Prof. Karen Anthony

My new review is out now in RNA Biology: RNA-based therapeutics for neurological diseases tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

@GunnerPuls UTV

Name a football club without letter "E" Impossible

Happy Christmas from our lab. Some projects funded, others not; some papers out, some still need to be written, some PhDs completed and others just beginning. We take the highs with the lows, let's see what 2026 brings...🎄🎅🌲

This is one of them moments that I would pay a serious amounts of money to relive for 5 minutes. It’s incredible unhealthy how much I’m addicted to this goal

My kid was there - forever memories made UTV!

Aston Villa woke up one morning a few weeks ago and decided they were the best team in the country.

INCREDIBLE END TO THE GAME 🔥 Emi Buendia wins it for Aston Villa in the 95th minute! @tntsports & @discoveryplusUK

Having a PhD means you can find the word “unfortunately” in an email faster that the search function

"It’s not about chasing a title...it's about giving something back and doing something positive for society as a whole.” Science students and academics had a VIP visitor recently, when @sarah_bool, MP came to campus to find out about their #research. northampton.ac.uk/news/member-of…

Why is @nature is seen as a top journal? It's because many scholars cite papers Nature publishes in their own publications. By making clear that citations are not based solely on merit, and thus debasing them, Nature is undermining a basis for its claim to prominence.

Congratulations to Dr Jude Krampah for passing his PhD viva today, it was great to be a part of this supervisory team. Jude's thesis explored the prognosic value of balance measurements and salivary biomarkers for declining cognition in older adults 👏 🙌 .

Research from an international team – including @UniNorthants academic Professor Andrew Williams – into the history of child health have used local archives to uncover new detail into the origins of English paediatric hospital care. northampton.ac.uk/news/uon-acade…

I'm tuning into the International Research Culture Conference #IRCC25 online today. As a PCE pilot panel member, I'm looking forward to hearing the reflections by Steven Hill from Research England.

Great to see our work on RNA trans-splicing highlighted in the 2025 Ataxia UK Research Impact Report. Can't wait to update the field at ICAR2026 with the latest in-vivo data! You can access it here: ataxia.org.uk/research-news/…

Yay! Also, yes, we do know DMD has 79 exons and not 97 (a copy editing oopsie)

Journals can’t find peer reviewers. Preprints aren’t taken seriously. Garbage papers slip through peer review. Meantime, AI is slowly taking over. Nature describes the current situation. I highly recommend reading the article. 📍 The summary (+ my comments): 1. We are facing a SIGNIFICANT overload on reviewers. Fatigue is epidemic. Few scientists have time for much peer review. As a result, manuscript turnaround times are chaos. They’re unpredictable and painfully slow. 2. Grant and facility proposals demand massive peer review too. They push the system even further. 3. Review quality is decreasing. Rigor is inconsistent. Technical aspects are poorly assessed. 4. Gatekeeping and bias are very real (we all know how manuscripts are rejected due to competition & jealousy). It causes a growing dissatisfaction among scientists. 5. Paid reviewing does NOT automatically improve the acceptance rate. Trials show mixed results. For example, acceptance rates barely increased from 48% to 53% for Critical Care Medicine. The quality of PR remained the same. But for Biology Open, the PR process has become much faster. In either case, paid reviews are very hard to scale business-wise. 6. Distributed Peer Review is becoming more popular. Some funding agencies now require applicants to review peers’ proposals. But to to eliminate bias in it? I don’t know. ❗ There’re no simple solutions. As a careful observer, I think that the complex picture is evolving along the following trajectory: AI-assisted peer view (AI pre-screening, AI PR-assistant, AI audition of peer reviews) + Community reviewing + Some form of compensation + Involvement of wider community in PR lists (not only most recognized scientists) What’s your view on it?

This 👇👇

Nothing will ever top this genius promo video, hinting to the World (well #avfc fans at least) that he would indeed play Villa Park that season.

To Ozzy. Thank you for the joy. 🖤 Birmingham Forever. To those wishing to lay flowers, may we suggest outside The Crown in Birmingham might be a respectful place? If you can't... donations to Acorns, Cure Parkinson's & Brum Children's Hospital seem apt bbc.co.uk/news/live/cn0q…

R.I.P Ozzy. Thank you for the music, what a joy it was to witness this homecoming, Birmingham forever 🤘

Must. Resist. Overwhelming. Urge. To. Scratch...