The White Men's Microbiome Congress #YAMMM #Manel #Boycott
So I got this email this morning inviting me to attend a conference: theSecond Annual Human Microbiome Congress in San Diego. (also called the North American Microbiome Congress).And it struck me that all the featured speakers were men. Great. So I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt, hoping that maybe if I looked at the rest of the speakers it would be better.So I had to register on some web site to download the full agenda for the meeting. And there were the featured speakers, rippling with diversitySo then I went to scroll through the document looking for the other speakers.OMFG - what a jo...
Source: The Tree of Life - October 5, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Yet another biased meeting from Oxford Global - their meetings should be shunned #YAMMM #GenderBias
Well, Oxford Global has done it again. They have found a way to be one of the most extremely gender biased conferences around. Their2016 Genome Editing Congress Speakers. Their web site lists 20 speakers, 19 of which are men. (One of the men is listed twice - I am not sure if that is due to giving two talks or a mistake. So this may be 19 speakers~ 95, 18 of which are men). Regardless that comes to ~ 95% male speakers.Andre Choulika, CEO CellectisGuna Rajagopal, VP – Global Head, Computational Sciences, Discovery Sciences JanssenLorenz Mayr, VP& Global Head, Reagents& Assay Deve...
Source: The Tree of Life - October 1, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Wrap up from Gender Bias Under the Microscope Symposium #RFUSymposium #GenderBias
Had an amazing time at Rosalind Franklin University for their Gender Bias Under the Microscope Symposium. I made a Storify about it here:[View the story "Gender Bias Under the Microscope #rfusymposium " on Storify] -------- This is from the "Tree of Life Blog" of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter. -------- (Source: The Tree of Life)
Source: The Tree of Life - September 23, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Storify of talk by @CameronNeylon at #UCDavis on "Excellence is Bullshit"
Made a Storify[View the story "Excellence is Bullshit: talk by @CameronNeylon at #UCDavis" on Storify] -------- This is from the "Tree of Life Blog" of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter. -------- (Source: The Tree of Life)
Source: The Tree of Life - September 14, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

No thanks Precision Medicine #PMWC2017 - I don't want to go to your $ & *@(#@( #manel #yammm #biased meeting
Today I got this email, ostensibly from Keith Yamamoto, who I have interacted with a bit over the years, including in the writing of theNAS "New Biology" report.So I decided to check outthe meeting site. Precision Medicine World Conference. Hosted by Stanford and UCSF and Duke and Others. And also a "manel". Also known as a YAMMM (yet another mostly male meeting). A festival in fact of men. So so so many men listed as speakers. Here is my round up.Just so sick of meetings like this. Apparently Keith Yamamoto and UCSF and Duke and Stanford and all the Sponsors endorse having a meeting where about 1 ...
Source: The Tree of Life - September 12, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

UC Davis Coffee Course covered by NPR
-------- This is from the "Tree of Life Blog" of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter. -------- (Source: The Tree of Life)
Source: The Tree of Life - September 12, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

