Top all-time · #1184
Lior Pachter
Personal blog · liorpachter.wordpress.comsciencedata
Lior Pachter writes Bits of DNA, a personal blog at liorpachter.wordpress.com about science and data. Since 2014, 58 different Hacker News readers have linked it 70 times, most often “The network nonsense of Albert-László Barabási”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-12, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 31 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
Linked for critiques of network science and Barabási, commentary on science culture and James Watson, and explainers on bioinformatics topics such as read alignment and statistics.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- Called a classic, 'worth a read', 'good' and 'handy'; a 'good start' on read alignment; a starting point for Barabási criticism.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 31 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Reviews and commentary on computational biology by Lior Pachter
Most-linked posts?
- The network nonsense of Albert-László Barabási7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2015-05-16
- Mathematics matters6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2018-09-17
- The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014)6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2015-06-06
- The myths of bioinformatics software3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-07-10
- The perfect human is Puerto Rican (2014)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-01-15
- The Heroes of CRISPR3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-01-19
- Unsolved problems with the common core2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2015-09-22
- /2017/08/02/how-not-to-perform-a-differential-expression-analysis-or-science/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-08-05
- Open-sourcing bioinstruments2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-01-19
- How to profit from Covid-19 testing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-07-31
What Hacker News says?
It's tricky to pinpoint exactly when modern "bioinformatics" started. Some notable times are 1979 when the Los Alamos Sequence Database started, 1982 when that became GenBank, and certainly by 1990 when the Human Genome Project started. GenBank is "an open access, annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GenBank ). Most journa…
Comment linking /2015/07/10/the-myths-of-bioinformatics-software/
on “Publicly Funded Research Should Be Publicly Available”Submitted The two cultures of mathematics and biology as a story · 126 points
HN discussionA starting point: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-network-non...
Comment linking /2014/02/10/the-network-nonsense-of-albert-laszlo-barabasi/
on “Our brutal science system almost cost us a pioneer of mRNA vaccines”Submitted I was wrong (part 2) as a story · 95 points
HN discussionYou could start with Pachter's sendup ( https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-network-non... ), and the Wikipedia article on Barabasi has a short section on criticisms. I read his work, figured out it was nonsense, and put him on the list of authors whose papers I automatically threw in the garbage. Kim Lewis is another one of those.
Comment linking /2014/02/10/the-network-nonsense-of-albert-laszlo-barabasi/
on “Ask HN: Physicists of HN, what are you working on these days?”Submitted The myths of bioinformatics software as a story · 86 points
HN discussionBe careful about Barabasi: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-network-non... (FWIW, I had previously read some Barabasi papers and had come away seriously unimpressed, see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9555547 )
Comment linking /2014/02/10/the-network-nonsense-of-albert-laszlo-barabasi/
on “Graph Databases 101”Submitted Open-sourcing bioinstruments as a story · 77 points
HN discussionIt's like finance or law or any other field with some hothead cutthroat personalities in powerful positions. Where there is perceived power there is an attraction to people who feed off of power alone. Egos are a plenty and often cruel to others trying for the same goals. Lots of people are hypercompetitive rather than collaborative, and see any peer as an adversary or challenger rather than leaning into synergy. Th…
Comment linking /2017/08/02/how-not-to-perform-a-differential-expression-analysis-or-science/
on “Let's hear scientists with different Covid-19 views, not attack them”Submitted Unsolved problems with the common core as a story · 75 points
HN discussionCompletely agree with your comment, and here you have some more examples in the Spanish university to support your thesis: - Rafael Luque was suspended of employment for 13 years not because of blatant dishonesty but because he was signing with the King Abdulaziz University as first affiliation and that bothered his university [1]. The KAU is known for buying citations this way [2]. - Another example is Francisco He…
Comment linking /2014/10/31/to-some-a-citation-is-worth-3-per-year/
on “New head of one of the world’s oldest universities organized a citation cartel”Submitted The two cultures of mathematics and biology (2014) as a story · 61 points
HN discussionThe question is who is most likely to be right, a nobel prize winning Ph.D. specialized in molecular biology, genetics and zoology, who worked 20 years at Harvard etc, etc....or you. Lior Pachter (who that link was from) is a Professor of Computational Biology at CalTech. His other post about Watson is good too: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/the-perfect-hum... But you don't need to steal a Nobel prize…
Comment linking /2014/12/02/the-perfect-human-is-puerto-rican/
on “'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?”Submitted The network nonsense of Albert-László Barabási as a story · 61 points
HN discussionJames Watson - who was as close to royalty as you can get in science - worked very long and hard to get himself fired. It wasn’t just ”an interview”, but a lifetime of racism and sexism. Lior Pachter has a handy collection of quotes with links to sources: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/james-watson-in...
