Everything you ever wanted to know about the measles surge

Canada just lost its 'measles elimination' status in the face of endemic and surging cases. Read my story for Nature.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03769-z 

mini FAQ

Q: There are a lot of news stories about people deciding not to get vaccinated. Is that behind the surge?

A: Yes and no. First, the rate of measles vaccination globally is going up, not down. (It took a hit during the pandemic and is still recovering back to pre-pandemic levels, but it is rising).

Most countries, including Canada and the US and the UK, don't hit the recommended level of 95% vaccination. But that's usually okay. You can beat back the disease in a country with a much lower level of vaccination than that. Overall, Canada and the US and the UK do have fairly high vaccination rates, around 90%.

BUT outbreaks do often happen in spots/communities where vaccination levels are low and so one case spreads. That's hard to fight back against.

Q: Is Canada doing really badly for measles?

A: Yes and no. Very badly indeed for Canada -- it's the worst surge in decades. But other countries have seen and do see far worse. The top country for measles this year is Yemen, with about 200,000 cases; Canada has seen just under 5,000. Globally, 2024 was worse for measles caseloads than 2025, and 2019 was far worse. In 2024 Europe was particularly hard hit, and in 2019 Africa had a lot of cases.

Q: Will the US follow?

A: Maybe. The Texas outbreak happened in January 2025, and if cases keep going to January 2026 then they too will loose their 'elimination status'. 

Q: what should we do about it?

A: get your kids vaccinated! While it's true that even a relatively high national level of vaccination isn't bomb-proof protection against outbreaks, vaccination will help your child and their friends and everyone in your community. Don't be part of the 'gaps' in coverage that let outbreaks happen.  

 

Highly Cited Researchers list gets shaken up

The creators of an influential list of highly cited researchers have shaken up their methodology this year, taking a swipe at scientists who associate with those linked to possible ethical breaches. The new rules have allowed the field of mathematics to return to the list, after being excluded for the past two years owing to concerns over suspicious citation patterns.

Read my news piece in Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03691-4

On a related note, see also my Q&A in FQXI with the chair of a working group on mathematical publishing. 

 

Beating back fraud in mathematics

When people think of scientific fraud, the field of mathematics doesn't ordinarily leap to mind. Mathematicians don't publish very often, and face less pressure to 'publish or perish' than many academics. They don't often fight for spots in Nature or Science. There is less money involved, too: mathematicians have relatively small grants, require no expensive laboratories, and risk no pharmaceutical profits with their work. A faked mathematical equation is surely easier to spot than, say, a set of faked experimental data. Why would anyone publish a fraudulent mathematics paper?

But the field is not immune to ethical problems—in fact, it is unusually vulnerable to them. In October, a joint working group of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) released a scathing report on poor publishing practices in mathematics. They published two companion papers in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society taking a hard look at fraud and how to fight it.

I spoke with the head of that working group, Ilka Agricola, chair of the IMU's committee on publishing and a physicist and mathematician at the University of Marburg, in Germany. Here is our Q&A on the Foundational Questions Institute news site.

https://qspace.fqxi.org/articles/281/beating-back-fraud-in-mathematics

The tasty fats in cat poo coffee

This was a surprisingly fascinating thing to research and write.

The wildly-expensive and exotic brew of civet coffee is made from beans that have been eaten, digested and excreted by civet cats across Asia. It's a strange and possible dangerous practice. These researchers are helping to work out what makes the coffee taste distinctive, while hoping to protect the welfare of the civet cats.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03467-w

Fun fact: civet coffee isn’t the only delicacy that utilizes animal excretions. Thai Black Ivory coffee uses beans eaten and pooped by elephants; Peruvian coati coffee has passed through a coatis, a local relative of the racoon; some favour coffee beans that have been excreted by bats, and some Chinese teas are enhanced with insect droppings. Honey comes from bee excretions, and Argan oil from the pits of olive-like fruits consumed by goats in Morocco.

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The AI Paper Proofers

Chatbots and large language models are being used to fact-check scientific work, but how effective are they? And is this a good idea?

