Mike Gallagher

1/ Happy to share important work done with my co-author Andrew Khalil in the labs of Rudolf Jaenisch @WhiteheadInst @MITBiology @MIT and Dave Mooney @Harvard @wyssinstitute trying to assess and fix the major problem of transgene silencing in human ESC/iPSC based work

@MS23840062 @SGRodriques @razibkhan The goal of science is to produce knowledge. Curing diseases is an application of knowledge from a subset of biological research.

@SGRodriques @razibkhan It doesnt matter if it replaces scientists because the goal is to cure diseases. Its incredibly selfish to keep a human in the loop just for the sake of preserving jobs if AI alone can cure diseases faster and thus save life. Please stop with this low iq obsession with jobs

I have spent my entire life working on this and thinking about this for the past 4 years. I don't know what will happen in 20 years, but I can promise you that on the 5-10 year timescale, scientists are not out of their jobs. AI is going to massively accelerate the pace of science, increase productivity, let individual scientists make way more discoveries way faster, and is going to make science overall more fun. But the model is going to be collaboration between humans and AI, not replacement. The key difference here between science and e.g. software engineering is that science is not verifiable in any rapid/convenient way (unlike software), unlike programming. We still need humans for their scientific taste.

@anshulkundaje @SashaGusevPosts What do you think should be done? E.g. should funders start considering preprint servers as equivalent to all journals, and consider all journals as equivalent? What about those who employ and promote scientists?

@GeneticsMike7 @SashaGusevPosts If things don't change soon, we will just disappear into oblivion & be outcompeted by more efficient systems outside trad academia. It's already starting to happen.

I have to admit this is true for me. I usually only read the supplement methods in detail and skim the main text (advertisement section) of papers. Very few papers have well written methods, which is actually the most important if anyone wants to reproduce or build on the work.

@anshulkundaje @SashaGusevPosts I supposed nothing will really change unless funders and employers abandon journal names as having any relevance.

@anshulkundaje @SashaGusevPosts Agreed, but who interprets peer review in that way? I think science would be a lot healthier if only society or other non-profit journals existed, but we don’t live in that world, so the question is what to do in the world that we live in.

@SashaGusevPosts @anshulkundaje 2/ the supp material text, is absurd. This can be the case for many different reasons, such as details that aren’t necessary for one’s interpretation, inability to assess the details due to lack of experience or expertise, or a table that is there if you need it, but you don’t.

@SashaGusevPosts @anshulkundaje 1/ Correct, although I don’t think it’s egocentrism. Scientists read what they need to to extract the meaning that is useful for them. It changes throughout one’s career, and can differ by field and other factors. The idea that anyone needs to read every word of a paper, inc all

@dioscuri I think this more a consequence of insufficient funding rather than an intrinsic problem with academia

Academia is cruel because it selects for people obsessively interested in a narrow topic, but what’s actually rewarded is the ability to pivot fluidly to whatever’s new and fundable.

@ladanuzhna I think this is driven by the realization in the 2010s that amyloid and tau pathology precede dementia by 5-20+ yrs. So all the trails may have indeed targeted them too late.

No other therapeutic area has much wishful thinking as AD. Drug class can literally fail across dozen+ different trials, and people would still be looking for a trial design where it might work. Was true for beta-amyloid, now clearly becoming true for tau.

@donsin4 @LocasaleLab No one is panicking. Some people are pretending that people are panicking so they have something to be mad about.

@LocasaleLab I don’t get this. Hantavirus comes from deer mice and causes ARDS when inhaled in large quantities. Person-to-person transmission is possible but very rare. Why this massive panic? Is this a novel strain?

We are about 3 news cycles away from people wiping down grocery bags and giving tutorials on how to wash your hands.

@parmita Thermocyclers, fluorescent microscopes, microarrays, qPCR machines, mass spec, Nanopore, flow cytometry, cryo-EM, a million high-throughput/automated assays, tons of super-res microscopes

the last instrument that actually changed biology was the sequencer. 1977. everything since has been cheaper, faster, parallel — same readout. fifty years of moore's law on a dead measurement. we are so overdue it is embarrassing.

@kwharrison13 @n_skene What does it mean that “each disease we can’t cure has the same shape”?

We've been testing new medicine on mice, plastic dishes, & monkeys for 90 years because we had nothing better. The result: $2B per drug while 90% of drugs fail Each disease we can't cure has the same shape. We couldn't understand it before, but we may have found a better tool.

@KenCaptn20114 @open_vaet @nuchdig @Kevin_McKernan @basenji_times @KUPERWASSERLAB @jsm2334 @IamBrookJackson Well I disagree, but that’s ok!

@open_vaet @nuchdig @Kevin_McKernan @basenji_times @KUPERWASSERLAB @jsm2334 @IamBrookJackson @GeneticsMike7 Thats what I have been saying. The theroies and modeling never matched the real world data. Everyone was getting it, noone was protected,,,, ever not one bit in the field

Modernas own data shows it didnt reduce infection. Same with Pfizer. Their own data sets. Why do people still think it saved millions? It would be funny but its not. Ignorance is bliss. The only hard data that is out there that vaccines worked is on blogs and BS made up organizations.

@KenCaptn20114 No, the vast majority of studies were not performed by pharma. Most studies are conducted by academic scientists around the world, and they generally confirms the findings from the initial clinical trials.

@KenCaptn20114 This is the website that stores all studies published in the world. It has nothing to do with the government.

@GeneticsMike7 PMC .gov .gov .gov Cmon man

@KenCaptn20114 Here’s a more up to date review. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12…

@KenCaptn20114 Here’s a review for Pfizer, Moderna and Astra Zeneca. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10…

@KenCaptn20114 5/ Since then, continued evolution of the virus, high levels of multiple exposures to the virus in the population, and other factors have rendered the vaccines relatively ineffective at reducing infections for more than a few weeks after vaccination.

@KenCaptn20114 4/ in a massive reduction of vaccine efficacy, as well as increased immunity in the population from 1+ infections and vaccinations. After Omicron evolved, effectiveness against symptomatic infection dropped to 30-35%, and for severe disease/death dropped to 70-85%.