Comment linking /2018/05/18/james-watson-in-his-own-words/
on “'Cancel Culture' Comes to Science?”Submitted Align AI and Mathematics–To Something Else as a story · 34 points
HN discussionThis is not new, at least for biological networks. For example, see this paper by Lima-Mendez and van Helden: The powerful law of the power law and other myths in network biology: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2009/MB/b90868... and several blog posts by Lior Pachter: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-network-non...
Comment linking /2014/02/10/the-network-nonsense-of-albert-laszlo-barabasi/
on “Scant Evidence of Power Laws Found in Real-World Networks”Submitted My aperiodic rhombic bathroom as a story · 13 points
HN discussionA classic from Lior Pachter (not mentioned in the article) from 2014: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-network-non...
Comment linking /2014/02/10/the-network-nonsense-of-albert-laszlo-barabasi/
on “Scant Evidence of Power Laws Found in Real-World Networks”Submitted How to solve an NP-complete problem in linear time as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThere is a lot of pushback on Levitt's predictions that keep moving the goalposts. Let's just say his Nobel Prize wasn't in curve fitting. https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2020/09/21/the-lethal-nons...
Comment linking /2020/09/21/the-lethal-nonsense-of-michael-levitt/
on “I believe US could see rolling series of “Ireland events” over next 2 months”Submitted The perfect human is Puerto Rican as a story · 12 points
HN discussion>Failure to distribute the data and code not only greatly devalues the contributions of many scientists, it makes replication far more difficult, and opens the door for outright fabrication. Reasons why labs don't produce code: (1) Fear of being scooped; suppose you put in tons of man-hours into a custom population genetics association study for malaria in Africa, you don't want your competitor lab to sequence a bun…
Comment linking /2014/02/11/the-network-nonsense-of-manolis-kellis/
on “The unsung heroes of scientific software”Submitted Does researching casual marijuana use cause brain abnormalities? as a story · 9 points
HN discussionWorth a read, more in depth analysis of some of these studies: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2020/11/17/mathematical-an...
Comment linking /2020/11/17/mathematical-analysis-of-mathematical-analysis-of-a-vitamin-d-covid-19-trial/
on “Over 100 Scientists and Doctors Call for Increased Vitamin D to Combat Covid-19”Submitted The relative impact factor of glamour journals is 2.166 as a story · 7 points
HN discussionFrom a slightly different angle, Lior Pachter focuses on how science is often a pyramid scheme of sorts: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/the-heroes-of-c... >There is a more cynical view of the PI model, namely that by running large labs PIs are able to benefit from a scientific roulette of their own making. PIs can claim credit for successes while blaming underlings for failures. Even one success can fu…
Comment linking /2016/01/18/the-heroes-of-crispr/
on ““Heroes of CRISPR” Disputed”Submitted Mathematics matters as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI learned about Apostol's death from a post by a very astute mathematical biologist, Lior Pachter, who was once a student of Apostol's. The post is "The Ice Cream Cone Proof,"[1] which nicely illustrates Apostol's brilliance as a teacher. [1] https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/the-ice-cream-c...
Comment linking /2016/05/09/the-ice-cream-cone-proof/
on “Caltech Professor Emeritus, Author Tom M. Apostol, Dies at 92”Submitted In biology n does not go to infinity as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