My article for the Foundational Questions Institute. https://qspace.fqxi.org/articles/280/the-ai-paper-proofers 

AI in media, education and science

I will be speaking at this upcoming panel event in celebration of the anniversary of UBC's school of journalism: https://jwam.ubc.ca/events/event/ai-in-our-world-shaping-media-education-and-science/

Oct 9

6-8:30pm

UBC downtown, Robson Square Theatre

Biodiversity Research Centre open house

I have been working to coach a set of amazing researchers to give fascinating public talks at this upcoming event, Sept 17 at the University of British Columbia: https://biodiversity.ubc.ca/events/biodiversity-research-centre-symposium-and-open-house

Highlights will include:

- how understanding the social lives of viruses gives us new tools to fight them

- how animals have shifted to be more nocturnal in the face of scary humans

- how bringing biodiversity to agriculture can help solve the global food crisis 

- why sturgeon are eating themselves to death 

- how gut bacteria might help save polar bears from climate stress 

- what heat stress does to plants, and the global limit we shouldn't cross 

- the kingdom of life you never knew about

- and... the sex lives of guppies 

See you there! 

Putting 'good fire' back on the land

 Read my Q&A with UBC forest ecologist and fire researcher Lori Daniels in Yale E360 

https://e360.yale.edu/features/lori-daniels-interview

Interstellar!

When I heard the news that an interstellar object had been spotted hurtling into our Solar System, my thoughts were:

1) Okay. Surely that's not a rare thing, is it?

2) Uh... is it an alien?

Turns out that while there probably ARE a tonne of objects winging their way through our Solar System from 'elsewhere', it is rare indeed to spot them: this is only the third interstellar object we've ever seen (hence the name, 3I/ATLAS, with ATLAS being the telescope project that spotted it).

And no, it's not an alien spacecraft, although there was a moment of speculation about instellar object number one, back in 2017, that the weird cigar-shaped strangely-accelerating object was alien. It wasn't.

It was great fun to chat with the people involved with the find. Check my story at Nature: 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02141-5

PS - perhaps one day there will be something out there, somewhere, that notices Voyager 1 or 2 passing by, and yes indeed we will be the alien visitors... strange thought. It looks like Voyager is going about 1/4 the speed of this sucker.

PPS here's a great animation of our planetary orbits and 3I's trajectory. I asked: no, there is no chance it will hit Mars.

https://bsky.app/profile/tony873004.bsky.social 

 

Scientists work with virtual AI teams

Here's a fun piece: I had a chat with some scientists who have used teams of virtual AI 'agents' to help them formulate new experimental ideas, critique their papers, and run lab meetings to think through different aspects of their work. 

All felt that the adoption of LLMs into idea generation and experimental design is as inevitable as the adoption of Internet searches into science. But they differed in whether they felt the results would be dramatic or always beneficial. Chatbots might make things more efficient and help guide graduate students, for example, but they might also undercut learning, or take away the "fun part" of science, such as coming up with new ideas.  

My story for Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02028-5

Is ChatGPT making you stupid?

Okay, no, I can't answer this question; no one can, yet. But I got the chance to look at a fun new brain scan study of students writing essays with ChatGPT, Google, or the old fashioned way, using 'just their brains'. 

Unsurprisingly, students who wrote essays with a chatbot didn't show as much brain 'connectivity' (widespread talk from one region of the brain to another). In other words, their brains were less engaged. No shocker there. But there are some more subtle findings that are interesting. PS - anyone seen a study of how calculators change our brains? How about typewriters? YouTube? Cat videos? 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02005-y 

Lightning lights up the North

Is the globe getting more lightning? And if so, what will that mean for local ecology and global climate?

"In August 2019, something bizarre happened in the Far North: A massive thunderstorm produced more than a thousand flashes of lightning, including a record-breaking bolt that hit just 32 miles from the North Pole, the closest strike ever recorded. “It was a crazy summer,” says Rick Thoman, a climatologist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

It’s common knowledge that thunderstorms and lightning are more likely when it’s hot than when it’s cold; they are more prevalent in the tropics than in the Arctic. So, scientists wondered: Was the Arctic becoming more electric in our warming world? ..."

 https://e360.yale.edu/features/arctic-lightning-climate-change