Software

How to download an older version of an app on an iPhone

It is not super easy but manageable. Install ipatool and Apple Configurator from the app store, then login you macbook.

brew install ipatool
cd ~/Desktop/
ipatool auth login -e you@example.com

This prompts for your password and 2FA code. Then find the numeric App Store ID – the digits after id in the App Store URL. For Cross DJ (free) it is 584824960.

ipatool list-versions -i 584824960

The list runs oldest to newest, so the last ID is the current version. Resolve the last few IDs now to version numbers.

ipatool get-version-metadata -i 584824960 --external-version-id <span class="s1">887600803</span>

For Cross DJ, the result was: 887600803 = 5.4.0. Then download the previous version

ipatool download -i 584824960 --external-version-id 868350149 --purchase -o CrossDJ_5_4_0.ipa

Then prepare the iPhone – back up any unsynced app data, delete the current app from the iPhone. Connect the iPhone via USB, unlock it, and trust the computer. Drag the IPA onto the device in the Apple Configurator window. On the iPhone, turn off Settings > App Store > A

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Software

Image authentification

I have been interested in that topic since taking my first image of a cell culture in the mid 80ies. The original film negative was long the practical proof of authenticity. It is a physical record, and every manipulation would leave some traces that can be examined. It has limits of course but would have needed a lot of technical skills from darkroom compositing, retouching internegatives, or re-photographing a staged print (some that I have examined recently).

With the advent of digital photography RAW files became the “digital negative” (NEF, CR2/CR3, DNG depending on camera brand). Basically all of the hundred thousands images that I have under my desk have a corresponding RAW file to allow further processing. They are harder to fake convincingly than JPEGs, because sensor noise, Bayer pattern, and maker notes have to be consistent. But they carry no cryptographic protection, so an existing RAW is a plausibility argument, not any proof of origin.

With the more widespread use of cryptographic technologies several vendor signing systems appeared but are already broken in 2010 as the private signing key from a Nikon camera made it possible to sign any image. A similar fate occured by the Canon Original Data Security Kit . In 2019 the Content Authenticity Initiative was founded by Adobe; in 2021 then came C2PA. How does it work? A quick summary can be found at c2pa.org: Utilizing some JPEG Universal Metadata Box Format as generic container, the architecture enforces content integrity through byte-range and general box hashes, and some kind of video segment tracking.

The Leica M11-P seems to be the first camera using C2PA with hardware key storage. It stores camera, lens, date, time, and location in a C2PA manifest and signs it using a secure chipset holding a private key; Sony followed some months later. Then came the Nikon Z6III failure last year. Although signing worked well, the camera’s multiple exposure overlay feature let a non-certified image combined with a certified one be accepted as C2PA compliant. In one demonstration, an AI-generated image was signed. Nikon suspended the service and revoked all certificates. PetaPixel noted that a complete fix also requires changes to the C2PA validation tools themselves – photographing a deepfake with a C2PA camera app may still pass verification (arXiv 2407.04169).

The Nikon service seems still suspended while Canon began rolling out a C2PA Authenticity Imaging System for the EOS R1 and R5 Mark II in May 2026. The approach is different: While Canon's On-Device Firmware Engine seals the image cryptographically directly inside the camera hardware at the precise millisecond of capture, Nikon's cloud-based ecosystem relies on an active internet connection to issue and validate those digital certificates via its remote servers. This architectural split makes Canon’s system entirely self-contained and instant on location, whereas Nikon’s approach shifts the authentication workload to external network infrastructure.

Unfotunately not any manufacturer of lab documentation system has a bullet proof gel authenticity at hand – neither Bio-Rad Laboratories nor Thermo Fisher Scientific (the latter being currently under fire). Their audit trails are nice but do not reveal any tampering just like Zeiss microscopes.

The iPhone 18 Pro announcement last week also uses by sensor signing. The sensor itself signs the raw data, and processing happens in an environment that can be independently checked. It includes signed timestamp tokens; the digital negative is stored as DNG and can be shared undeveloped; when developed, a private cloud recomputes the digest and verifies the sensor signature back to the sensor CA; it uses hybrid RSA/ML-DSA signatures, a revocation system for compromised sensors – a major leap in 2026. Petapixel again "in typical Apple fashion, the company took these existing ideas and implemented them in a way that amplifies their effect on the photographic process." Limitations still exist as it works only on the main sensor. It is opt-in and unfortunately not available in the EU. Apple’s architecture is one week old publicly, and no independent security analysis exists yet. but it will be exciting to watch if major camera brands will finally adopt sensor signing.

