Mattias Sherman
LightNews LightNews
banner
mattiassherman.bsky.social
Mattias Sherman
@mattiassherman.bsky.social
760 followers 470 following 11 posts
PhD student in ancient genomics @ the Crick, London | wolf domestication, canine evolution, aDNA damage 🦴🐕🧬
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
mattiassherman.bsky.social
Mattias Sherman @mattiassherman.bsky.social · Nov 17
Hi all! I'm Mattias, PhD in the Ancient Genomics Lab at the Francis Crick Institute (London, UK), and an evolution and ancient DNA enthusiast!

I'm currently working on dog domestication using ancient population genomics, and on understanding aDNA damage to improve the retrieval of degraded DNA.
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
us.theconversation.com
Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
November 21, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
ryangutenkunst.bsky.social
The Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament closes in 1 week! Learn, test yourself, and help the community by trying to infer demographic history detect sweeps! ghist.bio
November 21, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
drkeithsmith.bsky.social
UK science and technology is suffering from a lack of investment, a hostile immigration system, and fragile university finances, reports @cathleenogrady.bsky.social 🧪 #scipolicy
www.science.org/content/arti...
U.K. science sector is ‘bleeding to death,’ lawmakers say in report
House of Lords committee urges government to stem exodus of science and technology companies
www.science.org
November 10, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
palaeopete.bsky.social
9 days left until the abstract deadline for #icp2026! 🧬

See below for our current estimates of the registration fee, which some folks have been enquiring about... ⬇️

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
palaeogenomics.bsky.social ICP2026 Stockholm @palaeogenomics.bsky.social · 2d
⏰ The clock is ticking❗

LESS THAN 10 DAYS LEFT to submit your abstracts (30th Nov).

Do it here👉 icp2026.palaeogenomics.org/abstracts/

Many of you are asking for the registration fees 💸. We are still working out the details, but we estimate 400-500€ for regular attendees and 300-400€ for students.
Abstracts – International Conference on Palaeogenomics 2026
icp2026.palaeogenomics.org
November 21, 2025 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
pontus-skoglund.bsky.social
The 2026 EMBL symposium 'Reconstructing the human past using ancient and modern genomics' is live with a fantastic invited speaker lineup!

Abstract deadline 9 June. If work is ongoing, plan for Heidelberg in September😉.

Organised by Maanasa Raghavan, @matejahajdi.bsky.social, Choongwon Jeong & me.
November 19, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
retractionwatch.com
More than three-fifths of the editorial board of a @gigascience.bsky.social resigned after the publication’s operations moved from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, China, and the editors and software team were fired with 30 days’ notice.
Dozens of board members resign from big-data journal after mass staff firings
More than three-fifths of the editorial board of a biomedical sciences journal resigned after the publication’s operations moved from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, China, and the editors and software team…
retractionwatch.com
November 3, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
tweetisaurus.bsky.social
Geology and palaeobiology at the University of Leicester are under threat, with at least 14 staff expected to be made redundant. Support them, their postdocs, and their students by signing this petition: c.org/SK8Xm8dhqK
Sign the Petition
Save Geology at the University of Leicester
c.org
November 19, 2025 at 11:31 AM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
devoevomed.bsky.social
Better and more accurate coverage than from most of the #PopGen community I’ve seen so far, at least those I’m aware of… 🧪 🌱🐋
November 18, 2025 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
richardsever.bsky.social
"We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people" www.404media.co/a-researcher...
A Researcher Made an AI That Completely Breaks the Online Surveys Scientists Rely On
We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people.”
www.404media.co
November 19, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
kuhlwilm.bsky.social
Paper out now: A curated dataset of the great ape genome diversity!
rdcu.be/eQLCi
A curated dataset of great ape genome diversity
Scientific Data - A curated dataset of great ape genome diversity
rdcu.be
November 19, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
boothicus.bsky.social
For anyone interested in ancient diseases (either historical or prehistoric) here's an excellent, readable, comprehensive summary of where we are with ancient pathogen DNA.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Insights into infectious diseases through ancient pathogen genomics - Nature Reviews Microbiology
In this Review, Kocher, Krause and Spyrou explore how ancient pathogen genomics is providing new perspectives on the history and evolution of infectious agents. They show how ancient DNA has revealed ...
www.nature.com
November 19, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
nataliajagielska.bsky.social
AI slop gracing the cover of Royal Society B. Not only in AI yellow but scientifically nonsensical. Come on. I'm certain human photographs and artworks were ignored to platform ... this.
Royal Society B cover with AI generated image of endocasts.
November 18, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
spaam-community.bsky.social
How much do lab methods shape ancient microbiome results? 🧬 This study compares extraction & library prep protocols on dental calculus from Hungary and Niger, showing that no single workflow fits all. #MetagenomicsMonday #SPAAM #aDNA #calculus #microbiome
doi.org/10.1111/1755...
November 17, 2025 at 8:01 AM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
ugiatucl.bsky.social
Wonderful and engaging talk by
@lucyvandorp.bsky.social
who was invited to speak on the drivers of pathogen evolution using ancient DNA at the Ancient Genomes: Perspectives on Human Biology and Medicine meeting
@gensocuk.bsky.social
🧬🦠
November 17, 2025 at 9:54 AM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
palaeogenomics.bsky.social
Meet our plenary speakers 💁‍♂️

