Cathy Abbott
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cathyabbott.bsky.social
Cathy Abbott
@cathyabbott.bsky.social
4.2K followers 1.9K following 620 posts
Professor, eEF1A2/neurological disorders. Mostly talks about research, EDI (tries hard to be a good ally) but sometimes veers off into crafts and photos of Scotland. She/her, views own.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
amydjohn.bsky.social
Solid advice for grad school applicants #AcademicSky #MedSky #EpiSky #ScienceSky
November 9, 2025 at 2:32 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
britishneuro.bsky.social
"The UK cannot become a science superpower unless it exploits the full range of talent that we have" - @nramnani.bsky.social

We are now welcoming applications to our BNA Scholars Programme.

🔗 Find out more and apply: www.bna.org.uk/policy-advoc...

#BNAScholars #DiversityInSTEM #Mentorship
November 7, 2025 at 9:09 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
edinunineuro.bsky.social
Join us for our annual lecture! We have a fantastic line-up this year: a consultant neurosurgeon and two discovery scientists will discuss how they are redefining biomedical methods - using living human brain tissue - bringing us closer to curing major neurological diseases.
Book: edin.ac/4oYHTtk
Edinburgh Neuroscience Public Christmas Lecture 2025
A brain surgeon and two discovery scientists unwrap the story of their unique collaboration using living human brain slices.
edin.ac
November 7, 2025 at 11:23 AM
cathyabbott.bsky.social
*So* looking forward to Celebrity Traitors tonight.

This quote from the Guardian has been making me laugh for hours now “David Olusoga’s … so consistently misguided that you actually began to retrospectively doubt the veracity of his highly regarded documentaries” 😁😁😁
November 6, 2025 at 9:02 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
christoseland.bsky.social
Please repost - Multiple PhDs available

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
November 5, 2025 at 9:18 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
frezzalab.bsky.social
Following a recent article about the different layers of conceptualisation in a science project, this is about a pet peeve of mine. I would love to hear your views.

network.febs.org/posts/thinki...
Thinking like a Scientist: The Limits of Genome Editing and Omics
Second part of Thinking like a Scientist, reflecting on how genome editing and multi-omics, while powerful, can introduce conceptual flaws that distort our understanding of gene function and biologica...
network.febs.org
November 4, 2025 at 11:21 AM
cathyabbott.bsky.social
However long I live here I will never get used to how utterly beautiful the views from Princes St are. This was last night 😍
Edinburgh castle glowing in moonlight framed by trees Moonlit view of old buildings above Princes Sr gardens
November 2, 2025 at 9:59 AM
cathyabbott.bsky.social
Well, this is going to be quite the conundrum for RFK et al...
October 31, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
auditorynerves.bsky.social
7 basic science discoveries that changed the world.

Ozempic, MRI machines & flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government.

🧪🧠🔬💊💉🦈
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
7 basic science discoveries that changed the world
Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government.
www.nature.com
October 30, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
selinawray.bsky.social
In the mood for something sciency and spooky? How about the Halloween special of @uclbrainstories.bsky.social - where me and @caswell.bsky.social talk to @drjlange.bsky.social on some of the gothic stories in neuroscience! 👻 🧠 🎃 💀🧟‍♂️

spotify.link/2lHT9pLQRXb
Episode 23- Jenny Lange on the gothic history of neuroscience, a Halloween special
spotify.link
October 29, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
emmawilson.bsky.social
“AO3 reminds us that platforms can be built by and for communities, without extractive profit models or exclusionary hierarchies. It shows what’s possible when infrastructure is treated as a public good, and when participation is scaffolded, not gated.“

Such a great piece!
heroicendeavour.bsky.social Caroline Ball @heroicendeavour.bsky.social · 12d
My latest article, out now in Katina Magazine: 'How Fanfiction Can Help Us Reimagine Scholarly Publishing'

Basically: what if the next big idea for open access came from @archiveofourown.org instead of Els*vi*r? 👀 There's a thought...

