Dear Company I Ordered From Online: This is not cat litter.

The new ACIP charter includes liaison memberships for the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Physicians for Informed Consent, and the Independent Medical Alliance. None of these are expert societies and all of them have a history of disseminating antivaccine propaganda.

apple.news/ADr_woXWERHe... “Acting CDC director delayed release of study showing benefit of Covid vaccines” “An HHS spokesperson said Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had concerns about the paper’s methodology.” (.. or about the paper’s (strong) conclusion that the vaccine protected against severe disease)

2/3. There are often questions about why we spend money studying these kinds of things. There are many answers to those questions, but one important one is that we never know where those discoveries will lead. Sometimes they lead us to create things like what is allowing you to read this.

While we're celebrating space things, let me direct you to one of my favorite Golden Goose Awards. One of the reasons we have supercomputers now (that run the internet we enjoy) is because scientists needed more powerful computers to study black holes. 1/3 www.goldengooseaward.org/01awardees/b...

Cohort study of 615k+ vaccinated & ~2.3M unvaccinated males ages 9-26 finds males vaccinated w/ 9-valent-HPV vaccine had lower risk of HPV-related cancer vs. the unvaxxed cohort. The negative assoc. of the 9v-HPV vax w/ HPV-related cancer was found in males ages 9-14 as well as 15-26.🛟😷

Some good news! Another win for vaccines! 💉💪

Heard a talk by @alondra.bsky.social about a year ago and I was similarly impressed. Can’t agree more with the rec to check out her work: absolutely someone to amplify

My latest piece argues that as LLMs commodify routine cognitive tasks like data manipulation & text-drafting, a surprising implications emerges: namely that a traditional liberal arts education is what provides the skills that will be most valued in this era: www.noemamag.com/why-a-libera....

NASA's comms team is a reminder of the value of science communications. It's not just the mission, but how the science is made visible & shared openly through multimedia Without storytelling, even the most extraordinary achievements wouldn't get the attention they deserve

“Science is oftn viewed as colorless &objtve, to be conducted w/little emotion or expression.But as the Artemis II crew members painted lunar hills, valleys&plains in the minds of listenrs back home,they provided a model for a poignant approach to scientific inquiry”🧪 www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/s...

"Based on your results, we assume this comes as a great relief to you. The bridge trolling field requires little formal education, none whatsoever to be precise. If you are reading this letter at school, you may leave at any moment and head straight for the nearest bridge."

Join us!

A few have suggested that some aspects of this mission--joy, international teamwork, diversity--are being played up to stick it to the hateful attitude of the administration. But I don't think it's that. I think it's just that those things are essential to and inseparable from a mission like this.

It's National Public Health Week! 🎉 Public health in the US has roots going back to 1799, built on the belief that communities deserve protection from preventable disease. That mission hasn't changed, even when federal priorities do. What does public health mean to YOU right now? Let's talk…

AND! If you're not good at one or more, the best thing about being human is that we can teach each other and work together. You don't have to go through the universe alone. All of humanity can be with you, if we let each other.

Do science. Read poems. Do art. Sing. Do mathematics. Do it all because you're a complete human person and they are all a part of you, an indefeasible patrimony, an incredible gift.

🎨 @wizardofbarge.bsky.social

For more information (by NIH institute or center or NSF by Directorate), go to grant-witness.us/funding_curv... 5/5

New awards These are still lagging well below the curves for other years. 3/5

NSF update Still looking very bleak. 4/5

Wow. They hated the grant I submitted THAT much?

I made a pledge not to leave my office until I finished this week's tasks (reviewing, reading, writing). Now I am wondering if I have enough food to last me until next Wednesday...

@pauloffit.bsky.social is a total badass

"Jobs will still exist even with AI" is something that's easy to say for a labor economist It's less easy to say as a kid who grew up watching his town get fucked by deindustrialization and who took on debt to go to university to avoid working a non-union assembly line job with bad knees at 50

Researchers at Stanford University modeled how many people could die or be disabled in 25 years if vaccines for polio, measles, rubella or diphtheria were no longer available. We decided to illustrate it.

