Professor of Medicine at @UChicago. Decoding the human microbiome. https://teapaw.org/t.co/v7TIGaAfYu
Chicago
Joined November 2012
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Is it time we abandon recommendation letters in academia? Letters have ~zero signal to noise ratio, and with AI they are easy to generate. A 10-minute call is much more informative.
Compare today’s 3-page "top 1%" letters with Darwin’s 1851 letter for Huxley (2 sentences):
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Why does every AI Bio company sounds exactly like Theranos?
"a CRO but really fast" (with no tech innovation, no experience in biology) sounds a lot like "a blood test but from a really small amount"
Public trust in science is critical, especially now. This trust relies on the idea that “science” means real claims we can test and revise.
So when a @ScienceMagazine editorial describes a “unifying life force” as part of science, it's a problem
"In Lakota science, there are four parts—matter, energy, relationality, and a unifying life force" That @ScienceMagazine, arguably the world's preeminent science journal, would publish this is mind boggling.
The editorial is incorrect about fundemental science concepts. It calls “Western science” linear and purely reductionist, which is obviously wrong. It says AI is trained to use it as a “control”, also wrong.
No citations at all for any claim in this piece.
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Some concerns are valid: data sovereignty, underrepresented languages, and asking “what AI is for” are real issues. Indigenous knowledge is useful.
But blurring science and values, under the stamp of @ScienceMagazine, means both science and Indigenous knowledge lose credibility
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Ran Blekhman retweeted
This is an insane figure. Monthly arxiv submissions
What is biology research for?
Expanded version of my PLOS Biology Perspective, with very recent developments from arXiv and bioRxiv. This field is moving fast.
blekhman.substack.com/p/what…
Ran Blekhman retweeted
I feel like you could overlay this with a graph of GitHub PRs over time and they would match exactly.
So many parallels in the spam problems facing GitHub and preprint servers in 2026.
What is biology research for?
Expanded version of my PLOS Biology Perspective, with very recent developments from arXiv and bioRxiv. This field is moving fast.
blekhman.substack.com/p/what…
The authors didn't do anything wrong here - they clearly disclosed their AI use
But, as a reviewer/editor, I just cannot bring myself to read AI-generated papers. I don't reject the paper, I just step down as a reviewer. I simply can't justify spending any of my time reading it
It's time, calling for a “Rebuild American Science Act”:
- Double the NIH & NSF budgets
- Limits on executive interference
- End forward funding
- Rebuild the research training pipeline
- Full transparency of success rates
- Permanent H-1B fee exemption for universities
Reviewing a grant proposal online and this is the first question I'm asked. Folks, I think we solved peer review
The Blekhman Lab is at the Cold Spring Harbor Microbiome meeting next week 👇
Come see presentations by Tess Brunner, JJ Colgan, Pamela Ferretti, and Sambhawa Priya (@sambhawa_priya)!
This is actually completely routine in academia - many universities have these programs periodically.
This is because of tenure. The only way a tenured professor can retire is voluntarily, so universities have to pay an incentive to free up salaries and lines. Very common.
It's over. The higher ed dam has broken: Clemson is offering a voluntary separation program (VSP) to 452 eligible faculty and staff. Eligible employees who accept the offer will receive a lump-sum payment equal to nine months of their base pay.
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Ran Blekhman retweeted
Very good essay. You can read it in 5 minutes. I wrote some of my own thoughts on this over the weekend.
What Counts as Impact? doi.org/10.59350/006jq-a4y25
Some of my thoughts about the surge in AI-generated papers, why this feels like a completely new kind of problem, and what this means for how we evaluate science in biology.
Out now in PLOS Biology:
journals.plos.org/plosbiolog…
Some of my thoughts about the surge in AI-generated papers, why this feels like a completely new kind of problem, and what this means for how we evaluate science in biology.
Out now in PLOS Biology:
journals.plos.org/plosbiolog…
Fascinating/terrifying to read the comments on the "mathocalypse" on Tao's blog. If you think biology is safe - maybe safe for now, but I definitely see a "biocalypse" in the next 2-3 years
terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/…
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