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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä
@kallelep.bsky.social
160 followers 160 following 86 posts
Maybe it's just a science account? Then it's math and genetics.
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · 9d
I use Google Scholar to fetch BibTeX form citation information of articles and books, but it's not really great that capital letters in titles are not protected with curly braces, and LaTeX then renders something like genus names or "D-statistic" lower case. Come on 😤
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · 22d
I really don't mind social scientists saying something milk toast like "education improves health", but you can probably claim almost anything if exclusion restriction can just be assumed like that. And they will.
kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · 22d
You need those specific variants to only be associated with health via their association to "IQ", and you know most variants are associated with complex social traits through a huge mess of pathways that are mostly noncausal. The exclusion restriction is just obviously not justified.
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · 22d
OK but "If the Mendelian randomization assumptions hold, these findings suggest that both intelligence and education affect health". That conclusion probably isn't that controversial (or interesting), but why would the assumptions hold? That sounds like a huge if.
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · 22d
Well, can you now? If the score explains 1% of the variance in "IQ" causally, and some 10% through unknown non-causal confounding pathways, then what value can it possibly have as an instrumental variable? Sounds like the exclusion restriction is clearly violated.
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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä
letsgomathias.bsky.social
Christopher Mathias @letsgomathias.bsky.social · Sep 14
Last year: Austin Peay State University learns prof is Nazi who went to Charlottesville rally. Admin drags heels, pays him $56k severance to leave

This week: APSU prof posts screenshot of headline - Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment- & is immediately fired
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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä
nicrawlencenz.bsky.social
Nic Rawlence @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social · Jul 31
Thanks @newscientist.com for shining a light on the smear campaign against @toriherridge.bsky.social, @devoevomed.bsky.social, @flintdibble.bsky.social & myself just for fulfilling our critic & conscience role to provide expert commentary about de-extinction www.newscientist.com/article/2490...
Critics of de-extinction research hit by mystery smear campaign
Several researchers who have been critical of Colossal Biosciences’ plans to revive extinct animals say they have been targeted by online articles trying to discredit them
www.newscientist.com
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Jul 25
I didn't realize the Helvetica font could arouse any feelings one way or another.
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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä
motherjones.com
Mother Jones @motherjones.com · Jul 17
After he leaked Zohran Mamdani's Columbia application data to the New York Times, critics called Jordan Lasker a "eugenicist." A Mother Jones report shows there's much more to his backstory.

Read @nlanard.bsky.social on the shocking rise of one of the tech-right’s favorite posters.
The shocking rise of one of the tech-right’s favorite posters
After he leaked Zohran Mamdani's Columbia application data to the New York Times, critics called Jordan Lasker a "eugenicist." A Mother Jones report shows there's much more to his backstory.
www.motherjones.com
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Jul 12
Ok how about less detail then? Because your "controversial source" (a Nazi fraudster) is not in fact an academic, you LIED to your readers.
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Jul 12
All race scientists had their pages removed. Someone has money. www.pinkerite.com/2025/05/rati...
Rational Wiki censorship-palooza - so many connections to Emil Kirkegaard!
Here are the articles that I am aware of that Rational Wiki has censored.  Charles Murray declaring his financial support for the neo-Nazi  ...
www.pinkerite.com
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Jul 11
They're going to be named Smaug or Nazgul, aren't they?
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Jul 11
Partnering with Peter Jackson this time. Why, though?
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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä
stairwaytokevin.bsky.social
👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · Jul 9
In a long, whiny post about a recent Atlantic article about him, white supremacist Jordan Lasker posts an incompetent analysis using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study dataset that appears to have been illegitimately accessed and then stolen by one of his coauthors.
Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil Follow The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) does not seem to have fact-checkers, or at least they're very lazy and perhaps incompetent. Brieflv… Four panel plot showing two distributions for white and black populations alleging for A) additive genetics, B) shared environment, C) nonshared environment, and D) IQ scores
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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä
apmahonen.bsky.social
Ari Pekka Mähönen @apmahonen.bsky.social · Jul 2
How plants sense injury in their barrier tissue, periderm? Painstakingly detailed and amazing work by post doc Hiroyuki Iida shows that wounding is sensed by the diffusion of two gases: ethylene and oxygen. @treebiocoe.bsky.social‬ @erc.europa.eu‬ 1/x 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Plants monitor the integrity of their barrier by sensing gas diffusion - Nature
A study using Arabidopsis shows that plants can monitor the integrity of their outer barriers by sensing gas diffusion, enabling them to initiate wound repair to prevent water loss and pathogen entry.
www.nature.com
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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä
lauritsskov.bsky.social
Laurits Skov @lauritsskov.bsky.social · May 5
We ( @zeniabaek.bsky.social @moicoll.bsky.social and @asgerhobolth.bsky.social ) present a new cool way to visualize the optimal trade off for hmm decoding called Artemis plots!
arxiv.org/pdf/2504.15156
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä
carlzimmer.com
Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Apr 17
Patenting de-extinction. Story by @antonioregalado.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/16/1...
Jurassic Patent: How Colossal Biosciences is attempting to own the “woolly mammoth”
The company claiming it can restore lost species also wants to patent them.
www.technologyreview.com
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Apr 12
Theirs, Ben Lamm posted it.
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Apr 12
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Apr 12
On "X".
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Apr 12
Ok good to hear they at least wanted to release the preprint at the same time as going public, but why post childish and arrogant memes as damage control? Like this one, compared to the manuscript it's simply a lie:
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Apr 12
Strategically the company is very willing to encourage philosophical discussions about the species concept (Shapiro wrote a book about this some time ago, worth reading). That kind of "fantastical" level of discourse is perhaps a bit premature given the small number of edits, convenient for them.
kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Apr 12
Some people will be purists and insist that their creations should not be called dire wolves under any circumstances, I'm more sympathetic to the idea that if they can't be told apart it's fine, at least if they could interbreed with the real deal. The species concept is fuzzy anyway.
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Apr 12
What should we think about the pumapard? Leopards are big cats Pantherinae, pumas despite their size are small cats Felinae. They can produce fertile hybrids despite the over 10 million years separating them. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapard
Pumapard - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
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kallelep.bsky.social
Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Apr 12
Looks like wolves and jackals can make fertile hybrids. Like polar bears and brown bears etc., it happens everywhere so the species definition can't be set on stone about that.
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