Kevin Bird
@stairwaytokevin.bsky.social
Postdoc in evolutionary genomics of polyploids at RBG Kew | science & society | opinions mine
Mizzou, Fulbright Belgium, and Michigan State alum. Here because of medicaid, public universities, and pell grants
https://kevinabird.github.io/
Mizzou, Fulbright Belgium, and Michigan State alum. Here because of medicaid, public universities, and pell grants
https://kevinabird.github.io/
Pinned
Kevin Bird
@stairwaytokevin.bsky.social
· Mar 28
Phylogenetic and genomic mechanisms shaping glucosinolate innovation
Plants have created an immense diversity of specialized metabolites to optimize fitness within a complex environment. Each plant lineage has created n…
www.sciencedirect.com
Really excited to share this new paper with Amanda Agosto-Ramos & @spicybotrytis.bsky.social! We use glucosinolates in the Brassicales as an illustrative model to demonstrate what the improvements in genome quality & phylogenetic coverage are teaching us about the evolution of metabolic innovation.
Someone seems a little upset the journal isn’t a race science factory anymore
November 15, 2025 at 11:33 PM
Someone seems a little upset the journal isn’t a race science factory anymore
Reposted by Kevin Bird
Those claiming Dems should retreat on racial justice aren't hard-headed realists, they're pushing against the electoral tide rather than leaning into it. The story of Gen Z isn't about racist backlash or red-pilled young men. It's the most racially progressive generation in American history. 🧵
November 14, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Those claiming Dems should retreat on racial justice aren't hard-headed realists, they're pushing against the electoral tide rather than leaning into it. The story of Gen Z isn't about racist backlash or red-pilled young men. It's the most racially progressive generation in American history. 🧵
Reposted by Kevin Bird
Proud to share the preprint for some of my postdoctoral work in developing a high-throughput sequencing screen to find apomixis in plants. We sequenced 55 apple genotypes maintained by the USDA and over 1200 of their embryos. 🍎
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
November 14, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Proud to share the preprint for some of my postdoctoral work in developing a high-throughput sequencing screen to find apomixis in plants. We sequenced 55 apple genotypes maintained by the USDA and over 1200 of their embryos. 🍎
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Except you didn’t have beat reporters, you brought on a transphobe to source a complete nothing story from his white supremacist buddies
Reporters covering Trump are not the same reporters assigned to cover the NYC mayor's race. Beat reporters have to develop sources and that takes time so you can't just switch beats with every story. So no, a reporter covering the NYC race is not going to suddenly do a Trump story, and vice versa.
So when Trump is running for president, stories about him are less newsworthy than when Mamdani is running for NYC mayor? Fascinating, continue, you're doing really well.
November 14, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Except you didn’t have beat reporters, you brought on a transphobe to source a complete nothing story from his white supremacist buddies
Reposted by Kevin Bird
New paper with @statsepi.bsky.social and @deevybee.bsky.social in which we show there's really no evidence for a link between the gut microbiome and autism www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Conceptual and methodological flaws undermine claims of a link between the gut microbiome and autism
Claims that the gut microbiome causally contributes to autism regularly appear in
the scientific literature and popular press. Mitchell et al. critically examine influential
studies underpinning these...
www.cell.com
November 13, 2025 at 4:10 PM
New paper with @statsepi.bsky.social and @deevybee.bsky.social in which we show there's really no evidence for a link between the gut microbiome and autism www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...
Look I’m willing to say it: maybe James Watson got two things right
![Sent:
To:
Subject:
Attachments:
Robert Trivers
6/25/2018 2:19:44 AM
jeffrey E. [jeevacation@gmail.com]
Re:
EPSTEIN.docx
Importance: High
perhaps i misunderstood "let's concentrate on you"
Jamaica is bad enough but i have mastered that-at least the danger-4th highest murder rate in the world as for the us i have alienated large stretches of it-i will spare you the details i was amused that you are now friends with JD Watson he single-handedly prevented me from getting a Junior Fellowship at Harvard
In 1972 I got my PhD in Biology and it was conventional to nominate the very best post-docs for a Junior Fellowship, Harvard's most prestigious award-it provided three years of research support without any duties. I was the best student out of Evolutionary and Organismic Biology in more than 20 years. The entire department was behind me.
but Watson was on the 3-man committee, in charge of all the science candidates and he deemed my two papers, reciprocal altruism and parental investment and sexual selection as "not being science" and dismissed me in one sentence. Well bless his soul, he now does not even understand his own subject-yes, i speak of genetics-because having remained resolutely ignorant of evolutionary logic and biology he can neither understand the shape and form of the genotype nor how it differs systematically within life
i have been preparing something for you for a long time on human intelligence, Africa, parasites etc because i prefer to get things right but i am ready to send you what i have main focus is-Africans stupid or smart?](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:misyogthncmyejlvlflkvjbh/bafkreidoxuuq447qbvuj3edxli6qr7gzjy2y4ctod5a6363tjgtv4lb6ve@jpeg)
November 13, 2025 at 8:25 PM
Look I’m willing to say it: maybe James Watson got two things right
Reposted by Kevin Bird
POD EP 5: A Conversation About Dialectical Biology, with Mac Parker and Anatarah Bin AlKaf—on Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins' "Dialectical Biologist"!
patreon.com/posts/episod...
patreon.com/posts/episod...
