Mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya was the first woman to: + Earn a doctorate in #mathematics (in the modern sense) + Be appointed to a full professorship in mathematics She was also one of the first women to work for a scientific journal as an editor. She died #OTD in 1891. #WomenInSTEM

This made me ugly cry 😭 I will never claim that he was perfect…every president in my lifetime has pissed me off for one reason or another. But…dammit, I’m so tired of the constant feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty 😔

Scoop: Top FDA official Vinay Prasad overruled the agency’s reviewers when he refused to accept Moderna’s application for a new influenza vaccine, STAT has learned. www.statnews.com/2026/02/11/m...

Oh boy. This is going to make a family gathering next month even more testing than usual.

Holy shit—a terrible waste of $$ Bhattacharya is so kooky “If lots of people believe it & it’s moving public health, we as NIH have an obligation, again, to treat it seriously,” Bhattacharya said at a MAHA event Great reporting by @rachanadpradhan.bsky.social kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

And the new NCI Director moves to piss away his scientific credibility. First, killing cancer cells is a very low bar; many compounds kill cancer cells and are not the least bit useful for treating cancer. 1/2

The CDC says it's fine to resume normal activities 24 hrs after Covid symptoms are improving. A new, large prospective study with digital tracking shows recovery takes much longer than that www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Having too much data and no real idea of what to do with it is common. But sometimes someone is developing an approach and wants to test it with your data. That's when the unexpected can happen.

“At the age of 23, before she'd even earned her PhD, Carol Greider made the discovery that would earn her the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Along with her supervisor and co-laureate Elizabeth Blackburn, she discovered the enzyme telomerase…”

Have I ever mentioned how surreal it is to be an Editor-in-Chief of a journal called Vaccine right now? www.science.org/content/arti... It’s pretty wild, at least by typical academic journal editorial office standards.

💊🌟 Meet a next-generation approach to cancer treatment. Switchable CAR-T is a programmable immunotherapy designed to give scientists greater control over how—and when—the immune system targets cancer. The technology is now being tested in a Phase 1 trial for metastatic breast cancer.

This is the world that RFK Jr dreamed of; his dreams are coming true

First it was "vaccines" (MMR) by Wakefield, then thimerosal, etc, etc. Now its back to vaccines. A dizzying array of moving goal posts.

Casar holds a 3 minute and 26 second moment of silence to represent the time in which DHS officers let Renee Good bleed out after she was shot

Yes! If it makes you mad that Jay Bhattacharya said he sees NIH as the “research arm” of RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine MAHA movement If it makes you made that Bhattacharya & RFK Jr & Drs Oz, Høeg, Kulldorff, Makary, & Prasad are dismantling US public health and science Then RALLY 👇👇👇👇

"What happens to the human body in 49C heat? Australians are finding out."

You can’t tell me we have a functioning economic system when the richest man in human history is one of the most profoundly stupid people in human history

Biochemist/molecular biologist Joan Steitz was born #OTD in 1941. She (& team) figured out how our cells read/use genetic instructions to make proteins. A key person who helped crack the code on RNA—the molecule that acts like a messenger between DNA & and the proteins our bodies need. #WomenInSTEM

The extraordinary biochemist & pharmacologist Gertrude Elion was born #OTD in 1918. Elion won the 1988 #Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (w/2 others) for her pioneering "rational drug design." Her work saved countless lives...(👇 1/2) #WomenInSTEM

In reviewing grants and papers lately, as an exp., I have been using LLMs *after* my reviews to see how they stack up. And let me tell you - they're (all) *completely* off the mark. That makes sense if you understand the fundamentals of LLMs, but I'm worried many don't. But, please, don't do this.

