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Licenses Revoked

One of the developers of the Treefinder tool to build phylogenetic trees says researchers in certain immigration-friendly European countries will no longer be able to use his bioinformatics software, ScienceInsider reports.

On his website, German informatician Gangolf Jobb writes that he will be revoking the licenses of researchers in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK as of tomorrow.

"Immigration to my country harms me, it harms my family, it harms my people. Whoever invites or welcomes immigrants to Europe and Germany is my enemy," Jobb says in his statement. He has previously barred researchers in the US from using the tool.

ScienceInsider notes that Treefinder is fairly frequently used, though it hasn't been updated in a while and that there are other options.

"I'd say not being able to use Treefinder would be no great loss to anyone," Uppsala University's Sandra Baldauf says. After reading Jobb's statement, she sent an email to ScienceInsider saying, "I would stop using [Treefinder] just on general principle, even if we had to resort to using pencil and paper."

The co-developer of the tool, Korbinian Strimmer, a bioinformatician at Imperial College London, tells ScienceInsider he hasn't seen Jobb in 10 years and that "[h]is new diatribe against refugees is unbelievable."