Dorian McILROY
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dmcilroy.bsky.social
Dorian McILROY
@dmcilroy.bsky.social
1.4K followers 66 following 350 posts
Virology lecturer at Nantes University. Interested in polyomaviruses, particularly capsid interactions with antibodies and host receptors.
Posts Replies Media Videos
dmcilroy.bsky.social
I like it when Eric Topol gives bad studies a good kicking.
November 13, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
privateeyenews.bsky.social
The Trump World View

From the new Private Eye, out now.
November 13, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk 🎤

If you’ve read this far and still need convincing, please check out our preprint arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 and this infographic: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
10/10
The four-fold drain of scientific publishing: Money, Time, Trust, and Control.
November 13, 2025 at 8:17 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
I always wondered who the reviewers were and how they could be so bloody useless.
environmicrobio.bsky.social Roland Hatzenpichler @environmicrobio.bsky.social · 1d
They say you should not kick a dead horse, but tomorrow I will gladly - once more - kick the shit out of the disaster that’s the arsenic life paper. I’ve done this for the past nine years, and every time I found it’s an important lesson for graduate students in my class
November 13, 2025 at 6:16 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
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 Dorian McILROY
albrgr.bsky.social
I really like this R21/RTS,S malaria vaccine tracker from @1daysooner.bsky.social

1dayafrica.org/r21-campaign
November 11, 2025 at 11:54 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
Can we get the virus-specific beta jelly roll fold with these 10 as?
kevinkaichuang.bsky.social Kevin K. Yang 楊凱筌 @kevinkaichuang.bsky.social · 13d
Design stable, folded proteins using only the 10 "ancient" amino acids.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 10, 2025 at 6:41 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
jeremymberg.bsky.social
Bluetorial-Jim Watson

I met Jim Watson a few times but did not know him well. However, I was greatly influenced by his book “The Double Helix”. He was a complicated human being with some very, very bad features, but some good contributions.

What follows is my personal perspective.

1/41
a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on
ALT: a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on
media.tenor.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
stcmicrobeblog.bsky.social
the plot thickens...
#Archaea #Microsky #SymbioSky
tbharat-lab.bsky.social Tanmay Bharat @tbharat-lab.bsky.social · 7d
An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments

Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 7, 2025 at 10:16 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
carlzimmer.com
On the event of James Watson's death, I highly recommend this 2023 commentary from @matthewcobb.bsky.social and Nathaniel Comfort with crucial new insights into the discovery of the double helix. (And also check out Cobb's brand new biography of Francis Crick) www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure
Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.
www.nature.com
November 7, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
nextstrain.org
On Oct 1, 2025, GISAID informed us that they had ended updates to the flat file of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences and associated metadata that we had used to update Nextstrain analyses since Feb 2020. GISAID's stated rationale was that their "resources are limited". 1/5
November 6, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
boghuma.bsky.social
A new NEJM study reports results from a phase 1 trial of a Lassa virus vaccine, a recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus vector engineered to express the Lassa glycoprotein (the same platform as the approved Ebola vaccine, ERVEBO). It was safe and immunogenic.
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
Safety and Immunogenicity of an rVSV Lassa Fever Vaccine Candidate | NEJM
No vaccine is currently available for Lassa fever, a viral hemorrhagic disease that is estimated to cause thousands of deaths each year in western Africa. A replication-competent recombinant vesicu...
www.nejm.org
November 6, 2025 at 12:12 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
This happens every year. The day after the email goes out at my university, all the slots for flu vaccine shots are fully booked.
November 4, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
tetherin.bsky.social
Remembering David Baltimore (1938–2025): Cell www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Has anyone else had a more accomplished career modern biomedical science?
Remembering David Baltimore (1938–2025)
David Baltimore, one of modern biology’s most influential scientists, passed away at his home in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on September 6, 2025 at the age of 87, leaving legions of former trainees an...
www.cell.com
November 4, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
lswisnom.bsky.social
Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching
November 3, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
erictopol.bsky.social
A word that has become a euphemism for promoting and selling things without data or evidence
November 2, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
alexr.bsky.social
I've been asked about this paper (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) enough times that I finally had to read it.

The basic claim is that mRNA vaccines had huge synergistic benefit with checkpoint blockade against lung cancer melanoma.

tl;dr it's glam-slop & everyone involved should be embarrassed
SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint blockade - Nature
mRNA vaccines targeting SARS-CoV-2 also sensitize tumours to immune checkpoint inhibitors.
www.nature.com
October 30, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
edrybicki.bsky.social
@isv-news.bsky.social #ISV2025
Alec Freyn, Moderna presenting ISV Paper of the Year 2025 - quadrivalent mRNA vaccine against a broad spectrum of orthopoxviruses.
October 30, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
enirenberg.bsky.social
this figure would be such a good inclusion for an introduction to immunology
October 29, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
erictopol.bsky.social
Acute and chronic viral infections, including Herpes Zoster (Shingles), Hepatitis C, HIV, CMV, influenza, and SARS-CoV-2, are linked with a substantial increased risk of cardiovascular events, from a systematic review. Figure for SARS-CoV-2 below
newsroom.heart.org/news/some-ac...
October 29, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
This ‘minor’ bird flu strain has potential to spark human pandemic www.nature.com/articles/d41...
This ‘minor’ bird flu strain has potential to spark human pandemic
Experiments suggests H9N2 has adapted to human cells but cases of person-to-person transmission haven’t been reported yet.
www.nature.com
October 27, 2025 at 3:55 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
mikethemadbiol.bsky.social
I’ll say this again: so many mRNA-based phase II trials could be funded with a fraction of the money spent on spicy machine learning (not to mention things like adjuvants etc).
October 26, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
mdwallach.bsky.social
Man do they have good reason to be mad at us.
October 21, 2025 at 12:03 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
Couple of comments/thoughts on this paper. 1/ Serum antibody maintained at 100-200 ng/mL at least 72 weeks is pretty impressive. 2/ with HIV-specific bNAbs, could it rival lenacapavir ?
October 21, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
philippmarkolin.bsky.social
Here are some highlight clips from my very enjoyable chat with Decoding the gurus about my book

Full video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrsV...

Chris of course with the most important raised eyebrow:
Why did I do it?

Was it because I am a shill for EcoHealth Alliance? :)
Hear below

1/
October 19, 2025 at 10:08 PM