Dorian McILROY
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dmcilroy.bsky.social
Dorian McILROY
@dmcilroy.bsky.social
1.4K followers 68 following 370 posts
Virology lecturer at Nantes University. Interested in polyomaviruses, particularly capsid interactions with antibodies and host receptors.
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dmcilroy.bsky.social
Good to see the ASM standing up for science.
asm.org ASM @asm.org · 17h
For the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be effective, the public needs to trust its recommendations. Confidence that policies are being guided by science—not politics—is at the heart of that trust. Our statement: asm.org/press-releas...
Decades of rigorous, global research have demonstrated no causal link between vaccines and autism. Suggesting otherwise is dangerous and irresponsible, and contradicts the Administration’s stated goal of focusing on “gold standard science.”
November 22, 2025 at 8:07 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
crof.bsky.social
Amazing, but likely not the last time a country will be forced to such measures: www.iranintl.com/en/202511209...
Iran president says capital move now a necessity as water crisis deepens
Iran’s capital must be moved because the country “no longer has a choice,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday in remarks carried by state media, warning that severe ecological strain has mad...
www.iranintl.com
November 22, 2025 at 3:54 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
andrewcurry.com
In 2022, archaeologists at @uni-kiel.de's @neolithicbodies.bsky.social found 34 decapitated skeletons piled in a space the size of a parking spot. In the 3 years since, they’ve found 50 more. The mass grave is evidence for the collapse of the 1st pan-European culture 7,000 years ago. @science.org 🏺💀
Headless bodies hint at why Europe’s first farmers vanished
Wave of mass brutality accompanied the collapse of the first pan-European culture
www.science.org
November 20, 2025 at 7:17 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
The long-awaited YFV receptor!
November 20, 2025 at 6:56 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
Such a needless death, and of course the foetus died too. Beats me how anyone can pretend this is pro-life.
boghuma.bsky.social BK. Titanji @boghuma.bsky.social · 2d
I don't know how many more women need to die before the cruelty of these strict abortion laws finally dawn on us a society. This story is heartbreaking. Nothing about this is pro-life. It is anti woman and anti-life.
www.propublica.org/article/texa...
“Ticking Time Bomb”: A Pregnant Mother Kept Getting Sicker. She Died After She Couldn’t Get an Abortion in Texas.
Walker is one of several women ProPublica found with underlying health conditions who died when they couldn’t access abortions.
www.propublica.org
November 19, 2025 at 5:41 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
boghuma.bsky.social
I never tire of seeing the amazing success of HPV vaccination. We are seeing the elimination of a leading oncogenic virus pathogen in real time
(Source: GAVI)
www.gavi.org/vaccineswork...
November 18, 2025 at 3:03 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
Can anyone help me out with a question that came up in class today? In general discussion of the stability of naked compared to enveloped viruses, I pointed out that almost all enteric viruses are non-enveloped. The question is, what is special about enteric corona/toroviruses?
November 18, 2025 at 6:34 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
This is what you get when you have large numbers of genetically homogenous individuals cooped up in a small space: high attack rate and high fatality rate. Thinking about it, there's gotta be money in ANP32 GMO chickens, right?
infectiousdz.bsky.social Infectious Diseases @infectiousdz.bsky.social · 4d
Hickman’s Egg Ranch, the largest egg producer in the Southwest United States and 81 year old family run company, is being sold to a Brazilian company after suffering major losses from a bird-flu outbreak that wiped out nearly six million birds. www.azfamily.com/2025/11/16/a...
Arizona-based Hickman’s Family Farms set to be acquired by Brazilian company
Hickman’s Family Farms has over five locations across Arizona. The company also has locations in California, Colorado, and Nevada.
www.azfamily.com
November 18, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
privateeyenews.bsky.social
Do you rely on others for support?

From the new Private Eye, out now.
November 18, 2025 at 8:19 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
hansonmark.bsky.social
WE ARE RECRUITING PHD STUDENTS!!!

We have three(!) funded PhD studentships advertising presently. If any of these are of interest, please reach out! Thread below with links to more information on each project.

#Drosophila #Evolution #Immunity #SelfishGene #Aphids

Thread with links below 🧵 1/4
November 15, 2025 at 3:35 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
hansonmark.bsky.social
We have a funded NERC PhD studentship!

Selfish X chromosomes are these bizarre things where males carrying the selfish X suffer from imploding testes. Lots to do in this space, especially in evolutionary, stress, and infection biology.

Please share!

