iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Devang Mehta🌱🧬

Jeff Lewis @lewislab.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Respectfully, raw quantity has always been a poor proxy for scholarship quality. We all know examples of great scientists who publish a small number of large papers and others who publish many more strong, concise papers. I've been beating this drum for evaluative purposes for a long while.

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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"authors could not answer...even basic questions about the paper...difficult to see how they could have verified the paper’s contents" medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ask...

medium.com

Asking Authors About Their Own Papers

By Nihar B. Shah

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 16/09/2026

wonder what #proteomics folk feel about this platform that recommends “proteomics” platform but doesn’t seem to include any mass-spectrometers? 🧐 Atlas of Proteomic Technologies: an evidence-based framework for selecting and combining commercial proteomics platforms www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 16/09/2026

For now eLife is still considered a top journal to publish in the system Belgian universities use for allocating funding.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 15/09/2026

Happy to note that plant biology papers always seem to be the shortest in queue when I log in to screen 😎🌱 (or we just have the fewest preprints, but doubtful)

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 14/09/2026

Excited to listen to Aaron Panofsky speaking about scientific racism in Leuven following all the ill-informed public commentary around the Cofnas affair in Belgium of late.

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Journal of Experimental Botany @jxbotany.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

🥬🕐 RESEARCH 🕐🥬 Most cultivated lettuce varieties have a 27 h internal clock but are grown under 24 h light cycles. Anton-Sales et al. confirm circadian resonance effects in a crop species and demonstrate yield increases of 11–29% 🥬📈 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience 🧪

Fig. 3.Visual tipburn severity scale used for lettuce phenotyping. Representative photographs of lettuce plants illustrating the six-point tipburn scoring scale, ranging from 0 (no tipburn symptoms) to 5 (severe tipburn with extensive necrosis of inner leaves). Score 0 indicates healthy plants with no visible damage; scores 1–2 reflect early-stage symptoms with minor marginal browning on young leaves; scores 3–5 represent progressive necrosis affecting an increasing proportion of the inner canopy and considered unmarketable (severe tipburn). Scale bar=10 cm.

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PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Please submit comments to the EU Commission’s Call for Evidence on how to implement the new rules for "Plants obtained by new genomic techniques (#NGT)". Submission deadline 28 Sept. Below what I submitted. #plantscience ec.europa.eu/info/law/bet... ec.europa.eu/info/law/bet...

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Ben @cinemashoebox.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

everyone is going insane for this but it's a slop machine. the first character i rolled was a child who died in 5th century BCE Iran and the site generated me a picture of "his home" which had drainpipes and telephone wires. fuck this.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 29/08/2026

I suspected this was the case, good to see it backed by data.

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MadScientist @mads100tist.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Do you work with microscopy images and segment to quantify or track? Do you study cell biology? development? Gather round! Let me tell you about FOCUS-3D, a segmentation algorithm that is fast, accurate and can be used on any model. We used it here to study zebrafish development. 🧪 (thread)

biorxiv.org

FOCUS‑3D: Robust, generalizable volumetric cell segmentation for three‑dimensional fluorescence microscopy

Understanding how cells establish spatial organization within tissues is a fundamental question in life sciences. While modern three-dimensional fluorescence microscopy captures large-volume tissue ar...

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 26/08/2026

I’ve signed this and I hope more colleagues from Flemish institutions do so too!

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 26/08/2026

Friends, I think Ghent University should hear from us as the eugenicists are out in full force. This letter is from academics there to counter the ridiculous letter supporting the white supremacist now being called a "whistleblower" by his ilk You can add your name👇🏽 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

docs.google.com

Open letter on the suspension of Nathan Cofnas at Ghent University

***Version française en dessous*** We, colleagues of Nathan Cofnas - supported by many colleagues internationally - want to respond to the negative and incorrect framing of Ghent University’s decisio...

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FT @fucktheory.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Imagine being talented and beautiful and rich and famous and still the most noteworthy thing about you is how good a person you are.

