Elise Cutts

@elisecutts

Science journalist in Austria writing for Quanta, New Scientist, Scientific American, Science, and others. Signal: emc.7243623. Get my newsletter about the forces that shape how research is done, shared, believed, and acted upon: www.reviewertoo.com

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Elise Cutts@elisecutts· 9d

It is always Reviewer 2

Screenshot: n April 2023, Michael Börsch received what he describes as the laziest peer review in his 30-year career as a biophysical chemist. Reviewer 1 had given detailed feedback on his manuscript about an enzyme that drives the production of the energy-carrying molecule ATP, but Reviewer 2’s comments were, in Börsch’s view, “stupid”.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· 19d

One proposal EVEN HAS THE BIRD CALLS — and the range, and the little birb footprints — on the banknotes! Don't let them put Beethoven on the money when we could have BIRBS

A majestic banknote sporting a birb AND ITS CALL and its little footprints and its RANGE

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· 19d

COME ON HOW COULD YOU PICK ANYTHING ELSE Just look at this perfect birb

A proposed Euro banknote sporting a Wallcreeper lookin very cute

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· 23d

I ran a very simple analysis based on the calculation the team seems to have used for the 13% # for topic. And, wow: neither prestige, team size, or geography helped explain the gap! Actually, for some factors the gender gap would sometimes be ~bigger~ if women were distributed just like men. 9/n

Gender gap in acceptance rates at Science and Science Advances, showing women corresponding authors are less likely to be accepted; dashed lines show unadjusted gaps and solid points adjusted gaps for research topic, region, institutional prestige, and team size, with topic explaining ~13%.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· 23d

Here's the trajectories of women authors through each stage of review grouped by topic and journal. There's a lot of variation, and Earth science even sees the share of women rise with each step. But that's an exception to the rule. 6/n

Multi-panel line chart showing the share of manuscripts with a woman corresponding author at stages (submitted → editor → review → accepted) for Science (dark orange) and Science Advances (light orange) across topics, with declines across most fields—largest drops in condensed matter physics and

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· 23d

As the study pointed out, differences in the research topics men and women submit on explains some of the gap. Women submit more in the topics Science accepts most and less in the ones it accepts least. But the research team accounted for this and it explains only about 13% of the 1.1 pp gap. 5/n

Bar chart showing the share of papers submitted to Science with a woman corresponding author (dark orange) and woman first author (light orange) across research topics, highlighting lower corresponding-author rates (journal-wide dashed line ≈21%) versus higher first-author rates (e.g., cancer 42%, neuroscience 36%).

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· 24d

This AI-infested channel makes videos about fake 🧪studies. Here's how it describes itself: "We don't do hype. We do biology, real economics, and honest results — including when things go wrong" 🙃 (Use ad-block or something if you're going to search them. Don't let them leech any more ad $$.

A screenshot of an AI sloppy YouTube channel called Soil & Centuries that makes fake science videos.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· 26d

I do wonder if all of these researchers who want to flee to Austria know how precarious conditions for scientists are here — unless you are among the lucky few who gets a prof position. Most are on temporary contracts that can't be chained beyond 8 years at the same uni.

About 3/4 of Austrian academic staff (not including students) don't have permanent contracts. This chart shows just how few permanent jobs there are in comparison to temporary ones.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· 28d

Can anyone explain why Google is inexplicably directing people to read an old list of papers from my newsletter from August 2025? More people are reading this thing right now than the actual post from this week 😅

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jul 7

US tech giants spend more on R&D than flagship public research agencies like the US NSF and EU's Framework Programmes (Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe). I feel like we could maybe afford to spend a bit more on science. Just maybe. Link to chart: www.datawrapper.de/_/Ez65M/ 🧪

Line chart titled "Tech giants spend more on R&D than Horizon Europe and the National Science Foundation," showing annual R&D spending in USD from 2017 to 2025. Five tech companies (grey lines) are all plotted above two public research agencies (orange lines). Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon rise steeply from roughly $13–15B in 2017–2018 to between $53B and $60B by 2025, with Alphabet highest. Apple and Microsoft climb from about $6–12B to $32–36B. The EU Horizon line fluctuates between $9B and $24B, peaking in 2022 before declining to about $13B in 2025. NSF stays nearly flat and lowest throughout, around $6–7B. The overall pattern shows tech company R&D spending far exceeding, and increasingly diverging from, public research funding.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jul 6

Publishing has been in decline, shedding workers for a quarter century. But newspapers and magazines — the parts of this sector that journalism lives in — have been hit hardest.

