Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬 @drdevangm Twitter profile

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

5 months

My inaugural lecture at @KU_Leuven from ~2 weeks ago. Presented the lab's plans, as well as my experiences with racism in science, and how this relates to reforming science publishing (this part starts at 16:35).

Devang Mehta | Inaugural Lecture | Department of Biosystems | KU...

Introduction - 00:00Research: Engineering plant chronobiology for climate adaptation - 03:37Racism in science and EDI - 16:38

www.youtube.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

My first hire as a PI will be a moderately motivated postdoc because no one seems to want to hire those.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

What an absolutely disastrous decision by the eLife board. Beyond shameful.

Michael Eisen

@mbeisen

7 months

I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of @eLife for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

Since this is going beyond BioSci twitter, here's a 🧵 about who Mike Eisen is and why I care so much that he isn't fired from @eLife : First: Mike, as EiC of eLife, is trying to overturn the idea of prestige publishing

@[email protected] on Mastodon

@timnitGebru

7 months

This man is "investigated", ppl tag his employers to fire him, tag funders to pull $$, call on him to resign as EIC, & he deleted his Twitter account. All because he showed support for Palestinians while noting that he is Jewish with family in Israel & condemning Hamas's attacks.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

4 years

Protein levels are a much better reflection of a cell's state than RNA levels. @ me.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

4 years

I'm guessing/hoping this is just bad design @nature ? 😂

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

1 year

Don’t conference organizers ever get tired of seeing the same talks by the same people at every conference?

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

🧵I'm beyond excited to share that I've accepted a tenure-track research professorship at @KU_Leuven in @biosystkuleuven & the @LeuvenPlantInst ! @MehtaLab_KUL will study & engineer latitudinal adaptation in plants w/ an experimental systems biology lens:

The Mehta Lab at KU Leuven

The Mehta Lab at KU Leuven researches plant chronobiology for climate adaptation.

mehta-lab.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

PLEASE RT: We're looking for FIVE new members of @eLife 's Early Career Advisory Group! The ECAG is an international group of early career researchers (PhD students, postdocs, PIs <5 years) that directly advises eLife's leadership & shapes policy. Brief thread about the position:

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

Feel profoundly betrayed by an org. which so many Early Career Advisors (ECAG) spent so many hours help build. And grieving for its excellent staff coz there is no coming back from this for @eLife . Here's a 🧵of the amazing things we did that the Board has damaged so grievously.

Michael Eisen

@mbeisen

7 months

I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of @eLife for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

scientists from the first world really have no conception of the gap between their experience of science and that of all other scientists on the planet.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

1 year

New Article out with @CellAtlas colleagues: “We believe that it is finally time for the plant biology community to retire the western blot as a means to ‘validate’ quantitative proteomics data…”

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

10 months

In this week’s @nature WorldView column, I write: “The EU can and should play a greater part in ensuring global food security. I urge both ministers and legislators to…resist calls to further limit this technology.” #NGT #CRISPR

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

You know what's hypocritical? Trashing the @NatureComms paper authored by people in Abu Dhabi but giving this equally bad @NatureComms paper a pass just coz the authors are based in the West and are friends with influential scientists and journos.

Genome-wide analysis identifies molecular systems and 149 genetic loci associated with income

Nature Communications - Household income is used as a marker of socioeconomic position, a trait that is associated with better physical and mental health. Here, Hill et al. report a genome-wide...

www.nature.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

8 months

how do other #newPIs respond to reviews that say “the grant requests a postdoc but the applicant is a new PI and has never supervised a postdoc.”? Like, how are we supposed to start supervising people if we don’t get the chance to hire them first anyways?

