Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Dr Huw Groucutt

@huwgroucutt.bsky.social

The debate on when people first arrived in Australia continues! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Genomic evidence supports the “long chronology” for the peopling of Sahul

Genome data provide support for the first settlement of Australia and New Guinea via at least two routes by 60,000 years ago.

www.science.org

November 29, 2025 at 8:49 AM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Greger Larson

@gregerlarson.bsky.social

What's that? 5 ancient doggy papers in 10 days is too many dogs?

Can I interest you in some cats?

Perhaps a complete retelling of cat domestication, dispersal, and replacement across Eurasia?

As you wish!

Science
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Cell Genomics
www.cell.com/cell-genomic...

The dispersal of domestic cats from North Africa to Europe around 2000 years ago

The domestic cat (Felis catus) descends from the African wildcat Felis lybica lybica. Its global distribution alongside humans testifies to its successful adaptation to anthropogenic environments. Unc...

www.science.org

November 28, 2025 at 12:40 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Professor Euan Ritchie

@euanritchie.bsky.social

Honestly, when will unis and other research orgs collectively say enough is enough, and invoice them for all our unpaid labour that drives publishers MASSIVE profits?

The Money in Scientific Publishing danielroelfs.com/posts/the-mo... @danielroelfs.com

#KnowledgeSlavery

November 29, 2025 at 5:19 AM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

ellie_ancient

@elenaessel.bsky.social

Cool work from my colleagues @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social just dropped! Merlin Szymanski, @janetk.bsky.social et al. developed quicksand, a fast, accurate and beautifully designed Nextflow pipeline for taxonomic classification of mammalian mtDNA from ancient sediment DNA. doi.org/10.1093/molb...

quick analysis of sedimentary ancient DNA using quicksand

Abstract. Ancient DNA extracted from the sediments of archaeological sites (sedaDNA) can provide fine-grained information about the composition of past eco

doi.org

November 28, 2025 at 12:20 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

alexgilardet.bsky.social

@alexgilardet.bsky.social

Our manuscript on bovine deep-time paleogenomics at Denisova Cave and in the broader mid-latitude Asia is online! doi.org/10.1093/gbe/... 🦬🦴🧬

Main findings in the 🧵 below ⬇️

@cpgsthlm.bsky.social @genomebiolevol.bsky.social #aDNA

Paleogenomics Reveals a Loss of Bovine Lineages in Mid-latitude Asia Over the Last 200,000 Years

Abstract. Bovines have a complex yet poorly understood evolutionary history that is characterized by admixture and diversity loss during the Late Pleistoce

doi.org

November 20, 2025 at 9:52 AM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Kevin Daly

@gingerhowley.bsky.social

Despite my insomnia, I'm very happy to share our preprint: a multi-disciplinary assessment of a sheep mass mortality event from ~18th century France. We report the first ancient sheeppox virus (think smallpox) and the Taenia hydatigena (nasty roundworm) genomes.
#aDNA

Evidence of sheeppox in 17th-19th century France: a multi-disciplinary investigation of a sheep mass mortality assemblage

Epizootic outbreaks posed major threats to food security, economic stability, and animal welfare in past communities. While these events and their impacts are well documented in historical records, ve...

www.biorxiv.org

November 26, 2025 at 6:33 AM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

School of Archaeology

@unioxarchaeology.bsky.social

When did the #cat stop walking by itself & become one of our favourite companions? It's much later than you think! Lovely couple of 🐱🧬papers out this week to add to our #pet themed posts @gregerlarson.bsky.social @pku1898.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... #aDNA #zooarchaeology #cats #miaow

Cats became our companions way later than you think

In true feline style, cats took their time in deciding when and where to join us on the sofa.

www.bbc.co.uk

November 28, 2025 at 9:20 AM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

The Conversation U.S.

@us.theconversation.com

Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq

November 21, 2025 at 11:48 AM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Ryan Gutenkunst

@ryangutenkunst.bsky.social

The Genomic History Inference Strategies Tournament closes in 1 week! Learn, test yourself, and help the community by trying to infer demographic history detect sweeps! ghist.bio

November 21, 2025 at 4:20 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Keith Smith

@drkeithsmith.bsky.social

UK science and technology is suffering from a lack of investment, a hostile immigration system, and fragile university finances, reports @cathleenogrady.bsky.social 🧪 #scipolicy
www.science.org/content/arti...

U.K. science sector is ‘bleeding to death,’ lawmakers say in report

House of Lords committee urges government to stem exodus of science and technology companies

www.science.org

November 10, 2025 at 10:08 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Pete Heintzman

@palaeopete.bsky.social

9 days left until the abstract deadline for #icp2026! 🧬

See below for our current estimates of the registration fee, which some folks have been enquiring about... ⬇️

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

ICP2026 Stockholm @palaeogenomics.bsky.social · 8d

⏰ The clock is ticking❗

LESS THAN 10 DAYS LEFT to submit your abstracts (30th Nov).

