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  Although many biologists regard variability as at best a nuisance and at worst a hindrance to biological systems, many empirical examples demonstrate that variability is an ability, not a disability. From the molecular to the ecological level, there is evidence that this ability to vary has been harnessed by biological systems and is a positive force for adaptation and change. The @Co_Biologists@biologists.social just funded our workshop "Playing Dice: Chance as a Biological Strategy"...

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  Authoritative review on how academic #publishing turned bad: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/05390184261456132 #academicchatter

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  "If we still believe that science is a vocation grounded in argument, curiosity and care, we can’t delegate judgement to machines" https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/ai-not-peer-so-it-cant-do-peer-review #ai #peerreview #academia

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  @neuralreckoning@neuromatch.social I can imagine this could be so constructive! Great idea!

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  The sky is queer around here 😁

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  After the Council of the EU demanded to address the "Hazards of Scholarly publishing" https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2023/05/23/council-calls-for-transparent-equitable-and-open-access-to-scholarly-publications/ a whitepaper was published that outlined the plans: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/3603e219-6a65-11ef-a8ba-01aa75ed71a1/language-en this year, ORE is set to launch the next stage: https://home.cern/cern-host-europes...

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  Bob Calin-Jageman referencing extremely useful resources on experimental design and #reproducibility in #neuroscience : Beyond the Basics: Experimental Design in Neuroscience https://blog.eneuro.org/2026/02/discussion_beyond-the-basics-exp-design?_hsmi=417745689 #science

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  "How disruptive would it be if GitHub started deleting repositories, or Google Scholar started hiding certain papers in response to U.S. government demands?" https://www.thetransmitter.org/policy/science-must-step-away-from-nationally-managed-infrastructure/ Most people with some interest have seen precisely this coming for more than a decade. @neuralreckoning is among them. It's great that outlets like @thetransmitter are now also recognizing this problem and are h...

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  RE: https://stiftungen.social/@carl_zeiss_stiftung/116516249592998662 Also das ist mal wirklich eine tolle Initiative: „stiftungen.social - Eine demokratische Instanz“ https://www.die-stiftung.de/news/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/16-stiftungen-starten-mastodon-server-161535/ Davon könnte die Welt mehr gebrauchen!

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  Und genau das ist es, was die Ex-Verlage charakterisiert, die Umkehr des Datenflusses: "die Daten fließen nur in eine Richtung, nämlich von der Wissenschaft zu Elsevier." Als diese Überwachungskonzerne noch Verlage waren, war das noch die andere Richtung. "#Datentracking bei Elsevier: Yuliya Fadeeva im Interview" https://irights.info/artikel/datentracking-elsevier-yuliya-fadeeva-interview/32777 Mittlerweile macht, nach eigener Aussage, die Verlagstätigke...

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  TIL that "carbon footprint" is a campaign started by British Petroleum (BP) in order to distract attention away from coporate responsibility and culpability towards individual responsibility and culpability. https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781541700116 If you are concerned about your carbon footprint or shame others about their's, it shows how well this campaign has worked and is still working. But you know what is really on us? To stop this madness right now and de...

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  RE: https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/115230366976982724 It just got even easier for #academic #scholarly #institutions to host their own Mastodon instance! #academicchatter

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  Seltener wurde es klarer formuliert: "Wir haben Systeme gebaut, die Schein über Sein stellen, Quantität über Qualität, Sichtbarkeit über Substanz." https://www.laborjournal.de/editorials/3477.php Wir belohnen die Fliessbandproduktion und brauchen uns daher nicht zu wundern, wenn nur Fliessbandware heraus kommt. Dies ist ein systemisches Problem der #Wissenschaft , das nur mit systemischen Lösungen addressiert werden kann, s.z.B.: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/arti...

