NEW: Jenna Norton, an NIH employee who is openly critical of Trump & RFK Jr, has been put on "non-disciplinary" administrative leave. She says the administration is trying to "scare and silence me." An HHS official, asked to comment, called her a radical leftist. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/u...

Trump’s HHS put me on “non-disciplinary” admin leave today. This was retaliation for speaking up. Moves like this are designed to silence us. Let’s not let. www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Dteoop/

There's a disturbing pattern of Medical Child Abuse being legitimized by academic journals like MDPI & Frontiers. In this case, dangerous ILADS/MAPS quack Rosalie Greenberg, MD made numerous unlikely diagnoses in children. Unsurprising to see the use of predatory labs IgeneX, MDL, & Advanced Lab.

A bad thing is unfolding at NIH this week: It looks like the Trump administration is trying to replace key civil servant scientific leaders, the Institute Directors, with political hires. These directors control the NIH budget, tens of billions. A bit of a video explainer here: 1/ 🧪

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".

Confirmed this with an NIH source. At the moment, not aware of anyone else who has been placed on leave though.

Jenna Norton is a hero

1/ We might be nearing the end of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. But even if Congress extends #ACAsubsidies, the debate in Washington is way too small. The real issue isn’t actually the subsidies, it’s how completely insane our health care system has become. 🧵

Promising data supports safety and ability to create a good immune response in Valneva’s experimental #Lyme vaccine. More data is needed to evaluate real world effectiveness. It’s similar tech to the still-FDA-approved-but-shelved Lymerix but it’s designed to work in both Europe and North America.

Note the common tactic used by the internet commenter: Using a false premise to build a mountain of BS and support a conspiracy theory.

MAHA: The "we're not antivax" mask has been dropped www.respectfulinsolence.com/2025/11/10/m... via @gorskon.bsky.social

Very perceptive and well-done piece- you can learn a lot from going to quack conferences. There is a disappointing lack of study on quackery and medical conspiracy theories.

Steve Kirsch unknowingly identifies the fatal flaw of an antivax “report” from the McCullough Foundation: it included junk (even retracted) studies, low quality evidence, and pretended correlation is causation. sciencebasedmedicine.org/antivaxxer-s... Can't tag people here today.

Dr. Jen Gunter created a very educational breakdown of the “firehose of misinformation” spread by the FDA today: vajenda.substack.com/p/reaction-t...

This company Invivyd is looking more overtly anti-vaccine. Its shady SPEAR group has known cranks as members (Amy Proal, David Putrino) but also unexpected members Akiko Iwasaki and Michael Peluso. Yes, this whole thing is still "giving Wakefield" and smacks of tooth fairy science.

Brinda Adhikari and Craig Spencer go to an anti-vax conference and very patiently interview supercranks Pierre Kory and Bret Weinstein: pca.st/episode/12dd...

Steven Salzberg: Functional Medicine is not medicine at all. Instead, it’s a new name for an old grab-bag of unscientific, unsupported, and outright bogus claims. stevensalzberg.substack.com/p/dis-functi...

Learn strategies for combatting misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories about vaccines in your reporting with our new tip sheet. bit.ly/48Oba55 #SciComm #PublicHealth #journalism #news @aaas.org

Cheryl Hines—who has mostly steered clear of RFK’s antivaxx world—headlined a weekend gala for Children’s Health Defense. At the private party, which I watched from the back of the room, she praised CHD and hawked her book— proceeds which were promised to CHD. www.msnbc.com/news/news-an...

In our new book #ScienceUnderSiege @michaelemann.bsky.social @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social @publicaffairs1796.bsky.social we detail the forces driving this dark new chapter in American life www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Every public health and healthcare worker's worst nightmare.

Some physicists should stay in their lane. A recent @thetyee.ca article turns science into sciencefiction, claiming SARS-CoV-2 acts like HIV, causes immune collapse, and fuels cancer. None of it holds up to evidence. I dissect the falsehoods here 👇 🔗marcveldhoen.substac... 1/3

Of course Senator Ron Johnson endorsed Pierre Kory's MMS bleach quackery book 🫠

Quite the unholy journey of Pierre Kory, MD from vitamin cocktail/PANDAS quack to ivermectin/anti-vax quack to full-on bleach quack.

