Allison Cheney

Grad student at UCSC in the Vaske Lab. Research: pediatric cancers with a focus on brain tumors. Interested in science integrity.

[Allison Cheney @allisonrcheney]

@OxChaino @GRUGCEL I think it’s just a joke about prion diseases. Misfolded proteins (aka prions) cause a lot of diseases. To name a few: Mad cow disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and ALS.

[Florian @fvderop]

"More than 18,000 questionable images found in antibody catalogues of 15 companies" - It's stuff like this that makes bio research so slow

[Emma J Chory @chorye]

This one is hard to see.

The NIH Early Independence Award, one of the most competitive grants in the country for young scientists, will not go forward in FY2026. NIH says this is due to “administrative changes to funding opportunity processing and delays in approvals.”

[Bilu Huang @BiluHuang]

On April 16, 2026, the research group led by Alex Gao from Stanford University published a paper in Science entitled Protein-templated synthesis of dinucleotide repeat DNA by an anti-phage reverse transcriptase.

This study identified and characterized for the first time a bacterial reverse transcriptase named Drt3b, which does not require a nucleic acid template. Instead, it uses its own amino acid side chains as a "template" to precisely synthesize DNA of specific sequences.

This discovery represents another landmark breakthrough in the fundamental rules of biological information transfer since the discovery of reverse transcriptase by Nobel laureate David Baltimore and others in 1970. It not only fills a key gap in our understanding of biological information flow, but also opens a new dimension for deciphering the coding principles of life.

Congratulations to Team Gao on their outstanding work—this discovery is worthy of a Nobel Prize!

[Allison Cheney @allisonrcheney]

@juliet_turner6 @OxfordBiology @NewCollegeOx Congratulations Doctor!

[Sam Stein @samstein]

it's also kinda offensive to people who have worked for years on pediatric cancer research to suggest that they actually were just laying a trap to make Trump look bad for coming out against a CR. it's not all just a game.

[Sam Stein @samstein]

Wanna talk about heart wrenching.

Here is a leading pediatric cancer group TWO days ago celebrating the coming passage of the Gabriella Miller Kids act funding extension. It was just cut out of the CR after Elon/Trump demanded cuts

[Science Magazine @ScienceMagazine]

Exclusive: After 60 years, scientists finally know why ginger, calico, and tortoiseshell #cats look the way they do. https://t.co/lGeYTGG3Up @NewsfromScience

[Rafeeque @rafeequemavoor]

Free scientific illustrations for biologists! 😍

@NIH has released a library of 500+ free scientific illustrations to create figures, presentations, and illustrations!

all freely available in the public domain.

Retweet and spread the message!
https://t.co/p1bD1kxO7H

[Allison Cheney @allisonrcheney]

@spacekoala But doesn’t this happen anyway with neural crest cells waiting at the circumpharyngeal ridge for the aortic arch arteries? I’ve always wondered how that works…

[Mu Yang, Ph.D. @mumumouse2]

Another RETRACTION. The 95th that I caused in the past two years.

[The Nobel Prize @NobelPrize]

"School was not easy for me."

Carol Greider achieved success in molecular biology in the same way she overcame dyslexia as a child: with persistence and creativity. Greider is one of many Nobel Prize laureates that have dyslexia.

[Susmita Naskar @drsusmitanaskar]

This morning I received review of my PhD student's work and the reviewer felt the quality of the paper can only be improved by citing his own 25 papers. The more interesting fact is he suggested review for completely different paper. Some people take review process like a joke!!

[Allison Cheney @allisonrcheney]

And even more...

[Allison Cheney @allisonrcheney]

Looking into the authors further, I found that there were overlaps with another paper by the same group supposedly with entirely different treatments (topiramate versus curcumin):

[Allison Cheney @allisonrcheney]

And even those papers had even more overlaps with a third paper:
https://t.co/ZDhsHshfP5

[Allison Cheney @allisonrcheney]

Found a paper with some of the most obvious image duplications I've ever seen:

https://t.co/81hba57sqy

[Alec Stapp @AlecStapp]

One of the worst cases of scientific fraud ever:

>cardiologist fakes data showing better outcomes for patients who were given beta blockers before heart surgery

>Europe changes its medical guidelines based on this research

>turns out beta blockers increase risk of death by 27%

[Elisabeth Bik @MicrobiomDigest]

Delighted that this paper cites one of my first papers (1991)!
As an undergraduate student, I discovered this weird repeat - I honestly thought I had made some dumb mistake. We had no idea what this repetitive sequence was.
#CRISPR