Sep 19, 2026

AI generated overview of authenticity signing by camera brand.

 

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Noteworthy

A sense of humour is a survival skill

I am waiting for it every year, this time in Zurich: Excerpt from an email by nature news today

Last night, the Ig Nobel prize ceremony lived up to its promise to "first make people laugh, and then make them think". I've watched past events online, but it was another thing entirely to experience traditions such as 'the paper aeroplane deluge' in person. I wasn't sure about my choice of a front-row seat when I realized that many of those planes were heading for the back of my head, but it paid off when I caught one of the pairs of autographed cotton underpants thrown into the audience by the winners of this year's Ig Nobel in soil science, who buried hundreds of similar pants to investigate soil health.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Noteworthy, Philosophy, Software, with minor/major AI support

Scientific integrity investigators are the last resort

It's basically the same scene – backoffice journalists are fact checking reports. OSINT experts are verifying satellite and ground images. Science sleuths reanalyze numbers and tables in scientific publications. The stakes are high as integrity investigators are the last resort, the papers have passed already all quality checks at journals. It is a bit like the old "sub umbra dei" saying, there is only god behind them. And there is no room for error.

In the science integrity scene there are many mavericks or let's say colorful people. Most come from inside academia, starting or ending a career there. Some are from far outside it, and their motives are ranging from methodological curiosity, financial gain to personal grievance. What holds the field together is therefore not a shared background but a shared refusal to accept a published claim on authority of a journal alone. That heterogeneity is a strength for detection but also a weakness for credibility, because any single overreaching claim by one investigator is readily used to discredit the rest as "Pubpeer Mob". Again the stakes are high: A minor error in a published paper costs the author a correction. An unfounded allegation can cost a career, and it costs the field its licence to speak out. That asymmetry sets the working rules. There are no ten commandments but there are some working rules.

Methodological rigour comes first: every claim must be stated so that a third party can check it against the same source material and arrive at the same result. Image duplications get exact border coordinates, statistical objections need the extracted values on which a test was run. An eyeballed duplication anomaly is not a finding per se. Distribution checks only carry weight when the reported summary statistics, rounding conventions and sample sizes are documented well enough for someone else to replicate them. Replication is key not only for original work but also for post publication review.

Relevance is also a filter as much as rigour is. Typographical slips, reference-list errors, image panel mix up and stylistic issues dilute the serious concerns and shift the discussion from the science to the tone of the critic. These errors are annoying of course and do not add to the credibility of authors. But what really matters is whether a defect could change the value of a report and its conclusions: fabricated or duplicated data, misinterpreted assays and conditions, results incompatible with the stated design, analyses that cannot have produced the reported numbers, undisclosed conflicts that are directly related on interpretation. These are the high scores not the 1,800 issues produced by some automated software tool.

Everything else stays out. Statements about what the authors intended, whether they are competent, or what a pattern of errors implies about them are not verifiable. Even subtle threats are inappropriate; jokes and sarcastic comments are not wanted, I have learned that in the past. The finding that some numbers do not reconcile, that images have been used before, that the trial registration postdates the enrollment: this is the relevant stuff. Whether this arose from fraud, sloppiness, wrong antibody batch or software error is for the institution or editorial staff to verify, not for the sleuth writing the comment. Only journals, institutions or courts can ask questions that must be answered; the sleuth can document, but cannot compel a response. Usually he never gets access to raw data, neither can he interview a senior coauthor or a president which remains in the domain of journalists.

That limitation is worth holding on up, because it defines what a post-publication review can honestly claim: the published record, as it stands, does not add up. It can classify the level of the integrity violation but not claim to know why an issue occured. Fervour is the occupational hazard of the integrity field that is damaging: the investigator who is right about 99 findings and overstates the hundredth hands every previously criticised author a reason to dismiss the rest.

Restraint is not politeness, it is the condition under which the work retains its force.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Software

Link to a note from desktop

Apple does not want us to link from outside to a note although it makes sense to have a central notes management .

