Oca sapiens
ocasapiens.bsky.social
Oca sapiens
@ocasapiens.bsky.social
Sylvie Coyaud, retired science reporter, not sapiens yet.
Apparently the “terrorist” who “posed immediate threat” is a 3 year old child named Ahed al-Bayok.
December 8, 2025 at 1:54 PM
Well, France had Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier claiming that HIV/SIV nucleotides in Sars-Cov-9 genome showed it had been "manipulated", variants were the product of deadly anti-covid vaccinations, [omissis], & if we survived the flu vaccines would kill us...
December 7, 2025 at 9:13 PM
#AGW

George Box: "All models are wrong, but..."

Oca s. looking at the graphs: They all look pretty good.

@hausfath.bsky.social: "It turns out that that the resulting picture is complex."
December 7, 2025 at 1:49 PM
"The contribution of armed forces and war to climate change" by Neta Crawford, co-director of The Costs of Wars project - Brown University:
www.cell.com/one-earth/ab...

Not OA, but her famous 2019 paper
costsofwar.watson.brown.edu/sites/defaul...

and her views on Trump's geopolitics are
How the US became the biggest military emitter and stopped everyone finding out
Academic Neta Crawford warns that if Donald Trump follows through on his threats of war, emissions will soar and the planet will pay the price
www.theguardian.com
December 6, 2025 at 3:44 PM
#humanrights

The UN General Assembly approved 40 resolutions on #Palestine and #decolonization.

Opposed *all* resolutions on Palestine: Argentina, Fiji, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Tonga, USA.

And *all* resolutions on decolonization: Israel, USA.
December 6, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Vittorio Marletto e Claudio Cassardo recenciscono il saggio di Antonello Pasini, “La sfida climatica. Dalla scienza alla politica: ragioni per il cambiamento”.

Un percorso anche suo, riassunto in 163 pagine (Codice Edizioni).
December 6, 2025 at 11:06 AM
#evolution
#plasmids

Great paper (imo) beginning with "the genetic history of the Murray collection, a rare assemblage of bacterial samples from 1917 to 1954..."

Professor Murray's & his collection's history tout court
www.microbiologyresearch.org/sotsog/egd-m...
December 5, 2025 at 2:39 PM
#ConversationalAI

😟
"When AI systems are optimized for persuasion, they may increasingly deploy misleading or false information."

See also "Political persuasion by artificial intelligence": www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The levers of political persuasion with conversational artificial intelligence
There are widespread fears that conversational artificial intelligence (AI) could soon exert unprecedented influence over human beliefs. In this work, in three large-scale experiments (N = 76,977 part...
www.science.org
December 5, 2025 at 1:01 PM
#polarization #algorithms

"During a 10-day field experiment, 1256 American participants were randomly assigned to X feeds with reduced, increased, or unchanged amounts of AAPA [antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity] content."
December 5, 2025 at 12:44 PM
😍

"Fifty-four couples got married in a mass wedding in #Gaza in a moment of hope after two years of war. Crowds gathered in Khan Younis among the rubble."
A mass wedding in Gaza – in pictures
Fifty-four couples got married in a mass wedding in Gaza in a moment of hope after two years of war. Crowds gathered in Khan Younis among the rubble
www.theguardian.com
December 5, 2025 at 12:26 PM
"Satellites leaves bright streaks on images taken from ground-based telescopes, while the radio waves they emit bedevil radio observatories. [...] Satellite proponents, including SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, have said astronomers will just have to put their telescopes in space."

Thanks but no thanks...
December 4, 2025 at 1:04 PM
A propos #retractions

Can't we use a different term for a journal's (long awaited) decision to retract a paper and for authors' prompt decision to retract one of theirs, thank colleagues for helpful criticisms, and submit a revised version?
Looks like it worked?

In this essay ⬇️, @naomioreskes.bsky.social called out issues with a 2000 paper on glyphosate.

There is now a retraction notice on the website
(but I cannot find the exact date though)
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
December 3, 2025 at 2:41 PM
The correct move:

"In response to the critiques, the authors undertook revisions to constructively address the issues raised. Nature determined the changes exceeded those of a correction, so the authors will resubmit a new version of the paper for peer review."

From PIK's press release.
This is probably the correct move. These calculations are tricky, but the anomalies that came out are too large to do a minor correction. Doesn’t mean that costs are going to be small though!
The authors of a highly publicized study predicting climate change would cost $38 trillion a year by 2049 have retracted their paper following criticism of the data and methodology, including that the estimate is inflated.
December 3, 2025 at 1:25 PM
#AI

"LLMs can provide feedback in seconds, potentially without conflicts of interest."

But efficient ≠ valid:

"As the scientific community starts to embrace AI technology, it must make sure it isn’t solving a logistical problem by creating an intellectual one."
Artificial intelligence promises rapid and polite feedback on papers — but we must first review the reviewer, says Giorgio F. Gilestro

go.nature.com/3McjUsw
AI reviewers are here — we are not ready
Artificial intelligence promises rapid and polite feedback on papers — but we must first review the reviewer.
go.nature.com
December 3, 2025 at 1:11 PM
B. Arnault, billionaire CEO of luxury brands LVMH, rails against a surtax:"It would push [us] to delocalize".

