Dan MacLean

@danmaclean.bsky.social

160 followers 570 following 67 posts

Head of Bioinformatics at The Sainsbury Laboratory, Hon Professor UEA Computer Science. Likes genomics, stats, proteomics, bioinformatics, R user, Python wrangler. Wiganer.

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Biology 51%

Agriculture 37%

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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · Nov 18

I wrote a handy recipe book for R and Bioinformatics. Available through Packt. www.packtpub.com/en-us/produc...

Reposted by Brady T. West, Brendan Nyhan, Jacob Montgomery , and 6 more Brady T. West, Brendan Nyhan, Jacob Montgomery, Erika Franklin Fowler, Christopher Barrie, Aaron Shaw, Aurélien Mondon, Dan MacLean, Nicolai von Ondarza

Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 4d

LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text

But... can they? We don’t actually know.

In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test.

And our findings are striking:
LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵

Computational Turing Test Reveals Systematic Differences Between Human and AI Language

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the social sciences to simulate human behavior, based on the assumption that they can generate realistic, human-like text. Yet this assumption rem...

arxiv.org

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 15d

Thank you very much, Gaurav, I appreciate you taking the time to say so.

Reposted by Tuomas Mattila, Dan MacLean

Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 27d

(With apologies to Randall Munroe)

Reposted by Jon Green, Magnus Johansson, Dan MacLean

Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · Oct 8

I really really really liked The Oatmeal’s take on AI here theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

A cartoonist's review of AI art - The Oatmeal

This is a comic about AI art.

theoatmeal.com

Reposted by Dan MacLean

bioRxiv Molecular Biology @biorxiv-molbio.bsky.social · Oct 7

Synchronous spatio-temporal control of autophagy and organelle trafficking is necessary for appressorium-mediated plant infection by Magnaporthe oryzae https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.06.680644v1

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · Oct 2

2️⃣ For the love of all that remains sane in the world.

Reposted by Dan MacLean

Ben McKenna is Unwell @benmckenna.bsky.social · Sep 25

Great to hear Burnham's been to Mancwalk 2000.

Reposted by Dan MacLean

Christian Minich @christiannolan.bsky.social · Sep 16

Normalize never saying "leverage" or "utilize" as a verb. Tempted? "Use" is right there!

Simple words are better words

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Dan MacLean

SomersetWhovian 💙 🇺🇦 📎 @clairecopperman.bsky.social · Sep 1

"It has never been clearer: this is a class war, mediated through one person."
Love this article from @zoesqwilliams.bsky.social. I snorted several times, but she makes some serious points: in the eyes of the tabloids, the working class Rayner can't win, whatever she does.

Why are the tabloids so enraged about every aspect of Angela Rayner’s life? | Zoe Williams

Whether it’s her housing, clothes, the restaurants she goes to, or the fact she watches opera and drinks wine, she can apparently do nothing right, writes Guardian columnist Zoe Williams

www.theguardian.com

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 31

$ ls -laht
drwxrwsr-x 3 uname grp 27 Nov 16 2006 .nautilus
drwxrws--- 3 uname grp 26 Nov 16 2006 .metacity
-rwxrwx--- 1 uname grp 26 Nov 16 2006 .dmrc

😐

Reposted by Dan MacLean

GigaScience Journal @gigascience.bsky.social · Jul 22

Chris outlining the different AI coding agents that can be used for ontology development. Working on documenting best practices for this ai4curation.GitHub.io/aidocs #BOSC2025 #ISMBECCB2025

Reposted by Dan MacLean

GigaScience Journal @gigascience.bsky.social · Jul 22

Today #BOSC2025 and #BOKR (formerly Bioontologies) COSI’s, Chris Mungall is doing the keynote on Open KBs in the age of generative AI #ISMBECCB2025

Reposted by Dan MacLean

Darakhshan Nehal @darakhshann.bsky.social · Jul 22

*Learning visualization in Python as an R user*
#ggplot

Reposted by Dan MacLean

fesshole 🧻 @fesshole.bsky.social · Jul 21

I work with a lot of very intelligent people - the experts in a very select field - yet every morning they fight over the parking spots in the shade. By lunchtime they're all in full sun and my unwanted "sunny" spot keeps my car nice and cool. They never learn.

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 13

open.substack.com/pub/clauswil...