Do it here👉 icp2026.palaeogenomics.org/abstracts/

Many of you are asking for the registration fees 💸. We are still working out the details, but we estimate 400-500€ for regular attendees and 300-400€ for students.

Abstracts – International Conference on Palaeogenomics 2026

icp2026.palaeogenomics.org

November 21, 2025 at 12:20 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Pontus Skoglund

@pontus-skoglund.bsky.social

The 2026 EMBL symposium 'Reconstructing the human past using ancient and modern genomics' is live with a fantastic invited speaker lineup!

Abstract deadline 9 June. If work is ongoing, plan for Heidelberg in September😉.

Organised by Maanasa Raghavan, @matejahajdi.bsky.social, Choongwon Jeong & me.

November 19, 2025 at 1:41 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Retraction Watch

@retractionwatch.com

More than three-fifths of the editorial board of a @gigascience.bsky.social resigned after the publication’s operations moved from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, China, and the editors and software team were fired with 30 days’ notice.

Dozens of board members resign from big-data journal after mass staff firings

More than three-fifths of the editorial board of a biomedical sciences journal resigned after the publication’s operations moved from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, China, and the editors and software team…

retractionwatch.com

November 3, 2025 at 9:30 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Prof Susie Maidment

@tweetisaurus.bsky.social

Geology and palaeobiology at the University of Leicester are under threat, with at least 14 staff expected to be made redundant. Support them, their postdocs, and their students by signing this petition: c.org/SK8Xm8dhqK

Sign the Petition

Save Geology at the University of Leicester

c.org

November 19, 2025 at 11:31 AM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Vincent J Lynch 🐘🦣🦥 🦇🐋🐢🐍

@devoevomed.bsky.social

Better and more accurate coverage than from most of the #PopGen community I’ve seen so far, at least those I’m aware of… 🧪 🌱🐋

The Onion @theonion.com · 15d

DNA Sequencing Reveals Hitler Was Type Of Fern

BATH, ENGLAND—Saying the discovery shed new light on the infamous German dictator’s life, University of Bath researchers revealed DNA sequencing Friday showing that Adolf Hitler was a type of fern. “A...

theonion.com

November 18, 2025 at 9:26 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Richard Sever

@richardsever.bsky.social

"We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people" www.404media.co/a-researcher...

A Researcher Made an AI That Completely Breaks the Online Surveys Scientists Rely On

We can no longer trust that survey responses are coming from real people.”

www.404media.co

November 19, 2025 at 12:47 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Mark A. Hanson

@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 Mattias Sherman

Martin Kuhlwilm

@kuhlwilm.bsky.social

Paper out now: A curated dataset of the great ape genome diversity!
rdcu.be/eQLCi

A curated dataset of great ape genome diversity

Scientific Data - A curated dataset of great ape genome diversity

rdcu.be

November 19, 2025 at 2:27 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Tom Booth

@boothicus.bsky.social

For anyone interested in ancient diseases (either historical or prehistoric) here's an excellent, readable, comprehensive summary of where we are with ancient pathogen DNA.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Insights into infectious diseases through ancient pathogen genomics - Nature Reviews Microbiology

In this Review, Kocher, Krause and Spyrou explore how ancient pathogen genomics is providing new perspectives on the history and evolution of infectious agents. They show how ancient DNA has revealed ...

www.nature.com

November 19, 2025 at 3:15 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

SPAAM

@spaam-community.bsky.social

How much do lab methods shape ancient microbiome results? 🧬 This study compares extraction & library prep protocols on dental calculus from Hungary and Niger, showing that no single workflow fits all. #MetagenomicsMonday #SPAAM #aDNA #calculus #microbiome
doi.org/10.1111/1755...

November 17, 2025 at 8:01 AM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

UCL Genetics Institute

@ugiatucl.bsky.social

Wonderful and engaging talk by
@lucyvandorp.bsky.social
who was invited to speak on the drivers of pathogen evolution using ancient DNA at the Ancient Genomes: Perspectives on Human Biology and Medicine meeting
@gensocuk.bsky.social
🧬🦠

November 17, 2025 at 9:54 AM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

ICP2026 Stockholm

@palaeogenomics.bsky.social

Meet our plenary speakers 💁‍♂️

JOHANNES KRAUSE (eva.mpg.de)

Johannes' research has made major contributions to our understanding of human pathogens, hominin evolution, and the peopling of Europe.

Conference info 👉 icp2026.palaeogenomics.org

⚠️ Abstract submission open! (deadline 30th Nov) ⚠️

November 14, 2025 at 12:05 PM

Reposted by Mattias Sherman

Cedric Boeckx

@cedricboeckx.bsky.social

“substantial phenotypic diversity already existed in early Holocene dogs” nice #domestixation study by @gregerlarson.bsky.social & collaborators in @science.org 🧪🐶🐾

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...