Ed Gerstner 印格致
@silentypewriter.bsky.social
Director of Research Environment Alliances, Springer Nature ― Open Science advocate ― Zhongguo tong.
orcid.org/0000-0003-0369-0767
orcid.org/0000-0003-0369-0767
I *love* the marketing from DORA in the delegate bag for the EU Presidency High-Level Conference on Reforming Research Assessment in Copenhagen. #CeRRA2025
December 3, 2025 at 11:12 AM
I *love* the marketing from DORA in the delegate bag for the EU Presidency High-Level Conference on Reforming Research Assessment in Copenhagen. #CeRRA2025
Except that from the image used on this post, Hitler seems to have had left-handed DNA. Which is EXTRAORDINARY!
There is no reason to suppose that we learn anything significant from the genetic data about what made the dictator the man he was
✏️ Philip Ball
✏️ Philip Ball
Was analysing Hitler's DNA worth it?
There is no reason to suppose that we learn anything significant from the genetic data about what made the dictator the man he was
www.thenewworld.co.uk
November 27, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Except that from the image used on this post, Hitler seems to have had left-handed DNA. Which is EXTRAORDINARY!
Also, it's an export industry that is immune to tariffs!!!
We should be encouraging foreign students to come here and spend their money in our university towns and cities, not penalising them for doing it.
November 23, 2025 at 11:31 PM
Also, it's an export industry that is immune to tariffs!!!
This is an important question that gets to the heart of how people consume and pass on information. And I'll bet the AI number is connected to the human number. Because guess who the AI learns from.
What's the human percentage for the same task?
Yet again, we can't afford to let LLMs become a source of epistemic grounding for society.
October 24, 2025 at 7:56 AM
This is an important question that gets to the heart of how people consume and pass on information. And I'll bet the AI number is connected to the human number. Because guess who the AI learns from.
Something had indeed changed since the 80s. Jenrick should try googling, "Why were English football clubs banned from Europe in the 1980s?"
It wasn't because of good-natured rough and tumble.
It wasn't because of good-natured rough and tumble.
In 2025, Aston Villa averages 41k in a stadium holding 42k, not the 15k of 1986
Birmingham is at 25k not the 10k of 1986.
This rhythm of British life in Birmingham "men & women turning up and supporting teams" is obvs much stronger now, weaker then [now 15-20% women, which is low but obvs higher]
Birmingham is at 25k not the 10k of 1986.
This rhythm of British life in Birmingham "men & women turning up and supporting teams" is obvs much stronger now, weaker then [now 15-20% women, which is low but obvs higher]
October 18, 2025 at 10:58 AM
Something had indeed changed since the 80s. Jenrick should try googling, "Why were English football clubs banned from Europe in the 1980s?"
It wasn't because of good-natured rough and tumble.
It wasn't because of good-natured rough and tumble.
Reposted by Ed Gerstner 印格致
Couldn’t agree more with this para from @jonathanfreedland.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
October 4, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Couldn’t agree more with this para from @jonathanfreedland.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Reposted by Ed Gerstner 印格致
Great piece on the Welsh government’s 20mph policy by @willhaycardiff.bsky.social
“What is great about evidence based policy is that it has a wonderful habit of working”
Inspiration for England as DfT work on the promised road safety strategy.
“What is great about evidence based policy is that it has a wonderful habit of working”
Inspiration for England as DfT work on the promised road safety strategy.
Turns out the 20mph limit was great idea!
Two years on from the controversial policy, it's becoming increasingly clear that the doubters were wrong
willhaywardwales.substack.com
August 3, 2025 at 6:45 AM
Great piece on the Welsh government’s 20mph policy by @willhaycardiff.bsky.social
“What is great about evidence based policy is that it has a wonderful habit of working”
Inspiration for England as DfT work on the promised road safety strategy.
“What is great about evidence based policy is that it has a wonderful habit of working”
Inspiration for England as DfT work on the promised road safety strategy.
"Boomers bought houses at a time when saving a couple of pounds per day taking a packed lunch to work would give you a house deposit in eight years. For a millennial this would take two centuries."
My latest, exploring with numbers how the millennial household budget is basically incomprehensible to retired boomers.
WASPInomics and the magic avocado tree
Why boomers struggle to make sense of the millennial world.
open.substack.com
July 29, 2025 at 2:38 PM
"Boomers bought houses at a time when saving a couple of pounds per day taking a packed lunch to work would give you a house deposit in eight years. For a millennial this would take two centuries."
That's a nice piece. And feels just as relevant to the UK as the US. Though the point about the absurdness of US bureaucracy makes for less headroom in the UK case.
Found it through search when I remembered enough words...
josephheath.substack.com/p/my-two-cen...
josephheath.substack.com/p/my-two-cen...
July 15, 2025 at 10:10 PM
That's a nice piece. And feels just as relevant to the UK as the US. Though the point about the absurdness of US bureaucracy makes for less headroom in the UK case.