🔔 When Trump posted a video of budget director Russell Vought as the grim reaper, public health workers recognized a kernel of truth. My latest piece @kffhealthnews.org couldn't be more important. Art by the incredible @oonazenda.bsky.social 🧵 kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

A Dietitian Explains Why She Quit Functional Medicine [a marketing term for quackery embraced by Surgeon General nominee Casey Means]

How common is it to charge a fee to verify if a medical practitioner is board certified? The American Nurses Credentialing Center also charges a $40 fee, though they give one freebie. The ABMS site for doctors has free verification at Certification Matters. www.nursingworld.org/certificatio...

Whomp whomp

The American Academy of Nurse Practitioners Certification Board is so hostile to the public that they refuse to allow anyone to independently verify a nurse practitioner’s claim of being board certified without paying a $40 fee.

👏👏👏 youtu.be/MZAJeuZxZ38

🧵My latest: An inside look at how the Trump admin has deployed shrouded budgetary maneuvers to undercut outbreak response, HIV treatment, dementia care & more across America. “No one thought this was possible or legal, but that is what’s happening." abcnews.go.com/Health/red-t...

Starting shortly. Join us!

As I am one of the climate scientists he is referring to here - and I am a scientist who decided to dedicate her life to working on climate precisely because of how unjustly it disproportionately impacts the poor and vulnerable - let me clarify my rationale and thoughts below. 🧵

An alternate universe of blaming Lyme for everything, fake testing, fake diagnoses, and fake treatments

Back to Pasteur. Raw milk is not our largest public health issue, but the purported benefits are hypothetical and not empirically proven and the risks are basic. open.substack.com/pub/pauloffi...

Predatory publisher MDPI continues to show that it is a vanity publisher for cranks. In this case, it’s particularly egregious, given the quack exorcism of toddlers. Also, “integrative medicine” quackademic Christopher D’Adamo is first author in a special issue by autism grifter Richard Frye, MD.

NEW: FDA Drug Unit Chief Is Placed on Leave, and Cites a ‘Toxic’ Environment. Says politics was interfering with science in the race to approve new drugs. @by-cjewett.bsky.social has the scoop. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/02/h...

Those marketing (totally bunk) "stem cell" supplements love lean on meaningless wellness-woo phrases, like natural, GMO-free, pure, organic, toxin-free... Science-y nonsense + wellness nonsense = BS Supergroup! Our study: www.cell.com/stem-cell-re... cc @stemcellnetwork.ca @isscr.org

Another garbage exploitative paper published in one of the seven predatory MDPI special issues edited by autism quack Richard Frye, MD. In a September analysis, of the 52 articles published in the seven issues, Frye was a co-author of 24 articles, or 46%!

Found at the Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure site: A doctor had an extramarital affair. Then he told his hospital he "was diagnosed with cancer, thinking that would dispel rumors of the affair". www.state.ky.us/agencies/kbm...

Update: Amended accusation filed against Fouad Ibrahim Ghaly, MD, a stem cell quack who was medical director for the notoriously scammy clinic Infusio Beverly Hills. Infusio Beverly Hills was created by fake doctor Philip Battiade, who calls himself a naturopath. lymescience.org/rogues/Fouad...

1/3 John Knox, anti-vaccine activist, is now acting head of ASPR -- the agency that handles pandemic response. He’s called COVID vaccine campaigns “nothing other than genocide.” 😶 Not exactly reassuring...

I’m moderating a panel of TB experts on the vlogbrothers youtube channel! Tune in on November 13th at 9 am EST.

For this story, @wired.com spoke to more than a dozen furloughed federal workers about the toll of the gov't shutdown. It's a small glimpse into the shutdown's human toll, which is affecting 750,000 federal workers (who've already had a bad year: think DOGE, RIFs, heftier workloads, and so on...)

"The pneumococcal vaccine protects against .... pneumococcus. Pneumococcus is a common cause of pneumonia (a lung infection), as well as other serious infections. The vaccine prepares your immune system to recognize and fight pneumococcal bacteria. .." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Casey Means, a MAHA leader and RFK Jr. ally, is appearing before the Senate tomorrow for her confirmation hearing. Our podcast episode today starring @laurenweberhp.bsky.social dives deep into her history www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/pos...

A Lyme Disease researcher, here legally for decades, has been left to rot in ICE detention. He was grabbed in July at the airport as he exited a returning flight from Korea. 1/3

AG1 has a new product out: a sleep aid called AGZ. The costly powder is a potpourri of wellness sleep hacks gentrified with slick marketing. My latest for @mcgilloss.bsky.social. www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

Excellent!

Grokipedia is the antithesis of everything that makes Wikipedia good, useful, and human. Grokipedia looks like what you would get if you told an LLM to go make an anti-woke encyclopedia, which is essentially exactly what Elon Musk did. www.404media.co/grokipedia-i...