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Marc Robinson-Rechavi

@marcrr.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.4K following 678 posts

He/Him. Evolution and Bioinformatics. Posts mine alone, in English (mostly) & French. Chair of @dee-unil.bsky.social, Prof at @fbm-unil.bsky.social‬, group leader at @sib.swiss. PI of @bgee.org 🦣 Main account: ecoevo.social/@marcrr

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Reposted by Marc Robinson-Rechavi
Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 23h
You're gonna need a bigger chart
Chart showing the daily sea surface temperature for the Nino region of the Pacific, with a red line for 2026 shooting off above every other year in record-setting territory, with the latest spot right at the top of the chart
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Charlotte @fireantprincess.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
if I was an ai company, burning through unprecedented amounts of cash without a clear business model, I’d also hire scientists to do PR for me, because they are extremely cheap compared to the amounts of cash I am burning.
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Vincent Granier @vincentgranier.eurosky.social · 23h
Huit ans de procédure, pour confirmer que les médecins signataires pouvaient, sans commettre de faute déontologique, signer ceci : sante.lefigaro.fr/article/l-ap...
sante.lefigaro.fr
L’appel de 124 professionnels de la santé contre les «médecines alternatives»
Des médecins et des professionnels de santé ont décidé d’alerter sur les promesses fantaisistes et l’efficacité non prouvée des médecines dites alternatives comme l’homéopathie. Ce collectif demande l...
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Vincent Granier @vincentgranier.eurosky.social · 23h
🔴INFO @apmnews.com 👇🔒[ABO]
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arXiv @arxiv.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
arXiv has updated our policy on rate limiting for all submitters. This update was made to fairly distribute moderator time & support the arXiv community of staff, volunteers, readers & authors. Please read our announcement to learn more: blog.arxiv.org/2026/10/01/updated-r…
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 02/10/2026
> an increase in thin papers of narrow scope, as well as ‘salami’ papers, where a single work is broken up and submitted as a set of smaller papers. There is also a marked increase in dense, AI-written papers. AI tools are making it easy for authors to flood arXiv [and others with] low-value papers.
A histogram showing the incredible increase in submissions. 

> In September of 2016, arXiv received 9,869 submissions. In September of 2024, arXiv received 20,569 submissions. This September, arXiv received 40,363 submissions, which in turn generated almost 9,000 support tickets for arXiv staff and moderators. In only the past two years, submissions have doubled.
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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
That janitor just goes from building to building helping people. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/equati... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com
10-panel SMBC comic update. All the panels are dialogue-less. Two researchers are writing equations on a chalkboard. A janitor watches them from afar. The researchers leave as the janitor is still mopping the floor. The janitor walks up to the chalkboard and writes on it with purpose, admires what he wrote, and leave late in the evening. The two researchers return at dawn, and are shocked by what is written on the blackboard. Over their half-erased equations, the text "ChatGPT, do a breakthru, no mistakes, thankx."
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 01/10/2026
"you'll probably have to fight robots over concert tickets and booking appointments" we already have this problem?
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mixlamalice @mixlamalice.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Mes préférés c'est quand t'as une conf, t'as 12 mecs qui utilisent le micro et t'as toujours le plus malin que tout le monde qui arrive et te dit moi je parle fort j'ai pas besoin de micro... (et en fait si, t'as aussi besoin de micro)
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Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo @multicellgenome.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
#Evolution can innovate without inventing. Cell type families can retain ancient regulatory “vocabularies”, while individual cell types evolve by reshuffling how those motifs are combined. @natecoevo.nature.com New cell types from old regulatory words. We like this! doi.org/10.1038/s415...
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"Things change. They change for the better because we make them change, or for the worse because we don’t show up or lose the battle."
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
When it comes to the impact of #MeToo, it’s important first of all to recognise that it was not a deus ex machina event out of nothing and nowhere. It was a consequence of the preceding five years of feminist upheaval, which in turn built on earlier feminist work. That upheaval took place as a vast public discourse educating the public about the pervasiveness of gender violence and the fact that it very often does not unfold as “stranger in alley attacks pure young lady”. It got people to let go of a lot of the stereotypes and slanders that protected rapists by blaming victims or portraying them as incapable of bearing trustworthy witness to their experience. It created the editorial willingness to publish stories that exposed movie producer/convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein and a host of other abusers and creeps and unpacked the mechanisms of protection they employed.