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 months

I’m so fucking sick of biologists treating societal engagement as a scientific weakness. (excuse my French)

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

250 scientists have signed on to support our nomination of @MicrobiomDigest for the John Maddox prize! Sign here to add your support:

Supporting the nomination of Dr. Elisabeth Bik for the John Maddox Prize 2021

Over the past eight years, Dr Elisabeth Bik has single-handedly focussed the scientific community’s attention on widespread image manipulation and data falsification in published research. Her work...

docs.google.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

Last chance to join nearly 600 scientists in supporting this nomination of @MicrobiomDigest for the 2021 John Maddox Prize to give recognition to her tireless efforts to champion scientific integrity. Sign here: (form will close this weekend)

Supporting the nomination of Dr. Elisabeth Bik for the John Maddox Prize 2021

Over the past eight years, Dr Elisabeth Bik has single-handedly focussed the scientific community’s attention on widespread image manipulation and data falsification in published research. Her work...

docs.google.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

A massive thank you to the over 800 of you who supported the nomination of @MicrobiomDigest for the John Maddox Prize by @senseaboutsci ! Just submitted our nomination and I really hope Dr Bik gets the recognition she so richly deserves for her work.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

6 years

I write in @NatureNews : "If the reluctance of junior researchers like me to talk about racism is regrettable, the silence, and hence complicity, of senior faculty members is unconscionable."

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Please share! I'm recruiting a fully-funded PhD student for an exciting project on plant circadian biology and genetic engineering at KU Leuven in Belgium! #PlantSciJobs

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

1 year

A one-sided article about the changes at @eLife . @alison_c_abbott makes much of critical letters from a few editors, but we submitted a support letter to the Board with 153 signatories incl. >70 editors from 30+ countries that doesn’t get even a mention😐

Strife at eLife: inside a journal’s quest to upend science publishing

Nature - Editors threaten to resign over ‘no-reject’ model that others see as the future of research journals.

www.nature.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

People harp on about the "professionalism" a scientist must have, they don't realise that often "professionalism" is just code for maintaining an inequitable status quo. Great leaders speak their mind honestly, we should respond with honesty too.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

6 months

Nothing in the last decade has revolutionized the culture of life science research as much as @biorxivpreprint ! I've posted all my first author research papers here, and will continue preprinting for my entire career. Happy Birthday /congratulations to @cshperspectives & co

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

5 years

The constant RT'ing of @edyong209 's terrible piece on the new @elife virology paper by respected scientists prompted me to vent in a blog post about overselling results in science and its role in selective publishing. @PlantEvolution @mbeisen

Overstating results, eLife, and “distributed viruses”

Ed Yong, a journalist who other scientists usually regard highly, just published a story “A New Discovery Upends What We Know About…

devang.medium.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Don't understand how institutes that don't have a single lab studying plants can claim they study "all areas of biology". I mean "all areas of biology except 80% of the biomass of the planet" is more accurate, no?

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

5 years

Today in @NatureNews I describe the story behind my last paper and how it taught me that "Scientists have become so accustomed to celebrating only success that we’ve forgotten that most technological advances stem from failure."

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Kathryn Paige Harden would like a future where for $75 we identify kids that are "genetically less-likely in 30 years to have graduated from college or gotten a PhD". It should shock and anger all biologists that this is now considered respectable science.

Can science help poor kids earn more?

The wide gap in development between rich and poor children could be closed with the help of neuroscience. Might a controversial focus on genetics also help? ...

www.youtube.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Please Share: I'm recruiting a fully-funded PhD candidate in bioscience engineering at @KU_Leuven . The candidate will work on an exciting project to engineer latitudinal adaptation for climate change in plants. (A Master's degree is required) Apply here:

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

5 years

the glyphosate verdicts have to be just incredibly depressing for anyone who works in plant science or agriculture. it's so difficult to make people understand just how hard it is to find as safe and effective a weedkiller, and what losing it will do to farms around the world.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

430+ scientists have signed on to support our nomination of @MicrobiomDigest for the John Maddox prize! Help us get to 500! Sign here:

Supporting the nomination of Dr. Elisabeth Bik for the John Maddox Prize 2021

Over the past eight years, Dr Elisabeth Bik has single-handedly focussed the scientific community’s attention on widespread image manipulation and data falsification in published research. Her work...

docs.google.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

A paper in @nature this week that starts, “In evolutionary theory, natural selection describes why some things exist and others do not…Neither (sic Darwin & Modern Synthesis) addresses the space in which new phenotypic variants are generated.” 🤦‍♂️

Assembly theory explains and quantifies selection and evolution

Nature - Assembly theory conceptualizes objects as entities defined by their possible formation histories, allowing a unified language for describing selection, evolution and the generation of...

www.nature.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

1 year

Our ECAG Correspondence in @Nature is out, setting the record straight about the very high level of support @eLife 's new peer review model enjoys among its community. We also highlight why journalists should always interact with early career stakeholders.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

We're almost at 75 signatures supporting this nomination of @MicrobiomDigest for the John Maddox Prize. Sign here to support!