Reposted by Ed Gerstner 印格致
Bracing myself for an intense but stimulating few days next week. A year in the planning at @rorinstitute.bsky.social but now it’s almost here! metascience.info
Metascience 2025 Conference
A global gathering for knowledge sharing, community building, and opportunities to define a roadmap of research and intervention priorities to accelerate science.
metascience.info
June 26, 2025 at 4:26 PM
Bracing myself for an intense but stimulating few days next week. A year in the planning at @rorinstitute.bsky.social but now it’s almost here! metascience.info
When people claim that peer review is irreparably broken, the development of the COVID vaccine is the counterexample I offer.
Another banger from @iandunt.bsky.social; I'll forgive him for mixing up @natcomms.nature.com with @nature.com (two different journals, same publisher - paper was published in the former). Nice to see some science in the newsletter! And love the sentence in the pic below 😂
June 6, 2025 at 10:13 AM
When people claim that peer review is irreparably broken, the development of the COVID vaccine is the counterexample I offer.
Reposted by Ed Gerstner 印格致
Well worth a look. As I explain in my book Serving The Reich, there was very little resistance to these measures from the physicists, even in the early days. Most kept their heads down. As Chanda says, none left Germany unless they had "non-Aryan" hanging over them.
In light of this deeply illegal activity at NSF and the ongoing attack on American science, I'm posting the slides from my 2017 talk at the American Physical Society about the Nazi take over of German physics/why German is no longer science's lingua franca 🧪
🧵 1/26
drive.google.com/file/d/1_MCm...
🧵 1/26
drive.google.com/file/d/1_MCm...
May 31, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Well worth a look. As I explain in my book Serving The Reich, there was very little resistance to these measures from the physicists, even in the early days. Most kept their heads down. As Chanda says, none left Germany unless they had "non-Aryan" hanging over them.
Reposted by Ed Gerstner 印格致
Springer Nature reported its international web survey on research integrity. Congratulations! @silentypewriter.bsky.social In Japan, many researchers recognize that "avoiding research misconduct" is research integrity. We should update our thoughts. figshare.com/articles/onl...
White paper: Surveying the provision of research integrity training around the world
Springer Nature surveyed a total of 7,871 researchers in Australia (993), the UK (1,078), the USA (1,962), India (659), Japan (1,190), China (1,008), and Brazil (981), to explore understanding of rese...
figshare.com
May 30, 2025 at 3:32 AM
Springer Nature reported its international web survey on research integrity. Congratulations! @silentypewriter.bsky.social In Japan, many researchers recognize that "avoiding research misconduct" is research integrity. We should update our thoughts. figshare.com/articles/onl...
It seems to me that if we believe in free trade, we should believe in free trade. That's not to say that there might not be nationally strategic reasons to protect domestic bioethanol production, but I'd be interested to hear them.
Trade deals are about trade offs, and if the UK bioethanol industry needs tariff protection should that be prioritised? I don't know, but that side of the story should also be written.
UK bioethanol factories face closure after Trump trade deal — UK gave US 1.4bn litres tariff free quota. Equivalent to entire annual demand. And it seems no-one consulted Defra when they did it 🤷♂️.
Signs of a deal that was done to fit Donald Trump’s press conference schedule.
on.ft.com/43AADLa
Signs of a deal that was done to fit Donald Trump’s press conference schedule.
on.ft.com/43AADLa
May 28, 2025 at 3:36 PM
It seems to me that if we believe in free trade, we should believe in free trade. That's not to say that there might not be nationally strategic reasons to protect domestic bioethanol production, but I'd be interested to hear them.
Reposted by Ed Gerstner 印格致
Here’s what a Labour government at its best can achieve - share to spread the word and ask for more.
#TrueLabour
#TrueLabour
May 22, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Here’s what a Labour government at its best can achieve - share to spread the word and ask for more.
#TrueLabour
#TrueLabour
Huh! I feel utterly disabused.
Remember when you first learned about genetics at school? All those fascinating examples of human traits that are each apparently determined by just a single gene? Time to check in on some of your favourites to see how they’re doing. 🧬🧵🧪 1/n
May 2, 2025 at 4:07 PM
Huh! I feel utterly disabused.
Reposted by Ed Gerstner 印格致
🚀 The 2025 #StateOfOpenData survey is live! 🌐 Researchers worldwide, we want to hear about your experiences and challenges with data sharing. Help shape the future of #OpenScience and stand a chance to win 1 of 5 $100 gift cards! Participate today: go.sn.pub/024jk6
@figshare.com @digital-science.com
@figshare.com @digital-science.com
May 2, 2025 at 7:09 AM
🚀 The 2025 #StateOfOpenData survey is live! 🌐 Researchers worldwide, we want to hear about your experiences and challenges with data sharing. Help shape the future of #OpenScience and stand a chance to win 1 of 5 $100 gift cards! Participate today: go.sn.pub/024jk6
@figshare.com @digital-science.com
@figshare.com @digital-science.com
Love this!
