Michele Avissar-Whiting
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madubs.bsky.social
Michele Avissar-Whiting
@madubs.bsky.social
Director, Open Science Strategy @ HHMI
Pinned
Fine, I'll come over here, but I'm bringing my pinned tweet with me.
This is hands down the best article I've read on this topic: the imperative to transcend the superficiality of the pdf for research outputs.

"This is the bridge from search to understanding: from “find me a paper about X” to “help me reason whether X applies in context Y.”
January 31, 2026 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
GLP-1 agonists (eg Ozempic) are showing promise to reduce alcohol drinking and perhaps opioid use. This is, of course, a potential therapeutic success which arises from the random walking of science, not an “efficient” directed research program.
January 13, 2026 at 3:07 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
Preprints of pandemic potential - new historical piece from me on the history of bioRxiv/medRxiv, their role in the pandemic, and the way forward. 1/n journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
January 12, 2026 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
Did slashing multiple vaccines from the childhood vaccine schedule bring the US in line with other countries? In a word, no.
The US now recommends all kids be protected against fewer diseases than South Korea, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan & many more. www.statnews.com/2026/01/09/c...
When it comes to vaccine schedules, the U.S. is now the outlier
A STAT analysis of vaccine recommendations in 38 countries suggests the U.S. is now an outlier.
www.statnews.com
January 9, 2026 at 2:42 PM
"[Our current ecosystem] treats shared infrastructure like a free beer rather than a free puppy."

An important read on the dangers of open purism, though I'm not sure I agree with the ultimate conclusion. Maybe creative solutions will emerge.

rosalynmetz.substack.com/p/openness-h...
Openness Has Limits
Part 4 of a 5-part series on the politics of preservation and power.
rosalynmetz.substack.com
January 9, 2026 at 4:10 PM
I rarely appreciate a bumper sticker...
January 7, 2026 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
petition to make the entire winter as liminal as the space between Christmas and New Years.
December 31, 2025 at 1:42 AM
Damn, Wendy’s
December 28, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
Zoe Weissman - survivor of 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, FL

Mia Tretta - survivor of 2019 Saugus High School shooting in Santa Clarita, CA

Both are now students at Brown University in Providence, RI.
Zoe Weissman, a sophomore at Brown University, joins us to discuss the shooting on Brown's campus in Providence, Rhode Island. She was in middle school in Parkland, Florida during the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. She is now an advocate for gun control and gun violence prevention.
December 14, 2025 at 1:50 AM
"Reforms should be implemented in a coordinated and collective manner; otherwise, [those] who depart from journal-based metrics may risk a decline in international rankings, thereby reducing their competitiveness [...]."

Ay, there's the rub

utppublishing.com/doi/10.3138/...
Why the Current Model of Academic Publishing Is Ethically Flawed—and What We Can Do to Change It | Journal of Scholarly Publishing
This article offers a reasoned call for urgent reform of the academic journal publishing system. It focuses on the ethical flaws of the current for-profit model. This model enables the transfer of public funds into the profit margins of private companies that add no meaningful value to research and even limit access to knowledge. The article describes how feedback loops in metrics used in the evaluation of scientific publishing exacerbate structural inequalities and make it difficult to break out of the system. Moreover, the opportunity for easy profit attracts dishonest actors and fuels the rise of predatory journals, which in turn corrodes public trust in science. Without systemic reforms, the current system could also undermine artificial intelligence–driven research outcomes by enabling models to be trained on a growing number of substandard scientific publications. The article concludes with ten specific proposals for action, aimed at stimulating further discussion within and beyond academia.
utppublishing.com
December 1, 2025 at 3:39 AM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
Nature Sci Rep publishes incoherent AI slop. eLife publishes a paper which the reviewers didn't agree with, making all the comments and responses public with thoughtful commentary. One of these journals got delisted by Web of Science for quality concerns from not doing peer review. Guess which one?
November 27, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
Image screening is going to fail. We need audit trails for data provenance.
I tried an even harder example on Gemini Pro image generation and this is quite scary/amazing. I asked for a microscopy image of around 20 HeLa cells, GFP tagged 20% nuclear, 10% membrane, +1 nuclear staining, + overlap. Image below and prompt in the following post.
November 22, 2025 at 4:21 PM
"The actors with real power are funders (government, foundations) and institutions, who can set the policies that determine what can be published where, and who shape the incentive structures used in promotion and hiring."

blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...
Money, Time, Trust, Control – How commercial publishers drain science - Impact of Social Sciences
Have the interests of commercial publishers now become antithetical to the pursuit of knowledge?
blogs.lse.ac.uk
November 21, 2025 at 1:07 AM
We have to get serious about identity verification in scientific publishing. It is the fundamental problem at the core of many of the integrity issues we're seeing. I realize this is not straightforward...
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/s...
The Editor Got a Letter From ‘Dr. B.S.’ So Did a Lot of Other Editors.
www.nytimes.com
November 19, 2025 at 8:06 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
RIP Jim Watson. You inspired many of us to pursue a life in research. I wish you had made it easier for us to celebrate your legacy.
November 7, 2025 at 11:11 PM
I’m finding I’m now at lot less likely to correct my kids’ grammar/phrasing for school assignments. Fuck it - at least it’s obvious they wrote themselves.
November 1, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Some of y'all have never heard the thing about letting the perfect be the enemy of the good - and it shows.
October 17, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
We just posted an impact story on policies at HHMI, Gates & Astera promoting #OpenAccess #OpenScience #OpenData. Powerful signals to other funders to accelerate discovery in science. Well done @madubs.bsky.social @openaccessmaven.bsky.social @pracheeac.bsky.social! sparcopen.org/impact-story...
Funders Roll Out Next Gen Open Policies - SPARC
sparcopen.org
October 10, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
New blog post. In which I analyze the new HHMI announcement and what it means for the science publishing ecosystem openrxiv.org/preprint-man...
Preprint mandates gather momentum - openRxiv
By Richard Sever, PhD. Chief Science & Strategy Officer, openRxiv Preprints speed up science by enabling researchers to disseminate reports of new findings immediately. They also represent a simple wa...
openrxiv.org
October 6, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
(Part 1) Hear from @hhmi_news Investigator David Stern about his research program and what he's uncovering in the lab.

Stern will join the Institute in February 2026, bringing his lab and HHMI appointment to Kansas City. @hhmi.org

Read more: bit.ly/4np96Fb
September 30, 2025 at 5:10 PM
Feeling profound gratitude for my incredible colleagues and getting to play a part in change that really matters.

With the Immediate Access to Research policy, we are shifting our focus from journal-curated articles toward researcher-shared preprints.

hhmicdn.blob.core.windows.net/policies/Imm...
September 26, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
"Tylenol can't cause autism, autism came first!"

This is a terrible argument, stop making it. There are GOOD arguments against the claim, but this is obviously missing the point and makes you sound extremely ignorant to anyone who has looked into the issue.
September 24, 2025 at 3:40 AM
Reposted by Michele Avissar-Whiting
AI can now generate fake microscopy images that are nearly impossible to detect. A serious threat to scientific integrity—and we’re not prepared for it.

Commentary in @natnano.nature.com

#nanotechnology
September 15, 2025 at 10:39 AM
This year, my kid’s school has rolled out a house system a la Harry Potter. The houses are named for constellations: Phoenix, Hydra, Orion, Pegasus, and - wait for it - Draco! 😣 Yes, I know it’s the Dragon but was there no better option?! IYKYK
August 20, 2025 at 5:47 PM