Episode 5: A Conversation About Dialectical Biology. | crittheoryworkgroup
Get more from crittheoryworkgroup on Patreon
patreon.com
November 13, 2025 at 7:44 PM
POD EP 5: A Conversation About Dialectical Biology, with Mac Parker and Anatarah Bin AlKaf—on Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins' "Dialectical Biologist"!
patreon.com/posts/episod...
patreon.com/posts/episod...
Happy to see this paper from my time with @spicybotrytis.bsky.social out in @theplantcell.bsky.social!
Amanda, a fantastic PhD student with Dan, led this "phylo-functional" work & uncovered complex duplication & loss of a glucosinolate gene across the Brassicaceae affecting enantiomeric specificity
Amanda, a fantastic PhD student with Dan, led this "phylo-functional" work & uncovered complex duplication & loss of a glucosinolate gene across the Brassicaceae affecting enantiomeric specificity
Convergence and constraint in glucosinolate evolution across the Brassicaceae
Studying a glucosinolate enzyme across the Brassicaceae shows evolution of plant specialized metabolism involves independent gene losses, distal duplicatio
academic.oup.com
November 13, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Happy to see this paper from my time with @spicybotrytis.bsky.social out in @theplantcell.bsky.social!
Amanda, a fantastic PhD student with Dan, led this "phylo-functional" work & uncovered complex duplication & loss of a glucosinolate gene across the Brassicaceae affecting enantiomeric specificity
Amanda, a fantastic PhD student with Dan, led this "phylo-functional" work & uncovered complex duplication & loss of a glucosinolate gene across the Brassicaceae affecting enantiomeric specificity
Reposted by Kevin Bird
Sorry, Lawrence, but "Feynman would have done what I did" isn't the defense you think it is
Tfw you think that science is being destroyed by wokeness
November 12, 2025 at 11:17 PM
Sorry, Lawrence, but "Feynman would have done what I did" isn't the defense you think it is
If you’ve never heard of the “arctic origins of East Asian psychology” theory it’s because it was made up whole cloth by “David Sun”, some failed grad school applicant who somehow got one paper about it published and otherwise just posts lewd AI anime art about his theory on Twitter
The influence of race science is spreading in the evolutionary behavioural sciences. This new paper means members of a race science network have now been published in Evolutionary Psychological Science, Evolutionary Behavioral Science, Evolutionary Psychology & Adaptive Human Behavior & Physiology
November 12, 2025 at 5:40 PM
If you’ve never heard of the “arctic origins of East Asian psychology” theory it’s because it was made up whole cloth by “David Sun”, some failed grad school applicant who somehow got one paper about it published and otherwise just posts lewd AI anime art about his theory on Twitter
Reposted by Kevin Bird
i do think the authors were exceptionally kind in their critique of woodley et al's content analysis
if you dig into the details of woodley et al's supplemental data, there's evidence suggestive of data tampering
for example, they average 1 and 1 together to get 0.5 multiple times, seen here
if you dig into the details of woodley et al's supplemental data, there's evidence suggestive of data tampering
for example, they average 1 and 1 together to get 0.5 multiple times, seen here
November 12, 2025 at 4:57 PM
i do think the authors were exceptionally kind in their critique of woodley et al's content analysis
if you dig into the details of woodley et al's supplemental data, there's evidence suggestive of data tampering
for example, they average 1 and 1 together to get 0.5 multiple times, seen here
if you dig into the details of woodley et al's supplemental data, there's evidence suggestive of data tampering
for example, they average 1 and 1 together to get 0.5 multiple times, seen here
Reposted by Kevin Bird
Really quite striking how blatantly hereditarian research violates scientific norms. One of the papers under critique was accepted the same day it was submitted
November 12, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Really quite striking how blatantly hereditarian research violates scientific norms. One of the papers under critique was accepted the same day it was submitted
Reposted by Kevin Bird
new york times headline: new emails reveal potential relationship between epstein and trump
the email: Re: re: re: My Best Friend Donald Trump is a Pedophile, We were doing Pedophile Stuff together
the email: Re: re: re: My Best Friend Donald Trump is a Pedophile, We were doing Pedophile Stuff together
November 12, 2025 at 2:55 PM
new york times headline: new emails reveal potential relationship between epstein and trump
the email: Re: re: re: My Best Friend Donald Trump is a Pedophile, We were doing Pedophile Stuff together
the email: Re: re: re: My Best Friend Donald Trump is a Pedophile, We were doing Pedophile Stuff together
Today is the day! Our reply to the two concurrent critiques (from the same set of authors) is now published in the journal Intelligence 🧵 1/
November 12, 2025 at 3:31 PM
Today is the day! Our reply to the two concurrent critiques (from the same set of authors) is now published in the journal Intelligence 🧵 1/
You’re telling me SpringerNature doesn’t need to charge $13,000 a paper for Nature Plants? I’m shocked!