There is no documented, public URL scheme for Apple Notes. Apple has never listed one in developer documentation, and there is no deep link from iCloud.com or from non-Apple platforms.

But an undocumented mechanism exists and is reachable from outside the app. Just create a Shortcut Continue reading Link to a note from desktop →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Noteworthy, Philosophy, Software, with minor/major AI support

Scientific publishing in the age of interacting AIs

I will not repeat here what I already wrote about author vs journal interaction (here).

What I can share here is an ongoing review process where I but also a reviewer is now using a LLM – leading to pointless conversation.

Related in silico work has already been published by Anthropic scientists – they asked the agents to peer-review each other’s findings in a “build a game” experiment. Excerpt

When we humans learn new information, we use our discretion in determining how to apply it to future decisions. We might consider the content of the information itself, like how consistent it is with what we already know, or whether it appeals to our values-or we might consider the source, e.g. how historically reliable it has been, and whether it has a vested interest in changing our beliefs. Our world contains deceptive actors, and we need to apply skepticism to guard against them. AI models, however, lack this-and their more brittle epistemics affect their behavior toward humans and toward each other.

AI agents, while broadly knowledgeable, have limited exposure to or defenses against exploitative senders. Most applications test their capabilities in instruction-following settings, where their sole objective is to fulfill users' requests. But accumulated experience is needed to develop intuitions about who is trustworthy. As we move into a regime of multiagent interaction, where the presence of malicious actors is no longer speculative, we wonder: in the right setting, would agents be capable of similar epistemic vigilance?

In the aftermath I think, I should have included some whitespace LLM instructions as had been done now by a congress organizer [details at Casrai and Nature]. So the only thing I can share now is a semantic analysis of a reviewer who suddenly uses a LLM reviewing my farming manuscript.

In rounds 1 and 2 the use of a LLM can be ruled out. There are numerous errors, of kinds that instruction-tuned models essentially never emit:

  • Homophone substitution: “Where they really excluded?” for “Were”
  • Typos: “invididual”, “persona exposure”, “residental”
  • Number disagreement: “many paper have”, “these comparison”, “criteria … is not specified”
  • Article omission: “Present paper by-passes”, “Author fails”, “may be major reason”, “some of first studies”
  • Infinitive error: “makes the reader to wonder”

Yes – quite aggressive. Layered on that is a consistent signature pointing to German or Finnish: comma before an embedded interrogative or conditional (“interesting to learn, how fast”, “may be major reason, why classification”, “labeled as stratified, if they were”), the calque “Is it so that …”, German constituent order.

But by the third round the very same reviewer #2 appears unsettled, plausibly because his earlier objections had not landed. The prose changes at exactly that point. Not one of the 56 sentences he wrote in rounds 1 and 2 contains a semicolon; two of his eight round-3 sentences do (Fisher exact p = 0.014). Hardly rocket science, but it is a real discontinuity, and the orthography flips alongside it, from repeated “labeled” to “labelled”.

The argument drifts too, with amnesia. In round 2 the complaint was that rural-restricted studies had been wrongly labelled stratified. In round 3 the complaint is that rural-restricted studies have been wrongly labelled representative.

Most striking, a full sentence is carried over from Reviewer 1’s report of the previous round. Reviewer 1 wrote: “strong statements about previous literature, conflicts of interest, and possible publication bias. These points may be relevant, but they should be expressed in a more neutral and evidence-based tone.” In round 3 this reappears, now from the anonymous reviewer 2 as: “Strong statements about previous literature, conflicts of interest, and possible publication bias should be expressed in a more neutral and evidence-based tone.”

The evidence is thin, but the round-3 comments read less like a reviewer who has re-read the manuscript or the rebuttal – it sounds like a reviewer whose objections have been freshly assembled by a tool.

So arguing we in future paper submission increasingly against LLMs?

A Frontiers survey of over 1,600 academics found that 53% of peer reviewers have used AI tools in their work. Note also that Springer Nature instructs peer reviewers not to upload manuscripts into generative AI tools, emphasising that manuscripts contain confidential and sensitive information.

BMC Public Health is Springer Nature: If my reviewer #2 pasted my manuscript into a model, that is a policy breach independent of whether the resulting comments were any good.

