Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Like all good MAHA devotees, he swore the hypocritic oath before joining.
Jack of some trades, master of none: public health, epi and genetics mainly. Arsenal supporter, hiker. Live in LA. If home is also where the heart is England, South Africa, Papua New Guinea. Photos are my own. Views expressed are my own.
618 followers 531 following 1,147 posts
view profile on Bluesky Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Like all good MAHA devotees, he swore the hypocritic oath before joining.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Ive tried! I just re-wrote two paragraphs making as many changes as I could and I still got a similarity score of 84%
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
I've just been told the opposite by a journal.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
If one writes a very carefully constructed, tight sentence/paragraph on some statistical methods in a paper, is it unreasonable plagiarism to reuse the same for a subsequent paper.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Apart from LA where it's summer every day.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
If you find $500 on the pavement (sidewalk if you must) and there's no-one around, is it OK to keep it? Asking for a friend.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
You've lost me.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
The statement "I can't not [do something]" is a double negative, but means something other than the positive. I.e. it means "I must..." And not "I can...". That's as interesting as my day gets.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... Hunting and fishing are barbaric recreational activities that have nothing to do with sport. A ban seems entirely reasonable.
Sasha Gusev (@sashagusevposts.bsky.social) reposted
I wrote about gene-gene interactions (epistasis) and the implications for heritability, trait definitions, natural selection, and therapeutic interventions. Biology is clearly full of causal interactions, so why don't we see them in the data? A 🧵:
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Something to make everyone's day that little bit better.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Powerful resignation letter. It is a pity that so few of the elected representatives of the US population have the same principles.
Barack Obama (@barackobama.bsky.social) reposted
This interview, which is also available to listen to as a podcast, provides a useful overview of some of the dangerous trends we’ve been seeing in recent months regarding federalization and militarization of state and local police functions.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Studies have not shown an association.... That's why the Rotten F Killer Jr has to launch his own studies to confirm his prejudice.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Agree with all of those.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
I think their biggest mistake was allowing divas in the dressing room to undermine Moyes before sacking him.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Authoritarianism or what?
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Just thinking about the different statistical distributions you get in populations.
Mike Inouye (@mikeinouye.bsky.social) reposted
Sept is approaching & I can already hear initial chats/enquiries for potential PhD studies happening! If you're interested in a PhD, check out our department @cam.ac.uk www.phpc.cam.ac.uk/education-an... We've a super interdisciplinary faculty spanning primary care, data science, epidemiology etc
Jason Moore (@moorejh.bsky.social) reposted
Did you know the Cedars-Sinai’s New PhD in Health AI Program earned accreditation earlier this year? www.cedars-sinai.org/newsroom/ced... #artificialintelligence #healthAI #healthIT #bioinformatics #phd #gradschool #compsci
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Nice one.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
But it is not all sensible. "Although Kennedy said that environmental factors are the main cause of autism, research has shown that genetics plays a bigger part". Well he said the epidemic is due to an environmental toxin (and the rise in [st 20 years cannot be genetics).
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
What is it with these right-wing, racist, anti-vax, anti-science people who think that ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine (or bleach) 'work'. It's a belief system where you don't believe A (for which there is strong evidence) but you do believe B (for which there is strong evidence against).
George Monbiot (@georgemonbiot.bsky.social) reposted
Fossil fuel extractors fight tooth and nail to prevent market forces from operating. They demand the equivalent of the royal monopolies once granted by the Crown, excluding competitors, enabling old technologies to fend off newer ones. Trump answers the call. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
2/n The main result is based on Fig 2. Almost all the reduction occurs in the first 6 months. It seems implausible that the association is a causal one. The PH assumption in the Cox regression presumably violated.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... 1/n This paper reports an observational study to evaluate cancer risk in people taking GLP1 receptor agonists using propensity score matching. The conclusion "GLP-1RAs .. associated with a reduced overall risk of cancer", hazard ratio = 0.83, P = 0.002. However...
George Monbiot (@georgemonbiot.bsky.social) reposted
It's not asylum seekers who jack up rents, undermine the NHS, hold down wages and keep people insecure. It's capital. The role of the far right is to shift the blame for decades of economic attacks by the rich and powerful onto powerless people who have only just arrived here.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
I'm gonna say that's an out of control panel.