#PhDchat #AcademicSky @uniexecec.bsky.social
An advertisement for the project Cryptc consequences of a selfish X chromosome. It shows chromosome mapping indicating many inversions, flies with eye colour phenotypes (wild-type brighter than selfish X), and sections of testes that show ordered (wild-type) or deformed structure (selfish X).
November 15, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
kgandersen.bsky.social
A new approach to pandemic preparedness:

1️⃣ Stop preparing for pandemics
2️⃣ Rewrite history of the last major pandemic
3️⃣ Go to the gym

Simple - 🤷‍♂️.

www.city-journal.org/article/nih-...
NIH Directors: The World Needs a New Pandemic Playbook
The old one failed to cope with Covid and may even have caused it.
www.city-journal.org
November 14, 2025 at 3:21 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
I like it when Eric Topol gives bad studies a good kicking.
November 13, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
privateeyenews.bsky.social
The Trump World View

From the new Private Eye, out now.
November 13, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk 🎤

If you’ve read this far and still need convincing, please check out our preprint arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 and this infographic: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
10/10
The four-fold drain of scientific publishing: Money, Time, Trust, and Control.
November 13, 2025 at 8:17 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
I always wondered who the reviewers were and how they could be so bloody useless.
environmicrobio.bsky.social Roland Hatzenpichler @environmicrobio.bsky.social · 9d
They say you should not kick a dead horse, but tomorrow I will gladly - once more - kick the shit out of the disaster that’s the arsenic life paper. I’ve done this for the past nine years, and every time I found it’s an important lesson for graduate students in my class
November 13, 2025 at 6:16 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
albrgr.bsky.social
I really like this R21/RTS,S malaria vaccine tracker from @1daysooner.bsky.social

1dayafrica.org/r21-campaign
November 11, 2025 at 11:54 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
Can we get the virus-specific beta jelly roll fold with these 10 as?
kevinkaichuang.bsky.social Kevin K. Yang 楊凱筌 @kevinkaichuang.bsky.social · 21d
Design stable, folded proteins using only the 10 "ancient" amino acids.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 10, 2025 at 6:41 AM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
jeremymberg.bsky.social
Bluetorial-Jim Watson

I met Jim Watson a few times but did not know him well. However, I was greatly influenced by his book “The Double Helix”. He was a complicated human being with some very, very bad features, but some good contributions.

What follows is my personal perspective.

1/41
a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on
ALT: a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on
media.tenor.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
stcmicrobeblog.bsky.social
the plot thickens...
#Archaea #Microsky #SymbioSky
tbharat-lab.bsky.social Tanmay Bharat @tbharat-lab.bsky.social · 14d
An Asgard archaeon with internal membrane compartments

Brilliant study led by @fmacleod.bsky.social and Andriko von Kügelgen. Tight collaboration with @buzzbaum.bsky.social and lab. Congrats to all authors!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
November 7, 2025 at 10:16 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
carlzimmer.com
On the event of James Watson's death, I highly recommend this 2023 commentary from @matthewcobb.bsky.social and Nathaniel Comfort with crucial new insights into the discovery of the double helix. (And also check out Cobb's brand new biography of Francis Crick) www.nature.com/articles/d41...
What Rosalind Franklin truly contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure
Franklin was no victim in how the DNA double helix was solved. An overlooked letter and an unpublished news article, both written in 1953, reveal that she was an equal player.
www.nature.com
November 7, 2025 at 9:25 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
nextstrain.org
On Oct 1, 2025, GISAID informed us that they had ended updates to the flat file of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences and associated metadata that we had used to update Nextstrain analyses since Feb 2020. GISAID's stated rationale was that their "resources are limited". 1/5
November 6, 2025 at 9:46 PM
Reposted by Dorian McILROY
boghuma.bsky.social
A new NEJM study reports results from a phase 1 trial of a Lassa virus vaccine, a recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus vector engineered to express the Lassa glycoprotein (the same platform as the approved Ebola vaccine, ERVEBO). It was safe and immunogenic.
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
Safety and Immunogenicity of an rVSV Lassa Fever Vaccine Candidate | NEJM
No vaccine is currently available for Lassa fever, a viral hemorrhagic disease that is estimated to cause thousands of deaths each year in western Africa. A replication-competent recombinant vesicu...
www.nejm.org
November 6, 2025 at 12:12 PM
dmcilroy.bsky.social
This happens every year. The day after the email goes out at my university, all the slots for flu vaccine shots are fully booked.
November 4, 2025 at 10:46 AM