Laurel Oldach
@laureloldach.bsky.social
Biochemistry & instrumentation reporter at Chemical & Engineering News. Signal: Laurel_Oldach.07
An optimistic-about-science thread is a rare pleasure these days
A few weeks ago I attended the Olympic Peninsula Fungi Festival. I went as someone who is interested in most everything in the world, lives in a wet, fungi filled temperate rainforest, and is mostly ignorant about fungi. Here are some things I learned:
November 11, 2025 at 3:41 AM
An optimistic-about-science thread is a rare pleasure these days
One problem with said training data:
yes. I worry the "let AI do the science for us now" means we end up trying to milk more and more out of the same data. we're already looking for our keys in the lamplight, and AI encourages this more with an even narrower beam... But I think an author-facing tool to improve papers is different
November 9, 2025 at 7:11 PM
One problem with said training data:
I missed this news amid all the chatter about Watson on Friday. I wonder what they’re planning to do about the well documented problems with the training data?
apnews.com/article/chan...
apnews.com/article/chan...
Zuckerberg, Chan shift bulk of philanthropy to science, focusing on AI and biology to curb disease
For the past decade, Dr. Priscilla Chan and her husband Mark Zuckerberg have focused part of their philanthropy on a lofty goal — “to cure, prevent or manage all disease” — if not in their lifetime, t...
apnews.com
November 9, 2025 at 7:08 PM
I missed this news amid all the chatter about Watson on Friday. I wonder what they’re planning to do about the well documented problems with the training data?
apnews.com/article/chan...
apnews.com/article/chan...
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
I lift the silly weights in the gym. I will mess around with my own words and sentences and thoughts out of it. See where it all takes me.
November 8, 2025 at 12:39 PM
I lift the silly weights in the gym. I will mess around with my own words and sentences and thoughts out of it. See where it all takes me.
This obituary-slash-“what happened to Watson?”, by the late great Sharon Begley, makes me grateful that prewritten obits are a thing.
www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/j...
www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/j...
James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.
www.statnews.com
November 8, 2025 at 3:13 AM
This obituary-slash-“what happened to Watson?”, by the late great Sharon Begley, makes me grateful that prewritten obits are a thing.
www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/j...
www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/j...
This account is always interesting- on this piece especially
November 6, 2025 at 6:58 PM
This account is always interesting- on this piece especially
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
Quite a world when a federal judge has to call in a federal official to specifically tell him he can't use tear gas on children in Halloween costumes
October 28, 2025 at 3:19 PM
Quite a world when a federal judge has to call in a federal official to specifically tell him he can't use tear gas on children in Halloween costumes
Torn between asking “how the F did they obtain century-old embryonic DNA to train on?” and “how heavily does the model weight ZIP code at birth?”
October 22, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Torn between asking “how the F did they obtain century-old embryonic DNA to train on?” and “how heavily does the model weight ZIP code at birth?”
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
Wow, this is an interesting and rather sobering story: the commonly used drug rapamycin turns out in this particular application to be working via a completely different mechanism from its usual one, which no one had predicted.
Never assume that you know all about what any drug molecule is doing in the body - where it's going, what it's binding to. A new example:
Rapamycin's Secrets
www.science.org
October 15, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Wow, this is an interesting and rather sobering story: the commonly used drug rapamycin turns out in this particular application to be working via a completely different mechanism from its usual one, which no one had predicted.
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
My 14-yr-old and I were playing with Sora, gave it two prompts of things I/we had done that day 1/n
The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”
OpenAI is trying to clamp down on ‘bias’ in ChatGPT
GPT-5 is better at resisting liberal ‘pressure,’ the company says.
www.theverge.com
October 11, 2025 at 3:04 PM
My 14-yr-old and I were playing with Sora, gave it two prompts of things I/we had done that day 1/n
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
This means that we can screen for potential novel drugs for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in easily-grown skin cells, using mitochondria as a simple readout. In fact, a team at NIH’s NCATS is working on this now! Stay tuned.
October 10, 2025 at 4:47 PM
This means that we can screen for potential novel drugs for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in easily-grown skin cells, using mitochondria as a simple readout. In fact, a team at NIH’s NCATS is working on this now! Stay tuned.
My colleagues @rowanwalrath.bsky.social and @maxhenrybarnhart.bsky.social watched yesterday’s ACIP meeting so you won’t have to.
They caught this particularly confidence-eroding scientific critique…
💀
They caught this particularly confidence-eroding scientific critique…
💀
September 19, 2025 at 2:45 PM
My colleagues @rowanwalrath.bsky.social and @maxhenrybarnhart.bsky.social watched yesterday’s ACIP meeting so you won’t have to.
They caught this particularly confidence-eroding scientific critique…
💀
They caught this particularly confidence-eroding scientific critique…
💀
I hadn’t heard of Maxine Scates before reading this poem, but she nails the moment:
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
“Our Elsewhere”
“I wanted to tell you about what it’s like here now, / I wrote to my friend David.”
www.newyorker.com
September 18, 2025 at 2:10 AM
I hadn’t heard of Maxine Scates before reading this poem, but she nails the moment:
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
It so was hard to imagine having successful career in science as a disabled PhD student that eventually I just left.
Who could have guessed that years later I would help create a magazine issue dedicated to highlighting Trailblazing disabled chemists!
cen.acs.org/people/profi...
#DisabledInSTEM
Who could have guessed that years later I would help create a magazine issue dedicated to highlighting Trailblazing disabled chemists!
cen.acs.org/people/profi...
#DisabledInSTEM
Trailblazers: Chemists with disabilities rethink how we do science
C&EN’s 2025 Trailblazers issue, curated by guest editor Mona Minkara, looks at how chemists can solve problems in new ways
cen.acs.org
September 15, 2025 at 6:16 PM
It so was hard to imagine having successful career in science as a disabled PhD student that eventually I just left.
