Tim Kendall
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timkendall.bsky.social
Tim Kendall
@timkendall.bsky.social
480 followers 1.8K following 51 posts
Liver pathologist in Edinburgh, looking for patterns on glass. Luton Town fan, hoping for beauty on grass. 🔬
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Reposted by Tim Kendall
edzitron.com
Exclusive: Based on documents viewed by this newsletter, OpenAI spent over $12.4 billion on inference from 2024 to September 2025. As part of its Microsoft revenue share, it sent $493.8m in 2024/$865.8m Jan-Sep 2025, implying lower revenues than previously reported.
www.wheresyoured.at/oai_docs/
Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft
As with my Anthropic exclusive from a few weeks ago, though this feels like a natural premium piece, I decided it was better to publish on my free one so that you could all enjoy it. If you liked or f...
www.wheresyoured.at
November 12, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
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 Tim Kendall
tomerullman.bsky.social
Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting

I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:
November 3, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
davidheniguk.bsky.social
Yay. Priceless. The right column at the right time. And a gleefully English two fingers to the haters.
October 25, 2025 at 7:38 AM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
patrickmccray.bsky.social
If you're having a rough day, remember that in 1991 Tim Berners-Lee's paper for the World Wide Web was rejected and he was relegated to the poster session.
September 17, 2024 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
hannibaltabu.bsky.social
I saw the dot coms crash from a front row seat. AI is running out of money way faster.

The evangelism is insecurity from people who made the wrong bet. I’ve seen it before. futurism.com/future-socie...
AI Data Centers Are an Even Bigger Disaster Than Previously Thought
An investment manager realized he made a crucial mistake — and that his grim prediction about AI investments may not have been cynical enough.
futurism.com
October 11, 2025 at 6:46 AM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
drvantilburg.bsky.social
The Trump administration has stopped funding of PubMed, not considering a vital service.

Your doctor will not know the newest information that affects your health. This will cost lives.
October 2, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
andreamurillo.bsky.social
"Science communication isn't about dumbing it down, it's about meeting people where they are with curiosity, care and clarity."

Great read in Development, and I will definitely try some of these challenges to practice science communication. doi.org/10.1242/dev....
Speaking science in a fractured world: making truth land when facts alone cannot
ABSTRACT. Scientific misinformation is a defining challenge of our time. As public trust in science declines and falsehoods spread faster than facts, the scientific community must rethink its role in ...
doi.org
October 5, 2025 at 2:45 PM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
jayvanbavel.bsky.social
Reminder: It's always good to stay humble!
September 25, 2025 at 4:13 PM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
neillewisjr.bsky.social
I've shared this quote before but I'll share it again, as it's one I've been thinking about a lot as I've watched how our oligarchs have been behaving over the past few months.
At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.” Enough. I was stunned by the simple eloquence of that word—stunned for two reasons: first, because I have been given so much in my own life and, second, because Joseph Heller couldn’t have been more accurate. For a critical element of our society, including many of the wealthiest and most powerful among us, there seems to be no limit today on what enough entails.
December 27, 2024 at 11:07 PM
timkendall.bsky.social
League One football always offers surprises. Not Luton playing badly and losing away at Lincoln this afternoon. That's expected. But direct-to-consumer marketing of asbestos is not something I've seen before.
September 20, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
timkendall.bsky.social
www.theregister.com/2025/08/25/o...
The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon
Opinion: Are tech giants getting nervous? They should be
www.theregister.com
August 25, 2025 at 8:30 PM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
aluckmann.bsky.social
Academia may not give you job security, flexibility, or wealth, but it will let you unexpectedly connect to eduroam in foreign cities
August 20, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
carolatack.bsky.social
This is both funny and acute…might assign it to my incoming students as an introductory exercise…
August 16, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
smittermeier.bsky.social
I did this before in German but I guess today is a good day to compile English resources on why AI isn‘t actually intelligent and also a real danger: 🧵
July 9, 2025 at 7:32 AM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
albertvilella.bsky.social
@andywatson on the NGS Sequencing market and the prisoner's dilemma
June 21, 2025 at 10:59 AM
timkendall.bsky.social
It was good to make the case for the molecular testing we need to help patients with cholangiocarcinoma in Scotland to @jennimintomsp.bsky.social and the Scottish Government. Hopefully this will stimulate a solution. Thanks to @benmacpherson.bsky.social for hosting.
charityammf.bsky.social AMMF - The Cholangiocarcinoma Charity @charityammf.bsky.social · Jun 12
#AMMF was at Holyrood last night! Professor @timkendall.bsky.social highlighted the need for a comprehensive molecular testing programme in Scotland to prevent some #cholangiocarcinoma patients missing out on treatment opportunities.
#RethinkLiverCancer #FairerDealFaster
June 12, 2025 at 9:41 AM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
benansell.bsky.social
As Jon says this is absolutely fascinating and a stark warning to science journalists that if a result looks too good to be true it probably is.
May 17, 2025 at 9:38 AM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
edzitron.com
Newsletter: I am sick and god damn tired of everybody pretending that generative AI is the next big thing. The media is complicit in accepting fantastical nonsense - both in the numbers put out by OpenAI and the silly jobs created by Anthropic - and it has to stop.
www.wheresyoured.at/reality-check/
Reality Check
I'm sick and god-damn tired of this! I have written tens of thousands of words about this and still, to this day, people are babbling about the "AI revolution" as the sky rains blood and crevices open...
www.wheresyoured.at
April 28, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
mrillig.bsky.social
Interesting opinion in Science suggesting to replace 'scientific consensus' with convergent evidence.

Because it is less easily derailed by quoting one dissenting opinion.

Seems like a good idea!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Convergence and consensus
In these days of political instability, geopolitical tensions, and social discontent around the world, there are continued threats to the principles, conduct, and findings of science. This assault on ...
www.science.org
April 25, 2025 at 6:58 AM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
janelleshane.com
1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but
2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but
3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So
4. Now the LLM code points to malware.
daviddlevine.com David D. Levine @daviddlevine.com · Apr 12
LLMs hallucinating nonexistent software packages with plausible names leads to a new malware vulnerability: "slopsquatting."
LLMs can't stop making up software dependencies and sabotaging everything
: Hallucinated package names fuel 'slopsquatting'
www.theregister.com
April 12, 2025 at 11:43 PM
Reposted by Tim Kendall
masudhusain.bsky.social
Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness
academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
March 6, 2025 at 7:16 PM
timkendall.bsky.social
If LiverTox has gone, my reporting of ?DILI will be far less nuanced.
hurdleboss.bsky.social John Knebel @hurdleboss.bsky.social · Mar 2
LactMed, LiverTox, DailyMed, PubMed. Use at least one of these almost daily at work and they are gone. All my saved PMIDs for topic discussions. If this was intentional the only goal is to cause harm
shematologist.medsky.social Shematologist, MD @shematologist.medsky.social · Mar 2
This is going to be a big problem.

Not typically on pubmed (a free online database of medical literature) on Saturday nights but heard it was down and had to check for myself.
March 2, 2025 at 12:11 PM