James Galbraith
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gulbruth.bsky.social
James Galbraith
@gulbruth.bsky.social
750 followers 730 following 62 posts
Evolutionary biologist, Luddite, coffee addict. Postdoc at University of Edinburgh researching the evolution of weird chromosomes and sex determination in insects, opinions my own, he/him.
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gulbruth.bsky.social
On a related tangent, from Empire of AI, Altman and co being based in SF and being confronted with the homelessness crisis daily; yet instead of using their billions to remedy it or any other societal problems, they offload that responsibility onto their Messiah of AGI to do when it appears.
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 20
Much like offloading onto LLMs, men are more likely to feel OK offloading generally. Women do not & sadly are used to doing this work. Men are formed by patriarchy to demand, expect, and tolerate this. This is in pure contrast to all the women who contact me to say they will work hard to fight AI.
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 20
TBF they need much more help than just not using AI, but indeed they are its most vociferous supporters and for good reason: men under patriarchy are used to outsourcing (especially to women) their cognitive labour
November 25, 2025 at 8:40 AM
gulbruth.bsky.social
I'm halfway through @karenhao.bsky.social 's Empire of AI, and the moderation of highly disturbing content by lowly paid workers of the Global South by OpenAI, Meta and friends reveals how the tech-economy is just imperialism with a shiny new coat.
November 24, 2025 at 8:32 AM
Reposted by James Galbraith
ucuedinburgh.bsky.social
Great turnout at the Edinburgh UCU rally at parliament to demand an end to the University of Edinburgh management reckless budget cuts and redundancies!

#StopStaffCutsatUoE @ucu.org.uk
November 19, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by James Galbraith
ucuedinburgh.bsky.social
Join us tomorrow at the Parliament for a staff and student rally against the cuts!
November 18, 2025 at 11:34 AM
Reposted by James Galbraith
ucuedinburgh.bsky.social
Tag us on your picket line pics and videos and tell us why you are striking #UCU members
#StopStaffCutsatUoE
November 16, 2025 at 10:32 PM
Reposted by James Galbraith
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by James Galbraith
mehr.nz
disappointed that @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social is implicitly endorsing the use of LLMs to replace scientific thought

@richardsever.bsky.social this is a short-sighted move and a net negative for science
odedrechavi.bsky.social Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · 19d
IT'S HAPPENING! 💥 I'm psyched to launch the collaboration between @qedscience.bsky.social & @openrxiv.bsky.social @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social! Preprint + q.e.d = your science is out there, and anyone can appreciate it. Let's care about making discoveries, and not on “getting published” (1/3) 👇
November 7, 2025 at 9:06 AM
Reposted by James Galbraith
drewharwell.com
An OpenAI executive said GPT-5 found solutions to 10 "previously unsolved" math problems when in reality all it did was find online references to places where people had already solved them

techcrunch.com/2025/10/19/o...
OpenAI’s ‘embarrassing’ math | TechCrunch
No, GPT-5 did not solve a bunch of previously unsolved math problems.
techcrunch.com
October 20, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Reposted by James Galbraith
charlottewright.bsky.social
How many chromosomes can an animal have?

In our paper out now in @currentbiology.bsky.social we show that the Atlas blue butterfly has 229 chromosome pairs- the highest in diploid Metazoa! These arose by rapid autosome fragmentation while sex chromosomes stayed intact.
www.cell.com/current-biol...
Constraints on chromosome evolution revealed by the 229 chromosome pairs of the Atlas blue butterfly
The genome of the Atlas blue butterfly contains ten times more chromosomes than most butterflies, and more than any other known diploid animal. Wright et al. show that this extraordinary karyotype is ...
tinyurl.com
September 11, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Reposted by James Galbraith
ucuedinburgh.bsky.social
“We don’t see how the university can continue to provide quality education to students with drastic reductions in staff. Management does not appear to be listening—students may [be] able to insist they do.” Sophia Woodman UCU Edinburgh President
Edinburgh University spends thousands on chancellors bills while staff fear redundancy
The UCU have called the chancellor's perks a 'slap in the face' to striking staff
thetab.com
September 10, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Reposted by James Galbraith
ryanestrada.com
If you do find your name, go here to file to get your money!

www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com
September 6, 2025 at 6:31 AM
gulbruth.bsky.social
This is the most entertaining and most genuine piece of cinema I've watched I quite a while.
September 5, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Reposted by James Galbraith
saskajanet.bsky.social
So much fun! “Listers” is worth a watch #birds youtu.be/zl-wAqplQAo?...
LISTERS: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching
YouTube video by owen reiser
youtu.be
September 1, 2025 at 2:12 AM
Reposted by James Galbraith
molbioevol.bsky.social
Red devil spiders from the Canary Islands have a genome half the size of mainland counterparts - Pisarenco, @jrozasub.bsky.social et al. show how purifying selection against slightly deleterious DNA and TE insertions is the primary mechanism.

🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf206

#evobio #molbio #TEsky
How Did Evolution Halve Genome Size During an Oceanic Island Colonization?
Abstract. Red devil spiders of the genus Dysdera colonized the Canary Islands and underwent an extraordinary diversification. Notably, their genomes are ne
doi.org
September 5, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by James Galbraith
rachelmoran.bsky.social
First pop gen paper from our lab! We find repeated evolutionary turn over of sex chromosomes in darters contributes to reproductive isolation. Turnover may be an escape hatch to resolve mitonuclear conflict & neo sex chromosomes evolved via a rare recessive mutation. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Top left: Results of genome-wide association study (GWAS) for sex in E. caeruleum, E. radiosum, and E. spectabile showing sex chromosome turnover has occurred repeatedly. Top right: Phylogeny showing sex chromosome turnover in darters and non-darter percids. Chromosome 9 is the putative ancestral sex chromosome, shared by Perca flavescens and multiple members of the orangethroat darter complex (e.g., E. spectabile, E. pulchellum). Bottom: Schematic depicting repeated turnover of sex chromosomes as a mechanism to resolve mitonuclear conflict and promote speciation.
September 4, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by James Galbraith
tomtanuki.bsky.social
HOW NEO-NAZIS CAPTURED THE MARCH FOR AUSTRALIA

WATCH: youtu.be/GLRoFdeI_5Y

Documenting the crowd manipulation tricks deployed by the National Socialist Network to transform nationalist 'Marches for Australia' into, effectively, national socialist marches.
September 5, 2025 at 4:56 AM
Reposted by James Galbraith
thelabandfield.bsky.social
In all seriousness, this is a fantastic study that should be catapulted into every department chair's face immediately.
September 4, 2025 at 8:18 AM
Reposted by James Galbraith
danielcroll.bsky.social
Reproduction in ants 🐜 just keeps blowing my mind 🤯

But this here is the crown for sure... for now.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(go also check out obligate chimerism, social chromosomes, clonal production of females and males, and much more...)
One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature
In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...
www.nature.com
September 3, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by James Galbraith
gcbias.bsky.social
Would a rose by any other gene smell so sweet?
September 2, 2025 at 8:50 PM
gulbruth.bsky.social
Just leaving this here for any academics who still get LLMs to summarise literature for them without any critical examination of their own. Check the authors of Nature opinions pieces pumping 'AI'. Many are employees of Microsoft etc., the only people who truly profit from this.
rebeccasear.bsky.social Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · Aug 25
“The study authors asked GPT 4o-mini to evaluate the quality of 217 papers. The tool didn’t mention in any of the reports that the papers being analyzed had been retracted or had validity issues.

In 190 cases, GPT described the papers as world leading, internationally excellent, or close to that”
ChatGPT tends to ignore retractions on scientific papers
Study finds the chatbot doesn’t acknowledge concerns with problematic studies
cen.acs.org
August 25, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Reposted by James Galbraith
joelpick.bsky.social
🚨Introducing the @sortee.bsky.social Guidelines for Data and Code Quality Control in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology🚨 doi.org/10.32942/X24...

Increasingly E&E journals are recruiting data editors. We provide standardised guidelines for journals with data editors and those wanting to recruit them 🧵
The SORTEE Guidelines for Data and Code Quality Control in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
doi.org
August 15, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted by James Galbraith
sagitaninta.bsky.social
Mike Ritchie reminded to publish in your society journals to keep things rolling. Overpriced journals from big publishers did not circle back their money to society!

Surprised the EU still need to be reminded, I thought many funding bodies acknowledged review-community platforms.

#ESEB2025
August 22, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by James Galbraith
iwriteok.bsky.social
Ed's got a significant scoop here, an under-the-hood look at GPT5 that suggests why it feels like such a step back to users. The incompetence from OpenAI here is truly remarkable.
edzitron.com Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · Aug 22
Here's a bonus ep of Better Offline. I report on how OpenAI’s new "router-based" ChatGPT-5 makes it impossible for OpenAI to cache the static prompt for any model or tool it uses every single prompt, doubling token burn for mediocre gains.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...
Linktr.ee/betteroffline
Exclusive: How GPT-5 Actually Works
Podcast Episode · Better Offline · 08/22/2025 · 29m
podcasts.apple.com
August 22, 2025 at 4:24 AM
Reposted by James Galbraith
englishse.bsky.social
To be, or not to be, part-time in academia?
This is a tricky question that has faced many of us and in @elife.bsky.social we discuss the benefits and challenges of being part-time. With @emiliapsantos.bsky.social and a fantastic, interdisciplinary team!
elifesciences.org/articles/106...
Point of View: To be, or not to be, part-time in academia
Part-time working can be beneficial for individual academics, and also for academia as a whole.
elifesciences.org
February 20, 2025 at 12:38 PM
gulbruth.bsky.social
Does selfing allow or even lead to massive genome reshuffling, expansion and sky high homozygousity? Come and find out at posters 29 and 42 this afternoon, only at #eseb2025 and learn about an organism whose genome looks like it went through a blender and came out high repetitive and homozygous.
August 19, 2025 at 7:44 AM