Valentin Rodionov

Valentin Rodionov

@arbitraryeffect.bsky.social

Chemist. Neurodivergent. Orcophobe. Hand-tool woodworker. Faculty @ CWRU Macro. Founder @intellicat.ai

2K followers1.2K following786 posts

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Federal funding for science ensures that scientific agendas respond to the wants and needs of scientists and the public. We do not want to live in a society where the scientific agenda is set by a handful of billionaires.

Colette Delawalla, PhD@cdelawalla.bsky.social

It’s time to have a serious conversation about this shift in philanthropic dollars to fund science, in the broader context of the Trump administration’s war on science as a public good. Thank you to @heidiledford.bsky.social for covering this. MY HOT TAKES 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Valentin Rodionov reposted

I've been working a lot on nitrile to aldehyde conversion reactions, which has allowed me to do some pretty vanadium chemistry for the first time #vanadium #chemistry #chemsky #nitrile #aldehyde

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Very few people win the Fields Medal since it is awarded only every four years. But there is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_... Ignorant, racist, asshole.

en.wikipedia.orgMaryam Mirzakhani - Wikipedia
The Bulwark@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

Valentin Rodionov reposted

What kind of numerals do you use when you make up fake statistics about vaccine harms, you shitweasel?

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

Valentin Rodionov reposted

"AI can draft an essay for you, especially if you give it a high quality prompt." Really? This is what MIT thinks high schoolers should learn? MIT's "Day of AI" dayofai.org provides materials for K-12 teachers and claims to have reached over 5,000,000 students to date. 1/2

Valentin Rodionov reposted

In the last few weeks i've been bombarded with emails from people who have minor tech support problems. ChatGPT is telling them to email me, writing their emails, and compiling "evidence packets" after convincing them they have stumbled on a major story: www.404media.co/chatgpt-keep...

404media.coChatGPT Keeps Telling People 404 Media Can Solve Their Tech Support ProblemsBecause big tech doesn't do customer service, we are being inundated with AI-generated emails begging us for help.

Valentin Rodionov reposted

RFK Jr. is not even close to being done with destroying public health. Republican Congresspeople are 100% behind him in this effort. Vote for public health.

Jake Scott, MD@jakescottmd.bsky.social

HHS wants a new Medicare code that pays doctors extra only when they attribute a patient’s symptoms to a vaccine. Vaccine critics say doctors are paid to push vaccines. We aren’t. Under this code, we’d be paid to blame them. My new piece in @cidrap.bsky.social: www.cidrap.umn.edu/childhood-va...

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Dr Janelle Ayres looks like Trump's vision of a proper doctor.

Sholto David@sholtodavid.bsky.social

Absolutely brutal: Over four years in review with Nature. Still published with a copy and paste error between experimental groups. Checked everything but the raw data I suppose. pubpeer.com/publications...

Valentin Rodionov reposted

LLMs, asked to "peer" review 200 papers published this year in top science and medicine journals, either rejected or recommended major revisions 76% of the time. Telling the LLMs the paper was a revision paper made them much more generous. arxiv.org/abs/2610.31414

Valentin Rodionov reposted

What’s absolutely fascinating—& entirely predictable—is that the MAHA kooks (RFK Jr, Bhattacharya, etc.) used to say that it’s important to do proper RCTs & it’s important to get rid of financial conflicts of interest in medicine, but now that they run the health system they think the opposite 🧐

Dorit Reiss@doritreiss.bsky.social

Kennedy's FDA is looking to put on the market unlicensed peptides without asking for clinical trials - in spite of claims of harms from them. via @amymaxmen.bsky.social @kff.org kffhealthnews.org/public-healt...

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Huh #chemsky

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com

For decades, scientists believed that plastics were some of the safest materials around. Now, a new study shows just how flawed that assumption was. A range of studies have found links between microplastic exposure and various health problems.

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Sure but that's also what the over-leveraged oligarchs would want you to think. Someone has to go down with the ship.

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com

You don't need to check on your 401(k) daily — and doing so may backfire. “Frequent monitoring can increase anxiety and tempt investors to react to normal market movements rather than stay focused on their goals,” one financial adviser said.

