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.

(email domains removed, deduplicated list)

From: Ismail Ogulur <ismail.ogulur@siaf.uzh.ch>
To: ismail.ogulur, ahaber, nacevedoc, emma.wincent, piia.karisola, joseph.ndika, hanna.sinkko, chudk, jatodd, lars-olaf.cardell, christoff_g, M.Hyland, hstanleykim, stanley.szefler, R.A.Scheltema, mcasanovas, paul.lavender, cmma, acrc, mariamontserrat.fernandez, Marianne.van.Hage, Martin.Himly, joerg.lehmann, markus.kleinewietfeld, mjp, clive.page, frg, maria.bech, Tania.Maes, bayry, lbosca, mercedes.gomez, greta.guarda, hanif.javanmard, carlo.caffarelli, nbarrett, saadia.kerdine-romer, alexandrafigueirasantos, tomas.slisz, valerian.dormoy, hirotaja, jvortega2002, mathieu.coureuil, s.huber, A.ten.Brinke, kim.tu.vn, tuyetlanyds, drarturo, nuray.bayar, Nina.D’Vaz, Liz.Starcevich, aanowak, dirk.brenner, oscar.palomares, gudrun.weinmayr, sfw, Stacy.Weisberg, soott.weiss, maria.weitoft, michael-welsh, welte.tobias, Andrea_milnewenderlich, goran.wennergren, werfel.thomas, christina.west, marit.westman, paul.whitaker, kristin.wickens, magnus.wickman, Alicia.Widge, Pascal.Wild, christoph.wilhelm, pwilku, l.e.m.willemsen, tim.williams, wilson, jbwing, lone.winther, owirz, wohld, woehrl, wollenberg, roel.klein.wolterink, hkwonmd, ck-wong, wingkinwong, ashley.woodcock, jaw4m, harm.wopereis, margitta.worm, grzegorz.woszczek, wright.benjamin, rerjw, piotr.wroczynski, aywu, Ann.Wu, dongmeiwu, jbwucn1996, joyce.wu, wuzhihua, reinhard.wuerzner, Matthias.Wymann, y.xi2, zhengxuag, Damo.Xu, gzxur2708, luzheng.xue, yamamoto-k, yamanishi.mbch, yanyan9996, sagami, b.d.yang, Ian.Yang, j.yang, yangkd.yeh, peizengycmu, pcy2356, yaoc1010, s1130465, yazawa, reza_yazdani86, myazicioglu, sungtae, daniel.yerly, rae.yeung, oender.yildirim, yokomizo-tky, Yonkkang, LYONKER, ydy4218, cmcyhg, ivana.yang, gpsoy, jeyu74, yingxin.yu, qyuan, ayuce, james.yun, a.zahirovic, asiyazaidia, jzakzuks, ZARYAN, robert.s.zeiger, zeldin, krzysztof.zeman, olatz.zenarruzabeitiabelaustegui, hannah.zenker, zh_gm, dr.luozhang, sz, taozhang, wenmingz, zyy, zhaozuotaotao, tzheng, stefan.zielen, christina.zielinski, alexander.zink, torsten.zuberbier, c.zubrinich, zychlinsky, wdvandeveen, m.van.den.berge, nicole.van_der_burg, hvdkleij, C.M.vanDrunen, f.c.vanerp, m.vanmaaren, avmuylem, joost.vanneerven, vannunen, L.S.vanrijt, menno.vanzelm, ghsv, laura.vangerven, jdv27, pvarshney, martina.vasakova, katerina.vavrova, marta.vazquez.ortiz, tsvelikova, lennart.venemalm, carina.venter, sylvia.verbanck, donata, valerie.verhasselt, kitty.verhoeckx, giuseppe.verlato, alokverma21, mvermani, bpvicke, carmen.vidal.pan, viegig, stefan.vieths, s.j.vijverberg, mvillalba, alma.villasenor, jc.h.virchow, YVIRKUD, massimo.vitale, jvitte, b.vlieg-boerstra, marc.vocanson, david.voehringer, Lothar.Vogel, jens.stein, avb.rodehorst, Christophe.vonGarnier, stephan.vongunten, laura.vonkobyletzki, linstow, erika.von.mutius, l.udraite, robert_voyksner, sarah.vreugde, susanne.vrtala, vultaggioalessandra, Martin.Wagenmann, ulrich.wahn, christineyywai, Brynn.Wainstein, swalker, drdanawallace, elizabeth.wallace, Alexandra.Wallimann, g.m.walton, entwdy, de_yun_wang, xjwgang, wang_guifang08, wanghewen99, ijong, julie.wang, lixinwang99, wangm, entwxd, yichao.wang, aw24, peter.wark, klaus.warnatz, christopher.warren, ewasilewska, pwatkins, kewatters, tania.watts, robert.h.wauters.mil, marcin.wawrzyniak, paulina.wawrzyniak, richard.weaver, twebb, WechslerM, mikewechsler, wedi.bettina, wegrzyn.as, julie.weidner, edwin, denise.tambourgi, b-tan, ge.tan, tanakaa, akane, tyq003, mimi.tang, luciana.tanno, Kelan.Tantisira, btarini, tarran, Christian.Taube, tasadachisato, tunn_ren_tay, bineymt, timothy.j.taylor, m914674227, a_tenbrinke, n.h.t.ten.hacken, vinayt, Falko.Tesch, frederic.tessier, tezuka, diamant.thaci, vthannickal, frank.thien, j.thijs, paul.thomas, Wayne.Thomas, B.Thompson, bernard_thong, bth50, loreen.thuermann, jacob.pontoppidan.thyssen, alex.tihonoff, s.till, guillermotil, signe.timm, teresa.to, r.e.m.toes, martin.tollinger, peter.tomassen, peter.tomazic, tomlinss, d.p.tonge, sanna.salmi, leticia.tordesillas, mjtorresj, torres.tiago, tost, tour, traidl.stephan, claudia.traidl-hoffmann, g.tramper, maxwell.tran, trautmann_a, myrtotrianti, mtriggiani, mtrzeciak, stsabouri, tsakanova, anne.tsicopoulos, ol.tsilochristou, sophia.tsoka, kwtsui, gakku, Ellen.Tufvesson, y.turk, p.turkeltaub, p.turner, riitta.turunen, sturvey, cbennett10, damian.tworek, ueki-shige, ukleja, lena.uller, sullrich, csulrik, eva.untersmayr, j.upham, julia.upton, o.usmani, Wolfgang.Uter, vachovam, pv4588, Michael.vaezi, peter.valent, rudolf.valenta, pvtomazic, anna.valerieva, valero, maria.valkonen, gloria.vallejo, roccoluigi.valluzzi, Erkka.Valovirta, paevbhps, cezmi.akdis

