Slack / Private Message Drop — page 558

[2021-03-01 14:33:29] [Kristian Andersen] So, so, so sorry for her. [2021-03-01 14:35:01] [Andrew Rambaut] I am so livid. But I can't say anything as Emma is a former student. Someone needs to call this out. I can't believe the limited set of citations too - Franky Bollocks'' paper? FFS. [2021-03-01 14:35:47] [Kristian Andersen] Yeah - this really should be called out. Some of the worst I have read. What the heck went wrong here? Or are these people just so full of themselves by now that this seems ok? [2021-03-01 14:36:34] [Andrew Rambaut] ```The 'phylogenetic' tools used to track these variants were largely developed by evolutionary biologists to study the lineage of organisms. They were designed to construct phylogenetic trees that can ask, for example, whether flight evolved twice in mammals, or whether two large groups of bats began as one that then diverged. Now, co-opted to track a pandemic, the leaves of the phylogenetic tree represent SARS-CoV-2 sequences taken from individuals, and the tree grows with the number of cases ``` Now co-opted? [2021-03-01 14:37:11] [Kristian Andersen] Haha - "whether flight evolved twice in mammals" [2021-03-01 14:37:18] [Eddie Holmes] Here are some of my emails: [shared file(s): Screen Shot 2021-03-02 at 9.36.14 am.png] [2021-03-01 14:37:19] [Kristian Andersen] The best example they could come up with. [2021-03-01 14:38:53] [Eddie Holmes] And another. This is like a freedom of information act request: [shared file(s): Screen Shot 2021-03-02 at 9.38.02 am.png] [2021-03-01 14:39:14] [Eddie Holmes] The whole thing is complete and embarrassing shit. [2021-03-01 14:39:41] [Kristian Andersen] "We will *for sure* address this". Sure. Great emails Eddie - this is embarrassing beyond belief - in Nature, no less. [2021-03-01 14:41:36] [Eddie Holmes] They were so transfixed on getting it into Nature that they didn't see what they were doing. [2021-03-01 14:41:42] [Kristian Andersen]