26
The presence of that many skeletons, many children, some with head injuries and some head first, strongly indicates they were deliberately thrown in the well in a murderous or violent act. Radiocarbon dating puts the incident securely between 1161–1216 CE.
27
This date aligns with a prominent mass murder in Norwich in 1190CE when many Jewish people were killed during antisemitic riots, following the beginning of the Third Crusade.
28
In 1144, Norwich had been the setting for a foundational event in the history of antisemitism when the family of a boy – canonised as St. William of Norwich - claimed that local Jews had murdered him: this became the first documented invocation of the hideous Blood Libel myth.
29
As Boris Johnson does a victory lap at the conclusion of his reign in No.10, it is important to remember that he leaves in shame, forced out by his own MPs - no-one else - after a tenure characterised by deceit, elitism, cronyism, bigotry, and predictable ignominy. Remember him.
30
Morning. Here is my @royalsociety Attenborough Lecture from last night. I enjoyed it enormously. youtu.be/hIIgAIB5AWw
31
Alternative headline: discrimination abounds as disproportionate number of privately educated pupils admitted to Cambridge, for the 700th year in a row.
32
The replies. The endless racist replies.
My favourite is ‘how can she have dark skin when there is no sunlight under the sea’
My dude, she’s a frigging mermaid. Pigmentation is the very least of the evolutionary issues presented. twitter.com/DisneyStudios/…
33
Apart from the fact that this makes no sense, literally everyone in Europe is descended from Charlemagne, and all people in the UK with any longstanding British ancestry are descended from Edward III.
These are straight up facts. Wooooh mystery! twitter.com/StephenM/statu…
34
See if you can guess who is right here. Is it
A) Science - a complex social process where thousands of people model, measure and test multiple scenarios and hypotheses using methodologies, advanced technology and statistics developed over centuries, or
B) Toby Young? 🧐 twitter.com/toadmeister/st…
35
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…
36
The hard truth is that 100% of people who confuse correlation with causation will die.
37
Geneticist here. You can’t make facial profiles or accurate pigmentation predictions from DNA, and this is dangerous snake oil. twitter.com/edmontonpolice…
38
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…
39
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/…
40
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…
41
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…
42
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.
44
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…
45
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.
46
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
47
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?
48
I didn’t think this was possible, but Snoop’s voiceover is better than Attenborough’s. twitter.com/MichaelWarbur1…
49
‘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…
50
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…
Back off man, I'm a scientist.
President of @Humanists_UK
Lecturer in Genetics @UCL
Genetics, race, eugenics, history of science, + movies, books, cricket.