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, the 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.

Predatory science.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 10.08.2026

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 Übersicht. 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 10.08.2026

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 10.08.2026

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 10.08.2026

Withstand the threshold

I called the Endocrine Society’s 2024 reversal the biggest shift I’d probably eveer seen. Vitamin D insufficiency gone, thresholds meaningless, stop testing healthy people. And now, Frontiers runs Christie et al., Vitamin D in the UK: an urgent call to redefine the threshold for deficiency. The ask is one number: move the UK deficiency line from <25 to <50 nmol/L.

Notice it never argues with the Society. It can’t – the RCTs are the RCTs. So it just moves the fight somewhere else. The Society shut the door on the low-normal band. This reopens it by calling that same band “deficiency.” The new “deficient” line sits exactly on the floor of the old “insufficiency” band the Society just threw out. Everyone below 50 gets relabelled. In UK Biobank, isn’t that more than half of adults?

The first pages are all rickets, seizures, osteomalacia. Sure, those are real, and I have never said otherwise. But that’s the trick – they open with mis-treated toddlers in Glasgow and close with a cutoff for sixty million people who feel fine.

They half-admit it themselves near the end: efficacy depended on VDR genotype, and “we will need to move away from using serum 25(OH)D thresholds as the only target.” Fine - so why demand a new one?

And then read who’s asking – Frontiers prints it in full:”

SC: Over the last 3 years received consultant fees from the Council for Responsible Nutrition UK CRN UK. ACT NOW Vitamin D's inception meeting was supported by CRN UK, including room hire, subsistence and travel expenses. TH: Over the last 5 years, received consultant fees from Noble Foods and an honorarium from Danone. TH's institution currently receives a sponsored PhD studentship from The Lakes Free Range Egg co. Currently instructed as an expert witness by a professional services firm in a tribunal matter concerning a nutritional supplement company. Trustee of the Nutrition Society charity. CR: Received consultancy fees during 2025 from the European Fruit Juice Association, Yoplait, General Mills, the UK Tea & Infusions Association, Tate & Lyle, Holland & Barrett, the Proprietary Association of GB, BBC Radio Scotland, the British Egg Industry Consortium, INRAE and the University of Reading. She also serves as a board member of Quality Meat Scotland, a public body. MH: Co-holder of two patents on the therapeutic use of vitamin D binding protein; honorarium and royalties as Editor-in-Chief of Feldman and Pike's Vitamin D. The remaining author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The inception meeting paid for by the supplement trade body. Two patents on vitamin D binding protein. Royalties on a textbook.