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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

"Jupyter notebooks associated with papers are using software versions beyond their support window[s]...This contributes to reproducibility issues...Similar issues arise with datasets" A paper's a permanent scientific record. If dependencies aren't, it isn't. 1/2 academic.oup.com/gigascience/...

academic.oup.com

Validate User

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Pieter T. L. Beck @ptrbck.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

We have written a statement in support of Ghent Uni's decision to suspend Nathan Cofnas. We resist attempts to frame this as a punishment for "whistleblowing" or censorship of "controversial research". We invite all academics who share our views to sign our letter. forms.gle/qwN8xzEM5C7Q...

forms.gle

Open letter on the suspension of Nathan Cofnas at Ghent University

We, colleagues of Nathan Cofnas - supported by many colleagues internationally - want to respond to the negative and incorrect framing of Ghent University’s decision to suspend Nathan Cofnas. With th...

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Me, a US-based academic: I don’t care what any scholar believes, we all need to stand up publicly whenever someone’s academic freedom is threatened Me, continuing: also, the first time this has happened, motivating me to sign my first ever open letter, is in late 2026, to a race scientist, in Ghent

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Dr. Katja Thieme (she/they) @katjathieme.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Bouke de Vries is the supervisor who used his ERC grant to shimmy Nathan Cofnas into a postdoc position for which he did not actually qualify. There's a lot we already know about de Vries. 1/

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Kevin Bird @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Everyone who says this about race science and eugenics specifically is outing themselves as stunningly ignorant. It's so hard to have even passing familiarity with biological and social science literature and not know the myriad was these ideas have been refuted that it almost has to be intentional.

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Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

A good moment to recommend Angela Saini‘s Superior, which traces back the history of “race science” and shows the institutions that sustain this pseudo-research until today. These pursuits have nothing in common with the principles of academic inquiry www.angelasaini.co.uk/superior

angelasaini.co.uk

Angela Saini | Award-winning Science Journalist and Author

The website of British independent science journalist, author and broadcaster, Angela Saini. Her most recent book is Superior: The Return of Race Science.

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Andrea Musacchio @andrea-musacchio.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... “MPIs operate on the Harnack principle: build an institute around a small group of exceptional scientists granted near-absolute autonomy. On paper, scientific paradise; in practice, junior scientists live entirely at the director’s pleasure.” Tranchant…

science.org

In (qualified) defense of the research project grant

In a debate that has been building for years, a growing coalition of reformers has concluded that the research project grant (RPG) approach used by many science funders in the United States and based ...

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 23/08/2026

A great list to follow, and proud to be on this :)

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Adam Rutherford @adamrutherford.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I had not some across this before, but if you want an example Nathan Cofnas’ scholarship, this is a doozy. Again I say, being sacked is not the problem; being recruited in the first place is what deserves scrutiny.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 23/08/2026

People debating Cofnas and academic freedom here would do better to first read Sandel’s critiques of neutral liberalism.

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Dr. Katja Thieme (she/they) @katjathieme.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

If you have put your name on this open letter without reading Ghent University’s letter of suspension to Nathan Cofnas, then you should read the letter now. bsky.app/profile/rote...

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Priyamvada Gopal @priyamvadagopal.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

A reminder that academic freedom does not mean the right to spout and propagate discredited theories or pass off disproved claims as 'knowledge.' It also does not protect you from breaking contractual agreements.

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Dr Juliette @ferrydanini.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I spent a few weeks last year reading on the definition of whistleblowing and I have thoughts

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 23/08/2026

I do not fathom how serious academic can sign a letter of support for this individual, nor how his ‘research’ activities are funded by the @erc.europa.eu.

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Sunder Katwala (sundersays) @sundersays.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Ghent University suspends Cofnas, a supporter of eugenics and biological racism. Prior to his role in the Arday controversy, the department in Ghent had issued an account doubting the opaque recruitment process was on merit, or that he was qualified for the role www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

Academic who accused Jason Arday of plagiarism suspended by university

Nathan Cofnas says he is being investigated for discriminating against the late Cambridge professor.

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 18/08/2026

This is the “scholar” that the admin at UGent and so many ‘public intellectuals’ in Flanders were rushing to defend a few months ago…

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Sasha Gusev has a great new blog post on faculty hiring during the DEI era. Remarkable how much backlash there has been to what was an tiny and temporary bump in hiring Black, Latino, and Native faculty of about 1 person per R1 campus theinfinitesimal.substack.com/p/what-actua...