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  I love it how more and more people are daring to do behavioral #neuroscience with non-laboratory animals: "Olfactory learning in two Amblypygi species Paraphrynus laevifrons and Phrynus pseudoparvulus" https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-026-02065-1 #biology #ethology

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  To my knowledge, the second study now showing this: “authors choose to publish in more expensive journals” https://buff.ly/3gA9JhF h/t @SvenjaHagenhoff #openaccess #openscience

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  Interesting #preprint on automated reference-checking. It "runs entirely on [one] machine (free public databases, a single consumer GPU, and open-weights models) with no [...] external services. The pipeline verifies that references exist, checks retraction status, compares metadata against canonical records, downloads and parses cited papers, verifies that they support the claims made about them, and [...] checks cited papers' own bibliographies. " https://arxiv.org...

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  @UlrikeHahn So totally agree! The fact that arxiv actually feels like they need to review preprints, in a very ironic way means we need a pre-preprint server? 🤣 And as if to add insult to injury, our publication system was already FUBAR before LLMs were a thing, but people kept pretending the problem will go away by itself if they just manage to keep ignoring it for long enough. That ostrich attitude is so going to blow up in everybody's faces now.

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  How to fund #research with less bias and lower costs? Use more lotteries! "Lottery before peer review is associated with increased female representation and reduced cost" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65660-9 Give that this is only one of many such reports over the last decades, surely, this has become the standard by now? Oh, wait... "taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself" https://www.nature.com/ar...

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  RE: https://wisskomm.social/@uni_regensburg/116402466905827105 Meine Universität, wie sie genau das Gegenteil von dem macht, was man von einer modernen Universität heutzutage erwarten würde.

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  They're not wrong: "Cancer Research UK (CRUK) has announced it will cease funding #openaccess (#OA) publishing costs, arguing that the current model is failing to deliver a fair and efficient system for disseminating research." https://www.researchinformation.info/news/cancer-research-uk-to-stop-funding-open-access-publishing/ I wonder if the ORE announcement may have anything to do with that decision? https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-research-...

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  The PNAS paper from Monday got a lot of attention https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2420092122 One particularly attention-grabbing point was the growth of paper mill papers, i.e., the red line. The area under the black curve is the entire scholarly literature. Judging from reproducibility projects, I have added the # of articles that are likely to be irreproducible (yellow). Sure, paper mills can some day be a problem. But compared to irreproducibility, it's a really minor problem: https:/...

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  This should have been big news! Ten funding agencies from eight European countries have pledged to support a public infrastructure that is poised to replace academic journals: FWF 🇦🇹 RCN 🇳🇴 Forte 🇸🇪 ARIS 🇸🇮 SRC 🇸🇪 FCT 🇵🇹 CSIC 🇪🇸 DFG 🇩🇪 Formas 🇸🇪 ANR 🇫🇷 Only two of them issued press releases in English: https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/news/detail/joint-commitment-to-strengthening-open-research-europe https://www.fccn.pt/en/atualidade/fct-assina-declaracao-fortalecimento-open-research-europe-ore/ and on...

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  At last! It starts this fall: "A new era for Open Research Europe" https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-research-and-innovation-news/new-era-open-research-europe-2026-03-26_en Diamond #openaccess for all authors from 11 supporting countries: 🇦🇹 Austria 🇫🇷 France 🇩🇪 Germany 🇮🇹 Italy 🇳🇱 Netherlands 🇳🇴 Norway 🇵🇹 Portugal 🇸🇮 Slovenia 🇪🇸 Spain 🇸🇪 Sweden 🇨🇭 Switzerland Now "incentivize" institutions to make this the default #publishing option. #openscie...

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  It's beginning! EU journal replacement set to start this fall. Free OA publishing for all authors from 11 supporting countries. This is Germany's DFG press release: "New Publishing Opportunities for Researchers: Germany Joins Open Research Europe" https://www.dfg.de/en/news/news-topics/announcements-proposals/2026/ifr-26-21 #openaccess #publishing #openscience #ORE