I’m not saying the rickets isn’t real. But do you understand the urgency? I can only speculate. The ground moved – an earthquake – and an establishment defending its liturgy. Fresh scary NDNS numbers, a government that still hasn’t answered its own 2022 call for evidence, and SACN sitting at 25 as the world’s outlier.

If you are a MD: please treat vitamin D deficiency where you find it, the child kept indoors, the elderly housebound or dark skin in a Northern winter. But don’t turn half the country into patients three weeks after the biggest society on earth said stop that.

Yea, yea. Nay, nay. The rest cometh of the trade associations.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 10.08.2026

Is peer review overrated? Are journals superfluous?

These are my questions when reading the Nature news article although it has a quite different title “Think preprints are unreliable? Analysis of 70,000 studies might change your mind”.

The central conclusions of biomedical preprints rarely change following peer review in a journal, according to a study posted on the preprint server bioRxiv this month. The research also found that studies that appeared first as preprints are retracted at roughly half the rate of papers that did not appear online before being in a peer-reviewed journal. The authors say the findings suggests that preprints are a reliable source of information, although some scientists say the finding should be interpreted more cautiously.

It is all about this preprint

The primary claim was unchanged in 39.9% of abstracts, minorly revised in 50.0%, and substantially revised in only 10.2%.

Fits my experience.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 10.08.2026

Farm dust and immune readouts

Having just commented on a dust paper on PubPeer I looked also into more dust papers that include all "von Mutius" as co-author

The biggest clashes?

  • Active agent – endotoxin (Schuijs) vs microbiome (Kirjavainen) vs BLG+zinc (Pali-Schöll) vs Bos d 2/OBP lipocalins (Vercelli, who explicitly rules out BLG and endotoxin).
  • IL-33 – Schuijs and Schrumpf say dust lowers it and that’s why it protects; Korkmaz says dust raises it and that’s why it protects. Opposite direction, opposite valence.
  • Effector cell – epithelium (Schuijs/Schrumpf) vs macrophages (Dragunas) vs Tregs/DCs (Korkmaz).
  • Endotoxin’s role – central in the 2015 Science paper, explicitly dismissed as non-essential by four of the later papers.
  • Timing – everyone treats it as prevention, only except Korkmaz, who shows it works therapeutically after sensitization, rivaling even dexamethasone.

The papers do not converge on any stable mechanism, so the safest conclusion is that they may be internally inconsistent rather than cumulatively persuasive. In practice that leaves context-specific readouts from different models, not any coherent causal story.

These are not merely different endpoints; they assign different direction and different cellular locus to the same exposure. The same farm-dust preparation is used to support opposing claims about IL-33 and different dominant effector cells, which is hard to reconcile biologically. The “different cells/phases” defense doesn’t dissolve the problem, because the papers are still converting one exposure into several incompatible mechanistic narratives just to support a hypothesis that farm dust is allergy-protective.

One caveat worth stating: because all seven papers share a senior author and several share co-authors and even the same dust preparations, this reads less like independent labs failing to replicate and more like one network floating competing hypotheses just to cover every possibility. This isn’t primarily a non-replication problem – it’s a coherence problem.

  • Which raises the real question: why does each new paper launch a fresh mechanism instead of confronting the last one head-on?
  • Why do these groups keep talking past each other, publishing parallel mechanisms rather than arguing them out in a single discussion?
  • The deeper worry is cultural: if even closely linked groups won’t engage each other’s findings, how would any scientific field ever converge?
  • Is this the future of science just by paper release, content is irrelevant?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 10.08.2026

250€ per review

There is a new bioRxiv preprint examining traditional peer review that is slowed by delays finding reviewers and waiting for reports.

In 2025, Biology Open expanded its Fast & Fair peer review model, using pre-contracted, paid reviewers (£220 or 250€ per manuscript, paid only for timely, quality reviews) with a structured editorial timeline. The program cut time to first decision from 38 to 6 working days, and improved reviewer commitment: higher acceptance (67% vs 23%) and higher completion (98% vs 87%). Review quality and acceptance rates were unchanged.

So it is overdue to replace ad hoc reviewer recruitment with paid, deadline-driven, quality-contingent review.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 10.08.2026

Zur Katherina Reiche Diskussion – müssen KI Beiträge gekennzeichnet werden?

Die Meinungen darüber gehen auseinander.

Zwei Gastbeiträge von Ministerin Katherina Reiche unter KI-Verdacht – ob das nun von einem Lobbyisten, einem Redenschreiber einer KI oder etwa der Ministerin verfasst wurde, macht in dem Fall keinen großen Unterschied – es wird immer gleich defizitär sein.

Allerdings teile ich nicht die Meinung des SPIEGEL, der sich auf die Analyse Tools verlässt – zu sehr manipulierbar, zu sehr fehleranfällig.

Pangram und GPTZero kommen übereinstimmend zu dem Ergebnis, dass diese Worte mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit von einer künstlichen Intelligenz geschrieben wurden… Bei einer Nachprüfung des SPIEGEL berechnete das Werkzeug, dass nur die ersten 29 Prozent von einem Menschen geschrieben wurden.

Zur Illusion muss man einfach nur den Prompt bei der letzten Revision ändern auf “lass es nicht wie AI aussehen” und die üblichen KI Sonderzeichen entfernen.

Ich schliesse mich dafür lieber den Journalistenverbänden an, die eine Kennzeichnungspflicht für KI-Inhalte fordern – ganz im Unterschied zum deutschen Presserat.

Der Deutsche Presserat spricht sich in der aktuellen Diskussion über künstliche Intelligenz in den Medien gegen eine generelle Kennzeichnungspflicht aus…
Die Journalistenverbände DJV und dju haben beide eine Kennzeichnungspflicht für journalistische Beiträge gefordert … Dies solle im Pressekodex verankert werden …
»Die aktuelle Diskussion über künstliche Intelligenz in journalistischen Texten zeigt, dass die Glaubwürdigkeit des Journalismus auf dem Spiel steht«, erklärte der DJV-Bundesvorsitzende Mika Beuster. …
KI könne, etwa bei der Recherche, ein hilfreiches Werkzeug für Medienschaffende sein. Journalistinnen und Journalisten müssten hier aber klipp und klar Farbe bekennen.

Ich versuche dazu mal eine Klassifikation aus meiner Praxis

  • KI:0 – nur Bibliotheksrecherche, nur eigenes Archiv, nur eigene Überlegung, nur eigener Text
  • KI:1 – eigener Text; aber Recherche mit KI Hilfe oder grammatikalische Überarbeitung mit KI
  • KI:2 – eigener Text; aber mit KI Zusätzen, die alle überprüft wurden
  • KI:3 – KI generierter Text bzw Übersetzung, alle Fakten mit Fachkund überprüft
  • KI:4 – KI generierter Text, teilweise Fakten überprüft
  • KI:5 – KI generierter Text, nicht überprüft

Der Text hier is KI:0.

Weiterlesen zum Thema bei Übermedien

Der berühmte "human in the loop" also, der Mensch, der noch mal kontrolliert und entscheidet, was online geht … Wie präzise diese Kontrollen dann sind oder ob sie überhaupt stattfinden, ist oft fraglich… "Autorschaft ist gekoppelt an Identität und Verantwortung", schreibt der Journalistik-Professor Tanjev Schultz in seiner aktuellen Kolumne über KI-Täuschungen im Journalismus.

Ein Machtwort: Wir schreiben selbs! https://www.spiegel.de/politik/kuenstliche-intelligenz-wie-der-spiegel-ki-in-der-redaktion-einsetzt-a-51cbb6aa-4bcc-4a9d-a70a-fc9df37e0611

Nicht minder wichtig: Massenmodelle sind etwas für die Massen! https://beimwort.substack.com/p/das-hier-ware-fast-ein-anti-ki-manifest?r=359c7u&utmmedium=ios&triedRedirect=true

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 10.08.2026

AI is killing humans

There is a new paper of Rainer Rehak and Taylor Kate Woodcock. “Automating civilian harm: On Israel's use of the AI-enabled targeting system Lavender in Gaza and International Humanitarian Law. 2026 ACM Conference, 10.1145/3805689.3812357” that has some cruel details expanding on the current Wikipedia entry on AI-assisted targeting in the Gaza Strip.