Supporting the nomination of Dr. Elisabeth Bik for the John Maddox Prize 2021

Over the past eight years, Dr Elisabeth Bik has single-handedly focussed the scientific community’s attention on widespread image manipulation and data falsification in published research. Her work...

docs.google.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

6 years

Latest piece out! "Why I'm quitting GMO research", where I take out my frustrations with anti-GMO activists and fellow scientists in equal measure and explain why I'm somewhat glad to be moving towards new horizons in science. via @massivesci

Why I'm quitting GMO research

Constantly confronting people who think my research will harm them is profoundly distressing

massivesci.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

He's been at this for a while. He co-founded @PLOS , kickstarting the Open Access movement in biology, allowing students in the Global South (like I was at the time) access to cutting edge research. He's also a vocal advocate for greater EDI in science.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

His style is brash, radical, speaks truth to power. Many colleagues wish he would "tone down" his tweets. Not me. I found Mike's Twitter in grad school. Every action I've taken to promote EDI since has been a direct consequence of reading Mike's critiques of the status quo here.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

From critiquing the Nobel Prizes, to calling out the racism I witnessed in grad school, to working for diversity at every institution I've joined since, all of it is because of Mike's "harsh" tweets and those of people like him. And I'm sure there are others he inspired like me.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

6 years

Finally out and under review! We found that (unlike previous reports and editorials in @NaturePlants ) it's a bad idea to use Cas9 to engineer DNA virus immunity in plants. It's not efficient *and* it leads to the creation of a relatively abundant new virus!

bioRxiv

@biorxivpreprint

6 years

CRISPR-Cas9 interference in cassava linked to the evolution of editing-resistant geminiviruses #bioRxiv

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

People on hiring committees, please please stop requesting letters of recommendation before shortlisting.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

8 months

Read our detailed appeal on #NGTs to the @EU_Commission @EUCouncil @EUparliament in @NatureBiotech : “We appeal to EU legislators: prioritize scientifically informed decision-making over arbitrary rules that hinder innovation.” #GiveGenesAChance

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

Can you imagine a PI doing this today?

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

To end, Mike's always stood up for those whose voices don't count in the dominant culture of science. It's time we return the favour.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

📢 I am recruiting a fully-funded 4 year PhD student to work on an exciting project to engineer the plant circadian clock, at KU Leuven in Belgium! Review of applications begins July 22nd. #plantscijobs #PlantBio2022 Apply now!

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Honestly didn’t expect so many people to so openly admit that they just publish and pay to publish just to have specific journal titles in their publication lists rather than for peer review. Shows how completely warped our value systems in science have become.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

*shouts into the void* No one forces you to publish with Cell, Nature, Science etc.

Roel Verhaak

@roelverhaak

2 years

This makes me so mad. We acknowledged a NCI Moonshot grant in one of our publications. This funding mechanism requires immediate open access publishing. The cost of open access for this @CellCellPress paper: $9,900.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

one of the weirdest parts of modern biology is that if you discover a single regulatory interaction it's considered a great feat of understanding but if you discover thousands you're just producing more data.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Can you hear the screams in French?

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

4 years

Today, for the first time ever, eLife's Early Career Advisory Group (ECAG) is making public recommendations to @eLife for radical changes the journal should take in order to make publishing fairer and more inclusive. (thread)

Research Communication: Ways to increase equity, diversity and inclusion

The eLife Early-Career Advisory Group calls for radical changes at eLife and other journals to make science more diverse and inclusive.

elifesciences.org

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

6 months

An abysmally clear case of xenophobia and then gaslighting of the victim by this German university.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

@kareem_carr You could've credited @SJB_SynBio as the source of this image.