That in turn resulted in changed laws. Six years after that 2017 upheaval, two women said, in a talk at the Practising Law Institute, “Prior to #MeToo, only three states had passed anti-harassment reforms.” They counted 70 workplace anti-harassment laws passed, in 40 US states and 3,000 pieces of legislation introduced overall that were impacted by #MeToo. A nationwide law passed in 2021 ended forced arbitration of sexual assault and harassment, giving victims the right to go to court. All this legislation created a lot more accountability and victim protection, but it’s the kind of consequence that often goes unnoticed. Unnoticed because it’s complicated, slow, incremental and, for the most part, legislative reform is not a hot headline.
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Quite a lot has changed, actually.
theguardian.com
The one thing everyone gets wrong about feminism
People love to declare the death of the women’s movement, pointing to the ‘failure’ of #MeToo or the Epstein files, but don’t give up the fight just yet, writes Rebecca Solnit
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Time for this classic again.
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I like it better when my mountains are not top international news 😢
Front page of The Guardian app, with an image of a glacier landscape with melting ice, highlighting a large crevice with deep blue water visible. The news headline is 
‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
So glad that this quote can be added to my forthcoming article on AI and Epistemic Dispossession because I had to say that they will absolutely be using AI to erase science and history but I didn’t yet have the ‘he admit it’ smoking gun
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Rob Waterhouse @rmwaterhouse.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
The ubiquity of insect-vertebrate interactions makes clear that widespread #insect #declines are likely to seriously affect many vertebrate populations www.nature.com/articles/s44... #biodiversity #ecology #InsectDecline
nature.com
The importance of insect biodiversity for vertebrates - Nature Reviews Biodiversity
Changes in insect diversity and abundance can affect vertebrates but understanding these consequences relies on having rich information about vertebrate–insect interactions. This Review summarizes the...
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Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo @multicellgenome.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
We have a new branch in the family tree of animals: Atreyea- a previously unrecognized lineage among the closest unicell relatives of animals. Led by @konsmitsi.bsky.social & @freejakoba.bsky.social together with a fantastic team of collaborators. 🔗 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... #protistsOnSky
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Two grants submitted in the last month, both organic home-grown, hand-written, with no additives. If you review them, criticize the science all you want, but know that I wrote them without AI. Now to answer emails.
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Hannah Vardit @hannahvardit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
i worry that men think being A Good Guy is dramatically and heroically intervening on behalf of an endangered woman and then being publicly rewarded on a grand scale when actually being A Good Guy is just usually saying, “hey man that’s not funny” or “wow that’s fucked up” and there is no reward
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
👉"as a heuristic, “Where was the preprint?” is becoming surprisingly useful. Preprinting exposes experiments, controls and conclusions to the community before the journal’s prestige can become a shield."
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Sophien Kamoun @kamounlab.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I just published: How do we recognize world-class science? Not by the journal it appeared in What I told early-career researchers about prediction, rigour, failure, priors — and the tyranny of bar graphs. kamounlab.medium.com/how-do-we-re...
kamounlab.medium.com
How do we recognize world-class science? Not by the journal it appeared in
What I told early-career researchers about prediction, rigour, failure, priors — and the tyranny of bar graphs.
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Dr. Katja Thieme (she/they) @katjathieme.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
What do the researchers who work for Anthropic think about (1) having directed a machine to plagiarize other researchers' work, (2) posting a paper attaching their own names to these machine results, and (3) allowing the company to issue hype that goes far beyond the capacity of their results?
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Ben Alpers @benalpers.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Once we had to wait decades between empty, Cold Fusion-style breakthrough announcements. "AI" provides the promise of dramatically reducing the wait time.
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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Ideas are generally nicer than people!
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Paul Francois @pfrancois.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I am sharing links and information about this with all my trainees and colleagues. And we absolutely need robust institutional responses to this, beyond the usual lame response, this is once again crucial to the long term survival of higher education and scientific research.
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I'm not writing in the NYT and I won't word it carefully: it's clear that AI companies are stealing researchers' work (and why wouldn't they? they steal artists' and journalists' work with no consequences), and I warned my group about it this morning.
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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 27/09/2026
Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the news that Anthropic discovered new virus genes for making DNA. He says he’s been studying them for years—and feeding his data to Anthropic’s AI as part of his own research. Coincidence? Here’s my story. nyti.ms/3VSWayc
nyti.ms
Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own? (Gift Article)
An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I'm afraid the Doomer discourse has persisted for another week (UN "AI" briefing, etc) so in case you missed this when we first put it out earlier in this bananas news cycle, I'm reposting it: buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch... w/ @alexhanna.bsky.social and @deccamuldowney.bsky.social
buttondown.com
What To Read To Stay Grounded Amidst AI Doomerism
Our recommendations for the anxious and perplexed By: Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna and Decca Muldowney There’s a subculture within the “AI” industry that...
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
