Stuart MacGregor

Head of Statistical Genetics lab at QIMR Berhofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, Australia. Views are my own.

[Sasha Gusev @SashaGusevPosts]

Nice article in the New York Times (https://t.co/i4KSK7zm2u) on Akbari et al. Nature finding a large number of novel loci under selection in ancient DNA data. Here's what I wrote when asked for comment:

[Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences @AAHMS_health]

#AAHMSFellow @stuartmacgreg of @QIMRB_Institute is a world authority on the conduct and analysis of genetic association studies. He has led studies which have mapped hundreds of genes for diseases ranging from skin cancer to eye disease.

[steph panecasio ✨ @StephPanecasio]

probably Theseus, but it’s changed over time

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

A 5-year observational study of ~12,000 individuals with obesity taking GLP-1 drugs (without diabetes) with propensity matched controls
A significant reduction of all-cause mortality (HR 0.23, 95% CI 0.15, 0.34)
https://t.co/mbYzzdtOEP

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

Two impressive @Nature papers on the genomics of colon cancer, linking with outcomes, identify new mutations, likely role of diet and strengthen the case for sequencing to be used in medical practice
https://t.co/zM0VTo9tht
https://t.co/rIJwzc5JWe

[Ethan Mollick @emollick]

Kind of a big deal: GPT-4 simulates people well enough to replicate social science experiments with high accuracy

Note this is done by having the AI prompted to respond to survey questions as a person given random demographic characteristics & surveying thousands of "AI people"

[Paul Graham @paulg]

Cigarette sales and lung cancer deaths are the same curve, shifted 25 years.

[Estonian Biobank @ESTbiobank]

Today we opened a web portal for our 210,000 biobank participants! We currently return results on:
- Genetic & cumulative risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes;
- Pharmacogenetics reports;
- Ancestry information;
- Fun facts, e.g.caffeine metabolism & % Neanderthal.

[Stuart MacGregor @stuartmacgreg]

Sobering reading for any one who has put countless hours into grant writing (or been on a review panel)

[Dr Christopher Madan 🐘🧠💻 (he/him) @cMadan]

"A random half of panelists were shown a CV and only a one-paragraph summary of the proposed research, while the other half were shown a CV and a full proposal. We find that withholding proposal texts from panelists did not detectibly impact rankings."
https://t.co/IVXjvGqUDI

[Stuart MacGregor @stuartmacgreg]

@drjosephpowell @nhmrc Congratulations Joseph. Very well deserved.

[Giulio Genovese @freeseek82]

After 20 years and 42 days, Illumina's patent covering DNA microarray normalization, clustering, and genotyping, together known as Illumina GenCall, filed on March 24th 2004, has expired https://t.co/v4s4Q4u9Pc 1/8

[QIMR Berghofer @QIMRB_Institute]

Congratulations to Professor @stuartmacgreg on being awarded a highly competitive national funding grants for crucial research into #glaucoma risk prediction.

The @nhmrc’s Investigator Grants were announced on Thursday...

[george davey smith @mendel_random]

Mendelian Randomisation (MR) is going to hell in a handcart, with an exponential weekly increase of papers with Mendelian Randomisation in the title, most of them nonsense. 25th April 4.30pm online or in person @ucl I'll talk about what should be done https://t.co/r8c16dbCqG

[Stuart MacGregor @stuartmacgreg]

@ProfRScolyerMIA @JWilmott38 @inespiresilva @amenzies9 @MattCarlino @syd_health @CPC_usyd @SHPartners @SydneyResearch @SydneyCatalyst @PathologyRCPA That's wonderful news Richard!

[MRC Biostatistics Unit @MRC_BSU]

Very sadly, we have learned of the death of Professor Peter Armitage, CBE. Peter, who worked in a forerunner of the Unit 1947-1961, was a pioneer in developing statistical methodology for medical research. Our annual Armitage Lecture began in 2003 to honour this special man.

[Oded Rechavi @OdedRechavi]

We will add an asterisk symbol next to our names with the caption 'These authors contributed equally to this work'

[Stuart MacGregor @stuartmacgreg]

@JaneMTiller Done! Thanks for advocating for this.

[Dr Darren Saunders @whereisdaz]

This means Australians are being left behind. Our future prosperity, health, environment, and security depends on it.
Australia being ‘left behind’ as federal research and development funding sinks to 30-year low https://t.co/mcsZICRlak

[QIMR Berghofer @QIMRB_Institute]

If you're aged 50-65 years and have a family history of glaucoma (affected parent and/or sibling) but no personal history of the disease, we invite you to be part of our study.

Apply here: https://t.co/nJJlturryj