What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.
It's *scientific publishing*.
We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...
Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
It's *scientific publishing*.
We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...
Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
November 12, 2025 at 11:56 AM
You’re telling me SpringerNature doesn’t need to charge $13,000 a paper for Nature Plants? I’m shocked!
Reposted by Kevin Bird
What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.
It's *scientific publishing*.
We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...
Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
It's *scientific publishing*.
We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...
Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
November 12, 2025 at 10:31 AM
What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.
It's *scientific publishing*.
We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...
Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
It's *scientific publishing*.
We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.
Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...
Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
Reposted by Kevin Bird
Scientists operate on principles of good faith. But this is just ridiculous. If you, dear reader, take nothing else away from The Drain paper, it is that publishers cannot be invited to the table any longer.
They can participate and carve a space, but they can't be part of shaping policy.
3/n
They can participate and carve a space, but they can't be part of shaping policy.
3/n
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Scientists operate on principles of good faith. But this is just ridiculous. If you, dear reader, take nothing else away from The Drain paper, it is that publishers cannot be invited to the table any longer.
They can participate and carve a space, but they can't be part of shaping policy.
3/n
They can participate and carve a space, but they can't be part of shaping policy.
3/n
Reposted by Kevin Bird
132 imaginary spiders valiantly died trying
oh no Colin Wright is still at it
has nobody made fun of this guy’s lack of expertise enough to his face
has nobody made fun of this guy’s lack of expertise enough to his face
November 11, 2025 at 6:56 PM
132 imaginary spiders valiantly died trying
Reposted by Kevin Bird
The far right is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Musk keeps posting about "hobbits" because modern scientific racism owes more to fantasy worlds and gaming systems than genetic science, and they see both as effective mediums for right-wing propaganda www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons and Dragons to Be Racist
The fantastical roots of “scientific racism”
www.theatlantic.com
November 11, 2025 at 2:42 PM
The far right is obsessed with Lord of the Rings and Musk keeps posting about "hobbits" because modern scientific racism owes more to fantasy worlds and gaming systems than genetic science, and they see both as effective mediums for right-wing propaganda www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
Reposted by Kevin Bird
“Through wise taxation, regulation focused on the public good, and strong labor rights to empower unions, you get all of the benefits that the ownership society wants to produce without corporate decimation of our democracy and without the need to have centibillionaires in the world...Good stuff.”
November 11, 2025 at 3:30 PM
“Through wise taxation, regulation focused on the public good, and strong labor rights to empower unions, you get all of the benefits that the ownership society wants to produce without corporate decimation of our democracy and without the need to have centibillionaires in the world...Good stuff.”
If you like D&D and hate race science and Elon Musk, you’re gonna love this article
Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons and Dragons to Be Racist
The fantastical roots of “scientific racism”
www.theatlantic.com
November 11, 2025 at 3:25 PM
If you like D&D and hate race science and Elon Musk, you’re gonna love this article
“What’s The Point Of Standards?” is the tag line to Bari Weiss’ career
“I’ve been hearing that standards will be eliminated or severely cut back. Bari has told people that she wants to get rid of standards and is shocked that they have so much power. She also asked openly, ‘What’s the point of standards?’” one CBS source said.
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
Bari Weiss wants to take down ‘too much power’ CBS News Standards unit: sources
EXCLUSIVE: Internal rumblings within the newsroom come after the S&P head resigned and the network disbanded its vaunted Race and Culture unit.
www.independent.co.uk
November 11, 2025 at 3:23 PM
“What’s The Point Of Standards?” is the tag line to Bari Weiss’ career
Evolutionary biologists have been warning us for decades about the danger to humanity posed by fish men. Will we listen?
November 11, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Evolutionary biologists have been warning us for decades about the danger to humanity posed by fish men. Will we listen?
Reposted by Kevin Bird
The recent GBE paper on whole-genome duplication in Potamopyrgus antipodarum is the focus of November's Highlight.
Highlight: Genome Duplication in a New Zealand Snail Holds Clues for the Persistence of (A)sexual Reproduction
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf198
#genome #evolution #WGD
Highlight: Genome Duplication in a New Zealand Snail Holds Clues for the Persistence of (A)sexual Reproduction
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf198
#genome #evolution #WGD
November 11, 2025 at 12:53 PM
The recent GBE paper on whole-genome duplication in Potamopyrgus antipodarum is the focus of November's Highlight.
Highlight: Genome Duplication in a New Zealand Snail Holds Clues for the Persistence of (A)sexual Reproduction
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf198
#genome #evolution #WGD
Highlight: Genome Duplication in a New Zealand Snail Holds Clues for the Persistence of (A)sexual Reproduction
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evaf198
#genome #evolution #WGD
"The world's richest man continually manipulates his company's AI to lie about science and promote white supremacism" sounds like some hack sci-fi writing, but it's just our current reality
November 11, 2025 at 11:48 AM
"The world's richest man continually manipulates his company's AI to lie about science and promote white supremacism" sounds like some hack sci-fi writing, but it's just our current reality