1
Weird, a pair of actual Jehovah's witnesses just knocked on the door, and asked me what I thought about the origin of life.
"Um, you may have picked the wrong house here. I have 165 slides and a book'.
2
One of the true joys of my job is that I get to read books before they are published. So instead of dunking on funky ballsweat like Sapiens, here are 5 books coming out this year that I have read/am reading, that are splendid. 1/x
3
The constant threat of brutal justice delivered by the Batman? twitter.com/DoctorLockwood…
5
@amateuradam Adam, I spent weeks investigating a company that had won a £161m contract during covid, but two journalists dismissed it as ‘pocket change’ and not worth the bother.
6
I love this man with all my heart @rizwanahmed
7
I had a crack at what I presume must've been a conversation between Lady Sarah Hussey and Prince Philip.
8
The ‘is Die Hard a Christmas movie’ question is fully resolved with my son’s Hans Gruber Nakatomi Tower Advent Calendar, and let that be the end of it. Welcome to the party, pal!
9
I mean, you know this is insanity, right? Like, perfectly emblematic of the utter corruption and madness of this whole tournament. twitter.com/FBAwayDays/sta…
10
Fascinating. The father of Boris Johnson espousing very clear eugenics policies, and Great Replacement ideology whilst referring to the fecundity of ‘black and brown and yellow races’ as opposed to indigenous Britons twitter.com/Xx17965797N/st…
11
‘It’s called weather’ says Julia Hartley Brewer, repeating one of the most inane basic misunderstandings of climate science, a canard of lazy utter ignorance akin to ‘if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys’ twitter.com/bbcquestiontim…
12
I didn’t think this was possible, but Snoop’s voiceover is better than Attenborough’s. twitter.com/MichaelWarbur1…
13
I love it when a newspaper confesses its prejudices so overtly. It's 'social engineering' when it positively affects state schools applications, not when the whole system is gamed to advantage private school kids?
Unless you truly believe the rich kids are somehow... better?
14
There isn't a kinder, funnier smarter or better dressed person alive.
DO you know, one time we were in a cab at night, and she stopped the taxi to help a drunk woman on the other side of the road. Men: be more Keanu; Everyone: be more Prof Fry.
bit.ly/3W2AYBL
15
I'm not sure Sunak has 'won' anything. He's defaulted to become Prime Minister of the U.K., which when you think about it is a funny way to run a serious country.
Or even a small sports club to be honest.
16
Here is a classic example of modern scientific racism. I am no blank slatist - as a geneticist, it would be an absurd position to take. However, this thread below is very much mistaken, and not the open goal that the author believes. Here's why: twitter.com/monitoringbias…
18
I know this is counterintuitive, and hard to get one’s head around. But that is the exact point of science: to disabuse you of your intuition, which is not an infallible way of perceiving reality. If you think your intuition trumps maths then we’re not going to get along.
19
Please don't make me do this again.
If Cheddar Man has *any* single living descendant then he is the ancestor of LITERALLY EVERYONE ON EARTH.
Not metaphorically, or conceptually, but actually mathematically. All humans. Everyone. みんな. Tout le monde. 每个人. katoa. हर कोई. twitter.com/fasc1nate/stat…
20
Without seeing the details, this seems like a potentially catastrophically bad idea. Antibiotic resistance through overuse is one of the greatest threats facing global medicine, and giving them out with less restrictions will feed that.
This policy runs contra to all expertise. twitter.com/dr_ayan/status…
21
If only *anyone* involved in saying this had even the slightest knowledge of history, notably the history of eugenics, or Nazi Germany. twitter.com/kateferguson4/…
22
Almost none of what follows in this thread is true.
Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance has never been shown in humans, and in mice, the results are pretty ropey on the whole, underpowered, statistically questionable.
Exercise, eat well, but not because of flakey science. twitter.com/foundmyfitness…
23
Geneticist here. You can’t make facial profiles or accurate pigmentation predictions from DNA, and this is dangerous snake oil. twitter.com/edmontonpolice…
24
The hard truth is that 100% of people who confuse correlation with causation will die.
25
On this point, its worth remembering that
a) all families are as old as each other
b) everyone* in Britain is descended directly from Edward III
3) everyone in Europe is descended from Charlemagne, cos maths.
(*caveats in link)
waterstones.com/blog/family-fo… twitter.com/Otto_English/s…
Back off man, I'm a scientist.
President of @Humanists_UK
Lecturer in Genetics @UCL
Genetics, race, eugenics, history of science, + movies, books, cricket.