John Timmer
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jtimmer.bsky.social
John Timmer
@jtimmer.bsky.social
4.9K followers 330 following 1.3K posts
Ars Technica's science editor. Various other things that are far less interesting.

Check my author profile on Ars for my email. jtimmer.95 on Signal.
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jtimmer.bsky.social
Some of the reader feedback we get is, shall we say, less than helpful.
A feedback email filled with insults from a user who claims their name is "Biggus Dickus Cockasaur".
November 22, 2025 at 12:57 AM
jtimmer.bsky.social
It's the implementation of an Executive Order issued in August.

arstechnica.com/science/2025...
"Nothing in this order shall be construed to discourage or prevent the use of peer review methods to evaluate proposals for discretionary awards or otherwise inform agency decision making, provided that peer review recommendations remain advisory and are not ministerially ratified, routinely deferred to, or otherwise treated as de facto binding by senior appointees or their designees."
November 21, 2025 at 9:13 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Taking time out from a vacation day to handle one of my essential work functions.
Screenshot of an email response to one with the subject "Re: Hot Head Burritos Expands Catering + Delivery Capabilities with DoorDash & Foods" The text of the email reads: "Just wanted to make sure you know that i'm marking this as spam and blacklisting your entire agency for following up on a PR pitch that has nothing to do with anything I've ever written about.
November 11, 2025 at 7:12 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
I've been feeling someone needs to create this meme for a while now, but given I've not seen it, I've taken on this heavy burden myself.
A meme with the top frame being a person labelled "medical contrarians" shooting a person labelled "Public trust in medicine". In the second frame, with the body still smoking and covered in bullet holes, the shooter pronounces "we need reform because the public no longer trusts medicine".
September 22, 2025 at 3:46 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Is there something about large sums of money that interferes with self awareness?
Screenshot of the following text: "We are the only company where the mission is truth," Mr. Musk told his workers as part of an hour-and-a-half presentation that was listened to by The New York Times. "If you force the A.I. to lie or believe things that are not true, you're at great risk of creating a dystopian future."
September 19, 2025 at 2:48 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
The paper: the genetic program that enables digit formation in limbs is derived from the system that drives cformation of the cloaca.

Me, the headline writer:
A headline reading: "You can hold on to your butts thanks to DNA that evolved in fish"
September 18, 2025 at 4:45 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Was there a time when enough people put babies through paper shredders that it justified putting a warning icon on one?
A series of warning icons above the intake slot of a paper shredder
September 6, 2025 at 8:39 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Justice Jackson gets it.
Text with the following excerpt highlighted: For the Government, the incremental expenditure of money is at stake. For the plaintiffs and the public, scientific progress itself hangs in the balance along with the lives that progress saves.
August 21, 2025 at 10:29 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
I will never be unamused by use of the William Carlos Williams structure meme, so if it bothers you, best to unfollow now.

Also, just a side note to highlight that Williams was both everything Steve Miller et. al. hate, and the best of the US.
Screenshot of some text, with the following highlighted: William Carlos Williams was born the first of two sons of an English father and a Puerto Rican mother of French, Dutch, Spanish, and Jewish ancestry, and he grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey. He was a medical doctor, poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright.
August 9, 2025 at 11:42 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
I told Ars' creative director, @aurich.bsky.social, that I had a feature coming up about going shark tagging with @whysharksmatter.bsky.social, so he asked for some photos to find one to use for the story's header image.

