Paweł Pasikowski
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vitrioff.bsky.social
Paweł Pasikowski
@vitrioff.bsky.social
45 followers 65 following 25 posts
Pro: Mass Spec / Proteomics / TPD
Priv: S-F / Food-Wine-Beer / Boardgames / Absurd
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vitrioff.bsky.social
Great read, 100% recommend
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 9d
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 12, 2025 at 8:36 AM
vitrioff.bsky.social
There are moments when I am ashamed to be a human... and me, for not doing enough to prevent what seems inevitable...

doi.org/10.1093/bios...
The 2025 state of the climate report: a planet on the brink
We are hurtling toward climate chaos. The planet's vital signs are flashing red. The consequences of human-driven alterations of the climate are no longer
doi.org
November 6, 2025 at 10:55 AM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
corybooker.com
This is a beautiful truth.
October 17, 2025 at 1:26 AM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
marischuster.bsky.social
Looking for a friend 🙃

Does anyone have a reliable protocol for plasma membrane isolation/enrichment from N. benthamiana leaves, ideally for downstream proteomics. Got one that works?

Please share or repost! 🌱🧬

#PlantProteomics #Protocols #NicotianaBenthamiana #MembranePrep
October 1, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
bmeyer.bsky.social
Twitter is dead.....scientifically speaking.

www.southernfriedscience.com/twitter-suck...
“Twitter sucks now and all the cool kids are moving to Bluesky:” Our new survey shows that scientists no longer find Twitter professionally useful or pleasant
My colleague Dr. Julia Wester and I have a new paper out in the journal Integrative and Comparative Biology reporting on the results of a survey distributed to over 800 scientists, science educator…
www.southernfriedscience.com
August 20, 2025 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
slavov-n.bsky.social
Science needs more public discussions focussed on constructive criticism.

Such discussions are hard.
Much harder than superficial praise that is popular on social media.

Yet, scrutiny & rigor are more important for science than superficial praise.
August 12, 2025 at 1:34 AM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
zachweinersmith.bsky.social
Max Born, writing in 1945
August 12, 2025 at 8:48 PM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
jcschultz.bsky.social
🧪🌾 Fascinating and discouraging report on the growth of false science reports: www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly | PNAS
Science is characterized by collaboration and cooperation, but also by uncertainty, competition, and inequality. While there has always been some c...
www.pnas.org
August 5, 2025 at 2:20 PM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
jessothomson.co.uk
This also wastes humanity's resources, btw. The fact that there is no publication of stuff that doesn't work means that a bunch of people can independently try the same failing approach without ever knowing what was done before them, or having any way to know. Over and over again.
iris-meredith.bsky.social Iris Meredith @iris-meredith.bsky.social · Jul 2
I think, on consideration, that part of the issue we have at the moment is that, at least in technology, science and engineering spaces, is that a negative result is seen as a failure. My Masters' research led to inconclusive results, which I suspect caused me some trouble.
lastpositivist.bsky.social lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · Jul 2
Sociologists/historians of science: one thing that would be cool is, like, a big book of failure (besides my autobiography wahay!!!!) - like, detailed accounts of research programmes that failed, approaches that didn't work out. Does this exist?
July 2, 2025 at 6:57 AM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
samillingworth.com
🧪 Science Poem 🖋️

New research has found that climate change and cheese quality are closely linked – with drought reducing grass, altering milk, & muting flavour.

Here's my poetic interpretation: scienceblog.com/thepoetryofs...

#SciComm 🍎 🐄 #Poetry #ClimateChange #Cheese
Cheese Weather
How does climate change affect cheese quality? This poem and explainer explore drought, feed, and flavour in traditional dairy farming.
scienceblog.com
June 26, 2025 at 10:32 AM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
xkcd.com
Tukey

xkcd.com/3104/
Comic. [block quote] “Far better an approximate answer to the *right* question, which is often vague, than an *exact* answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.” -John W. Tukey, The Future of Data Analysis (1962) [caption] Happy Approximate Birthday to John Tukey, author of my favorite statistics quote, who was born 110.000 years ago sometime this week.
June 23, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
sagan.bsky.social
Carl Sagan in 1986 on the problems with media and science literacy.
June 5, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
richardsever.bsky.social
Big news: we are setting up a new non-profit organization to run bioRxiv and medRxiv. It's called openRxiv [no it's not a new preprint server; it's dedicated organization to oversee the servers] openrxiv.org 1/n
Homepage - openRxiv
openRxiv is an independent non-profit, the new organizational home for bioRxiv and medRxiv, enabling researchers to instantly share groundbreaking findings with the global scientific community.
openrxiv.org
March 11, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
jojofoshosho.bsky.social
So uhh…sorry for the nightmare fuel, but I wrote about how microplastics seem to be messing with photosynthesis. 🌏🧪
www.scientificamerican.com
March 11, 2025 at 2:11 PM
Reposted by Paweł Pasikowski
zachweinersmith.bsky.social
Me and Kelly in video form: www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN_C...
Why Elon Musk's plans to colonise Mars are bound to fail
YouTube video by Times Radio
www.youtube.com
March 9, 2025 at 8:58 PM
vitrioff.bsky.social
Dear #ProtemicSky community, I seek help! Anyone here working (preferably for a long time or extensively) on Exploris 480? I experience a peculiar problem on my machine and would appreciate any help (BTW, yeah, Thermo guys do not know what it is... at least yet)
January 30, 2025 at 1:59 PM