Read here → katinamagazine.org/content/arti...
October 29, 2025 at 12:06 PM
cathyabbott.bsky.social
Really looking forward to this- we can probably accommodate a few last minute sign-ups 😊
earthowned.bsky.social Theo @earthowned.bsky.social · 15d
Today I'm excited to being talking at the Edinburgh Neuroscience Afternoon about the real cost of academic publishing and big deals. Spoiler: they are expensive and not really transformative.
Agenda for the Edinburgh Neuroscience afternoon being held on Monday 27th October 2025
October 27, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
olivia.science
Third, the peculiar idea that somehow we don't need to read, write, or perform literature reviews anymore; popping up like a satanic mushroom in almost all so-called OK uses of LLMs.

Companies writing our papers via their chatbots is not scientific at all. See section 5: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

7/
table 1 extract from Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1 5 Ghostwriter in the Machine A unique selling point of these systems is conversing and writing in a human-like way. This is imminently understandable, although wrong-headed, when one realises these are systems that essentially function as lossy2 content-addressable memory: when input is given, the output generated by the model is text that stochastically matches the input text. The reason text at the output looks novel is because by design the AI product performs an automated version of what is known as mosaic or patchwork plagiarism (Baždarić, 2013) — due to the nature of input masking and next token prediction, the output essentially uses similar words in similar orders to what it has been exposed to. This makes the automated flagging of plagiarism unlikely, which is also true when students or colleagues perform this type of copypaste and then thesaurus trick, and true when so-called AI plagiarism detectors falsely claim to detect AI-produced text (Edwards, 2023a). This aspect of LLM-based AI products can be seen as an automation of plagiarism and especially of the research paper mill (Guest, 2025; Guest, Suarez, et al., 2025; van Rooij, 2022): the “churn[ing] out [of] fake or poor-quality journal papers” (Sanderson, 2024; Committee on Publication Ethics, In addition, who is held accountable if nobody with intent authored the text? Because while the original data fed into the system is certainly written with goals, messages, and audiences in mind jumbling this into ad-libbed word salad removes authorial intent (Bender et al., 2021). So do the companies who own the chatbot own the text or do the original authors? These questions denote legal battles, which are being currently fought in the public eye and which affect all of us in all roles, not just as academics (Creamer, 2025; Knibbs, 2024; Reuters, 2025). Either way, even if the courts decide in the favour of companies, we should not allow these companies with vested interests to write our papers (Fisher et al., 2025), or to filter what we include in our papers. Because it is not the case that we only operate based on legal precedents, but also on our own ethical values and scientific integrity codes (ALLEA, 2023; KNAW et al., 2018), and we have a direct duty to protect, as with previous crises and in general, the literature from pollution. In other words, the same issues as in previous sections play out here, where essentially now every paper produced using chatbot output must declare a conflict of interest, since the output text can be biased in subtle or direct ways by the company who owns the bot (see Table 2). Seen in the right light — AI products understood as contentaddressable systems — we see that framing the user, the academic in this case, as the creator of the bot’s output is misplaced. The input does not cause the output in an authorial sense, much like input to a library search engine does not cause relevant articles and books to be written (Guest, 2025). The respective authors wrote those, not the search query!
October 4, 2025 at 6:16 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
drcgl119.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/d41... look at the subtitle: which researchers welcome the effort?? Let’s just kill collaboration shall we? Let’s just make sure every paper is a battle. This is not going on the right direction
Google Scholar tool gives extra credit to first and last authors
Researchers welcome the initiative, but say it doesn’t go far enough to capture the nuance of researcher productivity and impact.
www.nature.com
October 26, 2025 at 7:57 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
richardsever.bsky.social
That merely being “under review” by a Nature family journal is offered as a quality proxy for a paper is a tragic illustration of the extent to which academia is addicted to brands and outsources evaluation
October 25, 2025 at 6:37 PM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
lizgloyn.bsky.social
It doesn't matter how many grant writing workshops you put on, or how much pressure you put on academics to apply - if the money isn't there, the money simply isn't there.
anavaldi.bsky.social ana valdivia @anavaldi.bsky.social · 20d
After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results:

- AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2%
- ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1%
- ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%
October 23, 2025 at 12:20 PM
cathyabbott.bsky.social
Honestly- can you imagine if we had a prime minister who decided to knock down Big Ben so they could build a tacky monstrosity for entertaining?
samlmontano.bsky.social Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 18d
I flew out of DCA last night and from the air I could see where the east wing had been because they had big construction lights on. Unsettling to say the least.
paleofuture.bsky.social Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 18d
ABC News pulled the satellite imagery of the White House comparing Sept. 26 to today.

abcnews.go.com/Politics/new...
October 24, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
edinunineuro.bsky.social
New @who.int Global Status Report on Neurology calls for urgent action to address the growing burden of neurological disorders & to promote brain health for ALL. @arinatam.bsky.social co-authored Ch4: Effective, timely & responsive diagnosis, treatment & care. Full report:
edin.ac/43r3P7U
October 24, 2025 at 11:23 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
kashyapchhatbar.bsky.social
🚀 Excited to share my latest paper on using SHAP, to predict direct target genes of chromatin-associated factors! Check it out for insights into gene regulation and the power of explainable AI in genomics! #XAI #SHAP #Genomics

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Let's break down what we found! 👇
Modelling transcription with explainable AI uncovers context-specific epigenetic gene regulation at promoters and gene bodies
Author summary Genes are turned on or off through complex processes involving many proteins that interact with DNA wrapped histones and modify their structure. These changes, known as epigenetic modif...
doi.org
October 24, 2025 at 11:37 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
tomgillingwater.bsky.social
🎯🎯🎯: "These 'AI' products are materially and psychologically detrimental to our students' ability to write and think for themselves, existing instead for the benefit of investors and multinational companies." Brilliantly put. I couldn't agree more.
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 17d
✍🏼 Sign AI open letter here: openletter.earth/open-letter-...

🤔 Resources on my perspective here: olivia.science/ai

📚 Read position piece below: bsky.app/profile/oliv...
October 24, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
olivia.science
cannot believe on some level I & my colleagues have turned the tide on this, but also it was in some senses inevitable as why not! Humans can do anything; we still have a way to go however of course, but:

banning AI in the classroom should be as uncontroversial as banning calculators in early maths
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 17d
“I already ban the use of generative AI in my own courses, and as a promoter of master’s theses. I explicitly tell my students they won’t learn anything by using it. [...] A general ban is necessary, but nobody dares to say so.”

🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏻‍♀️

apache.be/2025/10/24/b...
Belgian AI scientists resist the use of AI in academia
Several AI scientists have published an open letter calling for a ban on AI use by students.
apache.be
October 24, 2025 at 10:55 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
edinunineuro.bsky.social
Job Alert: Postdoctoral Research Associate
Join the Wellcome-funded ENERGISE-BD team at the University of Edinburgh. ENERGISE-BD is a randomised controlled trial comparing nutritional ketosis to the NHS EatWell guidance in patients with bipolar depression.

More info: edin.ac/4nEN5BDb Alert
October 24, 2025 at 9:50 AM
cathyabbott.bsky.social
Interesting piece “From my experience of universities, one of the most important elements of that is the culture around the senior management table, which is not the governing body,” he said. “You cannot have…an overbearing culture where essentially the executive is run in a hierarchical system.”
October 24, 2025 at 8:38 AM
cathyabbott.bsky.social
As if we needed more evidence of the harm being done by RFK et al 🤬

"It is because of this “stigma,” Lin explains, that his team hasn’t attempted to seek federal funding for its planned clinical trial."

www.science.org/content/arti...
A surprise bonus from COVID-19 vaccines: bolstering cancer treatment
Patients who got shots of mRNA before starting a type of cancer immunotherapy lived much longer
www.science.org
October 23, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Cathy Abbott
ejhg-journal.bsky.social
📢 Rapid #WES in children with severe #epilepsy achieves a high diagnostic yield and enables gene-targeted therapies. 🧬
#Genetics #PrecisionMedicine #EJHG

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Impact of rapid genomic testing on clinical outcomes of acutely unwell children presenting with severe epilepsy - European Journal of Human Genetics
European Journal of Human Genetics - Impact of rapid genomic testing on clinical outcomes of acutely unwell children presenting with severe epilepsy
www.nature.com
October 23, 2025 at 8:36 AM