Yannick Tremblay
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Yannick Tremblay
@yannickdntremblay.bsky.social
250 followers 100 following 2 posts
Lecturer at usask BMI, biofilms, beer and hockey enthusiast (He/Him)
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Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
wvschaik.bsky.social
🚨Job claxon 🚨

University College Cork is looking to appoint a lecturer in Medical Microbiology into a permanent, non-clinical post

A great opportunity in a microbiology powerhouse

For details go to my.corehr.com/pls/uccrecru... and enter reference number 092153
University College Cork Vacancies
my.corehr.com
November 18, 2025 at 10:55 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
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 Yannick Tremblay
ohtheurbanity.bsky.social
This is a small snow plow for sidewalks

If your city plows the roads but leaves sidewalks up to property owners, your city hates pedestrians.
November 11, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
brittanytrang.com
A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫
James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.
www.statnews.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
jdrakephd.bsky.social
Newly expanded version of my guide to scientific writing -- known as the “15 steps” -- published in PLOS Computational Biology. Special thanks to Éric Marty for creating a fantastic visualization.

Check it out: journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

#ScientificWriting #PLOSComputationalBiology
September 24, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
illumi.meme
me telling my grandkids what it was like to have vaccines
The Simpsons old man sitting on a stump telling a story but all the kids have been replaced with headstones
September 22, 2025 at 8:55 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
ohtheurbanity.bsky.social
Quebec introduced subsidized daycare in 1997 (initially $5 a day, now $9).

Afterwards, female labour force participation rose quite dramatically relative to the rest of Canada and the US.
Female labour force participation increasing in Quebec (relative to the rest of Canada or the US) after the introduction of subsidized daycare
August 28, 2025 at 2:48 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
cmkhursigara.bsky.social
MCB @ U of Guelph is hiring (again)! 🎉
Tenure-track Assistant Professor in Biochemistry
Part of our strategic cluster hire.

Apply now 👉 careers.uoguelph.ca/job/Guelph-A...

#Biochemistry #FacultyJobs #AcademicTwitter #MolBio
Assistant Professor (Biochemistry)
Assistant Professor (Biochemistry)
careers.uoguelph.ca
August 26, 2025 at 3:28 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
alexusherhesa.bsky.social
Evolution of the Age Profile of Canadian Professoriate, 2000 to the present. Number of profs over 65 is up from roughly 800 in 2000 to around 6000 today.
August 5, 2025 at 3:34 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
rajoyce.bsky.social
No one disputes that students deserve to learn. But there is literally decades of research on learning that shows that students aren’t able to assess if they have learned within the time span of a course. Using testing over time to show if students retain knowledge. 1/
July 31, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
dmgreene.bsky.social
Evaluation is important and we have good ways of evaluating instructors (observations, audits, mentoring). But the evidence is clear that asking students to Yelp review their instructors the week before exams yields no valuable information on teaching or learning--just customer satisfaction.
July 31, 2025 at 12:45 AM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
dmgreene.bsky.social
If you work in higher ed, you need to get your folks together and end the use of course evals or at least bar their consideration in evaluation, promotion, and hiring. This needed to happen yesterday because they don't measure learning, they measure instructor gender, but now it's a snitch pool.
July 31, 2025 at 12:41 AM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
surtlab.bsky.social
In case you’re wondering, the “caterpillars are hybrid worms” paper at PNAS remains alive (and guessing won’t be retracted ever)

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
July 25, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
richardsever.bsky.social
Likewise the ability of water to remember solutes www.nature.com/articles/333...

Background: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_m...
July 25, 2025 at 1:31 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
canjmicrobio.bsky.social
Missed the webinar? The recording is now available!

Learn how to plan your publication, select the right journal, write clear titles and abstracts, and navigate Open Access publishing.

📽️▶️ buff.ly/iYbfBsA

#ResearchSkills #OpenAccess #ECRs #AcademicWriting
Planning Your Publication: Pathways to Success Webinar details social card.
July 16, 2025 at 8:43 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
canjmicrobio.bsky.social
What does innovation in microbiology teaching look like?

We invite papers on pedagogy, tech, curriculum, and student engagement in microbiology education.

More information ▶️ buff.ly/OMVT8xk

#SciComm #MicrobiologyEducation #AcademicSky #SciComm 🧪 #AcWri #PHDSky #ScholComms #OpenScience #SciPol
Close-up of pink agar plate with bacterial colonies, promoting a call for papers on microbiology education perspectives.
July 16, 2025 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
metaror.bsky.social
🎓 Today we publish another evaluation for an article whose authors present a novel method—developed through a series of workshops—for assessing academics.

🙏 Thanks to the authors, reviewers & editors!

👇 Read the full text, reviews & editorial assessment on MetaROR metaror.org/kotahi/artic...
A framework for values-based assessment in promotion, tenure, and other academic evaluations
metaror.org
June 20, 2025 at 9:02 AM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
canjmicrobio.bsky.social
New #callforpapers! This collection will explore how #microbiology is taught, learned, and communicated both inside and outside the classroom!

Submit your research to @canjmicrobio.bsky.social ▶️ buff.ly/G9kA9rl
Social card for the Canadian Journal of Microbiology Call for Papers: Nurturing Minds, Culturing Microbes: Perspectives on Microbiology Education
June 19, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
nberlat.bsky.social
it seems like a real problem for colleges that some large percentage of the students don't see any value in learning the stuff they're ostensibly there to learn.

or at least, they see the assignments as pointless hoops with no relationship to learning anything. 1
May 8, 2025 at 6:05 AM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
scottmatla.bsky.social
This dude has flopped every single time Anderson has closed in on him, what a bitch
cjzero.bsky.social CJ Fogler @cjzero.bsky.social · Apr 26
Wilson mocking the Canadiens as crybabies
April 26, 2025 at 1:02 AM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
scottmatla.bsky.social
This is entirely on the officials for managing exactly 0% of this series well
April 26, 2025 at 12:53 AM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
wvschaik.bsky.social
Springer-Nature publishing the best science

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

'the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial civilization is active on Earth today, is taboo in academia, but the assumptions behind this taboo are faulty. '
The extraterrestrial hypothesis: an epistemological case for removing the taboo - European Journal for Philosophy of Science
The extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH), the hypothesis that an extraterrestrial civilization (ETC) is active on Earth today, is taboo in academia, but the assumptions behind this taboo are faulty. Adva...
link.springer.com
March 27, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
nikthomas.bsky.social
Our Tn-seq paper is out in PLOS Genetics! @plos.org
We found a new Vibrio chitoporin and a key regulator of chitinolytic growth. Lots of other cool stuff too!
Great work by Oriana Robinson and @landongetz.bsky.social

journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...
Functional genomics of chitin degradation by Vibrio parahaemolyticus reveals finely integrated metabolic contributions to support environmental fitness
Author summary Vibrio species are key contributors to ocean carbon cycling by degrading and assimilating robust chitin polymers. These waterborne and seafood associated bacteria also infect humans lea...
journals.plos.org
March 14, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Yannick Tremblay
jessicacalarco.com
If professors had actual brainwashing power, we wouldn't see gender and racial bias in student evals.
biblioraptorphd.bsky.social Biblioraptor, PhD @biblioraptorphd.bsky.social · Feb 28
If I had actual brainwashing power all my students would write in paragraphs
February 28, 2025 at 3:57 PM