The information depends on investigative journalism, built on anonymous IDF sources and leaked documents, but not independent forensic access. So there may be some limitations but this is all we know. The IDF’s response is consistently reported as a partial denial: the IDF stated some claims were baseless while others reflected a flawed understanding of IDF directives, describing a human-controlled process. There are three distinct systems.

  • Lavender is an “AI-powered database” which lists tens of thousands of Palestinian men linked by AI to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, used for target recommendation
  • Gospel automatically reviews surveillance data looking for buildings and equipment thought to belong to the enemy and recommends bombing targets. One officer told the Guardian “I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added-value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval.”
  • Where’s Daddy? is designed specifically to strike people at home with family present, because it was operationally easier than catching them during military activity.

Rehak and Woodcock now write

The digital infrastructure necessary for collecting, storing, and processing the data is provided by large US companies. The cloud storage of approximately 13.6 petabytes (13,600 terabytes) is provided by Google and Amazon under the name Project Nimbus. Cisco, Dell and Red Hat/IBM provide additional IT services. Palantir is responsible for integrating data from heterogeneous sources, and the AI applications are provided by Microsoft/OpenAI and Google; however not without internal resistance. To ensure optimal collaboration between the companies and the Israeli military, there are various personnel overlaps, e.g. Microsoft employees are also part of Unit 8200 of the IDF or regularly switch roles.

Their central finding is that the systems fail all three by design, not by accident. Reported configuration details they cite: thresholds for what counts as a “target” are adjusted up or down purely to hit a daily quota; pre-set tolerances allow roughly 15 civilian deaths per “junior” target and far more for “senior” targets; cheap, imprecise munitions are deliberately used on lower-value targets; and human review of each AI-generated target reportedly takes around 20 seconds, often just confirming the target’s sex. Internal IDF checks reportedly found about a 10% misidentification rate by the military’s own loose criteria.

The authors argue this combination amounts to a “reckless disregard” for distinction (people are targeted on statistical resemblance, not verified conduct), a failure of precautions (known error-prone, brittle systems are used uncritically at speed and scale), and very likely disproportionate harm given the resulting civilian death toll. They conclude that “targeted killing” is a misleading label for what they characterize as a more indiscriminate, quota-driven process, and that - given Israel’s technical sophistication - the high civilian toll is more plausibly a deliberate policy choice than an unintended side effect.

The cynical naming convention (Lavender, Gospel, Where’s Daddy?) sits awkwardly next to the lethality the AI systems used.

As if that weren’t enough, there seems to be another system not mentioned by Rehak and Woodcock called “Server in the Sky” (SITS) on drone fleets attributed to Haaretz reporting earlier this month. It deployed across Hermes 450 and 900 drones, designed to process intelligence and detect/classify targets in real time.

According to the documents, the algorithm independently analyzes the intelligence gathered by the drones’ sensors and cameras, automatically detecting targets, classifying them and deciding whether to track them or pass them on - to the command center, air force pilots or troops on the ground.
The server and the analytics it runs also allow the drone fleet to be managed autonomously, handing over tasks as the drones surveil a defined sector, shifting the burden among these unmanned aircraft to maintain continuous visibility.

So far neither ICJ (International Court of Justice) nor ICC (International Criminal Court) has so far issued a ruling that evaluates the Lavender/Gospel/Where’s-Daddy systems specifically as evidence – the charges so far center mainly on starvation as a weapon, destruction of infrastructure, and the overall casualty count.

Why does the reporting on the AI systems circulates only in NGO and academic analyses but has neither reached the public nor the ICJ? Germany accepts drone research projects and exports as this is prohibited only for systems that operate completely outside human control.

In Terror (2015) von Schirach has a pilot decide whether to shoot down a hijacked airliner heading for a packed stadium, killing 164 passengers to save tens of thousands. Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court had already ruled this unconstitutional: such a shoot-down violates the inviolable human dignity (Art. 1 GG) and right to life (Art. 2 GG) of the innocent passengers – a person may never be reduced to a mere calculation. It’s an absolute prohibition, not a proportionality balance; you simply don’t weigh lives against lives. That’s the sharp contrast with the IDF system that does the opposite. It pre-configures civilian deaths as tolerable collateral (15 for “junior,” hundreds for “senior” targets), not even as an emergency judgment under pressure like von Schirach’s pilot, but as a routine, repeatable daily setting.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 10.08.2026

Time to re-visit Naomi Klein

This is certainly one of the strongest AI pieces ever written: AI machines aren't 'hallucinating'. But their makers are,

She writes

The trick, of course, is that Silicon Valley routinely calls theft "disruption" - and too often gets away with it. We know this move: charge ahead into lawless territory; claim the old rules don't apply to your new tech; scream that regulation will only help China - all while you get your facts solidly on the ground… We saw it with Google's book and art scanning. With Musk's space colonization. With Uber's assault on the taxi industry. With Airbnb's attack on the rental market. With Facebook's promiscuity with our data.

