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Michael Eisen Profile
Michael Eisen

@mbeisen

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I science & try to make science open. Tweets do not represent my employer's views, but are always correct. My conflicts of interest .

37° 14′ 6″ N, 115° 48′ 40″ W
Joined February 2009
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
space is amazing
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
6 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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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
because of vaccine mandates we’re losing teachers who don’t believe in science, healthcare workers who don’t believe in medicine, and police who don’t believe in public safety…
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
7 months
Not to be a crankypuss, but awarding a Nobel for work that suffered from not being taken seriously for decades only *after* it proved to be of incredible value is not a triumph of prizemaking - it's a complete condemnation of it and the entire culture of modern academic science.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
Ladies, if he: * Solicits opinion of 3 strangers before agreeing to a date * Takes months to reply * Nitpicks about your appearance * Demands you make major changes * Won’t let you see friends unless they pay He’s not the one. He’s a scientific journal.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
as a lifelong die-hard @redsox who spent a freezing cold night in Fenway watching Curt Schilling help deliver the 2004 World Series to my beloved team, I can say it is a privilege and an honor that this racist fuckhead blocked me
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
7 months
The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university.
@TheOnion
The Onion
7 months
Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
1 year
RRR -- WOW!!
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
What the fuck does David Brooks - the child of academics who grew up in a tony suburb, went to the University of Chicago and, after graduation worked at the National Review, Hoover Institute, WSJ and NYT - know about hardship?
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
Wanna make the Internet go bonkers? Rent a private jet from Burlington, VT to Wilmington, DE.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
6 months
I still believe deeply in the need for a radical restructuring of science publishing to create an open and fair system that works well for science, for all scientists everywhere, and the public that supports us, and am proud of the steps we have taken to begin to get us there.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
7 months
Every sane person on Earth is horrified and traumatized by what Hamas did and wants it to never happen again. All the more so as a Jew with Israeli family. But I am also horrified by the collective punishment already being meted out on Gazans, and the worse that is about to come.
@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
7 months
The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
7 months
It's not that complicated. We can and should simultaneously celebrate Dr. Kariko for her ideas and persistence in the face of adversity, while acknowledging that she succeeded in spite of us, and realize it is our duty to do whatever we can to never let it happen again.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
Grampa Joe what did you do during the pandemic? I fought against the scourge of women with PhDs calling themselves “Dr.” (silence) Grampa Joe, didn’t women with PhDs develop the vaccine that ended the pandemic?
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 months
Frontiers missed a huge opportunity to say that the paper was #RATRACTED
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
1 year
@NickAdamsinUSA Guns are not in the Bible.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
C. elegans. They wiggle forward. They wiggle backwards. And occasionally they fuck themselves. That’s it.
@JusttheZooofUs
Just the Zoo of Us 🐊🐌🦬
4 years
What is the most overhyped animal? 👀
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
@SusannaLHarris What does he do when he wakes up in a panic of unknown origin at 3:00 AM? Or when he can't function at work for a few months because 🤷‍♂️?
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
10 months
I challenge @RobertKennedyJr @joerogan and @PeterHotez to submit papers with data supporting their vaccine hypotheses which we will subject to open, public peer review by domain experts.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
what is your personality type?
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
King Charles III is an inspiration for postdocs everywhere
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
10 months
A central problem in the interpretation of the scientific literature is that people (both in and outside of science) systematically fail to recognize that peer review is not, and has never been, about validating facts. It is about certifying conformity of approach.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
@twkelly_EDU Y'all fills a serious gap in the English language. So many other languages have a distinct second-person plural, and it's incredibly useful. I'd like to see y'all become ubiquitous.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
Or, you could submit to @eLife and use the $8000 you save to buy everyone in the lab their own espresso machine
@NatureNeuro
Nature Neuroscience
2 years
In this scenario, the cost of publication is covered by an Article Processing Charge (APC) paid at the time of publication. The APC for Nature Neuroscience in 2022 is €9,500/US $11,390/£8,290.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
anyone else burned out?