Plot showing a steep decline in journalism employment over the last quarter century

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jul 6

This week's newsletter is going out at 17:00 CET. The headline story is not a happy one. The last 2 weeks were pretty grim for science journalism... in that time, 4 magazines announced they were being sold, shutting down, or losing their main source of funding. Consider this chart a preview:

An area chart showing the number of newspaper, periodical, book, and other publishing jobs in the US over time. Newspapers were by far the biggest category in 2000, with 800,000 employees compared to less than 400,000 combined for all other categories. After that, newspaper jobs (and periodicals to a lesser extent) declined steeply. Now newspapers and periodicals employ about the same number of people as books and other.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jul 4

Who is this Dr. Elise Cutts and why do I keep getting her emails? (but actually if you're going to ask me to review a paper, at least admit that you're scraping the bottom of the barrel so hard you're now hitting the pool of ex-scientists who did not even finish a PhD)

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jul 1

Here are the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers for journalists: Want to report facts and speak truth to power? Expect to learn 5-6x less than your colleague who writes "longform essays" for an AI company and maybe lose your job next year. This is fine.

Table: Quick Facts: News Analysts, Reporters, and Journalists
2024 Median Pay $60,280 per year
$28.98 per hour
Typical Entry-Level Education Bachelor's degree
Work Experience in a Related Occupation None
On-the-job Training None
Number of Jobs, 2024 49,300
Job Outlook, 2024–34 -4% (Decline)
Employment Change, 2024–34 -1,900

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jul 1

What's everything wrong with the media environment in one sentence? Here's mine: AI company Anthropic is hiring a member of editorial staff with an annual salary of $295,000—$345,000 USD.

Screenshot from Anthropic's website listing annual salary 295,000-345,000 USD

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jun 25

In times like these, you might be asking: How hot can Earth actually get? My feature touring Earth history to answer that question for @sciencenews.bsky.social last year feels, uh, timely ... and I just realized that it made the cover! Check it out to be glad you don't live in the Cretaceous. 🧪

A magazine cover for Science News showing a globe split into 4 quadrants, one showing a flood, one with a volcano, one with a pterosaur shadow in green, and one with ice. The title is How Hot Can Earth Get?

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jun 23

I got some encouraging email feedback on my newsletter relaunch 😂😂

An email subject line: "I like your fresh start! I am not a retired engineer"

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jun 22

I'm covering 5 key topics: - Metascience and innovation - Science under threat - Truth and the infosphere - AI in science - Bias, attention and vibes The newsy Monday edition (~300 word essay + links and commentary) starts next week. Next month, I'll add the meatier 2x-monthly Thursday edition.

A screenshot of my website's about page with more information on what each coverage area means. Read more here: https://www.reviewertoo.com/about/

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jun 18

Precarious employment is a problem for academics basically everywhere. But it seems REALLY bad in Germany and Austria. In Austria, the vast majority (~75%) of researchers are on short-term contracts — often under conditions that would be illegal for workers not employed at universities. 🧪

Grouped horizontal bar chart titled "75% of Austrian researchers don't have permanent contracts," comparing temporary versus permanent staff across six academic position types. Senior roles (Full Professor, Associate/Assistant Professor, Senior Lecturer/Scientist) are mostly permanent, while the far more numerous lower-ranked roles are overwhelmingly temporary: Project Staff (~11,000) and Lecturer (~10,000) are almost entirely fixed-term, and Postdoc and Predoc staff number about 6,500 temporary versus ~1,500 permanent. Source: 2023 Universitätsbericht. Chart by Elise Cutts.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jun 18

There are more papers being published than ever before but at the same time it increasing seems like the whole paper thing isn't working so well — I've literally never talked to a scientist ready to praise the state of publishing. (Chart by @chriscmooney.bsky.social, www.datawrapper.de/_/8Fd8M/)

A graph of publications through time, showing growth from about 1 million globally per year in 2002 to more than 3.5 million globally per year in 2024.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jun 16

I'm preparing for the re-launch of my newsletter and writing the About page has been very helpful for turning my spaghetti bowl of vague ideas into a reasonably concise description and sharpening my focus... ... it also ended up producing "vibes" as a core coverage area. Lol.

A screenshot of my about page in progress. It's a list of coverage areas. The relevant section to the post is this bullet:

Bias, attention, and vibes. What shapes belief in spite of evidence? How do beliefs shape policy and action? How do algorithmic feeds, AI, social platforms, and the attention economy shape how we see the world? Was shared reality ever a thing? How do cognitive biases shape the perception and acceptance of science? Why do people trust grifters and inject dubious peptides? Why is conspiracist rhetoric so effective? Is it all really just about vibes?

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Jun 1

🧪 Preprint claiming the genetic code wasn't universal until after LUCA: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... "The 'universal' nature of the genetic code is not a simple consequence of common descent from LUCA, but also involved convergence of Bacteria and Archaea through horizontal gene transfer."