"outside experts said that the Anthropic researchers have yet to do the research required to confirm that they’ve found something new"
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Some of you sneering about those who mask/care about masking, have you considered that one day you might also have to care about masking again in a non-pandemic sense? Would you like to see yourself relentlessly mocked by journalists, politicians and ordinary folk on social media?
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Hill I'm ready to die on: whether for grants or articles, review by AI is not *peer review*. Review based on a 1st scan by AI without actual reading of the grant or manuscript is not peer review either.
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MwahahahahahadScientist @mads100tist.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
We have data to show these algorithms are biased against specific groups of people, so I don't know how this is not malpractice at the very least
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MwahahahahahadScientist @mads100tist.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
In fact, since the algorithm is opaque and we will never be able to test what is 'evaluated' and how, I think this is highly unethical @olivia.science @irisvanrooij.bsky.social
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MwahahahahahadScientist @mads100tist.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This is it. This is what everyone is enabling by humoring genAI: you spend months writing something that took you years to get at, for an opaque algorithm that a few control to spit a number and cut you off right there and then. This is what we're up against 🧪
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Iva Vukušić @vukusiciva.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Dear academia, dear researchers, we cannot go on like this. I bet those hours of paid labour are also quite expensive, and are being thrown out the window for all those unsuccessful applications. It's setting money on fire.
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Iva Vukušić @vukusiciva.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
We are in a death spiral now. Imagine the labor and work hours going into: 1. producing the proposals (for those honourable candidates which are not using AI tools to spit out polished-sounding unnecessary slop), and 2. reviewing them.
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Braasch Lab @ Michigan State University @fishevodevogeno.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
As we keep saying: the impact of the teleost fish whole duplication has been profound! #EndlessFishMostTasteful
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Brian Jay Jones @brianjayjones.com · 24/09/2026
Jim Henson would have been 90 (yup, you read that right: NINETY) years old today. You can celebrate his life by celebrating creativity, diversity, peace, imagination, and silliness.
A tuxedoed Jim Henson sits in a sea of Muppets.
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The old line that analytic philosophy is answering questions that come naturally to toddlers via methods that come naturally to lawyers remains undefeated.
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Isaac Kamola @isaackamola.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
@aclu.org & @amnesty.org just published a massive report "Student Speech Under Attack." 300pp & 2 years in the making it offers the definitive account of how the speech of students (faculty and staff) was silenced, and continues to be policed, on campus. @aaup.org www.aclu.org/publications...
aclu.org
"Student Speech Under Attack: Suppression of Pro-Palestine Speech and Dissent on Campus" | American Civil Liberties Union
"Student Speech Under Attack: Suppression of Pro-Palestine Speech and Dissent on Campus," an ACLU and Amnesty International USA research report, documents the heavy-handed responses by certain univers...
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Sonja Vernes @sonjavernes.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
🦇 Bat1K's biggest paper yet is out. Largest bat genome + fossil study ever: 103 genomes, 44 fossils, 137 researchers. We rewrote the bat family tree! Bats likely originated in Europe ~65 million years ago, not Asia, Africa or Americas. @bat1kgenomes.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11007-3
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Corey Callaghan @coreytcallaghan.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Do you use #iNaturalist data in research—or advise students who do? We put together a practical guide to using iNaturalist data in scientific research, covering how to access, acquire, analyze, and attribute the data, with examples in R and Python. Paper: doi.org/10.1093/bios... #ecology
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Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Stancil: "What do you mean?? It is a damn pipe! I can clearly see it with my own eyes!"
The Treachery of Images by René Magritte
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I once said this to @amywestervelt.bsky.social and I stand by the statement. “I don't think you can call anything where you're getting more oil out of the ground to burn a climate solution.” drilled.media/news/ccs
"It doesn't make sense to use CCS to prolong our use of fossil fuels, especially to produce electricity," David Ho, professor at University of Hawaii and senior researcher at Columbia Uni-versity, said. 'The argument in favor of enhanced oil recovery is often that if they weren't using this capt red CO2 they'd be using some other CO2. But I don't think you can call anything where you're getting more oil out of the ground to burn a climate solution."
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Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 22/09/2026
Read this, and really everything they're writing and doing at @securebio.org 👇
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Omaya Dudin 𓂆 ¦🍉¦🦠¦🔬¦ @dudinlab.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Must admit, ever since I was a kid, I’ve dreamt of seeing microscopy images of #protists in @lemonde.fr Today, protists are everywhere, and several images were taken by the team. And seeing #ichthyosporeans there too?! 🥹 One step closer to showcasing the beauty of the invisible microbial world. 🔬✨
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
xkcd.com/3010/ (Sorry)
xkcd.com
Geometriphylogenetics
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Jeremy Yoder says no war @jbyoder.org · 20/09/2026
There is no market for a paper-reading chatbot embedded with every scholarly article, much less a paper-reading chatbot that needs a disclaimer about how it does not in fact always read the paper correctly
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Jeremy Yoder says no war @jbyoder.org · 20/09/2026
ALMOST EVERY PEER REVIEWED PAPER HAS A SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS RIGHT BELOW ITS TITLE
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