Conrad Hal Waddington was born OTD in 1905. His “epigenetic landscape” is a diagrammatic representation of the constraints influencing embryonic development. On his 50th birthday, his colleagues gave him a pinball machine on the model of the epigenetic landscape. 🧪 🦫🦋 🌱🐋 #HistSTM #philsci #evobio

This is as good a moment as any to share "Jim Watson in is own words" - collected by Lior Pachter

https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/james-watson-in-his-own-words/

#JamesWatson #DNA #Genetics #Science

I heard good things about this book, but haven't read it yet. Opinions anyone? www.amazon.com/Priests-Prog...

Priests and Programmers: Techn...

Two pressures that are driving AI models are reasoning benchmarks and user engagement through sycophancy. I suspect that both provide diminishing returns and produce less "intelligent" behavior.

It finally gave a more relevant citation, pointing to a paper by one of my colleagues. But it got his name wrong...!

Yesterday I produced a nice example of why uncritically using chatbots is a problem that I hope will resonate with my colleagues. I asked chatgpt who wrote about a particular historical idea in the history of genetics. It first suggested two authors who didn't, and said so when I pressed, but also..

Science is the long march toward overcoming confirmation bias.

Watson himself created the myth that the key step to the DNA structure was appropriating Rosalind Franklin’s work (which certainly was important). She has become an icon of science and a symbol of women discrimination largely because of him, ironically. History is strange.

I was interviewed a couple of years ago for a Haaretz Podcast episode on the DNA structure discovery and Rosalind Franklin (Hebrew). www.haaretz.co.il/digital/podc...

זה אחד הסיפורים המדעיים הכי מפ...

It's is entirely possible to reject a simplistic hagiography of Watson without succumbing to a simplistic hagiography of Rosalind Franklin. Both give a misguided and harmful sense of what science is like.

Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of DNA. Stop saying that they discovered DNA! This was done by another guy you probably haven't heard of! And therein lies a story. academic.oup.com/genetics/art...

Before Watson and Crick in 195...

While this piece continues the myths about the DNA work, it contains many useful quotes about his failure to mature and his subsequent decline. A warning to other “arrogant truth tellers” without his legitimate claim to fame. www.statnews.com/2025/11/07/j...

James Watson, dead at 97, was ...

Maybe it’s time we have mobile devices that are open and trustworthy.

No, I’m not gong to post about the philosophy of slurs . But as usual, lease don’t do semantics when you need to do pragmatics.

While I enjoyed this tribute to the series I think it missed a key element. The Relationship of Richard and Hyacinth is as important and touching as the social climbing AND it is contrasted with Onslow and Daisy‘s rowdy but loving marriage. Richard and Onslow stolen moments are among the best.

Very sad to hear that Patricia Routledge of "Keeping Up Appearances" is gone. An amazing actor and an unforgettable role.

This is a very good documentary about the series. https://youtu.be/Jz-4zc98atA

According to the City of Paris, in the last 10 years 150K trees have been planted & 45ha of parks created in the already hot city, all intended to not only improve quality-of-life today, but also help the city adapt to & manage summer heatwaves of 50℃ (122F) by 2050. Just the start. Common sense.

Surprisingly little research on this topic! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Neurodevelopmental Disorders a...

This little explainer of #agency as the basis of #FreeWill by Arvin Ash and Philip Ball is quite neat, even pointing out the importance of #RelevanceRealization (without naming it, though...)

https://youtu.be/Ye6b7OkxBnc

Reminder: I am also on mastodon at: @ehud@scholar.social @ehud@mastodon.social For the time being I'm still here, but if you are over the pond, you can get my bsky post on mastodon via the following handle: @duhe.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:i7lv3abpcflafgtnc3nf5vlb/post/3lyksdk32h22o