Screenshot of a bioRxiv preprint. Header reads "New Results" with a "Follow this preprint" button. Title: "Tryptophan became part of the universal genetic code post-LUCA." Authors: Sawsan Wehbi, Nhan Ly-Trong, Andrew Wheeler, Bui Quang Minh, Dante Lauretta, Joanna Masel. DOI: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.28.728509. A note states: "This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review." Tabs shown: Abstract, Info/History, Metrics, Preview PDF.
Abstract text reads: "We evaluate whether tryptophan (W), widely thought to be the last of the 20 canonical amino acids added to the genetic code, was already present in the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). We reconstruct the evolutionary history of tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase (WRS), the enzyme that attaches W to its tRNA, and the related tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase (YRS). We identify and exclude sequences derived from ancient recombination between archaeal and bacterial YRSs. Diverse rooting methods, including a novel approach exploiting time non-reversible evolution, all place the root between bacterial and archaeal YRS rather than between YRS and WRS. This supports post-LUCA WRS origination in Archaea, followed by its horizontal transfer to Bacteria. However, ancestral sequence reconstruction suggests that Archaea were depleted for W while Bacteria were not, and enzymes essential for W biosynthesis emerged in Bacteria. This suggests that W usage originated in Bacteria, with later WRS emergence in Archaea allowing the archaeal genetic code to converge with the bacterial code. The universality of the genetic code is usually attributed to common descent from LUCA, but the final step making the code universal was instead achieved by horizontal gene transfer. This gives credence to similar mechanisms for earlier steps in genetic code evolution."

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· May 28

Hey Europe: AC saves lives Hey USA: Gun control saves lives Chart by @hannahritchie.bsky.social (see below)

A plot of heat versus gun deaths in Europe and the United States per 100,000 population in 2024. Heat deaths are excess deaths, not deaths recorded as "heat deaths" on death certificates. It is a bar chart. Heat deaths in orange, gun deaths in blue. From left to right the bars are: US — heat (1.94 deaths/100,000 pop); Europe — guns (1.20 deaths/100,000 pop); US — guns (13.27 deaths/100,000 pop, with about 1/3 of those being shaded to show they are homicides vs suicides); Europe — heat (11.22 deaths/100,000 pop).

The chart shows that gun deaths in the US and heat deaths in Europe are pretty close in frequency per capita. Europe is good at protecting people from gun violence, the US is good at protecting people from heat deaths.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· May 26

Update: the slides are getting very serious 😼

A screenshot of a presentation slide. There's a picture of a cat with a speech bubble: It's more natural to email a researcher you don't know personally if you've already commented on each other's cat photos on Bluesky!

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· May 26

I'm working on my slides for a social media workshop for scientists tomorrow and I feel like every other slide is some form of "you're going to waste a lot of time and energy unless you know who you want to reach and why"

A draft slide: "public engagement: what's your why? When I ask scientists why they want to engage with the public I often get an answer like this: I want to engage the public because I think it's important to share science with the general public." that's circular reasoning! Engaging with the public is not a goal in itself. Be more specific, or be frustrated. Inspiring kids to become physicists isn't the same as convincing policymakers to care about climate.

To the side there's a picture of the statue The Thinker thinking "why share science? hm...

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· May 16

If you feel sluggish and unproductive, just remember that hot spring archaea need decades to make a single copy of themselves. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Screenshot of a preprint on bioarxiv: Lipid Hydrogen Stable Isotope Probing Reveals Decadal-Scale Generation Times for Archaea in Hot Spring Sediments.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· May 13

The video is so cool that I won't even be offended if you just watch it and ignore my text. TLDR: scientists put a fish tank in a vacuum chamber and saw what happened. The result is a cool form of layered phyllo-like ice that could be 20 meters thick on Enceladus and a big problem for spacecraft.

A screenshot of a video of phyllo-like ice forming in a tank in a pressure chamber designed to mimic Europa or Enceladus. The ice forms thin layers separated by pockets of air.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· May 6

Ah yes, it's just LinkedIn casually suggesting to apply to this job training a machine to replace me. Uh. I mean: Thrilled to see the incredible disruption of my field! 🚀✨ So grateful for the chance for personal growth offered by this incredible opportunity to disrupt my own career trajectory. 🙏

A screenshot from a LinkedIn job ad looking for a "Freelance Junior Journalist - AI trainer"

posted 1 week ago. No applications yet.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Apr 30

I mean look at this: (Chart shows % increase in goblin mentions between GPT-5.2 and GPT-5.4 broken down by "personality")

Bar chart showing incidents of goblins mentioned by GPT-5.4 compared to GPT-5.2 broken down by personality. The nerdy personality has a roughly 4000% higher goblin incidence in GPT-5.4 vs 5.2. Other but much lower high increases were in Quirky, Cynical, and Friendly personalities.

Elise Cutts@elisecutts· Apr 30

That GPT would end up ranting about goblins mostly thanks to its "Nerdy" personality 100% checks out. Fellow nerds, correct me, but I do feel like we talk about goblins more than average.