A mini rant about diversity at meetings #STEMDiversity #YAMMM #manel
[View the story "A mini rant about diversity at meetings " on Storify] -------- This is from the "Tree of Life Blog" of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter. -------- (Source: The Tree of Life)
Source: The Tree of Life - September 2, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Congratulations SynbioBeta #SBBSF16 - you are having a #YAMMMy #manel
Well this is disappointing.Someone sent me an announcement for SynBioBeta SF 2016 - SynBioBeta possibly thinking I would go to it. Since it was local I decided to check it out. And, well, the 1st thing I did was to look at the gender balance of the speakers (as much as I could infer from a quick skim). And it did not look good. So I dug into it in more detail.They have aspeaker page and I went through most of them to make sure my inference of gender was correct (based on looking at the pronouns used to describe them in their speaker bio and also in other web sites). I know this is im...
Source: The Tree of Life - September 2, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Viruses viruses viruses viruses viruses viruses viruses.
Actually, the title is clearly insufficient. [Viruses]^100 or something like that would be better.And here is a story by Michaeleen Doucleff from NPR about viruses in the human microbiome with some quotes from me. -------- This is from the "Tree of Life Blog" of Jonathan Eisen, an evolutionary biologist and Open Access advocate at the University of California, Davis. For short updates, follow me on Twitter. -------- (Source: The Tree of Life)
Source: The Tree of Life - August 29, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Today's misleading overselling the #microbiome - U. Chicago on Alzheimer's and gut microbes
< a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i_wzC7Apkgo/V5IplrHZL_I/AAAAAAAKuOk/usgLJLhEnNARUqyVuE_Hp47pIhlyEZ1ygCK4B/s1600/overselling-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" > < img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-i_wzC7Apkgo/V5IplrHZL_I/AAAAAAAKuOk/usgLJLhEnNARUqyVuE_Hp47pIhlyEZ1ygCK4B/s400/overselling-1.jpg" / > < /a > < br / > Well, this is disappointing if not disturbing < br / > < br / > A new paper is out that has some interesting findings but the paper itself, and the press release form the authors (at University of Chicago) really goes overboard in misstating the findings. < br / > < br / > Here is the < a href="http://www.nat...
Source: The Tree of Life - July 21, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Overselling the Microbiome Award for @nytimes on thumb sucking, nail biting protecting from allergy
I am continually torn about handing out "overselling the microbiome" awards to many "stories" that are coming out recently on new scientific studies.  On the one hand, many of these studies are quite interesting.  On the other hand, a huge number of them oversell the implications of the work.  And for some reason it seems to me that studies that could indicate a positive role for microbes in some way seem to end up with more misrepresentation than other types of work.  Mind you, I truly believe the cloud of microbes living in and on various plants and animals are likely to play fundamental roles in all ...
Source: The Tree of Life - July 13, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Today in Overselling the #microbiome: Lick-hiker's guide to Inner Strength
Well, thanks, I think to Christie Aschwanden https://christieaschwanden.com for pointing me to this.Valio unveils Lick-hiker’s Guide to Inner Strength with travel presenter Ian Wright - hasan & partnersValio - Gefilus Trailer from hasan & partners on Vimeo.From the Press ReleaseInternational travel presenter Ian Wright is on a mission to seek out and lick the dirtiest locations in Europe for The Lick-hiker’s Guide to Inner Strength, a campaign that promotes the virtues of Gefilus, a good bacteria product range by dairy giant, Valio.Simultaneously almost certainly over-promoting the benefits of this on...
Source: The Tree of Life - July 9, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Worth a read: A simple proposal for the publication of journal citation distributions
This paper in BioRXiv is definitely worth checking out. Abstract is below: Although the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) is widely acknowledged to be a poor indicator of the quality of individual papers, it is used routinely to evaluate research and researchers. Here, we present a simple method for generating the citation distributions that underlie JIFs. Application of this straightforward protocol reveals the full extent of the skew of distributions and variation in citations received by published papers that is characteristic of all scientific journals. Although there are differences among journals across the spectrum of JI...
Source: The Tree of Life - July 8, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

A path towards the extinction of "Impact Factor"
From Ewen Callaway in Nature News:Beat it, impact factor! Publishing elite turns against controversial metric : Nature News & CommentBest part - the news from ASM"And in an editorial that will appear on 11 July in eight of its journals, the American Society for Microbiology in Washington DC will announce plans to remove the impact factor from its journals and website, as well as from marketing and advertising. “To me, what’s essential is to purge the conversation of the impact factor,” says ASM chief executive Stefano Bertuzzi, a prominent critic of the metric. “We want to make it so tacky that people will...
Source: The Tree of Life - July 8, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Agilent - where men are thought leaders
Well this is disappointing.  Was googling for a person and found this Agilent "Thought Leaders Program".  It is described asThis invitational program promotes fundamental scientific advancements by contributing financial support, products and expertise to the research of influential thought leaders in the life sciences, diagnostics, and chemical analysis.Alas it might be described better as "Agilent Male Thought Leaders Program". In my estimation (based on the pronouns used in the descriptions of the people and in Googling around for more information), of the 31 "thought leaders" 28 are male.  That comes to ...
Source: The Tree of Life - July 6, 2016 Category: Microbiology Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs