Thanks @gregggonsalves.bsky.social for the mention! Just the lift I needed to carry forth the reporting energy into 2026. 🙏

Here's our reporting on the proposed dismantling of the jewel of US atmospheric science, @ncar-ucar.bsky.social. The plan is to break NCAR apart and disburse some parts to other locations (like the research aircraft fleet) and eliminate others. www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪 #AGU25 #climate

INBOX: Former NIAID director Jeanne Marrazzo is suing the Trump administration. She alleges the NIH violated her constitutional rights and illegally fired her after she blew the whistle on actions that jeopardized public health and violated federal law.

Attendance at US-based science conferences is bouncing around this year but generally down. #AGU25 has ~10k fewer this year! I explored these trends for @nature.com — including solutions to keep conferences local & productive: www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

When should a paper be corrected? Last December, @elisabethbik.bsky.social and other sleuths began flagging papers by a prominent bioengineer, Ali Khademhosseini. They found over 80 with image issues. Khademhosseini and his colleagues have issued over 40 corrections, but avoided retractions.

Psychiatrists have long relied on diagnostic manuals that regard most mental-health conditions as distinct. Now a genetic analysis of more than one million people suggests that most major psychiatric conditions have common biological roots. For @nature.com:

Fired CDC director Susan Monarez is one of Nature's 10 people who shaped science in 2025. “I always challenge the status quo because that’s what you do in science,” Monarez told me. “You challenge it to try to do better, but you don’t compromise your moral and scientific integrity for expediency.”

The top 10 people of 2025 @nature.com who shaped science. Recognizes Dr. Susan Monarez, the CDC Director who was "fired for holding the line on scientific integrity" www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

!!! The Post obtained hot mic comments by the chair of RFK Jr.'s CDC vaccine committee. "We feel like a little bit like puppets on a string as opposed to really being an independent advisory panel" wapo.st/4atob4M

This thread and article is really quite something. "Notably absent were any academic researchers or clinicians." 👀

$80 for 6 bags of potato chips. What’s this, MAHA or “HAHA”? Like laughing. I’m available to explain further if need be

no collidial silver? how can i get the full RFK experience without the funni smurf serum

Americans need to eat fewer ultra-processed foods and more dubious powders

This is achingly beautiful and almost too painful to read in places (but you still should). The cruelty of cancer, the longing to be with your children — and the twist of fate, being RFK Jr’s cousin as he unwinds U.S. health research.

RFK Jr, Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makary, The Food Babe, Dana White, Russell Brand, Bryan Johnson, and a slew of influencers. Oh, and attendees got a bag of chips made with beef tallow!

This is some stand-out, exclusive reporting about a MAHA conference held in DC that was nearly absent of scientists (and reporters.) Worth your time to read. Bravo, @maxkozlov.bsky.social 👏🏻

Wow...this is really embarrassing. Reads like an @theonion.com article.

that's literally a MAHA starter pack

I mean, it's one bag of tallow chips, Michael. What could it cost? 13 dollars?

About that exclusive, "closed-to-press" MAHA summit last week with RFK and JD Vance: I got in. Here's what I saw. 🧵 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Halted NIH Clinical Trials List Reveals Slashed Treatments for Cancer, COVID and Minority Health www.scientificamerican.com/article/halt... Sickle cell disease, sleep disorders and lung cancer & much more A dive into the list of NIH's 383 shelved clinical trials, obtained by Scientific American

life IS lived forward unless you die really prematurely and needlessly because of preventable diseases

Now that’s a lede. Story by @taracopp.bsky.social and @michelleboorstein.bsky.social. Read here: www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

A note about this quote attributed to an anonymous HHS official. I have not asked HHS for comment on Jenna's leave status, but I'd be willing to bet good money this came from their comms office. They have a habit of telling reporters — without any mutual agreement — things on background

NIH program officer @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social has been placed on admin leave, sources say. Norton has been outspoken about the Trump administration's dismantling of science, and she signed the Bethesda Declaration. Bhattacharya has said that "science is dead without free speech".