"There is no doubt that students of all kinds will use AI; most already are. The task now is to help them become professional and ethical users." @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I think we should be a country that builds spaceships instead of fighter jets and uses the science knowledge we get to have the best healthcare and food and education that we freely give to everyone in the world who wants and/or needs it.

People react to big science and art the same way for a reason - both express our humanity by providing new eyes to see the world.

Organizations like MSF are *exactly* who needs a drug like lenacapavir, because the populations that MSF serves are *exactly* the people who have a high risk of contracting HIV and a reduced ability to take a daily pill.

Today, MSF is going public with something we've been fighting behind closed doors for months: Gilead will not sell us their new HIV drug, lenacapavir. The sticking point isn't even price, they just refuse to sell. Open letter linked + explainer 🧵1/ www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/gilea...

A pub in California is pulling carbon dioxide from the air to carbonate its beer and fight climate change at the same time.

I’m alive today because a doctor with more than four decades of experience treating Black patients recognized my symptoms from a very small number of cases he’d seen in his career. This may seem quaint in light of big data and AI, but if it’s your life at stake you’d think (very) differently.

How long do wild mice live? 🤔🐁 Excerpt from Immune podcast episode 102: Living longer without B cells 🎥: @chrissuspect.bsky.social Hosts: @cindyleifer.bsky.social @stephanielangel.bsky.social @bioprofbarker.bsky.social

Maybe you heard somewhere that the COVID-19 pandemic started with a lab leak? NO! That is NOT what the evidence shows. It was not a goddamn lab leak. I’ve had enough. Here is what the evidence shows: it was zoonotic spillover at the market rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/five-reaso...

The only “online debate” I’ve seen about this movie is about how he loaded the centrifuge, and it’s not much of a debate - we all agree that Ryan Gosling doesn’t know how to load a centrifuge www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...

UConn has a faculty hiring freeze lol

Which 1/5th of the most important biomedical advances of the last several decades do we find expendable?

TWiV reviews the paper: Influenza hijacks myeloid cells to inflict type-I interferon-fueled damage in the heart (Pub Med) Excerpt from TWiV 1307: My heart breaks for flu @bioprofbarker.bsky.social

As a grandma who remembers these diseases & has seen the extraordinary difference vaccines made, I’ve joined/follow Grandparents for Vaccines, a storytelling movement that encourages grandparents to share personal stories about disease & the relief of vaccination. www.grandparentsforvaccines.org

💯@newyorker.com @paulnoth.bsky.social

Stop scrolling and say 'Hello Pickles.' 📸 emma_ferguson18

Be this grandma

Someone sent me this…don’t think the poster has an account here or else I would share the post here… Ahhh March Madness

The journey is what matters! @celestelabedz.bsky.social @drsurekhadavies.bsky.social @abbaetha.bsky.social @aknupsky.bsky.social @jasontebbe.bsky.social @jocelynl.bsky.social @olivia.science @irisvanrooij.bsky.social

Too many students are convinced by their own universities, by some of their teachers and professors, and by the AI companies themselves that ‘using ai to study is getting ahead of the game’ But the process they seek to get ahead of is the point.

The practice of trial and error generates ingenuity. A fresh-faced naive student, or intern, is the ultimate idea generator. A collaborator. A creator. A chance to take an approach no one's thought to take before - not even you. Be selfish. Train others. Do more than you alone can imagine. 13/13

THIS PLEASE 👇 An AI miggt solve exactly the very delimited problem you give it. It will NEVER create better ways to solve it. Nor will it find you're asking the wrong question or that there are better questions.

Wasn’t joking

Readers may not be aware that all Philip had to do was ask nicely and he already got my “expert advice” on his (very good) book Citizen Scholar. No slop, no bullshit. We should all do more of that: Reach out to humans we know and/or trust.