The Criminal Justice team at Arnold Ventures is looking for a pending/recent PhD with strong causal inference skills, for a remote, part-time consulting position. This is a great opportunity for someone considering a transition from academia to the policy space. Deadline: March 15 Please share!

NIH is reworking social and behavioral study sections including *eliminating SSPA and SSPB*. There will be one new study section Population Dynamics and Health. Bad news since SSP originally received so many applications, they needed 2 difft study sections to process them. :( #demography

Good observations from @drugmonkey.bsky.social about early stage investigators (or at least Director Bhattacharya's comments on a podcast about them). drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/02/26/n...

Try these three strategies from @nature.com if you're experiencing any writing apprehension on large or long-term projects. ✍️ 1. Set concrete goals 2. Develop structure and accountability 3. Write as you go

New and Competitive Renewals Only 803 grants have been made compared to ~2650 in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 through February 20. All institutes and centers (include OD now) have made awards except NIAAA, NLM, NCCIH, and FIC. 3/4

Non-competitive renewals 2/4

My weekly update on NIH All projects 1/4

INBOX: South Korea's birth rate increased(!) for a second straight year(!!), with the highest year-over-year growth rate since 2007(!!!) For the first time since 1981 (!!!!), both monthly births and marriages increased for all 12 months: www.chosun.com/english/mark...

My husband said his coworker came in this morning and said he had $90k forgiven. Where do I sign up??

Foster care children in Tennessee could be placed in the most secure facilities — with barbed wire and cells that lock — under a newly proposed bill that is alarming advocates. My latest:

NIH reports on ESI support in FY2025 drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/n...

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) Imbedded Pragmatic Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and AD-Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) Clinical Trials (IMPACT) Collaboratory annouces a Request for Applications for the 2026 Health Care Systems Scholars Program. Learn more here! #geronsky #hpsr #hpss #hspr

Here's a quick analysis I did on data I've been collecting on psych/neuro faculty applicants. I don't have data on unsuccessful applicants, but my inference is that women mentored by women have to rely more on bringing in $ to get a faculty job than men mentored by men.

ScienceInsider: NIH research grant success rates plummeted in 2025 By Jocelyn Kaiser cc Jay Bhattacharya @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social @science.org bit.ly/4aHmjUn

Are you a junior faculty member interested in spending 2-4 weeks at Princeton Psych? Please apply for our Microsabbatical program! It’s a fully funded visit for professional development and creating long-term collaborations. psych.princeton.edu/diversity/mi...

New U2 song American Obituary. About the killing of Renee Good. And Minneapolis rising. “The power of the people is stronger than … the people in power” youtube.com/watch?v=Y3zi...

None. Grants that were or would have been reviewed have get barely made it through Council. Grant making is just very slow, largely (I believe) because of (1) the need to "remediate" applications due to problematic language; and (2) some unknown slow steps after a grant is ready to be awarded.

New and competitive renewal awards. The number of awards is 569 compared with more than 2200 through the same date in earlier fiscal years. All ICs have now made awards except for NIAAA, NCCIH, NLM, FIC, and OD. NEI (Eye Institute) made its first award during the new period. 3/4

Non-competitive renewals. 2/4

My weekly NIH update (grants funded through 2/13/26) All projects... 1/4

Wonderful op-ed by a mother who explains how NIH-funded research at U of U Health saved her daughter's life. "That research — and Briar’s life — demonstrate just how critical federal support is to scientists, doctors and, especially, the patients they help." www.sltrib.com/opinion/comm...

O'Neill departs CDC... 🛟 www.biospace.com/policy/cdc-l...

Know a master graduate looking for a funded doctoral position? Please share this! Come work with @ezagheni.bsky.social and me at @mpidr.bsky.social on topics related to migration of scholars and the highly-skilled. More details: www.demogr.mpg.de/en/career_61...

NBC story on NIH Institute Director vacancies... www.nbcnews.com/health/healt... It is bad enough that national news networks (well, not CBS) are covering this story,,,

A brief Bluetorial about analyzing federal grant funding. Both NIH and NSF make data available about funded grants, but each has its quirks and the data structures are VERY different. 1/11

The Irish government is implementing a pilot plan that will give 2,000 artists a basic income for three years, allowing them to focus on their creative output while maintaining an adequate standard of living: https://cnn.it/4634gGS

See the vast deviations in mean scores that this one influential French ice dancing judge has *repeatedly* turned in, often a standard deviation difference from the other judges, to favor French skaters and disadvantage their competitors. www.sbnation.com/olympics/110...

NIH moves to decrease administrative burden. Riiiiight. drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2026/02/13/n...

NSF Update Funding curve overall. A little bit of progress in the past week, but only a little bit. Now by Directorate... 1/11

NEW: Another NIH institute director hasn't been renewed — the director of NIAMS (arthritis, musculoskeletal and skin diseases institute). That leaves a whopping 15 of 27 institutes and centers without a permanent director.

Gallup Will No Longer Track Presidential Approval Ratings www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/u...

#PedSky #MedSky #EpiSky #policysky #polisky #neuroskyence #neurosci 🧪🛟 💊 In September 25 FDA approved leucovorin suggesting it can treat autism. Now, the biggest clinical trial cited in that decision was retracted.

NEW: The FDA just shot down Moderna's new flu shot. From me: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Non-competitive renewal awards 2/4

My weekly update. Some good(ish) news. The pace of NIH grantmaking appears to be picking up. 1/4

"prohibition in the united states" has this time lapse map that switches from folksy banjo music to ominous industrial sci-fi for the 15 seconds when alcohol was illegal nationwide

With FY26 federal appropriations bills now signed into law, the R&D funding outlook is brighter than initially feared. Compared to the drastic cuts that were proposed in the spring, the bills show some increases, flat funding, or relatively small reductions for R&D.

sabrina carpenter singing islands in the stream w the muppets has healed me in ways i did not know i needed

Researchers recently tried an experiment: Gather people who had the same kind of lung cancer and put them on the same type of treatments to fire up their immune systems. The only difference was that half got their medications earlier in the day and the others got them later. https://cnn.it/4amsptq

New story in Research Professional News [from UK, gift link] www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-usa-... 1/2

More on NSF Here are the number grants that were active in each year (at least part) including the effects of grant terminations (data from grant-witness.us) by directorate from 2021-2025. The only directorates showing losses are STEM Education and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

These data show that the NSF terminations targeted STEM Ed and Soc Behav and Econ Sciences almost exclusively with an 11.4% drop in active EDU grants and a 7.4% drop in SPE from FY2024 to FY2025 and most other Directorates essentially unchanged (with an overall drop in the number of active grants)

Breaking, from me: An executive order from Oklahoma's governor directs most of the state's public colleges to "phase out tenure." #AcademicSky #HigherEd @chronicle.com www.chronicle.com/article/tenu...

in addition to chomsky, Dershowitz, and Nowak

Do you have to be a social scientist to know how funny this is?

Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

New and Competitive renewals These are still be made VERY slowly. Only 75 awards have been made through 1/23/26. These are now from 7 institutes and centers (NIA (45), NINDS (16), NIDDK (5), NIDCR (4), NIDCD (2), NHLBI (1), and NCATS (1)). 3/3

Some good news underlying this. At least 36 awards are in response to previously "expired" Notices of Funding Opportunity. If you don't believe pushing back and litigation matters, these are real investigators (primarily graduate students at this point) whose careers have been concretely improved.