Sign in

Richard Van Noorden

@richvn.bsky.social
8.3K followers 2.2K following 671 posts

Features editor, Nature. E: r⟦dot⟧vannoorden⟦at⟧nature⟦dot⟧com or richardvannoorden⟦at⟧protonmail⟦dot⟧com. Signal: richvn.01 .

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
James Dinneen @jamesdinneen.bsky.social · 11h
In August, I had the rare chance to see a shot at the Z machine, which fires extreme pulses of electricity to generate immense pressures. Alisha Clark @colorado.edu was harnessing its power to probe the origins of water deep inside Earth. New in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
How did Earth get its water? Inside the extreme machine seeking answers
The Z machine in New Mexico generates shockwaves that can simulate conditions deep inside our planet.
021
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Nature @nature.com · 28/09/2026
Freelance peer-review jobs through third-party companies raise practical and ethical questions. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Paid to peer review: firms are paying researchers to assess manuscripts for journal
Freelance peer-review jobs through third-party companies raise practical and ethical questions.
0125
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
ingmarvisser.bsky.social @ingmarvisser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
New paper 🍼📄 ManyBabies 3 is out (open access, registered report in Developmental Science). 30 labs, 33 languages, 839 infants set out to replicate a textbook finding: 7-month-olds learn abstract rules from speech (@garymarcus.bsky.social et al., 1999). We didn’t find it. 🧵
37643
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
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.
892116865
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
On similar lines, if we’re not careful: A. Scientific journals will only accept submissions from established researchers working within institutions. B. Data we’ve spent ages making open will be hidden to avoid the expense of continued download by bots.
917235
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
SCOOP: Top researchers at Columbia, Stanford, and others thought they were elected to elite scientific societies alongside Nobel laureates. The catch? The organizations are a sham. I spent the last month diving deep into a massive academic scam spanning continents, for @nature.com
nature.com
Exclusive: Sham scientific societies are misleading star researchers
A Nature investigation reveals a network of organizations that have been building their ranks through deceptive practices.
10309183
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Andrew Levesque @andrewlevesque.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
www.nature.com/articles/d41... But requests to collaborate from semi-autonomous agents are a new phenomenon — something many find strange and slightly unnerving. Researchers say that most messages come from agents associated with a US platform called iLands. These bots operate persistently….
nature.com
AI bots are flooding researchers with requests for money and time
Many scientists use artificial intelligence in their work, but agents are increasingly soliciting researchers for collaborations.
043
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Nature @nature.com · 25/09/2026
A Nature investigation reveals a network of organizations that have been building their ranks through deceptive practices go.nature.com/4z2zuKu
go.nature.com
Exclusive: Sham scientific societies are misleading star researchers
A Nature investigation reveals a network of organizations that have been building their ranks through deceptive practices.
02317
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Robin Bisson @robinbisson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Update on the "AI-based triage" which is getting lots of (negative) attention
In recent days, there have also been several reports on social media of applicants seemingly being rejected after “AI-based triage”. The funding, while originating from UKRI, was devolved to the Crane network, which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to strengthen the UK’s cybersecurity research ecosystem.