April 28, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Love this!
"If traditional computers are precision machines that struggle with fuzziness, LLMs are the inverse: fuzzy machines that struggle with precision."
💯! And crucial to deciding when LLMs should and shouldn't be used.
💯! And crucial to deciding when LLMs should and shouldn't be used.
This post is SO, SO good. Very much in line with my thinking about AI and the future of software. I hope we can get @PhillipCarter.dev to speak at one of our upcoming #AICodeCon events.
LLMs Are Weird Computers
A perspective on AI models as an inverted computing paradigm
www.phillipcarter.dev
March 5, 2025 at 3:28 PM
"If traditional computers are precision machines that struggle with fuzziness, LLMs are the inverse: fuzzy machines that struggle with precision."
💯! And crucial to deciding when LLMs should and shouldn't be used.
💯! And crucial to deciding when LLMs should and shouldn't be used.
Suella's refusal to accept the consensus of the English that being English has nothing to do with race is at least consistent with her assertion that she isn't herself English.
Your regular reminder that the vast majority of people in England - as in every part of Britain - reject race & ancestry as markes of national identity. Braverman may not consider herself English but the vast majority of her fellow citizens too.
According to Wikipedia, Suella Braverman was born in Harrow and raised in Wembley.
February 27, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Suella's refusal to accept the consensus of the English that being English has nothing to do with race is at least consistent with her assertion that she isn't herself English.
Reposted by Ed Gerstner 印格致
Great minds… within 24 hrs both us at @nature.com and @science.org make similar appeals to the research community. And @holdenthorp.bsky.social and I didn’t even exchange notes about it ;-)
🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Come together, right now
The chaos, conflicting information, firings, and hurtful rhetoric of the Trump administration’s approach to science over the past month are causing anxiety, grief, and concern for the scientific commu...
www.science.org
February 25, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Great minds… within 24 hrs both us at @nature.com and @science.org make similar appeals to the research community. And @holdenthorp.bsky.social and I didn’t even exchange notes about it ;-)
🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Reposted by Ed Gerstner 印格致
3 years from when russia invaded Ukraine. When the USA told the leader of the free world President Zelensky to leave, and he replied "I don't need a ride. I need ammunition".
This is the first slide of every talk I gave in the last 3 years. This thread is about (quantum) science in Ukraine. 🧵
This is the first slide of every talk I gave in the last 3 years. This thread is about (quantum) science in Ukraine. 🧵
February 24, 2025 at 9:19 AM
3 years from when russia invaded Ukraine. When the USA told the leader of the free world President Zelensky to leave, and he replied "I don't need a ride. I need ammunition".
This is the first slide of every talk I gave in the last 3 years. This thread is about (quantum) science in Ukraine. 🧵
This is the first slide of every talk I gave in the last 3 years. This thread is about (quantum) science in Ukraine. 🧵
Every talk that I've ever given on writing — and I've given MANY — has begun with Tim Radford's first rule of writing to think of the reader. “This is because, although you — an employee, an apostle or an apologist — may feel compelled to write, nobody has ever felt obliged to read.”
Two Tim Radford obituaries, one published by his former employer @theguardian.com, the other from @rogerhighfield.bsky.social @absw.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
www.absw.org.uk/articles/tim...
www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
www.absw.org.uk/articles/tim...
Tim Radford obituary
Science journalist who could make complex subjects intelligible and thrilling even to a non-specialist readership
www.theguardian.com
February 14, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Every talk that I've ever given on writing — and I've given MANY — has begun with Tim Radford's first rule of writing to think of the reader. “This is because, although you — an employee, an apostle or an apologist — may feel compelled to write, nobody has ever felt obliged to read.”
Reposted by Ed Gerstner 印格致
This should be changed asap.
If we give someone refugee status, it can't be right to then refuse them route to become a British Citizen. To say they can have a home in our country, but never a place in our society and be forever second class. freemovement.org.uk/good-charact...
If we give someone refugee status, it can't be right to then refuse them route to become a British Citizen. To say they can have a home in our country, but never a place in our society and be forever second class. freemovement.org.uk/good-charact...
Good character guidance amended to block refugees from naturalisation - Free Movement
There have been some important additions to pages 50 and 51 of the Good Character guidance (a comparison of the new and old versions is here) that have the
freemovement.org.uk
February 11, 2025 at 3:01 PM
This should be changed asap.
If we give someone refugee status, it can't be right to then refuse them route to become a British Citizen. To say they can have a home in our country, but never a place in our society and be forever second class. freemovement.org.uk/good-charact...
If we give someone refugee status, it can't be right to then refuse them route to become a British Citizen. To say they can have a home in our country, but never a place in our society and be forever second class. freemovement.org.uk/good-charact...