Must read also Lila Shroff

Plenty of people are seemingly starting to feel like depleted AI babysitters… workers were experiencing "mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of
AI tools beyond one's cognitive capacity.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 10.08.2026

Markus Blume und die künstliche Intelligenz

Bayern hat beschlossen, das Verbot von Künstlicher Intelligenz bei Hochschulprüfungen zu verbieten. Sprachlich ein Meisterwerk, führt das inhaltlich zu der naheliegenden Frage: Wenn in der Prüfung ohnehin jedes Sprachmodell mitschreiben darf, warum prüfen wir dann überhaupt noch?

Kernkompetenz. Wir brauchen auch weiterhin Leistungsnachweise, um sicherzustellen, dass die Studierenden gelernt haben, die richtige KI mit dem richtigen Prompt zu bewegen. Wer den Bachelor besteht, hat bewiesen, dass er ein Sprachmodell unter Aufsicht bedienen kann, ohne dass es halluziniert. Eine Schlüsselqualifikation des 21. Jahrhunderts, und die gehört zertifiziert.

Klimaschutz. Solange Tausende Studierende gleichzeitig dieselbe Frage an dasselbe Rechenzentrum schicken, wissen wir wenigstens, wofür der Strom verbraucht wird. Ohne festen Prüfungstermin liefen die Grafikkarten ja völlig planlos heiß, so kann man die Antworten komplett aus dem Cache ziehen. Der synchronisierte Klausurtermin ist im Grunde angewandte Energiepolitik.

Und dann die soziale Funktion. Ohne Prüfungsangst wüssten ganze Studierendenjahrgänge nicht mehr, wofür sie um drei Uhr nachts wach liegen sollen. Man kann den Menschen nicht einfach die letzte verlässliche Quelle existenzieller Demut nehmen, die das Bildungssystem noch bereithält.

Die Verwaltung. Was würde bitte aus den Prüfungsämtern? Eine Verwaltung, die nichts mehr zu verwalten hat, ist eine Verwaltung, die über sich selbst nachdenken müsste. Dieses Risiko will wirklich niemand eingehen.

Endlich Fairness. Alle dürfen jetzt KI benutzen, also alle dieselbe Chance, sich auf dasselbe Modell zu verlassen, das bei allen denselben Fehler macht. Chancengleichheit war noch nie so leicht herzustellen. Für die Abschlussprüfung an den 5 Musikhochschule erlaubt Bayern jetzt auch das Vorspielen von mp3 Files und an der Otto Falckenberg Schule YouTube Videos.

Fazit. Abschaffen geht also nicht. Wir behalten die Prüfung, nehmen ihr nur jeden verbliebenen Zweck und nennen das dann Hochschulinnovationsgesetz. Bayern, Vorreiter des digitalen Wandels.

 

 

 

Postscriptum 11.7.2026

Wir lernen daraus: Was für einen bayrischen Politiker völlig normal und wünschenswert ist, wird andernorts als Betrug geahndet.

https://www.dmz-news.online/2026/07/11/wenn-die-pruefung-nicht-mehr-zeigt-was-studierende-wissen/

Screenshot 11.7.2026

 

Könnte der Wissenschaftsminister vielleicht mal kurz mit seinem Kultusminister reden, der gegen Betrug beim Abitur massiv vorgeht? Denn hier

dürfen auf dem Pult nur Papier und Stifte liegen, die die Schule geprüft hat. “Alles andere, Essen, Trinken, Stofftiere als Maskottchen und Glücksbringer, muss auf den Boden gestellt werden, weil sich dort kleine Kameras befinden könnten”, sagt er. Jacken, Taschen und elektronische Geräte lagern in einem anderen Raum. Auch für die Kleidung gibt es Vorgaben: Blusen und Hemden sind im Abi nicht erlaubt. Auch dort könnten Mini-Kameras angebracht sein. Falls sich jemand nicht daran hält, hat die Schule vorgesorgt: Wir haben dann so Leibchen, die man aus dem Sportunterricht kennt, eine Art Trikot, die bitten wir dann die Schüler überzuziehen.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf , accessed 10.08.2026