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Whenever Real Clear Science links to a post of mine, I can tell from the comments that show up.

Mark Histed@markhisted.org

Wait wait! In addition to all this: Real Clear isn’t some spontaneous thing, it’s a rightwing site funded by the same far-right billionaires - Koch, Uihlein, Bradley, etc - that want to tear down the govt, incl to destroy US cancer research. Real Clear is part of the Project 2025 effort.

Valentin Rodionov reposted

"All animal experiments were carried out according to Institutional Animal Care Guidelines and were ethically approved by the Administration Committee of Experimental Animals, with the approval of Nantong University, Jiangsu, China." 🤡 pubpeer.com/publications...

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Starting to think that men around the world in democracies should perhaps not have the vote. I'd surrender my vote if it meant that the rest of my gender couldn't vote for fascism at every opportunity like it was 1932.

Valentin Rodionov reposted

So in a huge surprise to absolutely no one, it turns out that NIH director Jay Bhattacharya's new journal based on the premise of letting his friends and only his friends publish essentially whatever they want is full of crackpot nonsense from retired cranks.

publichealth.realclearjournals.orgAre air quality‒health effect claims a statistical analysis fluke?There are literally thousands of epidemiology (observational) studies in the literature claiming that air quality causes adverse health effects, including mortality. There are three profound examples ...

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Dr. Sethi never held an NIH grant, finished her residency in 2017, and hasn't had a significant leadership position. In other words, an early stage investigator may direct an institute. NIMH staff and stakeholders deserve a more experienced leader. www.science.org/content/arti...

science.orgKennedy to select MAHA-aligned researcher to head mental health institute, overruling NIH directorHealth secretary wants a leader of “metabolic psychiatry” movement to direct $2.2 billion agency

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Another successful authorship sale. The authorship was sold before submission, so no changes to be picked up by the publisher.

Authorship for sale@author-for-sale.bsky.social

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Czech President Petr Pavel says a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine was “quite close” – until Donald Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel. 🔗 vist.ly/5pjp8

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Reminder: The lifecycle of carbon capture and storage is inconsistent with thermodynamics. Without removing all fossil fuel generation as an energy source, ccs will produce more carbon than it removes. And it removes it very badly and inefficiently. Entropy is a bitch and always wins.

Dan Ilic@danilic.bsky.social

For decades we were told that this plant could exist because “carbon capture and storage” was going to sequester carbon in bedrock — Dear Reader, they told that lie so they could sell gas.

Valentin Rodionov reposted

I am happy to see a downplaying retraction notice corrected with more candor. The emphasis on praising admissions of honest error to create exit strategies is pragmatic but has created too many face-saving efforts.

Retraction Watch@retractionwatch.com

Since her leave from Princeton, Porandla has remained in the spotlight, recently meeting with Republican Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne from Texas’ 24th District to discuss American leadership in scientific research, according to a post on X by Van Duyne that has since been taken down.

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Another surprising "seed-42 coincidence" We were reading this: doi.org/10.1057/s415... and noted a mistmatch of data in Fig2 with reported stats (e.g. the SD of x-coordinates for blue crosses cannot be 30 as reported). We extracted the plotted points to investigate... #psychscisky #science

Valentin Rodionov reposted

#Chemsky So, if you see a protocol that says they used KHMDS as a base, and the reaction was conducted in DCM... Thoughts? Mine are, Holy Fucking Carbene Batman! But am I overreacting? Is this normal?

Valentin Rodionov reposted

" Springer Nature felt that Scientific American’s criticism of Trump was threatening their broader business—selling subscriptions to their scientific journals. "

Emmet Fraizer@woolsox.bsky.social

Last summer, Scientific American's owners were stalking the site, making sure it wasn't being too critical of Trump. This summer, the magazine was sold and gutted. I wrote about it for The Nation www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Valentin Rodionov reposted

Also: of those who said "yes", 2% named Elon Musk..

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com

Every year, Research!America does a poll that asks, "Can you name a living scientist?" In January 2026, 76% of respondents said "no." Of those who said "yes," 5% named a scientist who was, in fact, dead. www.researchamerica.org/blog/can-you...