JOHANNES KRAUSE (eva.mpg.de)

Johannes' research has made major contributions to our understanding of human pathogens, hominin evolution, and the peopling of Europe.

Conference info 👉 icp2026.palaeogenomics.org

⚠️ Abstract submission open! (deadline 30th Nov) ⚠️
November 14, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
cedricboeckx.bsky.social
“substantial phenotypic diversity already existed in early Holocene dogs” nice #domestixation study by @gregerlarson.bsky.social & collaborators in @science.org 🧪🐶🐾

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The emergence and diversification of dog morphology
Dogs exhibit an exceptional range of morphological diversity as a result of their long-term association with humans. Attempts to identify when dog morphological variation began to expand have been con...
www.science.org
November 14, 2025 at 12:32 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
ceciliapad.bsky.social
Pre @gensocuk.bsky.social talk @crick.ac.uk by Svante Pääbo, and interesting thoughts on how to define a “modern” human. More tomorrow!
November 13, 2025 at 8:43 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
labschneeberger.bsky.social
🌱 Postdoc position in Plant Genomics/Bioinformatics!

Love genome plasticity, computational methods, and solving big questions in plant biology? Join our newly established Institute for Crop Biology at HHU Düsseldorf.

More info on schneebergerlab.org/career/
Apply by Nov. 30 | 3-year position
Career – Schneeberger Lab
schneebergerlab.org
November 11, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
evoldir.bsky.social
The 2025 Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament (GHIST) is live! Submit by Dec 1, 2025, to test your methods on genomic data. Learn more at https://ghist.bio and check the publication: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf257.
Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament (GHIST)
Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament (GHIST)
ghist.bio
November 11, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
celestelabedz.bsky.social
Submit them to Aurorasaurus!!! They're an NSF funded project out of University of New Mexico that takes crowdsourced aurora observations for research purposes:
www.aurorasaurus.org
Aurorasaurus - Reporting Auroras from the Ground Up
Friends, see my real-time #aurora report on the aurorasaurus.org map! Follow us on www.facebook.com/aurorasaurus.org. Reporting #northernlights and #citizenscience from the ground up since 2012!
www.aurorasaurus.org
November 12, 2025 at 3:25 AM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
aylwyn-scally.bsky.social
Come and join us here in Cambridge! Applications open for a new faculty position, for a researcher in computational and/or theoretical biology, based jointly in Genetics and Mathematics. Happy to answer questions about research, teaching and working here.

www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/faculty...
Faculty Position in Computational Biology
Applications are invited for an Assistant/ Associate Professorship in Computational Biology to commence on 1 April 2026 or shortly thereafter. This is a joint post between the Department of Applied
www.cam.ac.uk
November 11, 2025 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
harmitmalik.bsky.social
Are you an early-stage graduate student (2nd or 3rd year) or early-stage postdoc based in the US or Canada, working primarily in Drosophila? Would you like to help improve the experience of all trainees working in Drosophila research? If so, read on.

(Please repost to reach a broad audience.)
November 12, 2025 at 4:49 AM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
hoehna.bsky.social
PhD position available in evolutionary genomics/bioinformatics (hoehnalab.github.io/job_adverts/...). Topic: analyzing gene expression evolution across several firefly species and linking expression changes to genomic architecture. The position is jointly supervised with @anaevolcatalan.bsky.social
hoehnalab.github.io
November 11, 2025 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Mattias Sherman
jolijnerven.bsky.social
Check out our paper, we now included a comparison between glimse1 and glimpse2!
November 11, 2025 at 9:01 AM