Nicola Romanò @nicolaromano@qoto.org

@devezer

Underlying problem is that we literally have college courses in noise mining (we call them Stats 101) so millions of scientists are out there noise mining, and so we have a lot of papers that really do have low evidentiary value. It's not because they're not preregistered, it's because the people doing the analysis wouldn't know what a good analysis looked like, and in fact would likely fight a good analysis tooth and nail.

I wrote a script that takes as input a gene of interest:

```console
./script/plot_heatmap.sh -p 10 TP53
```

and generates a gene expression heatmap with genes that have correlated expression patterns.

Behind the scenes is a Bash script (calling `gget`) and a #Rstats script available at https://github.com/davetang/archs4_heatmap

One of my professors during PhD used to say “you can drive a truck through the holes in any given paper. so you look for what you *can* learn instead.” and being the smartass grad students we used to think driving that truck was fun. After so many years, I now appreciate her wisdom more than ever. All scholarly work has limitations but it’s refreshing when people critically evaluate what’s the actual value of the research. It's about humility, honesty, rigorous intellectual work.

New posting! This addresses the recent controversy at the 2023 Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting, where one of the speakers used his time to complain that he felt discriminated against as a white man.

To my mind, that isn't what's surprising and shocking about the episode.

The surprising thing is that on this occasion, a courageous young female scientist actually called him out on it.

The shocking thing is that despite such sexist, chauvinistic comments still being commonplace, such interventions basically never happen. And they should. #womeninstem

https://totalinternalreflectionblog.com/2023/07/16/speaking-up-speaking-out-the-2023-lindau-nobel-laureate-meeting-controversy/

Many prominent anti-vaccine influencers claim biomedical credentials. In a new pre-print, we quantify the size & influence of the group of perceived experts in the anti-vaccine community on Twitter.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.07.12.23292568v1.full.pdf+html

@mzan

Bad values dont me new values... A good person encouraging education to children is just as good a person regardless if they wear pants or a dress... THAT is a good value to teach kids.

@admitsWrongIfProven @iDoobyLeaves@noagendasocial.com

Microsoft "confirmed Tuesday that its validation procedure had been manipulated to digitally sign dozens of pieces of software."

Microsoft, Adobe, these firms have autoupdaters, installed on so many of our machines, that will run without question code signed by the mothership.

That's bad enough. How much should you trust Microsoft, both its intentions and internal security?

It's absolutely terrifying that hostile third parties have managed it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/12/microsoft-hack-china/

ht @GossiTheDog

Really not enjoying this “will they won’t they”. UK science is at stake. Sunak and von der Leyen fail to agree Horizon Europe deal.
https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-politics-2023-7-sunak-and-von-der-leyen-fail-to-agree-horizon-europe-deal/

Hey #RStats folks. For the coming R Sprint I'm thinking of proposing a project to improve documentation (in particular, examples, but it could be anything). So hit me with functions with bad, confusing or incomplete documentation in R base.

@rstats

Please boost/forward/tape to lab fridge etc.

Are you currently working on a #scientificwriting project such as a manuscript, grant proposal, job application, or research/teaching statement? Struggle to find place/time to write? Interested in learning how to improve the clarity and effectiveness of your professional writing? If so, consider applying to the CSHL Scientific Writing Retreat!

DM me with any questions. See interview with us here:
https://currentexchange.cshl.edu/blog/2021/8/a-word-from-32

https://meetings.cshl.edu/courses.aspx?course=C-WRITE&year=23

Enjoyed reading "Using prototyping to choose a #bioinformatics workflow management system". Paper describes authors' 10 day experience searching and implementing a workflow. Summary: Need to decide which tool to use? Shortlist a list of potentially useful tools based on your needs. Start using each tool on a simpler problem. Assess the suitability of each tool. Paper contains useful tips for building reproducible workflows and links to many useful resources. https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008622

Read an article today about why Americans think alcohol has health benefits and it's apparently another "well the French are healthy and they do X so it's healthy to do X."

So here's your periodic reminder that France (and Italy, and Sweden, and Japan, and basically every country you've seen in a "this country is so healthy, what's their secret?" headline) has universal health care.

The secret is access to health care. It's always access to health care.

Last term, I had a final assignment option having students use #ChatGPT to write their final essay, then critique the results. It was great, and I'll be doing it again. Everyone in #academia should do something like this with their class if they can. Short 🧵 on what we found.

Hello! I’m a Canadian #internist / #geriatrics desperately seeking a #medicine microblogging community now that the world is on fire. Interested in #aging, #palliative care, #frailty, #dementia, #neurology, and #alzheimers. Curious about #ai #artificialintelligence #ml #machinelearning in #healthcare. How do I find my people? :) 👋

#introduction

If you ever find yourself thinking “would this graph be better in 3D” the answer is always no⁠ ⁠ #Venn #Graph #VennDiagram #Data⁠ #cartoon #cartoons #comic #comics #instacomic #instacartoon ⁠ #academia #science #research ⁠ #errantscience

@mmasnick

#Bluesky, which directly competes with Twitter, has hired Twitter employees & all 3 Board members worked at Twitter. Bluesky has plainly been using Twitter IP, trade secrets & confidential information to accelerate its development. The attraction to its users is that it is basically a copycat clone of Twitter - but Musk has never made a peep about it. And never will.

That should tell anyone who has a neuron dedicated to critical thinking, something very important about Bluesky.