Who could have guessed that years later I would help create a magazine issue dedicated to highlighting Trailblazing disabled chemists!
cen.acs.org/people/profi...
#DisabledInSTEM
Who could have guessed that years later I would help create a magazine issue dedicated to highlighting Trailblazing disabled chemists!
cen.acs.org/people/profi...
#DisabledInSTEM
This is an interesting take from George Church, given that many sequencers seem to be competing on turnaround time, with neonatal diagnosis as a key use case.
www.wired.com/story/whole-...
www.wired.com/story/whole-...
![Screenshot from a Wired story reads : “ But there was one group Church was cool on having their genomes sequenced: newborns. “It’s kind of too late for really early onset [diseases], and it’s way too early for late onset.” The latter conditions, he noted, have very few cures. “It’s kind of a recipe for anxiety more than anything else.””](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lfyb347wgt5vdgfeobc3yxvl/bafkreieco2kpxswxnfpg5xsesz2w2bxtf3fdoahgjosunwiqj7njvefoui@jpeg)
September 15, 2025 at 4:12 PM
This is an interesting take from George Church, given that many sequencers seem to be competing on turnaround time, with neonatal diagnosis as a key use case.
www.wired.com/story/whole-...
www.wired.com/story/whole-...
Shocking story. I hope that making it public improves life in some small way for the poor surrogate, who nearly lost her life and has lost at least one job to this vengeful family.
Surrogate pregnancies are increasingly popular in tech circles, and the practice is expected to explode globally in the coming decade. It’s also shockingly unregulated. This is a story about what happens when it goes horribly wrong.
The Baby Died. Whose Fault Is It?
When her son died in utero, a venture capitalist went to extremes to punish her surrogate.
www.wired.com
September 3, 2025 at 1:43 PM
Shocking story. I hope that making it public improves life in some small way for the poor surrogate, who nearly lost her life and has lost at least one job to this vengeful family.
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
Anne Moffatt's memoir, The IT Girl, details the story behind the photograph with the baby—where Moffatt, then Technical Lead at Shirley’s company, Freelance Programmers, programmed the black box flight recorder for the Concorde
August 22, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Anne Moffatt's memoir, The IT Girl, details the story behind the photograph with the baby—where Moffatt, then Technical Lead at Shirley’s company, Freelance Programmers, programmed the black box flight recorder for the Concorde
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
But my point is that the EPA was going out of their way to keep live coverage of this announcement under the radar
July 30, 2025 at 4:34 PM
But my point is that the EPA was going out of their way to keep live coverage of this announcement under the radar
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
Yesterday at a semi-truck warehouse in the middle of nowhere Indiana, Lee Zeldin annouced that the EPA is trying to recind the regulatory basis to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. I was there. Here's my story for @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/policy/regul...
EPA rejects key finding underpinning US climate rules
Energy secretary cites new DOE report on climate change by known climate denialists to justify repeal
cen.acs.org
July 30, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Yesterday at a semi-truck warehouse in the middle of nowhere Indiana, Lee Zeldin annouced that the EPA is trying to recind the regulatory basis to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. I was there. Here's my story for @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/policy/regul...
CBER director/CMO Vinay Prasad is out at FDA:
www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/v...
Sounds like the rare disease community played a major role in pushing for his ouster, after a dizzying series of moves on Sarepta's DMD therapy (which has been implicated in the deaths of several patients).
www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/v...
Sounds like the rare disease community played a major role in pushing for his ouster, after a dizzying series of moves on Sarepta's DMD therapy (which has been implicated in the deaths of several patients).
Vinay Prasad, a powerful FDA official, departs after controversy over rare disease drug
Vinay Prasad, a top FDA official, is out after less than three months on the job.
www.statnews.com
July 30, 2025 at 1:07 PM
CBER director/CMO Vinay Prasad is out at FDA:
www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/v...
Sounds like the rare disease community played a major role in pushing for his ouster, after a dizzying series of moves on Sarepta's DMD therapy (which has been implicated in the deaths of several patients).
www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/v...
Sounds like the rare disease community played a major role in pushing for his ouster, after a dizzying series of moves on Sarepta's DMD therapy (which has been implicated in the deaths of several patients).
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
POLITICO compiled a list of all the Washington Post staffers who have left in the past eight months. It’s at least a hundred names, many of them among the biggest names in journalism. This is the fastest erosion of a major outlet ever.
July 25, 2025 at 7:39 PM
POLITICO compiled a list of all the Washington Post staffers who have left in the past eight months. It’s at least a hundred names, many of them among the biggest names in journalism. This is the fastest erosion of a major outlet ever.
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
An intentional, avoidable mass starvation event is happening in the context of an ongoing genocide and not only is the US not doing anything to stop it, we are actively enabling it, both materially by continuing to fund and arm Israel and also by silencing protest here. www.bbc.com/news/article...
More than 100 humanitarian groups warn of mass starvation in Gaza
A joint statement says the Israeli government's "siege" has left aid supplies "totally depleted".
www.bbc.com
July 25, 2025 at 1:28 PM
An intentional, avoidable mass starvation event is happening in the context of an ongoing genocide and not only is the US not doing anything to stop it, we are actively enabling it, both materially by continuing to fund and arm Israel and also by silencing protest here. www.bbc.com/news/article...
Reposted by Laurel Oldach
Treating women in pregnancy is a necessity, not a luxury. We shold not neglect treating mental health concerns just as we should treat high blood pressure (paraphrasing the expert)
July 21, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Treating women in pregnancy is a necessity, not a luxury. We shold not neglect treating mental health concerns just as we should treat high blood pressure (paraphrasing the expert)