No, AlphaFold has not completely solved protein folding

Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.

open.substack.com

Reposted by Dan MacLean

Michael Love @mikelove.bsky.social · Jul 13

I recently ran a session at CSAMA with Laurent Gatto and this is the way. "Good enough" with knowledge of the tools that can help you get there. Here's some of the recs from the paper.

Reposted by Simon Roux, Dan MacLean

Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · Jul 12

AlphaFold is great, but contrary to public opinion it has not completely solved the protein folding problem. Much work remains to be done.
clauswilke.substack.com/p/no-alphafo...

No, AlphaFold has not completely solved protein folding

Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.

clauswilke.substack.com

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · Jul 10

😀 This is good to hear. My kid is past kpop phase so won't choose it, but I put it on my mental watchlist as a candidate for one of those nothing else on, dad can still choose some good things, type evenings.

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · Jun 19

Nice. An API is like a structured set of URLs for querying data that you can send to someone's computer and they'll send you an appropriate response. Eg api.mcdonalds.com/menu/sold/cheeseburger might return 31234543219494938263628 (some big number, anyway)

Api.mcdonalds.com

Reposted by John L. Provis, Benny Geys, Justin H. Kirkland , and 5 more John L. Provis, Benny Geys, Justin H. Kirkland, Daniel Stone, Michelle Everson, Halvard Leira, Kevin Jon Heller, Dan MacLean

Mel Brooks @officialmelbrooks.bsky.social · Jun 12

I told you we’d be back

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · May 23

If it was a small sample I might try Internet archives set of scanned magazines, iirc they have ads scanned or you might find it in reviews archive.org/details/comp...

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

archive.org

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · May 22

I use this yihui.org/tinytex/ (mostly through quarto so ymmv) but it's ok for that.

TinyTeX - Yihui Xie | 谢益辉

TinyTeX is a custom LaTeX distribution based on TeX Live that is small in size, but functions well in most cases, especially for R users. If you run into the problem of missing LaTeX packages, it &hel...

yihui.org

Reposted by Dan MacLean

da share z0ne @dasharez0ne.bsky.social · May 14

"AI" - dashare.zone ADMIN

A SKLEATON RISIN UP OUT OF DA GRAVE 2 REMIND YOU THAT DA A.I SHIT THATS GOING AROUND NOW IS DA SAME AS EVERY OTHER COMPUTER SCAM , AND THE BEST ITS GOT AFTER TRILLION'S OF DOLLARS OF MONEY AND SO MANY COMPUTERS THAT WE HAD TO OPEN NEW POWER PLANTS TO RUN THEM , IS : 1. VIDEO'S OF PEOPLE WHO ARE MOVING AROUND SLOWLY IN A WEIRD WAY, 2. PHOTO'S OF JESUS WHERE HES IN A SHOPPING MALL WITH THE PRESEDENT, 3. CODE THAT DOSENT WORK, 4. INCORRECT SUMMARY OF INFOMATION THAT YOU PASTE INTO IT, 5. NOW DUMB GUYS THINK THAT THE COMPUTER IS SAD OR SMART!!! THERE ALL BAD BUT THE WORST PART IS THAT THE WORST GUYS IN THE WORLD ARE MAKEN A SHIT LOAD OF MONEY OFF OFF IT AND IT DOESNT EVEN WORK, ANYWAY THE TEXT SAYS " REMEMEBER NFT'S? SORT OF? NOT REALLY? THE SAME GUYS WHO MADE THAT BULLSHIT ARE NOW TELLIN US AUTO COMPLETE IS INTELEGENT AND IT HAS FEELINGS" - DASHARE.ZONE ADMIN

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · May 4

Afternoon stroll

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · Apr 24

I would say don't. Take the opportunity to start per project libraries with renv.

Reposted by Dan MacLean

Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · Apr 22

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

Reposted by Dan MacLean

Dirk Eddelbuettel @eddelbuettel.com · Apr 1

#Rstats is being rewritten in Rust, and the R Core already has a book coming out!

O'RLY book title 'Rewriting R in Rust' with a subtitle 'How Hard Can It Be?' and a 'A Compelling Weekend Project' header written by the R Core Team

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · Apr 1

Definitely a chopper

Reposted by Dan MacLean

Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · Mar 29

The frightening thing about the Vogons was their absolute mindless determination to do whatever mindless thing it was they were determined to do. There was never any point in trying to appeal to their reason because they didn't have any.

Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · Mar 28

I get lots out of it, I think it's because I more easily see the bigger picture/broad strokes of what I'm trying to do and giving it that and having it fill in details is a real time/boredom saver.

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