Screenshot The 2026 Future of Peer Review Report https://www.silverchair.com/news/future-of-peer-review-2026/

 

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Allergy, Genetics

What if decades of immunology and infection research go in the bin?

Screenshot 14/8/2026 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.adf7702

The groundbreaking research of Stephan Rosshart (now in Erlangen) puts a question mark on several decades immunology and infection research carried out in inbred SPF lab mice: they are simply too clean to be useful as a model for human disease.

A new paper by Rosshart in TiM may serve as a primer into the field

Specifc pathogen-free mice have shaped modern immunology, but they exist in an ecological vacuum, far removed from the microbial realities that have shaped mammalian immunity. Recognizing microbial self and nonself as integral to the immune identity of the metaorganism reframes our understanding of tolerance, memory, and disease. Recent ndings indicate that microbial peptides play a direct role in thymic selection … This can occur either through the direct transport of commensal-derived antigens to the thymus … or indirectly via tonic IFN production that shapes the selection process.

see also “Mice and Men with Asthma“

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Software, Theology, with minor/major AI support

Zwei Schichten in der Logienquelle: Eine AI basierte Analyse

Die Logienquelle Q ist ein hypothetisches Dokument: jene rund 235 Verse, welche die Evangelisten Matthäus und Lukas teilen, ohne dass sie bei Markus stehen. Von den 661 Markus-Versen finden sich etwa 600 bei Matthäus und rund 350 bei Lukas wieder, wobei die genauen Zahlen je nach Zählweise (wörtliche Parallele oder inhaltliche Entsprechung) schwanken. Diskutiert wird, ob Q noch vor dem Markusevangelium entstanden und zumindest in seinen Anfängen in Galiläa zusammengestellt worden ist.

Als ich 1979 Theologie studierte, war Q nur als singulärer Corpus bekannt. John Kloppenborg hat dann 1987 eine einflussreiche Schichtenanalyse vorgelegt: Q1 als ältere weisheitliche Unterweisung (Feldrede, Aussendungsrede, Vaterunser, Sorget-nicht-Worte) und Q2 als spätere redaktionelle Gerichtsschicht (Täuferpredigt, Beelzebul, Jonazeichen, Weherufe, Menschensohn-Worte), dazu Q3 als späte Ergänzung mit der Versuchungserzählung. Die These beruht auf literarkritischen Argumenten: charakteristische Formen, charakteristische Motive und impliziertes Publikum. Übereinstimmungsraten zwischen Matthäus und Lukas spielen bei Kloppenborgs Zuordnung keine Rolle, ein Test daran ist also nicht zirkulär.

Eine unabhängige, quantitative Überprüfung fehlt meines Wissens; mir war es immer zu aufwendig, Texte einzulesen, n-gram und Übereinstimmungen zu rechnen. Für Details zum Textbestand siehe das Internationale Q-Projekt im Anhang.

Die überprüfbare Hypothese: Wenn Q1 und Q2 unterschiedliche Entstehungs- oder Überlieferungsgeschichten haben, könnte sich das in der wörtlichen Übereinstimmung zwischen Matthäus und Lukas niederschlagen. Diese Übereinstimmung gilt seit langem als bimodal, manche Perikopen sind im Griechischen fast identisch, andere teilen nur den Inhalt. Verteilt sich diese Bimodalität zufällig über das Material, oder folgt sie den Schichten?

Methode. Textgrundlage ist der SBLGNT (griechischer Text, dekodiert aus einem SWORD-Modul). Klassifiziert wird nach der vers weisen Zuordnung von Kloppenborg: 19 Perikopen Q1, 25 Q2, 1 Q3. Für jede Perikope wurde die Übereinstimmung zwischen dem Lukas- und dem Matthäustext berechnet: längste gemeinsame Teilfolge (LCS) auf Wortebene, normalisiert auf die mittlere Perikopenlänge, sowie der Jaccard-Index gemeinsamer 4-grams. Verglichen wurden die Verteilungen per Mann-Whitney-Test, ergänzt um einen Permutationstest und Kontrollen für Länge, Gattung und Position im Matthäusevangelium.

Als Eichung dient die Dreifachüberlieferung. Dort, wo Matthäus und Lukas nachweislich dieselbe erhaltene schriftliche Quelle kopieren, nämlich Markus, lässt sich mit derselben Metrik messen, wie das Kopieren einer gemeinsamen Schriftquelle quantitativ aussieht. 27 Perikopen, dieselbe Rechnung.

Ergebnis. Die beiden Schichten unterscheiden sich in der Wortlauttreue nicht signifikant. LCS-Übereinstimmung liegt im Median bei 0,34 (Q1) gegen 0,47 (Q2), p = 0,17. Beim 4-gram-Jaccard Test 0,03 gegen 0,12, p = 0,045, also gerade so an der Signifikanzgrenze und ohne Korrektur für multiples Testen. Was in der Doppelüberlieferung bimodal streut, streut nicht entlang der Schichtgrenze.

Die Markus-Baseline liegt bei einem Median von 0,349 (Mt gegen Mk 0,46, Lk gegen Mk 0,43). Die ursprüngliche Erwartung von 0,5 bis 0,6 trifft nicht zu; die Mt-Lk-Übereinstimmung ist die Schnittmenge zweier unabhängiger Redaktionen und liegt damit unter der Wortlauttreue jeder einzelnen Redaktion.

Gemessen daran ist Q1 (0,343) von der Baseline statistisch ununterscheidbar. Q1-Material verhält sich also exakt so, wie zwei Evangelisten eine gemeinsame schriftliche Quelle mit normaler redaktioneller Freiheit kopieren. Die niedrige Q1-Übereinstimmung ist kein Argument gegen eine Schriftquelle. Q2 (0,473) liegt über der Baseline, mit p = 0,043 gerade wieder signifikant.

Interessanter ist eine Grenze quer dazu. Q2 ist intern bimodal. Kurze Orakelsprüche unter 160 Wörtern liegen bei Median 0,62: Rückkehr des unreinen Geistes 0,83, Otterngezücht-Predigt des Täufers 0,82, Jerusalem-Klage 0,81, Jubelruf 0,77, Dieb in der Nacht 0,77, treuer Knecht 0,74.

Die langen Gleichnisse derselben Schicht liegen bei 0,42 und darunter: Gastmahl 0,15, verschlossene Tür 0,17, Pfunde 0,22. Derselbe Gradient findet sich in Q1 (kurz 0,38, lang 0,29) und in der Markus-Baseline, wo die spruchlastigsten Perikopen die Liste anführen (Feigenbaum-Gleichnis 0,57, Vollmachtsfrage 0,54, Leidensankündigung 0,53) und reine Erzählung bei nur 0,2 bis 0,4 liegt.

Interpretation. Die Ãœberlieferungstreue folgt mehr Form und Länge, nicht der Schicht. Kurze, stark strukturierte prophetische Rede mit Parallelismen und Reihungen lässt sich wohl nicht gut paraphrasieren, ohne sie zu zerstören – sie wird also zitiert, nicht nacherzählt. Lange Erzählgleichnisse und Mahnrede werden dagegen umformuliert. Beide Evangelisten haben denselben Reflex, und deshalb bleibt die Schnittmenge bei formelhaftem Kurzmaterial hoch, unabhängig davon, aus welcher Schicht es stammt. Dass die Weherufe gegen die Pharisäer, ein Kernstück von Q2, mit 0,26 zu den niedrigsten Werten überhaupt gehören, passt auch dazu, denn es ist der längste Block im ganzen Material.

Damit stützt die Messung die Zwei-Schichten-Hypothese nicht unbedingt. Sie widerlegt sie auch nicht, denn Kloppenborgs Argumente sind literarkritisch und stehen oder fallen nicht an Wortlautstatistik. Sie hätte aber eine Signatur haben können, die hier nicht gefunden wurde. Unter der Farrer-Hypothese (Lukas benutzt Matthäus, kein Q) lesen sich dieselben Zahlen ohnehin genauso: Lukas zitiert kurze Gerichtsworte wörtlich und baut lange Erzählstücke um. Die Messung diskriminiert nicht zwischen gemeinsamer Quelle und direkter Abhängigkeit, sie ist kein Existenzbeweis für Q, keine Datierung und auch keine Richtungsentscheidung.

Bemerkenswert bleibt aber der Q1-Befund. Q1 ist fast reines Spruchmaterial, liegt aber auf dem Niveau, das Matthäus und Lukas dem Markus-Erzählstoff angedeihen ließen, also niedrig für Spruchgut. Ob das an einer variantenreicheren Vorgeschichte liegt, an divergenten Rezensionen, an unabhängigen Übersetzungen aramäischer Vorlagen oder schlicht daran, dass Paränese Gebrauchstext ist, das lässt sich hier nicht entscheiden.

Weitere Einschränkungen. Die Baseline setzt voraus, dass beiden Evangelisten ein Markustext nahe dem kanonischen vorlag. Die Diskussion um Proto- und Deuteromarkus und die minor agreements stellt das in Frage. Die Metrik setzt schließlich eine gemeinsame griechische Vorlage voraus.

Anzumerken ist, dass Markus Tiwald in seiner Einführung von 2016 die Kloppenborg-Stratigraphie nicht übernimmt. Er spricht von Wachstumsringen in Q, von schriftlichen Vorstufen und von “secondary orality” und löst die Unterscheidung weisheitlich gegen prophetisch als zwei Aspekte derselben Sichtweise auf, nicht als zwei Schichten. Die Prämisse dieses Tests ist also im deutschsprachigen Schrifttum auch nicht Konsens.

Alle Analyse Skripte (SWORD-Dekoder, Analysepipeline, Markus-Baseline) stehen hier zur Verfügung.

  1. Arnal, William E., “The Rhetoric of Marginality: Apocalypticism, Gnosticism, and Sayings Gospels”, Harvard Theological Review 88 (1995) 471-494. Enthält in Anm. 12 die hier verwendete versweise Tabellierung der Kloppenborg-Schichten. Cambridge Core
  2. Carlston, Charles E. / Norlin, Dennis A., “Once More: Statistics and Q”, Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971) 59-78.
  3. Carlston, Charles E. / Norlin, Dennis A., “Statistics and Q: Some Further Observations”, Novum Testamentum 41 (1999) 108-123.
  4. Goodacre, Mark, The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem, Harrisburg 2002.
  5. Holmes, Michael W. (Hg.), The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition, Society of Biblical Literature / Logos Bible Software 2010. Einleitung unter sblgnt.com/about/introduction
  6. Howes, Llewellyn, “Make an Effort to Get Loose: Reconsidering the Redaction of Q 12:58-59”, Pharos Journal of Theology 98 (2017). Volltext (PDF)
  7. Ingolfsland, Dennis, “Kloppenborg’s Stratification of Q and Its Significance for Historical Jesus Studies”, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 46/2 (2003) 217-232. Volltext (PDF)
  8. Kloppenborg, John S., The Formation of Q: Trajectories in Ancient Wisdom Collections, Philadelphia 1987. Google Books
  9. Kloppenborg Verbin, John S., Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel, Minneapolis 2000.
  10. Robinson, James M. / Hoffmann, Paul / Kloppenborg, John S. (Hg.), The Critical Edition of Q, Leuven / Minneapolis 2000.
  11. Tiwald, Markus, Die Logienquelle. Text, Kontext, Theologie, Stuttgart 2016. doi:10.17433/978-3-17-025628-6
  12. Q-Bibliographie mit Volltextnachweisen: reconstructingq.com

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Joke

Reality surpasses anything one could imagine

Today’s inbox brought an invitation to Cappadocia: three days on epithelial barriers, the microbiome and planetary health.

I had assumed my column on the epithelial barrier theory would keep me safely off that list. Instead I found myself recipient number 361 in an unhidden To: field, which is itself a nice demonstration of barrier dysfunction.

From: Ismail Ogulur <ismail.ogulur@siaf.uzh.ch>
To: ismail.ogulur, ahaber, nacevedoc, emma…

Dear Colleagues,
We are delighted to announce that the EAACI Symposium on Epithelial Barriers, Microbiome and Planetary Health 2026 will be held from 1-3 October 2026 in Cappadocia, Türkiye.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappadocia
On behalf of the Scientific Programme Committee chairs, Cezmi Akdis (Editor-in-Chief Allergy) and Ismail Ogulur (Chair EAACI epithelial cell biology working group), we would like to invite you to participate in this symposium. We believe that your expertise and scientific contributions would greatly enrich the scientific programme.
Please find the preliminary programme at the link below:
https://www.epithelialbarriertheory.com/events
Venue: Cappadocia Marriott Hotel
https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/navmc-cappadocia-marriott-hotel/overview/
Main topics and speakers:
Immune and epithelial mechanisms in allergic diseases
Dr. Mohamed Shamji and Dr. Clare M Loyd
Epitelial barrier and immune pathways driving allergic diseases
Dr. Maria Torres and Dr. Umit Sahiner
Modeling and mechanisms of epithelial barrier function
Dr. Sandra Citi and Dr. Ozlem Celik-Yesiltas
Epithelial injury and microbiota-driven regulation of immune responses
Dr. Ali Onder Yildirim and Dr. Jonathan M. Coquet
Environmental and planetary drivers of epithelial barrier dysfunction in allergic diseases
Dr. Cezmi Akdis and Dr. Ruby Pawankar
Metabolism and biomarkers in allergic inflammation
Dr. Milena Sokolowska and Dr. Ibon Eguiluz Gracia
Mucosal homeostasis and epithelial barrier function in gut and lung
Dr. Nicola Harris and Dr. Ismail Ogulur
Microbial and dietary influences on allergic inflammation
Dr. Oscar Palomeras and Dr. Rodrigo Jimenez Saiz
Environmental regulation of epithelial barrier integrity and the microbiome in allergic diseases
Dr. Arzu Bakirtas and Dr. Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann
The symposium will be officially announced on the EAACI website within the next few days. Following the announcement, abstract submission will open through the official EAACI symposium webpage.
The aim of this symposium is to explore the critical role of epithelial cells and their interaction with the microbiome and immune system at the barrier interface between humans and their environment and to highlight how global changes, including climate stressors, pollution, and biodiversity loss, affect barrier integrity and human health. By bringing together leading international experts in epithelial cell biology, immunology, environmental science, microbiology, and translational medicine, the meeting will address mechanistic insights into epithelial barrier biology and the impact of extreme environmental exposures. The goal is to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, inspire novel research strategies, and translate scientific advances into preventive and therapeutic strategies for the rising burden of allergic, autoimmune and chronic inflammatory diseases worldwide.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Warm regards,
Ismail Ogulur
Chair, EAACI Epithelial Cell Biology Working Group
Cezmi Akdis
Editor-in-Chief Allergy
Past-Chair EAACI Epithelial Cell Biology Working Group
Umit Murat Sahiner
Board Member, EAACI Pediatric Section
President, Turkish National Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Ismail Ogulur, PhD.
Swiss Institute of Allergy and Asthma Research (SIAF)
Associated Institute of the University of Zurich
Herman-Burchard-Strasse 9
CH-7265 Davos-Wolfgang – Switzerland
ismail.ogulur@siaf.uzh.ch
World Immune Regulation Meeting-XIX
10-13 March 2027 – Davos, Switzerland
www.wirm.ch
Website: www.epithelialbarriertheory.com

 

So, my earlier satire got the structure right. It predicted an EAACI-sponsored symposium in late 2026, built around the epithelial barrier theory, with Akdis at the centre and an environmental framing in the title. All of that arrived: Cappadocia, 1-3 October 2026, Cezmi Akdis chairing the planetary session, the theme announced as “Epithelial Barriers, Microbiome and Planetary Health”. Only the country was wrong.

The satire got the content wrong by being too specific. It invented sessions on microplastic pathobiology, quaternary ammonium toxicology, electromagnetic effects on tight junctions and a digital detox protocol. Absurd, but each named an exposure that could in principle be measured and refuted. The real programme names no exposure at all. Nine sessions pass without a single quantity, agent or threshold.

What the nine titles do contain is a small vocabulary recombined: epithelial, barrier, immune, microbiome, environmental, allergic, mechanisms, just with the nouns reordered. Nothing in the list would change meaning if the words were shuffled between titles, each speaker could speak with slides from another talk – known as powerpoint karaoke.

That is the point worth publishing. A satirist inventing a fake conference has to give each session distinguishing content, because otherwise the joke does not land. The real programme is under no such constraint. It reads more interchangeable than the parody, and the theory it is built on has now reached the stage where a symposium can be assembled around it without anyone having to say what would count as evidence against it.