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
the biggest lie in science is "data and code available upon request"
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
6 years
if we printed all 2,000,000 STEM papers published every year, put them on a rocket and launched them to Mars with their spacecraft to take them their, it would cost around $3b a year - we currently spend around $10b a year to put them online
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
To have everyone on the planet have immediate free access to the every academic paper ever written, and for people in power to stop making excuses for why they can’t.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
Many things that make it though peer review are wrong
@mykola
Myk - 🇺🇦🌻🇵🇸🍉 - Here To Help
4 years
Please quote this tweet with a thing that everyone in your field knows and nobody in your industry talks about because it would lead to general chaos.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 months
Well that was fun
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
They weren’t being shot at school?
@TIME
TIME
3 years
Fewer children died in 2020, despite the pandemic. Experts are trying to figure out why
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
Today is the anniversary of the day, long ago, when my father killed himself, and I just want to commemorate it by saying thanks to all the people working to improve the culture of science and confront mental health challenges within our midsts.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
10 months
I’ve learned from a decade on this app to not accept the superficial way things are presented here, especially when someone’s words are being used against them. And so I watched the whole session for context. And I’m glad I did. Because in context it’s way worse.
@Amro_Hussien
Amro Hussien
10 months
To date, only 61 women have won the @NobelPrize compared with 898 men Yet, Kurt Wüthrich: a successful Nobel Laureate who runs 3 academic labs in 3 continents (🇨🇭🇺🇸🇨🇳) complained that he faced discrimination for being a man in science. Said while talking in an all-male panel🤦
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
I am very excited to announce that, beginning today, @eLife will review preprints directly on @biorxivpreprint and, based on these @PreprintReview 's, consider them for publication in the journal.
@PreprintReview
Preprint Review
4 years
Preprint Review offers authors the opportunity to have @eLife review their work directly on bioRxiv, and, simultaneously, consider the work for publication in the journal
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
Science is a collective endeavor. No matter how smart, talented or accomplished you are, if your actions make it harder for other people to do science, you are impeding, not advancing, science.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
what’s the biggest lie? “I will finish that paper after I leave the lab”
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
9 months
The only essential characteristic of a scientist is honesty.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
The academic job search system is so messed up - it's tortuous, inefficient, biased and stochastic. Dozens of institutions try to hire the same 10 anointed people, with most searches failing, while so many talented postdocs don't get positions. There has to be a better way.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
Hi, I'm a federally funded research scientist. You may know me from my greatest hits including, “ ” ,“ ” and “ ”. What? You don't know me or my work because it's behind a #paywall ?
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
I don’t care if you cure cancer, end global warming and resurrect unicorns. If you sexually harass someone you should be expelled from the National Academy <FULL STOP>.
@erinjprosser
Erin Prosser
5 years
@NeedhiBhalla Robert Weinberg adds: “... it might be useful to ask whether sexual harassment by a member has anything whatsoever to do with their credibility as a scientist and the soundness of their research accomplishments—the criteria that were used to elect them in the first place.” 🙄🙄🙄
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
It's fewer, not less
@eliistender10
Giles Paley-Phillips
5 years
Your best advice in 4 words or less
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
I have a favor to ask. For 20+ years I've been working on a dream: to make all science funded by US taxpayers freely available to all. We are on the verge of achieving this. But we need to show that people care. So please, if you can, sign this letter:
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
Shocked to learn rich white people buy kids' way into Ivies by donating buildings - I mean by sending them to elite boarding schools - I mean by moving to rich white suburbs - I mean by hiring application consultants - I mean by bribing soccer coaches
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
Sure. In neuroscience. I mean is there anything more truly hard to grasp than how some members of a species can produce incredible art, music, poetry, writing and science, while others emit unmitigated bullshit like this?
@drmichaellevin
Michael Levin
4 years
Does biology have truly difficult ideas? Studying math, comp sci, physics, etc., one quickly encounters material that is hard to truly grasp (and many of us get to a point where we mentally just can't go further, while some others can). Does this exist in biology? If not, why?
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
i get really stressed when the eye doctor does the “are these tiny letters clearer with lens 1 or 2” because my vision for the next year depends on the answer and i can’t fucking tell
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
I have a joke about NIH grants, but it won't be discussed.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
7 months
The Onion is not making light of the situation. And nor am I. These articles are using satire to make a deadly serious point about this horrific tragedy.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
I think it's time for us to retaliate for people zoom bombing classes with dick picks by flooding streaming porn sites with slides from our lectures.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
Everyone complains about the Nobel Prizes, but imagine how difficult it must be for the committee to decide whether to give it to 2 or 3 men.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
we should destigmatize retraction - retracting for fraud is bad - but not all retractions are fraud and there needs to be a way to say "hey, we messed up" or "hey, we were wrong" without being treated like a pariah
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
The entirety of the scientific literature should be completely freely available to everyone.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
You know who brings diseases to America? Rich white people who don't vaccinate their kids.