Largest union's sec. general in an interview: "🐀 are jumping ship", "bosses are motivated by greed".
Duh.

❄️ bosses' group gets her indicted for "public insult".

One in French, pls...
December 2, 2025 at 6:26 PM
#AGW
#SRM
#models

Good to know if/when push comes to shove...

Link to the OA paper with well-explained uncertainties, "caveats and limitations", imo. in the 🧵.
Just published to wrap up the year: “Response of Tipping Elements to Different Strategies of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection”

We analyzed the response of various climate metrics relevant to a set of climate tipping element under SSP2-4.5 and under a set of SAI scenarios modeled using CESM2.
December 2, 2025 at 3:15 PM
#climate
#opendata

To existing series, HCLIM adds 12,452 - recently digitalized - records of weather stations in *118 countries* from 1750 onwards.

Instructions for use in Nature Scientific Data, key points in the 🧵& in Berkeley Earth's Oct. temperature updates berkeleyearth.org/october-2025...
Recently, @berkeleyearth.org expanded our temperature database by integrating the HCLIM data set.

nature.com/articles/s41...

The additional data rescued by HCLIM helps improve early reconstructions, but doesn't fundamentally change the large uncertainties due to sparse sampling.

1/
December 2, 2025 at 2:52 PM
#pollution

@watershed-i.bsky.social and @investigate-europe.eu mapped 61,000 UK and EU landfills, and identified those "at risk of leaking toxic waste into water supplies, and the environment".

"Illegal waste dumping is [...[ one of Europe’s fastest-growing areas of organised crime."
December 2, 2025 at 1:22 PM
#Gaza

The US military and business plan to improve Israel's control of the Palestinians still living in the Strip and its "aerially enforced occupation".
AI-powered surveillance firms are gunning for a share of the Gaza spoils

The presence of Palantir and Dataminr at the new U.S. military compound in Israel offers a glimpse of how tech companies are cashing in on the genocide.

www.972mag.com/ai-surveilla...
AI-powered surveillance firms are gunning for a share of Gaza spoils
The presence of Palantir and Dataminr at the new U.S. military compound in Israel offers a glimpse of how tech companies are cashing in on the genocide.
www.972mag.com
December 2, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Con l'aiuto dell'università di Bari, Action Aid-Italia ha segnalato alla Corte dei Conti e all'ANAC "irregolarità" nella gestione dei CPR in Albania.

I #dirittiumani dei richiedenti asilo interessano a pochi, lo so, ma a chiunque paghi le tasse dovrebbe interessare il loro buon uso, no?
CPR in Albania
Presentato esposto alla corte dei conti per danno erariale e segnalazione all’ANAC sulla gestione.
www.actionaid.it
December 2, 2025 at 10:57 AM
"Along with many other research organisations, the CNRS opposes quantitative evaluation based on bibliometric indicators, instead of favouring a qualitative approach."

Also: "This decision will help save €1.4 million annually in subscription fees..."
From January 1st 2026, the CNRS will cut access to one of the largest commercial bibliometric databases, Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science, along with the Core Collection and Journal Citation Reports.
The CNRS is breaking free from the Web of Science
From January 1st 2026, the CNRS will cut access to one of the largest commercial bibliometric databases, Clarivate Analytics'
www.cnrs.fr
December 1, 2025 at 3:04 PM
#WorldAIDSDay

"Stories of the devastating impact of US, British and wider European aid cuts on the fight against HIV – particularly in sub-Saharan Africa – continue to mount as 2025 comes to an end..."
December 1, 2025 at 12:18 PM
#AR2

The "forces of unreason" targeted Ben Santer, lead author of Chapter 8, and "upended [his] life".

"Participating in the 1995 IPCC report had personal cost. But the anger is tempered by another emotion: gratitude. [...] I’ve had the opportunity to use my voice. To speak science to power."
1/2
November 30, 2025 at 11:15 PM
#scientificpublihing #oligopoly

A good explanation, imo, of how perverse academic incentives lead to the "fall" of pay-to-publlsh journals, and also to the "million-dollar profits" of Elsevier, Springer-Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis.

h/t @radioprozac.bsky.social
The fall of a prolific science journal exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing. One of the world’s 15 most-publishing journals has been expelled from the indexing system for irregularities. Its publisher, Elsevier, has a 38% profit margin english.elpais.com/science-tech...
The fall of a prolific science journal exposes the billion-dollar profits of scientific publishing
One of the 15 publications that put out the most studies globally has been expelled from the indexing system for irregularities. Its publisher, Elsevier, has a 38% profit margin that reached $1.5 bill...
english.elpais.com
November 30, 2025 at 6:04 PM
#immunotoxicology

😟

"Considering the unstoppable trend of tattooing in the population, our results [in mice] are crucial in informing the toxicology programs, policymakers, and the general public regarding the potential risk of the tattooing practice associated with an altered immune response."
November 29, 2025 at 12:11 PM