Demographics of R1 university faculty, 2001-2024
84.5% 80%
White 69.8%
60
40
20
8.9%
3.4%
2.9%
0.3%
2001
'05
'10
'15
'20
— Asian/PI 17.1%
lispanic 6.4%
Black 4.8%
'24 Other 1.9%

Hiring counts for tenure-track positions at R1 universities
4,000 hires
3,797
• Non-URM 3,753
3,000
2,000
2,254
1,000
623
623
298
→ URM 788
Black 348
2018
2019
2020
322
2021
2022
2023
2024

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Time to share again @cattownsend.bsky.social's excellent piece on Pinker - who is listed as a referee on Nathan Cofnas' CV - which helps illustrate why scientific racism and eugenics continue to circulate in academia www.liberalcurrents.com/epsteins-gif...

liberalcurrents.com

Epstein's Gifted Scientists

Somehow it’s never the billionaires who are told that they have bad genes and shouldn’t breed.

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PlantEvolution 🌱🌾 @plantevolution.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Many years ago, my lab helped to discover YUCCAs. Later, Jia-Wei Wang in the lab sussed out the role of miR156s in a range of developmental processes. And now YUCCA and miR156 reappear as partners in this beautiful paper from the Lenhard lab! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #plantscience

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Jeff Groh @jeffgroh.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Avocados come in 2 varieties - A-types start each day female and switch to male midday. B-types do the reverse. In work just published from the last chapter of my PhD, we show this system evolved 40+million yrs ago and is regulated by alleles of 1 transcription factor www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pnas.org

Balanced polymorphism in a floral transcription factor underlies the ancient rhythm of daily sex alternation in avocado | PNAS

In avocado and certain wild relatives in Lauraceae, a highly synchronized daily rhythm of floral sex timing promotes cross-pollination between two ...

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ASAPbio @asapbio.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Despite many adversities that came their way, the @elife.bsky.social team continues with their innovative publishing model and is a champion in the Publish-Review-Curate space. We have nothing but admiration for what you've done so far. 👏 Learn more about eLife and PRC:

buff.ly

Open Science: What is publish, review, curate?

Publish, Review, Curate (PRC) solves some of the challenges in research communication today. We take a look at the range of organisations working to make PRC a bigger part of scholarly publishing.

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Matt Ortega @mattortega.com · 28/07/2026

Stephen Miller said just the other day that all asylum claims are "fake." A couple deported from the U.S. to Guatemala were gagged, bound, and shot dead. Their 14-month old found crying next to their mother's body. People like Miller don't care though because this is the point: ethnic cleansing.

stlpr.org

Overland couple shot dead in Guatemala after local ICE stop led to deportations

The couple’s 14-month-old daughter was found crying beside her mother’s body in a sugarcane field last week, according to Guatemalan authorities and media.

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Ran Blekhman @blekhman.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Everyone says AI will accelerate science. I don't think it will -- at least not in biology, and at least not soon. New post where I explain why, and how the productivity paradox can be resolved: blekhman.substack.com/p/why-ai-wil...

blekhman.substack.com

Why AI will not speed up science (yet)

You can see AI everywhere except in the productivity statistics

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Joris Sprakel @jorissprakel.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

How do transcription factors bind DNA strongly, and in a switch like manner, while remaining sequence specific? Our new paper on a canonical plant TF suggests the answer is a previously underappreciated assembly state: transcription factor nanoclusters. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

Nanoclustering of a plant transcription factor enables strong yet specific DNA binding

Transcription factor nanoclusters balance the DNA binding trade-off between weakly binding oligomers and nonspecific condensates.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 25/07/2026

Whew, the editors of @science.org are getting real.

science.org

The Assault On Science Funding Continues

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Devang Mehta🌱🧬 @mehta-lab.com · 23/07/2026

Happy to report that our grant was funded despite this disaster of a review 🎉 (thanks to those who wrote in support, your efforts were helpful and are very much appreciated 💚 (also for others in a similar boat, LLMs seem to be reasonably good at narrowing down possible reviewer identities👀)

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Dr. Lindsay Stallones Marshall (she/her) @lindstorian.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

One if the first responses to this post was “so they did worse when you took away the tool?” as though that was a slam dunk refutation. If you take away a tool and the student can’t do the skill you said the tool was teaching, then the tool didn’t teach the skill. This is education 101. 2/

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Dr. Lindsay Stallones Marshall (she/her) @lindstorian.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

One of the reasons why we are letting AI destroy our children’s education is because we have failed to root out the false idea that education is measured by what students produce. 1/

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