@mmfa
Media Matters
6 years
Brian Kilmeade speculating about immigrants in the caravan: "What about diseases?"
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
the irony is that if all these cancellations and online classes work to blunt the spread of #COVID19 they’ll be ridiculed as an overreaction
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
I mean luciferase IS 666 amino acids long, has a molecular weight of 66.6 kD and a pKa of 6.66
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
If Rosalind Franklin had been male, she'd be remembered not as someone who was screwed over by colleagues who stole her data, but as the co-discovered of the structure of DNA and co-winner of the Nobel Prize.
@PDBeurope
Protein Data Bank
4 years
Today is the 100th birthday of crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray diffraction images of DNA were critical in confirming the structure of DNA. This video highlights the double helix structure and base pairing in PDB entry 1bna: #Franklin100
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
Yes I have a PhD in Biophysics. Yes I still have no idea what biophysics is. We exist.
@thecrobe
Justin Stewart
3 years
Yes I'm getting my PhD in Ecology. Yes I googled if birds have bones. We exist.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
Kid made a T-SNE
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
Every biologist should learn to code simply because, unlike Excel, Python doesn't change Oct4 to October 4th
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
This, from , is such unbelievable bullshit - 33% of human proteins have four consecutive positive charged amino acids.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
Shh. Don't tell anyone, but luciferase from Oceanobacillus caeni has the peptide ASP-GLU-VAL-ILE-LEU.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
Is there anything more annoying on the internet than journals that embed PDFs in a frame? Who wants this??????????
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
Now that flipped classrooms are all the rage, maybe we should consider flipped labs in which the grad students sit in their offices coming up with ideas and raising money while the PIs do all the experiments.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
First they came for dark skinned refugees, but I said nothing because I’m a white college professor. Then they came for the skilled workers, but I said nothing because postdoc visas are exempt. Then they came for the Chinese undergrads whose tuition pays my salary ....
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
6 years
Just posted @biorxivpreprint describing one of whackiest discoveries of my time in science. We found a virus that has swapped hosts from insects to a fungus that manipulates insect behavior - and we think it might be involved in hijacking fly behavior .
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
You know what I don't want to ever hear again? A single complaint from anyone about how efforts to fix science publishing are going to affect their society or society journal. Because far more than anyone else it is scientific societies who are responsible for creating this mess.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
Congrats to my colleague Jennifer Doudna who is not just a great scientist, but also, and more importantly, a great person. And congrats to Basic Science, which was honored here as much as the individuals.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
Why are they not being immediately arrested?????
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 months
Science publishing is NOT a pyramid scheme. NOBODY is being scammed. We all KNOW what's going on and yet we DELIBERATELY continue to participate in the theft of billions of dollars of public funds and the crippling of science.
@blekhman
Ran Blekhman
2 months
Weird getting an email with a $10K bill for a journal publication fee, followed by an email requesting to review a paper for the same journal for free. Feels like being a victim in some kind of a pyramid scheme
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
6 years
the great disappointment of my professional career is the discovery that the structures of science careers reward people for violating the principles by which science is supposed to operate
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
I'm really excited for the chance to be EIC at @eLife ! Anyone who follows me here knows how deeply I care about making science communication not only open, but also more effective and truly accessible and fair for all
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
@Sciencing_Bi were they wearing PPE?
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 months
Everyone going apoplectic about someone publishing Midjourney hallucinations in a @frontiersin paper, but they're totally fine with people publishing T-SNE hallucinations in @nature .
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
2021 will be the first year that is the product of two consecutive prime numbers (43 * 47) since 1763 (41 * 43) - I feel like that's a good omen
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
Because one comes at the expense of a sore arm, the other 2 million deaths.
@RandPaul
Rand Paul
3 years
Why does the left accept immune theory when it comes to vaccines, but not when discussing naturally acquired immunity?
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
A good electric car should get at least 40 miles per gallon.
