Thomas Lumley
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tslumley.bsky.social
Thomas Lumley
@tslumley.bsky.social
Biostatistician. Baritone. He/Him.

Product of more than one country.
May contain nuts.
Excellent talk this morning from Cheng Soon Ong on choosing experiments to both learn where the good values are and take advantage of where you already know.
November 25, 2025 at 6:32 AM
I build parsimonious models; you practice dimension reduction for feasibility; they make restrictive assumptions
#IrregularVerbs
November 25, 2025 at 3:06 AM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
Incredible story of tracking down the real human behind AI slop stories, by @nickhunebrown.bsky.social
"I was embarrassed. I had been naively operating with a pre-ChatGPT mindset, still assuming a pitch’s ideas and prose were actually connected to the person who sent it"

Stunning investigation of how slop merchants are getting work into established media outlets

thelocal.to/investigatin...
November 24, 2025 at 3:24 AM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
"The mystery of twin heritability comes to an ignoble end: no massive tranche of rare variants, no phantom interactions, just inflation."
I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵
The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered
Not with a bang but with a whimper
theinfinitesimal.substack.com
November 24, 2025 at 1:07 AM
Commendation for the Biometrics -- Australasian Region conference: name tags printed on both sides, not just on the back!
November 23, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
New paper out: An archaeal genetic code with all TAG codons as pyrrolysine: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
An archaeal genetic code with all TAG codons as pyrrolysine
Multiple genetic codes developed during the evolution of eukaryotes and bacteria, yet no alternative genetic code is known for archaea. We used proteomics to confirm our prediction that certain archae...
www.science.org
November 23, 2025 at 7:22 PM
I don't have the attention span for pure mathematics.

(or, quite possibly, the ability, but I diverted to statistics before that came up)
What’s the lore behind choosing your career path ?
November 23, 2025 at 4:30 AM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
If you have been sharing that Malwarebytes article on the Gmail thing, you should note the giant correction up top.

www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/20...
November 22, 2025 at 9:44 PM
Melbourne has wide diversity of transit modes
November 22, 2025 at 3:58 AM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
I did it, I wrote it. The thing I think (?) some educators have been waiting for for quite a while. mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/sift-for-a...
SIFT for AI: Introduction and Pedagogy
Once I thought more deeply about what people had been asking for it made a lot of sense
mikecaulfield.substack.com
November 22, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
Academic intros that go hard
November 20, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Is it Greg Egan who has the SF short story where literally the woke mind virus is spread by transfusion?
November 20, 2025 at 1:49 AM
Helpful cycling infrastructure 😐
November 19, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Rainbow lorikeet on Callistemon, Docklands, Melbourne
November 19, 2025 at 9:18 PM
A small child on this flight is watching a Tom & Jerry episode about durian!
November 19, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
just learned we won an award for our blog post about Tom Holland and stormwater management.

remember, when you see an article about stormwater management, you repost it. i don’t make the rules.
What Tom Holland’s historic lip-sync showcase taught us about stormwater management
Grab your umbrella and your tights.
neorsd.medium.com
November 19, 2025 at 12:22 AM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
Excited we are hiring a "statistical capacity development adviser". This is a one year role in Suva, an investment to improve the quality of all the work we (45 of us) do to promote long term capacity for statistics in Pacific island countries and territories. careers.spc.int/job/statisti...
Statistical Capacity Development Adviser
Suva-based position (Fiji) Attractive expatriate package Join the principal development organisation in the region Description The Pacific Community (SPC) is...
careers.spc.int
November 19, 2025 at 3:11 AM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
The wonderful people at the NZ Science Learning Hub have turned my talk on MythBusting de-extinction to sort fact from fiction into a freely available educational resource. You can check it out here www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/my...
Mythbusting de-extinction to sort fact from fiction
De-extinction hit the headlines recently with the ‘resurrection’ of the dire wolf and the push to bring back the moa. However, can scientists really bring back extinct animals? And more importantly, s...
www.sciencelearn.org.nz
November 18, 2025 at 9:47 PM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
November 18, 2025 at 4:38 AM
Strāy macrōns?
November 18, 2025 at 1:42 AM
'"The IDI was developed in 2011 and is still in prototype form," Stats NZ told Treasury late last year.'
www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
November 17, 2025 at 8:24 PM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
Available now in @asn-amnat.bsky.social ! Taking on some big-scale natural history: processed >40k @inaturalist.bsky.social images of Monarda fistulosa using computer vision to query for flower presence and phenotype flower color: doi.org/10.1086/739413
November 14, 2025 at 6:29 PM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
The BMJ slapped an "expression of concern" on a much-publicized stem cell trial it published just 2 weeks ago.

Read more at: https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/stemcellresearch/118484?trw=no
Something Off About Recent Heart Failure Stem Cell Trial, Major Journal Admits
BMJ issues 'expression of concern' about much-publicized phase III study
www.medpagetoday.com
November 16, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Auckland Museum in the distance behind engineering and trees
November 16, 2025 at 11:28 PM
Reposted by Thomas Lumley
Moral: Be careful what you ask for.
November 15, 2025 at 10:14 PM