📌Publication alert: In a preprint from the @23andMeResearch team, we conducted one of the largest GWAS study of Long COVID and identified genetic links of chronic conditions with Long COVID. medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

Academia is cruel because it selects for people obsessively interested in a narrow topic, but what’s actually rewarded is the ability to pivot fluidly to whatever’s new and fundable.

Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace. However, we live in a world where democracy is in retreat, where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting to violence. Maria Corina Machado – awarded the 2025 #NobelPeacePrize – has spent years working for the freedom of the Venezuelan people. The Venezuelan regime’s rigid hold on power and its repression of the population are not unique in the world. We see the same trends globally: rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarisation. In 2024, more elections were held than ever before, but fewer and fewer are free and fair. #NobelPrize

Exciting updates!! (1) I just opened my lab at Boston Children’s Hospital (Harvard-affiliated) (2) I’m hiring a postdoc focused on integrating GWAS and functional genomic data. Reach out if you’re interested or connect at ASHG next week! (3) Learn more at stroberlab.com

One major issue I have with encouraging students to “do research during med school” to earn a residency spot is that it cheapens what research actually is. It sends the message that research is something you squeeze in between learning physiology, primary care, surgery, and everything else. Good research takes TIME, focus and real intellectual investment. Treating it like a side hobby shows a lack of respect for what good researchers actually do.

I went into academia to search for truth. I left learning how to write safe grants, avoid controversy, and serve bureaucrats.

So, during the pandemic I had a young angry man who chose not to be vaccinated. He was convinced that his youth and vigour along with some questionable supplements would keep him healthy. He took no precautions and actually attended a COVID party.

Thank you to our customers and the @23andMeResearch team for this work on the genetics of #longcovid medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/…

Our blog post on the same work, for the lay reader. blog.23andme.com/articles/ge…

Sometimes I think that menu-driven statistical programs should not be available. They provide a false sense of competence and facilitate a garbage in garbage out approach to statistical analysis.

GPT is having a profound effect on how students write. Its verbose style, full of cliches and 'fancy', out of place vocabulary is in every paper and draft I read. A few years back, there were grammar errors and awkwardness -- but at least people had their own voice. Now, scholarship is getting full of robotic triviality.

Burnout happens when there is no progress. Burnout also happens when you have no visibility into how dots will connect in the future. Burnout is about not being able to close the loop after putting a ton of effort and not seeing enough results.

Journal editors be like

Interesting paper from 23andMe showing "the minimal contribution of non-additivity in the genetic architecture of adult human height." based on a GWAS of height in 3.6 million individuals. One caveat to note that is here the authors tested epistasis between only a ~1000 common variants that they found as genome-wide significantly associated with height. They did not search for epistatic interactions across the genome. Understandable, because the number of combinations to test would be astronomical, and even with a GWAS of height based on everyone on the earth would lack the power for such an analysis. So, the authors assume that if there are any non-additive contributions that should emerge from variants that are already associated with height through additive effects, which may not be true. But we will probably never know. But the consensus in the field is non-additivity contributes minimally explain the heritability of polygenic traits. Jabalameli et al. medRxiv biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…