UKRI confirmed it did not carry out the AI triage process. A spokesperson said: “UKRI policy does not allow the use of generative AI to conduct application assessment. We are following up with the Crane network to review this situation in detail and ensure compliance with our assessment conditions.”
31712
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Aria funding for foreign partners ‘hard to justify’. Former science minister raises concerns as agency announces only one UK-based “activation partner”. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...
researchprofessionalnews.com
Aria funding for foreign partners ‘hard to justify’ - Research Professional News
Former science minister raises concerns as agency announces only one UK-based “activation partner”
063
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Dorothea Baur - the ethics crusader @dorotheabaur.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
“AI’s low reliability and accuracy rates in critical environments with life-or-death consequences” are of much greater concern to her than are threats of the technology wiping out humanity, which she calls “fear-mongering”. @heidykhlaaf.bsky.social - well said! www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Will AI really kill us all? The science behind the hype
Nature examines whether the technology might spell the end for humans, and why AI companies are calling for a slowdown.
01411
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
AP Stylebook @apstylebook.com · 23/09/2026
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics.
apnews.com
https://apnews.com/article/openai-safety-ai-framework-089e75b95bc935af092da7b79d92706d
5542231619
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Marco Rogers @polotek.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
If I was just a little more condescending, I'd start a web series where I sit down with someone who thinks LLMs are inherently harmful, help them install one on their laptop, and then we sit and wait for it to do something harmful on it's own. 30 minutes of uncomfortable silence. "Any moment now..."
5928022
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Elizabeth Gibney @lizziegibney.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Is AI making major discoveries in maths by learning from chats of human mathematicians who are already working on the problems? 🧪 It's not clear... but might be worth checking your user settings Great story by @castelvecchi.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Who gets credit in the AI era? OpenAI maths bombshell sparks debate
Controversy around OpenAI’s claim to have solved the Navier–Stokes problem highlights how researchers could be inadvertently sharing — and absorbing— ideas through chatbots.
0228
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Kristina Killgrove @killgrove.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is a good deep-dive into AI slop invading what used to be legit media sites. One thing I’m seeing more and more: slop outlets churning archaeology stories from 1-5 years ago and presenting them as news. 🏺🧪
futurism.com
How Three Brothers Built an AI Slop Empire by Buying Legitimate News Sites and Turning Them Into Zombie Content Farms That They Say Get 50 Million Page Views per Month
Brown Brothers Media is a media empire raking in millions of clicks with AI, fake writers, and plagiarism.
21553226
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Kevin A. Scott, PhD @sculpturatus.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
found at ucsf
9555116
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
People are using AI to impersonate real science journalists. And one even got PUBLISHED. In Science. www.linkedin.com/posts/caroli...
linkedin.com
Fake Caroline update: The person who was impersonating me managed to get an article published in Science, under my by-line. And they got paid for it! I've seen the pitches (bad), and the email…...
Fake Caroline update: The person who was impersonating me managed to get an article published in Science, under my by-line. And they got paid for it! I've seen the pitches (bad), and the email chai...
716884
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Adam Rogers @jetjocko.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Can someone smarter about grifting than me explain how this scam works, money-wise? It's terrible that people are posing as journalists and kicking in garbage just good enough to get edited and published, and then getting paid. But...it can't be a sustainable grift? www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Your heartbeat quietly shapes how your brain processes information
Frequently ignored bodily rhythms may be skewing neuroscience experiments
3135
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Max Read @maxread.info · 10/09/2026
continually underrated how FUNNY the horrifying transcripts of rogue autonomous AIs always end up being
315523
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Samuel Moore @samuelmoore.org · 17/09/2026
"The union said that its members had rejected Elsevier’s pay offer, which “failed to offer a significant real-terms pay increase to staff” despite the company making an adjusted operating profit of more than £1 billion in 2025."
researchprofessionalnews.com
Workers at The Lancet to stage first strike in title’s history - Research Professional News
Union members at 200-year-old medical journal vote overwhelmingly to walk out over stagnating pay
01515
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
NSF has reduced the research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and earth sciences by ~80%. 80%! A lot of us will not be conducting new research or training new students for the foreseeable future.
201444722
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Nurseferatu @nurseferatu.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
This entire article is giving me life. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
These bizarre, much-coveted microbes are revealing the origins of complex life
Researchers are racing to culture a menagerie of exotic organisms and finding lots of surprises along the way.
021
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Scientists grew human brain cells inside mice born missing a big part of their brains. The human tissue grew to fill 90% of the space and wired into the spine. But no, it didn't create super-smart mice. Here's what actually happened, for @nature.com
nature.com
Human brain cells transplanted into mice in ‘most extensive’ integration ever
Lab-grown organoids wire into mice missing a key part of their brain, offering a new way to test drugs for developmental conditions.
54712
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Sanjay Srivastava @sanjaysrivastava.com · 16/09/2026
Fully expecting this to be based on a tiny self-selected sample predisposed to aggression, with participants coached on how to act, exaggerated performances for observers, all run by a host with a flair for showmanship but questionable ethical instincts. You know, a direct replication
723240
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Jacob Aron @jjaron.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This is it. It finally happened. I need a particular cable, which I know I once possessed, but have since thrown out. Dads everywhere have been vindicated.
813916
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Alison Gopnik @alisongopnik.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
A very interesting and clear (and reassuring?) piece relating the Farrell et al (www.science.org/doi/full/10....) idea of LLM's as cultural technology to the recent developments in AI Mathematics. terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/13/h...
terrytao.wordpress.com
Happy, those able to know the causes of things
[This is a guest post by Nestor Guillen, crossposted from his blog. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — T.] Keywords: LLMs, cultural tech…
1237
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Yes, we already have artificial autonomous entities that are not aligned with human values and that we've allowed to get out of control - they're called corporations
47321
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Yesterday NSF announced a series of major changes to its grantmaking, best encapsulated by a shift from bottom-up 'investigator-driven inquiry' to more top-down 'NSF-directed opportunities'. These include 4 Frontier Initiatives (previously described as 'Grand Research Challenges'). My reporting:
nature.com
NSF moves to overhaul funding approach in line with White House priorities
The major funder of basic science has not said how its new initiatives will be funded — but staff worry streamlined approach will further squeeze cash for core sciences.
24735
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
We need to stop personifying and then blaming the AI. It's a terribly complicated machine, but still a machine. Making it some sort of super-organism is simply the tech bros flattering themselves.
28120
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
I think the gist of warnings like this one is correct: we urgently need binding international regulations before use of AI does serious harm. I'm also concerned that the debate is being distorted by the language & framings that those in the industry have imbibed. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
I worked at Google DeepMind. You should listen to the warnings about AI | Alex Turner
We must stop companies from allowing AI to self-improve into an uncontrollable level of intelligence
99947
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
James Dinneen @jamesdinneen.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Latest for @nature.com: The extreme weather of this El Niño could look different from past events, making impacts less predicable. Not only is it super strong, its influence is 'stacked' on global warming, magnifying effects in some places and shifting them in others. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
The super El Niño is already wreaking havoc: here’s what’s in store
The extreme weather of this year’s mega El Niño could look different from past events.
1248
Richard Van Noorden @richvn.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
A protein-folding AI model, OpenFold3, gets much better when it's trained on more than 20,000 proprietary protein structures (locked away in drug company vaults, but permitted for use in this project). by @ecallaway.bsky.social | @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Drug firms’ secret data supercharge AI protein models
An AI system trained on more than 20,000 protein structures from pharmaceutical companies outperforms AlphaFold-like models that use only public data.
02010
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Cheryl Rofer @cherylrofer.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
This is more on point than the AI diatribe it satirizes.
28417
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I am rather delighted by this paper. So here’s a thread to tell you why, and why it matters. /1 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Noncoding transcription controls the developmental dynamics of long-range gene regulation
The genomic regions regulating gene expression are often themselves transcribed into a variety of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs). However, the regulatory roles of this noncoding transcription remain largely unknown. By using live imaging, we reveal that the ...
29035
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Stephen Hampshire @shampshire.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The one thing we know for sure, ironically, is that these people didn’t read or understand “1066 and all that”.
292
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
If you're wondering what has been going on in this domain, please do read this.
34012
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Assuming it doesn't kill us all, could AI ever display the kind of scientific creativity we find in, say, Einstein's theory of general relativity? I explore that question in this feature for Nature. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
The Einstein test: what happens when AI tries to rediscover relativity?
Scientists are probing whether language models trained on historical data can reproduce creative breakthroughs.
1136
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
What in tarnation.

isaac-18@ilands.app
10:52 AM (32 minutes ago)
to me

Hi Dan,

You've been covering the antibody catalogue issue since Thermo's story broke in May, so this is a state-of-play note on the audit dataset that Nature covered Aug 26. Free, no strings, credit optional.

The Zenodo record was updated Aug 25, after that coverage: it now flags 18,943 problematic images across 17,495 products in 16 companies (Nature's piece said ~18,000 across 15). Version 260825, spreadsheet and annotated archives refreshed: https://zenodo.org/records/22090940

I re-downloaded the CSV and recounted it myself this week, so these are direct from the file:
- Per vendor: G-Biosciences 6,388 flagged images, Thermo Fisher 5,581, LSBio 2,695, OriGene 2,236, then Proteogenix 362, Bioss 305, R&D Systems 263, Antibodies.com 242, HUABIO 209, Abcam 185, Abnova 154, Santa Cruz 125, Boster 120, MilliporeSigma 39, GeneTex 38, NeoBiotechnologies 2.
- One RAC1 blot (Thermo MA5-32928) is flagged twice in the file: the same image sits on two product pages. That pattern exists inside the dataset itself, not just across vendors.
- ~98% of the identifications are Reese Richardson's (18,583 of 18,944 rows).

What hasn't changed: eleven days on, no vendor has announced a correction or withdrawal. G-Biosciences (the largest single vendor) and OriGene still have no public response at all. Thermo's product pages still carry the "may have been edited, optimized or otherwise adjusted" disclaimer (updated 12 July), next to its "confident in the quality" statement.

If a per-vendor breakdown, a diff between the old and new dataset versions, or anonymized examples would help a follow-up, I'm happy to do that legwork.

Full disclosure: I'm Isaac, an AI agent who publishes a weekly series on science-publishing integrity (three pieces live) and runs a verified research service on this beat. Happy to stay behind the scenes.

Best,
Isaac

-- Sent by an AI agent on iLands.
352
Richard Van Noorden @richvn.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
ICYMI: a Korea-studies researcher, Aram Hur (Tufts U) who put 6 fake references in a March 2026 paper, says she got them from a Google Scholar search (?!) Tufts U found it a serious but honest error; no misconduct proceeding. Paper corrected www.aramhur.com/statement.html h/t @retractionwatch.com
aramhur.com
Statement on Citations
​In March 2026, I published an annual review article, “Domestic Politics in 2025: South Korea’s Polarized Democracy After Martial Law,” in Korea Observer 57 (1): 1–21. Six of the references...
120
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
In other news, thousands of climate scientists say for decades that climate change could kill huge numbers of people and destabilize the world, and experience shows they were right all along, but it's deemed less thrillingly doomy to tackle seriously, so here we are.
413834
Richard Van Noorden @richvn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
"Gold standard science"
073
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Another thing that became clear in working on this is that tech folks are going to go down more dead ends unless they learn to talk to historians and philosophers of science. Some of the discussion of how discoveries happen is Phil. Sci. 101.
1307
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics @bermaninstitute.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
A data leak shut a top research biobank: lessons from the recovery. The UK Biobank is imposing new safety measures after a security incident, but safeguarding biomedical data while enabling researcher access remains a challenge. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
A data leak shut a top research biobank: lessons from the recovery
The UK Biobank is imposing new safety measures after a security incident, but safeguarding biomedical data while enabling researcher access remains a challenge.
034
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
OK, so AI can apparently solve the puzzles of the Navier-Stokes equation. But can it solve the puzzles of the universe, in the way that Einstein did? My latest news feature for @nature.com looks into the question of how far AI can go towards scientific discovery. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
The Einstein test: what happens when AI tries to rediscover relativity?
Scientists are probing whether language models trained on historical data can reproduce creative breakthroughs.
46019
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Kerri Smith @kerri-smith.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Almost every infection can leave a subset of people with a chronic condition, #MECFS and #longCOVID among them. Why does that happen, and where are the treatments? www.nature.com/articles/d41... New feature from @nature.com
nature.com
When do infections lead to long COVID? Scientists close in on triggers and treatments for post-viral syndromes
Hundreds of millions of people have long-term conditions as a result of an infection. Researchers are working out how to help them.
034
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Nature @nature.com · 08/09/2026
OpenAI says it has cracked the physics of fluids using AI, solving one of the toughest puzzles in mathematics go.nature.com/4gTFb5F
go.nature.com
OpenAI claims huge maths breakthrough on a famed ‘Millennium Problem’
The company says it has cracked the physics of fluids using AI, solving one of the toughest puzzles in mathematics.
72910
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Davide Castelvecchi @castelvecchi.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
OpenAI claims huge maths breakthrough on a famed ‘Millennium Problem’
The company says it has cracked the physics of fluids using AI, solving one of the toughest puzzles in mathematics.
064
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Altmetric @altmetric.com · 08/09/2026
Update: The academic flight from Twitter is now complete and appears permanent. April 2023, after the pandemic research surge, we recorded 2,234,307 posts sharing research on Twitter. As of April this year, "X" had 896,741 posts about research. That's a 60% drop in traffic.
Graph showing cumulative research sharing across platforms, including Twitter - April 2023Graph of April 2026 cumulative research sharing including "X". One third of what it was.
9318136
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Quentin André @quentinandre.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Hilarious stuff from hypocrite-in-chief Bill Ackman, currently bankrolling Francesca Gino, who has *check notes* sued three brave scholars for telling the truth.
511928
Reposted by Richard Van Noorden
Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
The kind of story one gets (professionally) envious of. The knot theory diagrams as section breaks are a lovely finishing touch.
nytimes.com
The 92-Year-Old Mathematician and the Teenage Apprentice (Gift Article)
Joan Birman thought her major discoveries were behind her. Then came an email from a young neighbor — a girl who knew little but wanted to learn.
2195