There's an exclusive, closed-to-media MAHA summit tomorrow. Here's the full agenda I was leaked In attendance will be JD Vance, RFK Jr, Bhattacharya, Makary, actor Russell Brand (who is facing rape and sexual assault charges), and dozens of other MAHA influencers and people in Trump's orbit

The baseless protein craze "You just create an inefficient system where your body gets very good at wasting food protein” “It’s really frustrating because there isn’t evidence to support the claims that they’re making" Feature @nature.com nature.com/articles/d41...

the "FDA of the Future" panel will be moderated by a totally normal guy who keeps a cum journal

There's an exclusive, closed-to-media MAHA summit tomorrow. Here's the full agenda I was leaked In attendance will be JD Vance, RFK Jr, Bhattacharya, Makary, actor Russell Brand (who is facing rape and sexual assault charges), and dozens of other MAHA influencers and people in Trump's orbit

Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Got a new story about a little-known HHS agency with a massive job: the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). ASPR gave us Operation Warp Speed. Now it's being run by a conspiracy theorist who calls those vaccines “genocide.” www.msnbc.com/msnbc/meet-a...

Madison is a close friend and has a touching personal story about IVF: "Just before my 25th birthday, I hooked my feet into stirrups on an icy exam table, ready for a doctor to retrieve my eggs. I’d been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and learned chemotherapy might make me infertile.

Fewer grad students means less science, but many STEM PhD programs in the US are cutting back on admissions this year due to federal funding uncertainties. Words by me for @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41... @emsque.bsky.social @ucsdcooperlab.bsky.social @julieposselt.bsky.social 🧪

People being treated for certain deadly cancers lived longer if they had received an mRNA-based vaccine against COVID-19 than if they hadn’t go.nature.com/4hkqZma

A vaccine that helps to fight cancer might already exist: People being treated for deadly cancers lived longer if they had received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccines have this apparent life-extending effect not because they protect against COVID-19 but because they rev up the immune system.

A must-read @politico.com piece about the man behind the Great Barrington Declaration & the Brownstone Institute, two groups that were foundational and central to RFK Jr’s rise and to his MAHA agenda (I was interviewed for the piece; there’s a quote from me) www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Powerful @maxkozlov.bsky.social interview with Susan Monarez, who was fired from the CDC for standing up to Robert Kennedy's demands. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Read our exclusive interview by @maxkozlov.bsky.social with the ex-CDC director - Susan Monarez - In which she talks about the importance of the job and the reasons why she was fired 🧪 #CDC #MedSky @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"But whether or not I ever want to go back to the federal government — I just don’t know if I can. I know that there is greatness in health innovation in the United States...And I just don’t ever want to be put in a position where we don’t embrace that" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Powerful interview of recently fired CDC director by @maxkozlov.bsky.social . What unfolded is chilling and also sad to read in her words. The decimation of the CDC is a low point in global public health history because its impact extended beyond America. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

EXCLUSIVE: In her first interview all year, Susan Monarez, CDC director for only 29 days, tells me why Trump/RFK fired her and where this is all headed. The CDC director is an “inherently political position, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be politically compromised”, she tells @nature.com.

EXCLUSIVE: In her first interview all year, Susan Monarez, CDC director for only 29 days, tells me why Trump/RFK fired her and where this is all headed. The CDC director is an “inherently political position, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be politically compromised”, she tells @nature.com.

Staff members at the NIH seem to have done the impossible: spend the agency's $48 billion budget. “Everyone has been rallying together to clean up the mess, but it’s a mess that did not need to be made,” an NIH program officer told me. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

From an NIH source: "The fact that it’s 8am on the day of a likely shutdown, and NIH personnel have received not one word about it from our leaders, from HHS, or higher, is gobsmacking. Normally we receive shutdown preparations emails starting days in advance. Absolute silence except at IC level."

Staff members at the NIH seem to have done the impossible: spend the agency's $48 billion budget. “Everyone has been rallying together to clean up the mess, but it’s a mess that did not need to be made,” an NIH program officer told me. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Despite political obstacles, officials are on track to disburse all of the research funds allocated to the NIH go.nature.com/46Mxycw

From an NIH source: "The fact that it’s 8am on the day of a likely shutdown, and NIH personnel have received not one word about it from our leaders, from HHS, or higher, is gobsmacking. Normally we receive shutdown preparations emails starting days in advance. Absolute silence except at IC level."

Several scientists have received letters from the NIH director disinviting them from their positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding, I'm told. In July, I reported that NIH staff were told to select members aligned with Trump administration priorities.

Recently I learned that civil servants have the First Amendment-protected right to speak out on matters of public concern. Thurgood Marshall, in an 8-1 SCOTUS decision, noted that government employees know how the gov’t works, and the public has a special interest in hearing from them.

NEW: Nature trained AI to predict which NIH grants from 2014 would have been cut if the Trump admin had its way back then — and what science would have been lost to history. "The results show the damage that cuts in funding can do to research, and the unpredictable nature of the research process."