When Pigs Fly — Changing author lists on scientific papers

A sizeable minority of researchers favour changing the way which author contributions are presented on scientific publications. A twitter…

link.medium.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

. @elife is looking for FIVE new Early Career Advisors. I've been one for almost 4 years and it's been an incredibly enriching experience--highly recommended for anyone interested in changing paradigms in science publishing! Apply by May 24.

Early-Career Advisory Group: Applications open for candidates to join in 2022

We’re looking to elect early-career researchers to five vacancies opening in August 2022.

elifesciences.org

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

Some have told me he's not a team player, or his style can't bring people along. Nothing could be further from the truth. His cheerful radicalism gives others around him the courage to push boundaries, and work to see their values realised, instead of just overlooking inequities.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

I've had heated arguments with him (sadly/ironically on freedom of speech too). He's always been generous in listening and gentle in disagreement, even when I wasn't. When I needed a ref. letter coz one fell through (authorship dispute), he wrote one enthusiastically, no Qs asked

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

Feel like there's a generation of scientists that's far too much in awe of Crick, Brenner-type of wild hypothesizing and not enough in awe of the insights that actually having a ton of data allows.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

5 years

Francophone scientists across the Atlantic take a public stance on media misreporting the facts on vaccines, homeopathy, glyphosate, GMOs, climate change and nuclear energy!

Marc RobinsonRechavi @[email protected]

@marc_rr

5 years

Today many French speaking scientists and journalists have published an op-ed in journals of Canada, France, Belgium and Switzerland, calling for better respect of science in the media. This follows on years of increasingly poor treatment of science esp. by French TV & newspapers

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

I'm going to fill this out to nominate @MicrobiomDigest this weekend. The form has doesn't make it easy so I will be making a sign-up sheet for anyone who wants to support the nomination. (you absolutely should do the full nomination if you have the time and a referee)

Nature Portfolio

@NaturePortfolio

3 years

Nominations are now open for the 2021 John Maddox Prize for Standing up for Science. The award recognises the work of any individual who promotes science and evidence on a matter of public interest in the face of hostility. Find out more:

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

4 years

Hiring committees, please don't ask for reference letters up front. Its just a pain for everyone involved? No committee is going read 200*3 letters+the average postdoc applies to several tens of positions and its inconsiderate to have to ask v. busy profs to write so many letters

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Here's what @eLife 's new process means for you as an author: ➡️You decide whether to respond to reviewers ➡️You decide whether to revise your paper ➡️You decide when to publish a final version of record ➡️You have less reason to moan about reviewers at lab meetings 🙃

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

A massive thank you to the over 800 of you who signed my nomination of @MicrobiomDigest for the John Maddox Prize. And thanks to @hv_lab for serving as referee. A very well-deserved honour!

Sense about Science

@senseaboutsci

2 years

What a night. Congratulations @MicrobiomDigest and @MohammadRazai . Many thanks to @ExploreWellcome for hosting us, #MaddoxPrize partner @SpringerNature and presenters @Magda_Skipper , @bronwenmaddox and Tracey Brown, plus all the judges, nominators, and our supporters.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

6 months

People got what they wanted, Mike has been fired. Young scientists are now more afraid than ever to share their opinions. And yet folk still continue to misrepresent his past tweets without context. Incredibly bad faith behaviour. (Yes, I know it’s Twitter but still).

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

As promised, here's the recording of @mbeisen 's fantastic talk at @MolCellSys last week. But here's the deal: you have to promise to watch this the next time you're deciding where to submit your paper, and whether you'll @biorxivpreprint it, okay?

Reinventing science publishing- Prof. Michael B. Eisen at the...

Prof. Michael Eisen is the editor-in-chief at eLife, an open-access life-sciences journal and a professor at the University of Calfornia at Berkeley. Eisen i...

www.youtube.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

4 months

At @NCBS_Bangalore now, looking forward to giving my first scientific presentation in India :) Many thanks to P V Shivakumar and @RedkarAmey for hosting!

