Daily briefing: The pros and cons of writing a paper with ChatGPT

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The first days of human embryo development have been revealed with a clarity never seen before. The imaging technique uses two common laboratory tools: fluorescent dyes and laser scanning microscopes. “We can see single cells and how they interact with each other as they form the pre-implantation embryo,” explains cell biologist Nicolas Plachta, a member of the team, which imaged dozens of live embryos during the first 40 hours of development. This type of non-invasive imaging could one day allow for screening of embryos conceived through in vitro fertilization.

Nature | 4 min read

Reference: Cell paper

A pair of scientists has produced a research paper in less than an hour with the help of ChatGPT — a tool driven by artificial intelligence (AI) that can understand and generate human-like text. The goal was to explore the chatbot’s capabilities as a research ‘co-pilot’ during the entire process, from crunching raw data to writing a polished manuscript. The article was fluent, insightful and presented in the expected structure for a scientific paper, but researchers say that there are many downsides. For example, such tools could make it easier for researchers to engage in dishonest practices such as P-hacking, for which scientists test several hypotheses on a data set but report only those that produce a statistically significant result.

Nature | 5 min read

Reference: ChatGPT paper (pdf)

On July 14, India will launch Chandrayaan-3: its second attempt to land a spacecraft and rover on the surface of the Moon. In 2019, the Chandrayaan-2 mission crash-landed in the final moments of its touchdown. If successful, India will become the fourth country ever to make a controlled lunar landing, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China. Chandrayaan-3 will focus on the lunar south pole, a previously unexplored region, with a range of planned measurements and analyses. Even if it does not have a dramatic impact on scientific knowledge, a successful mission will have “important technological and geopolitical dimensions”, says space-policy analyst Tomas Hrozensky.

Nature | 4 min read

Features & opinion

When patients no longer respond to any antibiotics, phages — bacteria-killing viruses — can sometimes save lives. Microbiologist Jessica Sacher is helping to make this happen. As a co-founder of Phage Directory, she connects physicians looking for phages with those who can produce them at a safe-to-use quality. The directory “post calls or ‘alerts’ for phages against different bacterial strains”, Sacher explains. “We receive one such request a week on average, and 84% of the alerts we have sent out have received a response, such as sharing of phages or directing requestors to labs with the appropriate phage.”

Nature | 6 min read

“I hope [this story] resonates with people who love deeply from afar and often feel lonely for it,” says author Ayida Shonibar of the latest short story for Nature’s Futures series.

Nature | 6 min read

Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes an intriguing investigation of Earth-like exoplanets and a tantalizing analysis of invisibility.

Nature | 4 min read

Even a bacterium that has just enough genes to survive can evolve. Scientists initially thought that any mutations would kill cells with such a minimal genome because they lack the genes to repair damaging DNA changes — but, in the words of Jurassic Park’s fictional scientist Ian Malcolm, “life finds a way”. Over 2,000 generations, the ‘minimal’ bacteria strain recovers some of the fitness cost associated with having a stripped-down genome. “In some cases, this minimal cell actually evolved faster than the non-minimal cell,” biologist Jay Lennon tells the Nature Podcast. He explains that this could have implications for synthetic biology: “The forces of evolution simply can’t be avoided.”

Nature Podcast | 29 min listen

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