A scientific conference or a scam conference? The lines are blurring.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Noteworthy

Das war es dann

Vier Jahre Vorlauf, ein Anhörungstermin der Enquete Kommission, und am Ende steht der Satz, der seit 2020 jede unbequeme Frage zuverlässig entsorgt: dazu brauche es mehr Forschung.

Die Wirksamkeit der NPIs bleibt offen, dafür ist die Zuständigkeit für das Offenbleiben jetzt sauber dokumentiert. Immerhin schreibt sich “Epidemologin” schneller als das Wort mit i; der LMU Vorgänger der Epidemiologin hatte den Corona-Leugnern ohnehin schon den Hof gemacht. Man arbeitet also weiter an der Anschlussfähigkeit.

Epidemologin Prof. Dr. Eva Annette Rehfuess von der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München wies jedoch am Beispiel des Maskentragens auf soziokulturelle Unterschiede zwischen Deutschland und Skandinavien hin…
Schutzmaßnahmen können auch Schaden anrichten. Rehfuess nannte es "nur bedingt sinnvoll", auf die Wirksamkeit einzelner Eindämmungsmaßnahmen zu sehen. Entscheidend sei immer ein Maßnahmenbündel. NPIs könnten schützen, sie könnten aber auch Schaden anrichten. Als Beispiel nannte sie die Schulschließungen, die bei vielen Kindern und Jugendlichen zu psychischen und sozialen, aber auch gesundheitlichen Schäden geführt haben. Insgesamt seien solche Nebenwirkungen während der Corona-Pandemie "zu wenig beforscht" worden, befand Rehfuess: "Da müssen wir in Zukunft früher ran."

Screenshot

Natürlich ist es sinnvoll, NPI einzeln und in Kombination zu untersuchen – da gab es genügend Forschung auch in Deutschland, die Wikipedia hat eine gute Ãœbersicht. Ob man dabei den Schweden wirklich folgen will, die sich selbst bei COVID so blamiert haben? Aber man kann sich ja aus den tausenden Einzelstudien selbst heraus suchen, an was man am liebsten glauben möchte.

Oder mehr Forschung fordern.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Software

In the AI era, we will always have to fight for the truth

In the AI era, we will always have to fight for the truth / Das Zeitalter der KI wird ein ständiger Kampf um die Wahrheit prägen (Jonas Schaible, 2026).

The problem is concrete: AI can be poisoned easily, as we found and now others have replicated. Evidence abounds in the collection of the weirdest images ever published in academic journals.

Meanwhile, the AI optimism narrative persists. A new Science editorial by Holden Thorp documents the gap between promise and practice: “AI in scientific publishing: Slower, worse, and more expensive.” The promises remain seductive –

how it will transform work, claiming that so little human effort will be required that humanity will enter an era of radical abundance, free from disease, drudgery, and danger, among other benefits

yet empirical reality suggests otherwise. Bergstrom et al show that “The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science” actually cut against the optimistic case:

By allowing scientists to work more quickly, LLMs raise the opportunity cost of researcher time, creating incentives to refine papers less thoroughly before moving on. Enticing as it is to imagine that, by saving us time on mundane tasks, LLMs will provide us with more time to think deeply and develop projects completely, our results temper such hopes.

The implication is stark: fighting for truth may now require more labor, not less.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026
Noteworthy

Wissenschaftsrat fordert intellektuelle Souveränität

https://www.forschung-und-lehre.de/politik/wr-spricht-sich-gegen-bequeme-vereinfachung-durch-ki-aus-7781

In seinen “Empfehlungen für die Hochschulbildung in Zeiten generativer KI” plädiert der WR für “Intellektuelle Souveränität” als Leitidee, die den Hochschulen und allen beteiligten Akteursgruppen Orientierung bieten und für den Umgang mit generativer KI leitend sein soll. Gefordert seien Autonomie im Sinne von Selbstbestimmung, epistemischer Eigenständigkeit und Gerechtigkeit, kritische Reflexion und Widerstand gegen “bequeme Vereinfachung”.

Schön, daß wir uns weiterhin kritisch äussern sollen. Es wird nicht einfach sein.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 20.09.2026