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Really excited to share something we've been working on for a long time at @eLife : our first Open Call for new editors. Read on to find out why this is such an important step for community publishing🧵(1/4):

eLife Latest: Applications open for new Reviewing Editors from Latin America and the Caribbean

eLife is looking to recruit researchers from these regions with an open call for self-nominations to its editorial board.

elifesciences.org

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

6 years

Note: African scientists have already created GMO maize varieties that can control this insect. They're just not allowed to release it.

American Scientist

@AmSciMag

6 years

An invasive insect is forcing smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa to turn to pesticides. But improper use of the pesticides -- as well as some unscrupulous agrochemical dealers -- is putting those farmers at additional risk by @LauraJoanKraft

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

I wish I could share with all of you jaded PIs the 300+ applications we received from junior scientists all over the world for the ECAG at @eLife . They are filled with so much frustration with the current system but also so much optimism and hope for change!!

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

We recieved an incredible 366 applications for 5 spots on @elife 's Early Career Advisory Group! That's 361 ECRs around the globe who want to shape research culture but won't have an avenue to do so. I beg you, make one for them in your societies, journals and institutions, folks!

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

I've seen this first-hand at eLife, having joined the org. as an advisor before him. He transformed the organisation in just a few years, giving people new energy and always listening to us early career scientists, instead of seating us at the kids table like other senior folk.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

4 years

This is not how authorship on manuscripts should work.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

5 years

"Organic farming doesn’t even feature once in the chapters of the #IPCC report dedicated to food security. This is because it is one of the very worst ways of farming if your objective is to conserve land."

We need genetic engineering to stave off climate change-induced global hunger

Despite what many say, organic farming will not save us from the worst impacts of climate change

massivesci.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

🧵Why publishing in selective journals costs so much: Journals pay staff to handle papers (& pissed-off authors). If a journal gets 200 papers a month, pays 2 staff to handle them, but only publishes 20 papers, those 20 authors must pay the full cost of the staff salaries. (1/8)

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

6 months

💯 this may sound uncharitable but honestly, I too look at papers that never appeared on bioRxiv with greater scrutiny, wondering what the authors were trying to hide… “Scientists, have we lost the plot?” by KamounLab

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

8 years in plant science and just learned what happens if you make bread with sulphur deficient wheat:

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

1 year

When a Masters student nervously asks if a negative result will result in lower grades (before even starting a project),you know that positivity bias in science has gone wayyy too far.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

1 year

Plus, we collected 153 signatures in less than a week at that. eLife new model and @mbeisen ’s leadership has strong support from scientists at all career stages (unlike the opposition) and this article misrepresents the reception to the model.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 months

As @Europarl_EN debates #NGTs , I urge legislators to move past outdated arguments & free EU science to once again lead the world in Ag-innovation! 💚 @tomvdkendelaere @Frederiqueries @guyverhofstadt @hildevautmans @kvanbrempt @marctarabella @OChastel

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

4 years

My main piece of grad school advice is: if possible, go somewhere other than the USA.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

5 years

Here's to ending the #plantsci tradition of coming in to water your plants on long weekends and holidays! Instructions to setup a simple timed irrigation (and fertilization) system online on our lab website: Tested w/ Arabidopsis, Benthamiana and Petunia

Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

5 years

Just installed a simple timed watering system and now I don't know why more plant labs don't do this, not all #plantsci students have green thumbs y'know.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Nothing gives me more hope for a kinder scientific community than meeting @elife ’s incredible Early Career Advisors. If eLife’s vision for a journal-free future succeeds it’ll be because of the positivity they bring to the adversarial system of research communication we inherited

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

"Dr Coates’ analysis found that 82.8% of coronavirus-related preprints and 92.8% of non-coronavirus-related preprints saw no material change to their conclusions upon journal publication." So much for the "peer review adds value to the paper" argument.

Preprints on the coronavirus have been impressively reliable

The case for publishing in expensive, restrictive scientific journals continues to weaken

www.economist.com

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

4 years

If you've had a conference talk cancelled due to #COVID19 #ShutItDown , @eLife is making it possible for ECRs to present their research virtually! Sign up here:

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

oh c'mon, this is such a BS paper. At what point do we start demanding more evidence prior to making claims like this?