@elonmusk
Elon Musk
3 years
@PPathole @cleantechnica A good PCR test should identify if I have the cov2 spike proteins, although I have heard some low accuracy numbers for those too. Hard to get a straight answer. False positives will roughly scale with # of tests & daily test rate has gone ballistic:
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
The greatest lie in academia is that tenure is a mechanism universities use to guarantee intellectual freedom. It’s not. You will understand academic institutions far better if you see tenure for what it is: a tool they use to reward and enforce adherence to the status quo.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
Accepting and rejecting papers is an archaic practice that is terrible for science. It strips peer review of its value & institutionalizes the practice of judging scientists based on where, rather than what, they publish. It's time for this system to go.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
People should worry less about protecting their institution’s reputation and worry more about creating institutions worthy of having good reputations.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
I hope Eric wears the “I helped commercialize CRISPR but all I got was a $100,000,000,000 patent” t-shirt I sent him today.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
Dad, why are you trending on Twitter?
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
17 days
Want to change the system? Post preprints and only post preprints - don't submit to journals, don't subscribe to journals, don't read journals - only hire and fund people based on their preprints.
@maw_tweets
Michele Avissar-Whiting 🎗️
18 days
Nature now charges $12,290 US to publish a single article open access. Shall we list some things that cost less than that? I'll go first: a 2017 BMW 330i sedan, a 7-day cruise for a family of four, six Louis Vuitton purses. 🤪
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
Hey folks, what’s the best NIH grant?
@WajahatAli
Wajahat Ali
3 years
I asked everyone about what's the best butter recently and it got Kerrygold to trend. Well, they just sent me an entire box of butter and cheese for St. Patrick's Day. God bless the Irish.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
I've been telling y'all that the @ImpossibleFoods burger looks and tastes like beef, but now you can hear it from no less an authority than @BurgerKing
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
i know others have said this but HOW IS IT FUCKING POSSIBLE THAT IT IS TAKING 10 DAYS TO GET COVID TEST RESULTS BACK, DO PEOPLE NOT KNOW THIS IS FUCKING USELESS?????
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
If only we had a group of trained professionals who had spent years studying and researching these issues and becoming experts on things like viruses, epidemiology and public health.
@megynkelly
Megyn Kelly
4 years
I’m so frustrated right now ... that we can’t trust the media to tell us the truth without inflaming it to hurt Trump ... that Trump has misled so many times we no longer know when to trust his word ... that even I as a journalist am not sure where to turn for real info on COVID.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
6 years
Holy Shit! @nature announces that, starting in 2020, ALL of its journals will be FREE to publish in and read!!
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
My message for other parents at Disneyland today
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
I know the @NobelPrize committees are struggling over which three people to credit for #CRIPSR . The solution is obvious - give multiple prizes: Medicine/Physiology: Mojica, Horvath, Marraffini Chemistry: Doudna, Charpentier, Siksnys Economics: Zhang, Lander
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
my two pumpkins
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
Just a reminder that it cost less than 1/4 of what we spend on science publishing every year to develop, build, test, launch, fly and land a large and incredibly sophisticated scientific instrument on another freaking planet.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
1 year
I can't even with the people whose response to UC postdocs earning a living wage is to complain that they can't afford them anymore. That our field is dependent on exploitative labor practices is not their problem.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
we've moved quickly from everyone being an epidemiologist to everyone being an immunologist
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
@SusannaLHarris Potter HJ*, Granger HJ*, Weasley RB*, Longbottom N, Lovegood LE, Weasley GM, Hagrid R, Order of Phoenix Consortium, Dumbledore's Army Consortium, Dumbledore APWB (1997). Deathly Hallows act via phase separation and epigenetic modification of microbiome. HogwaRxiv 9.75.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
5 years
@lkcalloway And I have never once asked a student for proof of bad shit happening to them. Is it possible some of them are making shit up? Sure, it's possible, maybe even likely. But catching them in a lie is not worth inflicting any additional pain on people who are actually struggling.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
2 years
prize for the first person who figures out what this is
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
4 years
I want to share this message I just received from my cousin, who is a doctor in Boston. Please read it. It's incredibly important.
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
3 years
16yo's bio teacher asked if anyone in class knew anything about C. elegans....
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@mbeisen
Michael Eisen
1 year
Because @UofCalifornia has tried to suppress faculty support for employees striking today, I think it particularly important to say that I offer my complete solidarity with @uaw2865 @UAW5810 and their effort to improve the living and working conditions at UC.
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