He sent me this one back.
Image of a person in an orange shirt, sunglasses, and tanned hat, holding a spool of line with a hook at the end, with a fish head as bait. Behind him is an expanse of blue-green water. Someone has photoshopped in the shark from jaws erupting from that water.
July 22, 2025 at 12:22 AM
jtimmer.bsky.social
There's a lot of bad stuff going on the world that I have little to no control over. But I have complete control over whether I have a clean bike chain, so excuse me while I spend a few moments enjoying that.
Image of the rear wheel, gears, and cranks of a road bike lifted off the ground on a work stand. Various equipment is in the background.
July 14, 2025 at 11:23 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Post yourself from another era.
A young man in a wooded area near the side of the road. He's wearing a dark blue shirt, and has a beard and hair down below his shoulders.
June 29, 2025 at 6:17 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
The vibe I'm getting.
Trump sits with his wife in a crowd of officials, appearing extremely unhappy. A lone man wearing a festive cap sitting at a table with a cake on it, looking depressed.
June 15, 2025 at 12:32 AM
jtimmer.bsky.social
I know this is paywalled, but in biomedical research, it really isn't just some oddball americanism.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
June 6, 2025 at 11:34 AM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Happy mile 8,000 to one of the few non-alcoholic things that is keeping me sane in 2025.
A yellow and black road bike leaning against a park bench, with lots of greenery behind the bench.
May 26, 2025 at 11:49 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
I think this is symptomatic of a problem that buries negative results in science. The default assumption when something doesn't work is that you're not using the methods properly - not that the methods are prone to failure. Showing that the methods fall short is also a LOT of work.
Screenshot of the following text: Second, people rarely publish papers about when Al methods fail, only when they succeed. The authors of the original PINN paper didn't publish about the PD Es their method hadn't been able to solve. I didn't publish my unsuccessful experiments, presenting only a poster at an obscure conference. So very few researchers heard about them. In fact, despite the huge popularity of PINNs, it took four years for anyone to publish a paper about their failure modes. That paper now has almost a thousand citations, suggesting that many other scientists tried PINNs and found similar issues.
May 19, 2025 at 5:12 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Latest skirmish in my ongoing war with the PR industry.
A response to an email titled "These Star Signs Are Built for NBA Greatness, According to the Data". The response text: You do realize i'm a science editor, right? And that you're not just pitching me an astrology story, but following up when i don't respond?
May 1, 2025 at 3:34 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Many PR agents seem to have self awareness issues, so I'm doing my best to help.
Email showing the following text: This is the 5th email you sent me pitching this individual this month alone. As a result, I'm marking all of these messages spam. The possibility that you will eventually send me a pitch i cared about will be greatly outweighed by the gain in productivity|
April 14, 2025 at 10:05 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
I've looked at this photo a few times to make sure I'm in the right frame of mind.

widerimage.reuters.com/story/taking...
Image of a woman standing serenely as police in heavy riot gear approach her.
April 14, 2025 at 7:28 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Some of the Princeton cuts were purely because the research was producing results this administration didn't like. It has nothing to do with how the funds were handled, and everything to do with the fact that the administration can't deal with reality.
Screenshot of the following text: This cooperative agreement suggests that the Earth will have a significant fluctuation in its water availability as a result of global warming. Using federal funds to perpetuate these narratives does not align with the priorities of this Administration and such time and resources can be better utilized elsewhere.
April 11, 2025 at 10:02 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Something a bit on the unusual side in the author affiliation list of a paper I covered today.

And it's not like he's got multiple affiliations, or there's a "present address" or something. It's just Wal-Mart.
A list of author affiliations with major research institutions, plus a highlighted one where the author is affiliated with Wal Mart.
March 27, 2025 at 11:57 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
As a science journalist, the PDF has become an active hindrance to reporting. I recently tried to copy some basic text from a paper into my notes for a story, and I got random selections scattered across the page.
Text from a technical document, including lots of formulas. A subset is highlighted in blue - it's discontiguous, with highlighted text scattered up and down two different columns.
March 19, 2025 at 3:48 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
On Ars today, we ran a story about diversity programs in the aerospace industry being killed. And it's clear that a lot of commenters don't understand what they're about. So I shared how I came to my understanding of why they're needed.

Too long to thread, so here's a screenshot.
Screenshot of text that's too long for Alt Text. An excerpt: Back when I was an undergrad, I did a molecular biology project lab. Molecular biology involves lots of incubating with enzymes, so we spent a lot of time chatting with each other. One of the people in the lab had been to a rough NYC high school, and told the story about how the guy next to him at lunch had ended up with a knife in his back. We wanted to know more about the environment, and he told us how he had to deal with the fact that, if the drug dealers found out you were smart, they'd force you to do all of their homework - and do it different for each of them, so that it wasn't flagged as cheating. So he described how he used to go up to his teachers at the start of the school year, explain how they couldn't ask him questions in class, and he'd play stupid if they did, how they should never mention his grades in class, etc. It took me a decade or more to understand the significance of all of that. At a time where my biggest challenges were figuring out how to squeeze as many AP classes as possible into my schedule, this guy was navigating an extremely adult world with a degree of insight and maturity that I probably didn't have until about 15-20 years afterwards. if thrown into a job or some other real-world situation at that age (ie, not grad school), I have absolutely no doubt he'd have handled it better than I would. Because I had opportunities that his school lacked, and had a safe environment to engage in after school activities like sports, I would wager money that I looked better on paper than he did when it comes to the standard college admissions criteria. But I have no doubt now that if I had been rejected in favor of him, the school would have been making the right choice.
March 13, 2025 at 11:19 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
Not bad at all, science fans.
A huge crowd in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
March 7, 2025 at 5:46 PM
jtimmer.bsky.social
The flag of Ukraine, blue over yellow.
February 28, 2025 at 10:55 PM