My interview with Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder

I had the great fortune of chatting with Jimmy Wales before Christmas about the early days and evolution of Wikipedia, his recent book on trust, and how AI might help (or hinder) the spread of truth.

Check it out in Nature today https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00083-0 

PS, I remember when my Nature colleague Jim Giles first did an investigation of the veracity of Wikipedia, pitting it against Britannica with expert human reviewers (https://www.nature.com/articles/438900a). That was a big deal at the time, and earned Jim his own page in Wikipedia (yes, I'm jealous). That study is referenced in Wales' book, and is still one of the foundational proofs that the concept (of getting random people to pen and edit encyclopedia articles) is sound!

 

Oldest known poison arrows

The world all seems a bit crazy right now with Trump trying to take over Venezuela... as an anecdote to global politics, here's a story about poison arrows :)  Paleolithic people were smart. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00051-8

Top stories of 2025

My annual year in review piece for Knowable magazine

https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/society/2025/top-science-stories-of-the-year-2025

HIGHLIGHTS

1. Renewable energy up, but emissions still crazy
2. Global vaccine coverage struggling
3. HIV: next best thing to a vaccine now in play, but funding facing challenges
4. Astronomy: Vera C Rubin Observatory hosts biggest yet camera
5. Personalized gene therapy gets started
6. Hopes for more transplants, including from pigs
7. First treatment for Huntington's
8. Metal Organic Framework sponges come of age
9. Quantum computing gears up
10. Pollution perils
11. Rethinking mitochondria
12. And... of course... dire wolves back from extinction? And a new colour called olo! 

Canada’s first volcano monitoring station

In the spring of 2026, Canada is set -- finally -- to get its first dedicated and continuous volcano monitoring station. And it's going to be right in my back yard.

Mount Meager, one of Canada's two most hazardous volcanoes and the source of Canada's largest ever recorded landslide, is just 60km or so up the valley from where I live in Pemberton, BC. The active volcano last erupted 2,400 years ago, and is today spewing hot gas and  sloughing rock and gravel down its slopes. It could erupt tomorrow, or tens of thousands of years from now. For lack of monitoring, no one knows.

 

The station is set to be just the first in a set of instruments needed to establish an early warning system for residents like our family. Read my story in the Pique:

 

https://www.piquenewsmagazine.com/local-news/canadas-first-volcano-monitoring-station-set-to-be-installed-on-mount-meager-in-spring-11583768

Neurosymbolic AI: the return of 'good old fashioned' AI

The latest buzzword in AI is "neurosymbolic", the strategy of combining the learning prowess of neural networks with the logical reasoning of symbolic systems.

My feature in Nature: 

This AI combo could unlock human-level intelligence

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03856-1 

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!