Adriano Aguzzi
@AdrianoAguzzi
Physician, Prof of Neuropathology, mountain biker, prion researcher, sepsis survivor. Posts orthogonal to my employer's.
It gives me much satisfaction that I'm faster commuting Appenzell-St.Gall by bike than by train. Although in fairness you don't have to be Gino Bartali or Fausto Coppi to beat the Appenzeller Bahn😆
If you want to make sure that nobody understands your results, draw them as a Circos plots. Their inventor is permanently residing in the 7th circle of visualization hell. 😆
Some students can be ridiculously hypersecretive about their research (like concealing gene lists that are anyway in the public domain). Over time, they realize that not only nobody will steal their ideas, but that they'll be lucky if anybody is interested in them.
Over the past 20 years, conceptual advances in prion biology have been modest and rare. Every step of the prion life cycle is still a black box. This is bad, because understanding these steps would allow us to exploit their weaknesses and devise treatments.
Last year I was hospitalized in the ICU with sepsis and my survival was unclear, so I wrote a testament (including a sizeable endowment to EMBO for a postdoctoral fellowship). Now I am back to riding >200 km/wk. The fellowship will eventually come, but not right now (sorry!) 😆
1. PI proposes genome-wide arrayed CRISPR screen (2x21,000 assays). 2. Student does 1 plate (384 assays), finds a potential candidate, refuses to go on and switches to hypothesis-testing. 3. PI implores to continue the screen. 4.student reluctantly does another plate. 5. Repeat
OK but the hypocrisy starts with the journals. How honest is it to send you automated requests to review papers outside your expertise, masquerading as letters from humans? (and then sending you daily reminders for the following 2 weeks). Live by the bots, die by the bots.
Researchers have been sneaking secret messages into their papers in an effort to trick AI tools into giving them a positive peer-review report Read the full story: go.nature.com/4eVTIwC
A few axioms about supplements: 1. If you are poor, don't waste your money on supplements. 2. If you're rich, don't waste your money on supplements. 3. Every supplement peddler has an agenda: greed. This can include even Stanford professors.
"Magnetic brick". Aguzzi, 2025 (methacrylate and neodymium).
Uncontroversial tweet from the (self-appointed) Tourism Office of Appenzell.
A powerful motivator to enter a new research field is the disease of a loved one. This can benefit everybody because the newcomers bring new ideas and infuse new energy to a staid field of research. (That’s why I, a neuropathologist, founded a company to treat peanut allergies).