Jo Morrison (@jomorrison.medsky.social) reposted
So some sad nasty racist has put red crosses on the speed sign to our village (and others), along with mid-spelt racist slurs. The village WhatsApp group is in uproar and several have reported to police and council. Someone else has scrubbed them off ‘with white spirit and righteous fury’.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Sure, but what do you really think.
Darren Dahly (@statsepi.bsky.social) reposted
Endorsed. I live here and people drive down Ballyhooly like it's a link road. *Loads* of evidence showing that slow speeds in urban areas save lives without appreciably impacting travel times. There is zero reason not to act on this.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
So have a rule that all money bequeathed to UK taxpayer is taxed as income and remainder taxed as estate tax.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Did I say that was unfair?
Prof Christina Pagel (@chrischirp.bsky.social) reposted
🚨1000 authoritarian actions. 7 months🚨 I've been tracking Trump's authoritarian actions. From dismantling democratic institutions to militarising immigration enforcement, Trump is reshaping America. In my new post I highlight key authoriarian attacks christinapagel.substack.com/p/grand-desi... 1/2
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
People call it inheritance tax, but it's not a tax on what is inherited, it's a tax on the estate before anyone inherits. Treating inherited money as income and taxing it as income would be fair. Bequeath your estate to many people in the lowest tax band and tax burden would be low.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
"When I had nerve damage in my arm and was struggling to type this column, I reluctantly booked an appointment with a private physiotherapist". There's nothing a physiotherapist can do to help nerve damage, that's why the NHS wont pay.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
What Rupert Lowe is too stupid to realise is that someone who is nauseous is someone who makes others feel sick. The person who feels sick is nauseated. Rupert Lowe is, indeed, nauseous. (I know that this is not now common usage but I like words to have specific meanings).
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
I think some of the most inspiring stories are those about people who struggled against the odds to get an education.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
4/n My colleague and I tried using ChatGPT to do the same and the answer was dependent on how the question was posed. After further correspondence we all agreed that the original formula (and ChatGPT) was wrong. And the moral of the tale? Caveat emptor!
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
3/n Specifically they uploaded the relevant section from the review and asked ChatGPT to confirm that the algebra was correct and to provide the reasoning. ChatGPT obliged. I went through the line by line reasoning and there was one jump that made no sense.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
2/n My derived formula was different, so I asked a colleague to do the same and he got the same as me. I wrote to the author of the review paper and suggested there may have been an error in the algebra. They responded to say they did not have the original notes, but had asked ChatGPT to check.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
1/n Problems when using large language correlations to do algebra: a 🧵 I was doing some calculations for a parameter in gen epi using a formula given in a highly cited review. The results were not quite what I expected so I went back to first principles to derive the formula myself.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
#science Why do journals bother with listing peoples academic degrees in the list of authors?
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
That's real impact.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
#WorldPhotographyDay The January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles were disastrous. The sunrise over downtown on the morning after the fires started was suitably apocalyptic.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Or indeed take a fine tuned racing bike and cycle it up a mountain trail.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Yeah, but's what's the Altimetrics?
Daniel Lakens (@lakens.bsky.social) reposted
An abbreviation (ABB) in a journal article (JA) or Grant Application (GA) is rarely worth the words it saves. Every ABB requires cognitive resources (CR) and at my age by the time I'm halfway through a JA or GA I no longer have the CR to remember what your ABB stood for.
Lewis Goodall (@lewisgoodall.com) reposted
Spot on from Olga Rudenko: "Russia could end the war in Ukraine at any moment by stopping its attacks and withdrawing its forces. By simply going home. Mr. Putin could end it with a phone call." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/o...
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Worth a read (it is long).
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
I'm a reasonably intelligent scientist. I have no idea what that means. If you want engagement you might try summarizing in plain English.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Not enough investment from crooked oligarchs or Arabs to be able to compete ;-)
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
There's an article about me in The Onion.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Top 8 - if they have a better team! That doesn't seem v ambitious.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
And?
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
I do not agree with your improvement for the title of the sequencing costs slide. It's way too long. While reading it the audience is not listening. Also, people may not read the title before looking at the figure. Why do you need a title at all? Put up the graph and say "this graph shows .....".
Retraction Watch (@retractionwatch.com) reposted
‘Tin Man Syndrome’ case plagiarized from April Fools hoax, sleuths say
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
#birdsoftheworld #nature Photo of a very handsome greater kestrel taken in northern Namibia to set you up for the weekend.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Why?
Ketan Joshi (@ketanjoshi.co) reposted
can you imagine trying to convince the average skepti-dude in the year 2010 that this is what summer europe will look like in 2025
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
How's the BMI going?
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Rhubarb crumble remains a mainstay of my culinary repertoire (not that rhubarb often found in my local West Hollywood supermarket).
The Onion (@theonion.com) reposted
Fun Getaway With Murderous Dictator Just What Exhausted Trump Been Needing
John Oxley (@joxley.jmoxley.co.uk) reposted
Interesting how you never see the head of this school on Question Time or elsewhere opining on the culture-war topic of the day.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
D-hacking
Marie Le Conte (@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com) reposted
ohhhh no the perils of being overly friendly got talking to this middle-aged white woman on the tube about the lack of aircon and how hot it was, then we moved onto the lack of investment into TfL and she went "well we all know where the money's going don't we" wincing, I asked her what she meant
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre... Trump is a facist and most people don't seem very bothered.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
That's a two tier cat care system.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Clustering solved some peoples need to gets lots of citations: I give you the intrinsic subtypes of breast cancer.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Have you got yourself a pig too?
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
The illness care system in the US is designed primarily to enable some people to get rich. MAHA is doing the same with the public health system.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
This little creature needs to go back to its cammouflage coach. #nature #insects
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
#prostatecancer
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Admit it: No one really likes reading The Spectator.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
www.bbc.com/news/article... Perhaps if more clinicians use the well validated PREDICT prostate tool prostate.predict.cam/tool this would be less of a problem. As always, we are always happy to accept donations to pay for maintenance of the website and ongoing development. DM me
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
#birdsoftheworld #nature I think this ones a red breasted sap sucker. Seen in the Inyo National Forest in central California.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Cancer ascertainemnt in the All of US cohort is based on the EHR not linkage to cancer registries. We have explored the implications for genetic association studies of varying sensitivity/specificity of different case definition criteria. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Maarten van Smeden (@maartenvsmeden.bsky.social) reposted
If you think AI is cool, wait until you learn about regression analysis
Carl T. Bergstrom (@carlbergstrom.com) reposted
1. "'Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy," Kennedy said." It's literally a vital feature of both science and of representative democracy. I've written a fair bit about trust in expertise as a vital mechanism in the collective epistemology of science.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
There's meta-meta-meta science and there's better meta-meta-science. But most importantly there's better not meta-meta-science.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
www.bbc.com/future/artic... A one word article is all that's needed for this BBC headline. No.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Fair enough, but it's only those aged 85+ that have a poorer record than the under 35 age group (Chart 3a), and 71-75 year olds appear to be the best. Testing those older than (say) 75 is not going to have much effect on total collisions (Chart 3b). + issues with level of impairment to intervene.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Given the accident rate of young men worrying about reaction times of older drivers seems inequitable.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Trump says he's going to clean up the streets in DC by removing homeless and jailing criminals. I wonder which jail he has chosen for himself.
Prof Gavin Yamey (@gavinyamey.bsky.social) reposted
RFK Jr must resign and I believe those of us who work in healthcare, public health, health research, or any related field should demand his resignation
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
The head of the WBC wants to find ways to make safer a sport where the aim is to give your opponent a serious head injury. The way to make it safer is to ban it. Fighting of any kind has no place in a civil society. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/boxing...
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
I'm not familiar with that metaphor, what does it mean?
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Equally incredible that a rabies jab costs $21000. How can that possibly be justified?
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Genius caption.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
As dignified as Trump is an embarrassment.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social)
Firday night jazz with a wee whisky. Wonderful. jazznow.bandcamp.com/album/gravity
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Enjoy!
CIFOR-ICRAF (@cifor-icraf.org) reposted
💡Did you know? Planting trees on farms creates corridors that species use to move from one protected area to another. And farmers, in turn, reap the benefits in soil health, erosion control and proximity to pollinators. Learn more: 🔗https://bit.ly/44d8ZFg #TreesPeoplePlanet
Hetan Shah (@hetanshah.bsky.social) reposted
The slide continues www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
Name the book.
Paul Pharoah (@paulpharoah.bsky.social) reply parent
A question that is way beyond my pay grade?