Tim Mak

@timkmak

3 years

MIT study: Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and other vaccines may not do as well covering people of Black or Asian genetic ancestry as they do for white people

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

It is a shame that 20 years since Golden Rice was first announced, scientists still have to write editorials like this. Anti-GMO activists have blood on their hands.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

1 year

So good to finally move into an apartment, Ikea bags and all, after a month and a bit of hotel rooms and BnBs.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

4 years

Amid all the chaos, happy to present our latest work on CIDER-Seq, expanding the method's utility to sequence viruses AND eccDNA, and a step by step protocol for new users. (1/6)

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

I'm so glad to see this, for @MicrobiomDigest of course, but also because it means that even if scientific leaders and their institutions don't recognise the work people put in to make science better, others do.

The New Yorker

@NewYorker

3 years

Over the past six and a half years, @MicrobiomDigest has identified more than 4,900 scientific articles containing potentially doctored images, using her eyes and memory alone.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Well after a few bureaucratic delays, a lot of paperwork, and a week’s travel, finally made it to Leuven!

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

So if you're someone who's dissatisfied with the status quo in science, and has the time and will to catalyse reform, join us! Apply here by March 22nd & feel free to reach out if you have Qs:

Early-Career Advisory Group: Applications open for candidates to join in 2021

We’re looking for five early-career researchers to join our advisory group and help us realise our mission to transform research communication.

elifesciences.org

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

5 years

Btw, here's the preprint that divided reviewers so much that one called it "excellent (and to my knowledge unique)", another said it was "rampant and unsupported speculation", and a third called it "excellent, in design and execution". Decision: Rejected.

CRISPR-Cas9 interference in cassava linked to the evolution of editing-resistant geminiviruses

We used CRISPR-Cas9 in the staple food crop cassava with the aim of engineering resistance to African cassava mosaic virus , a member of a widespread and important family of plant-pathogenic DNA...

www.biorxiv.org

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

28 days

🧵With the exception of perhaps my first 1-2 papers (incl. as co-author), I’ve tried my very best to ensure code and data is reproducible and provided in great detail in all my papers. Unfortunately, this transparency is more often punished rather than rewarded in peer review.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

@WAJ_Webster @ChadPecot That's just old people writing 😅

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

It's great that universities are stepping up to support Ukrainian students, but it's at least a little racist(?) that they are fine not giving those supports to students from all the other major warzones (dark red) on the planet right now.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

It is perfectly possible to explain V(D)J recombination without leaning into an anti-vaxxer lie 🤷🏾‍♂️

Steven Salzberg 💙💛

@StevenSalzberg1

2 years

Yes, the vaccine does change your DNA, but only indirectly, as I try to explain in my latest Forbes piece here

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

1 year

Dunno about you but imo writing a long article to rant about young scientists wasting time by being “too online” seems to be the greater waste of time… Science in the age of selfies | PNAS

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

2 years

Referees (esp. senior PIs), if you have a student you who you think deserves success, please be enthusiastic about them, because I promise other PIs *are* boosting their students, and science *is* a competitive world.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

@DrWigley They're ones that actually run a lab.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

7 months

Well they finally did it: they’ve chased one of the most progressive voices in science, someone who gave many young scientists incl. myself hope that change is possible, off this site.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

In another world where the culture of science wasn't all about hierarchies, credentialism, and arrogance, this whole zoonosis v. lab leak thing could've been avoided...

NYT Science

@NYTScience

3 years

Alina Chan, a young scientist who raised early questions about Covid's origins, has faced scathing criticism. A new report from the Biden administration, due shortly, may help shed light on the pandemic's beginnings.

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Devang Mehta 🌱👨🏽‍🔬🧬

@drdevangm

3 years

That's it for scientists then

Ethan Mollick

@emollick

3 years

Optimism turns out to be a huge predictor of extraordinary longevity. Two studies, one 30 years long and the other 10 years, found that high optimism was linked to 11%-15% greater lifespans, even taking into account socioeconomic factors, health & more.