Good news: Dr Quinhin Nantote, the minister of health of Guinea-Bissau, says the proposed trial by Danish researchers that RFK Jr funded has been cancelled “Africans want to solve Africa’s problems, not satisfy the curiosity of the funders,” says Nigerian physician-researcher Abdulhammad Babatunde

It’s a very strange, damaging choice that RFK Jr & the physicians in the Trump regime—Drs Makary, Oz, Bhattacharya, Høeg, Bhattacharya—are making Instead of dedicating themselves to controlling measles—including by doing everything humanly possible to promote vaccination—they’re just sitting it out

Absolutely. When I wrote about these two in the final chapter of 21st-Century Yokel, on the surface of it I was just writing about two unremarkable 20th-Century working class lives in the centre of Britain. But my research took me down soooo many social history and topographical rabbit holes…

In case anyone else wants to grab a (freshly republished) Villager, @blackwells.bsky.social do a quite phenomenal free worldwide delivery offer. It probably won’t last forever. blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro...

A dive into how scientists are trying to understand what consciousness is and where it comes from

The Shingles vaccine has outperformed all expectations. Why? erictopol.substack.com/p/spotlight-...

There was a recent Heritage Foundation event on the origin of COVID, which was rife with disinformation. Because our work is that specifically targeted, here's is just one example from the former CDC Director. Listen to clip one - Mar 8, 2023 House hearing (under oath). "I was excluded".

The new cover and feature @nature.com www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

This is better news than expected especially at times in 2025. 🧪

It’s really upsetting to watch this video, but it’s important to do so The HHS Secretary, an AIDS denialist & extreme homophobe, says “the gay lifestyle” is the cause of AIDS, not HIV

Really critical story on the unethical hepatitis B vaccine study in Guinea Bissau. In addition to the Danish researchers, #RFKJr & billionaire #BillAckman are key drivers of this nonsense. The combo of bad science, bad politics & bad money are putting kids at risk again. @katherineeban.bsky.social

Its a waste of valuable time, money and resources when studies have to be done to refute the bogus claims of politicans and lawyers.

Good question👇

First Hantavirus Detection in San Diego County in 2026.

This is hugely important information A letter from an official in Guinea-Bissau confirms that the trial was canceled

Breaking with the U.S., Canada will slash its 100% tariffs on Chinese electric cars, opening the doors to imports that cost less than $25,000 (or $35,000 Canadian). insideevs.com/news/784657/...

A few updates on the deeply unethical study to probe "non-specific" effects of the birth dose HepB vaccine in Guinea-Bissau by Danish investigators. 1️⃣ The study was canceled as per AfricaCDC - HHS disputes this. 2️⃣ Full protocol was leaked and it's bad. Quick 🧵 www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Another major triumph for a refractory autoimmune disease—hemolytic anemia—through engineered T cells @nejm.org nejm.org/doi/full/10....

An analysis of more than one million people in the UK found that two-thirds of people who were vaccine-hesitant during the COVID-19 pandemic went on to get vaccinated go.nature.com/4qgJE5Z

I love the reuse of rural British phone boxes as tiny libraries so - after my ex-publishers collapsed & I bought the warehouse stock of my backlist from them - I decided that every time I saw one, I’d top it up with a few of my books. Not sure how many books it was in total, but definitely 300-plus.

This is going to be terrific fun

House finch at the new bird feeder.

Villager by Tom Cox @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social captivated me from the first page. The story is about a place, a moor, a village, people and their loves, lives, music. Time goes backwards and forwards as the story is woven together by sometimes subtle links in the chapters. Its very clever. Loved it

Great article in the UT. "This is such a good example of projects that kick off on the academic side, become a strong collaborative program between academia and public health, and then, once mature, fully get integrated into the public health setting". www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/01/07/c...

Had this to celebrate a provisionally accepted research paper at the beginning of the week. Revisions almost done - might need more.

Fantastic to see San Diego booting up its own wastewater surveillance program run directly by the county's own public health lab! This is very similar to the program we have been doing with SEARCH (which ended in December), but it was time to pass the mantle 👏🌟 www.kpbs.org/news/health/...

Extremely powerful rapid respnse to our piece from @pyedlin.bsky.social: "History shows that health policies in the United States do not only have an impact within its borders, but often radiate to other countries, particularly in our region. Argentina is not an exception."