Best of Twitter - Week of June 14, 2021

We’re hiring Head of Program and Head of Content for New Science (my nonprofit with the long-term goal of building new institutions of basic science) — newscience.org/jobs. If we hire the person you recommended for any role, we’ll fly you out to Boston next year during New Science’s Summer Fellowship and show what this was all about!'

Tony Kulesa @kulesatony

Science infrastructure sets the exponent of progress in society. For the right person, joining Alexey and team at New Science to build new scientific institutions could be the highest leverage opportunity of a career. Do it!

Alexey Guzey (hiring Head of Program for New Sci) @alexeyguzey

Hiring for Head of Program and Head of Content at @newscienceorg: https://t.co/5c2dqaKsH5

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oliver beige @oliverbeige

Very generalizable across academia. Whole fields have been built on measures that don't measure what they claim to measure, but are easy to acquire and entrenched in the literature.

Ilan Gur @ilangur

a little piece of me dies every time I see a paper that uses patent activity as a general proxy for innovation. seriously, who said that was ok? just stop. please. (if you work in science or tech, back me up here — the economists need to hear this one loud and clear.) https://t.co/uo8HIFZPZf

Nic Duquette @NicDuquette

Professor Copernicus, thank you for your interesting paper on the structure of the solar system. After reviewing the referees' comments and carefully reading the paper myself, I have decided to reject. Some comments:

Nic Duquette @NicDuquette

1. The literature review is totally inadequate; referee 1 has helpfully pointed out some recent papers advancing epicycle theory I encourage you to cite. This will clarify your contribution to the literature.

^ thread

Steven Byrnes @steve47285

Book review: "Feeling Great" by David Burns

lesswrong.comBook review: “Feeling Great” by David Burns - LessWrongI’ve never had any “real” mental health problems, but sometimes I feel stressed or guilty or whatever, like everyone, and who doesn’t want to feel more good more often? So a couple months ago I read Feeling Great: The Revolutionary New Treatment for Depression and Anxiety by David Burns (published 2…

Anna @DistractedAnna

Increasingly unconvinced that none of my relatives who “outgrew” their ADHD actually did anything of the sort. Mostly they seem to have just married someone who’s into managing them. This is actually a revelation to me

Hendrik Dietz @hendrik_dietz

What about putting viruses in quarantine? Virus traps are here: rdcu.be/cmvND nature.com/articles/s4156… With @UlrikeProtzer @sethfraden @HaganLab, supported by @virofight @dfg_public @ERC_Research

Morgan Housel @morganhousel

This quote from Michael Collins (Apollo 11 astronaut) is both brutal and says a lot about human nature: “Fame has not worn well on Buzz [Aldrin]. I think he resents not being first on the moon more than he appreciates being second.”

Niko McCarty @NikoMcCarty

Researchers engineered human cells with a green-light sensitive gene, and triggered the cells to release glucagon-like peptide-1 on demand with an Apple Watch. Interfacing wearable devices with transgenes. #synbio

nature.comSmart-watch-programmed green-light-operated percutaneous control of therapeutic transgenesWearable smart devices often have green light diodes to monitor health. Here the authors use this to control a light-activated genetic switch for GLP1 production in diabetic mice.

Quarantined section

“gotta love the scientific publishing establishment” edition:

Yuri Deigin @ydeigin

Yeah, this is a bombshell but we had 10 rejections from “respectable” academic journals. Any big name genome sequencing journals out there who want to take our manuscript and grill us hard in peer review so that we know our findings are 100% solid? Come on now. Let’s do this!

Yuri Deigin @ydeigin

💥KABOOM💥 We examined public sequencing data from Wuhan and discovered contamination of agricultural datasets by viral sequences. We were even able to pull out two novel MERS-like coronaviruses, one of which was in a reverse genetics backbone. https://t.co/jCPiSDUvBp https://t.co/RcV41oYI7r

Hans Mahncke @HansMahncke

Hi @SpringerNature, what's going on with the stealth edits? First, you added a natural origins disclaimer to this important article. Then you quietly removed it. Are you now claiming the virus didn't come from nature after all? Why did you add the disclaimer in the first place?

carolyn weaver (⧖)🌹BLM @weavercarolyna

"Why is Nature’s reporter [Amy Maxmen] lying about & deleting old tweets that show she did indeed meet a scientist [Peter Daszak] at the centre of the lab-leak debate?" (A debate Maxmen has discouraged). Lying is utterly disqualifying for any journalist.

Matt Ridley @mattwridley

The world is getting weirder: item, a bizarre episode in which a science journalist claimed a photograph of her at a conference was a deep fake, despite her own tweets showing it wasn't... https://t.co/Ql3G1CZKcm

Mr Ivan Johnson @MrIvanJohnson

⁦@ianbirrell⁩ on how ⁦@Nature⁩ & ⁦@TheLancet⁩ shut down debate on the #covid19 #lableak hypothesis, possibly to appease China. #shame V ⁦@unherd⁩ h/t ⁦@AutomaticEarth⁩ unherd.com/2021/06/beijin…