Something I’ve been thinking for a while: communicating the value of research, especially fundamental research, is necessary but not sufficient to retain public support for science. Vannevar said it. It’s the tangible benefits that convince people to continue to invest.

For example: if 84% of people already agree that scientific research aimed at advancing knowledge is usually a worthwhile investment over time... Why are you so sure that the real problem is that people "just don't know enough about why research matters" www.pewresearch.org/science/2026...

February 8, 1968: 3 Black students are killed and 28 are wounded as state troopers open fire on student demonstrators on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg following protests over a whites-only bowling alley. The event becomes known as the Orangeburg Massacre.

One of the most valuable comments I heard in grad school was in a mock review panel when the guest prof said, basically, sometimes reviewer comments are real concerns and you can get funded by fixing them, and sometimes they just didn’t think it was interesting and had to write something.

Yeah, letting go of adored but obvs dying & dead pet hypotheses seems to be the insuperable problem.

Since someone floated this up, some data! A little birdy sent me a slide deck FOIA’d from CSR. Costs for a normal recent operating year (FY24) of one in-person meeting, two remote, per standing study section. $13.15M in reviewer payments. $7.25M in hotel and $4.38M airfare

That was my experience last year. Everything that was picked up (that I am aware of) was according to percentiles. The unfortunate part, and I don't know if my experience is widespread, I saw no select pay.

NIGMS has had no official payline as long as I can remember. That said, funding was highly correlated with percentile, with exceptions for publicly stated policies (limits on total funding to one investigator). I’m expecting this to be the norm at other ICs.

NIGMS will have council meeting tomorrow. You can watch the open session here. nigms.nih.gov/node/145911

“The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love.” - Bad Bunny #WednesdayWisdom #Grammys2026

The bureaucracy of science has grown so much, the system is collapsing upon itself: Scientists have become administrators of grants rather than spending time on science. Paid administrators are demanding even more administrative work from scientists. Administrators are eating the science budget.

I started offering career advice to two junior colleagues today in separate meetings, and both times I caught myself thinking that, if I'm honest, I don't have very good advice on navigating the current funding and job climate. I think it's important to say that no one does.

My muse needs to keep better hours.

Every Feb. 1 I will celebrate the Greensboro Four, who tried to get served at the Woolworth lunch counter and launched a national movement. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensb...

I am not sure I would say that the task of review at the ICs and CSR was as different as apples and oranges; I rather think the task was pretty fundamentally the same. Regardless, I think we can all agree the process that led to consolidation was suboptimal.

Black History Month: Ernest Everett Just, 20th century biologist, earned a zoology PhD from U. of Chicago (1916) & was a pioneering biologist at Howard Univ; the Marine Biological Lab at Woods Hole & Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, Berlin. He's renowned for fertilization & cell surface studies

Reading an incredibly thoughtful, deeply referenced review this morning written by an academic in a BRICS state and published in a journal that some here would no doubt look down on. We lose so much when we give a narrow set of authorities a privileged place in our thinking.

If you're an adult who was vaccinated, you should get your titers run to make sure you still have immunity. Vaccination can wane and/or you may not have generated a strong immune response. That was ok when we had herd immunity but we're likely about to lose our "measles free" status.

Snowy view of the #NIH Clinical Center, the largest research hospital in the US

So then a score doesn't make something more meritorious. And scores are splitting hairs on many panels. Is a 25 better than a 31? Seems there may be a role for considering all the factors that in grant funding.

I was just recounting one my early career stories when we took a triaged grant and just resubmitted it (with nothing changed) and asked for a different study section. 6 %ile. One scientist's trash is another scientist's gold.

Just different reviewers with different perspectives

The same grant can be scored when reviewed in 1 panel and not discussed when reviewed in another. Did the merit of the application change?

Nice modeling by @jeremymberg.bsky.social showing the impact of forward funding more NIH awards. Don’t miss the subtle point he makes early on about decreasing probability of award driving a delayed increase in application numbers. open.substack.com/pub/goodscie...

Current status: making questionable decisions about caffeine consumption.

You have to do the experiment. There is no way around it.

I keep trying to explain to non-biologists that you cannot predict biology. Whatever you think the rule is, evolution has probably found several ways around it.

HPV vaccine can also prevent other cancers caused by the virus, including head and neck and penile cancers. There is no credible evidence of harm.

I am hearing that RFK Jr.’s minions are going to go after HPV vaccines. I’ve got problems with these people and now you’re going to hear about them, first from a personal perspective and then from a professional one. It all boils down to this: WE HAVE A SAFE VACCINE THAT PREVENTS CANCER.

For all the citizen supporters of science in the audience: your philanthropic donations make a difference. We appreciate you, and we need you. But if it's the kind of thing you're into, ask your nonprofit of choice what they're doing to make sure they're not just donating under the lamp-post.

For comparison, over the same time period, the number of competing R01 applications NIH-wide increased less than twofold.

This is remarkable and insane dereliction of integrity...

FWIW, this would be my advice: to the extent you are able, diversify your funding sources. Yes, that’s hard and uncertain, and there’s general consensus that there aren’t enough private dollars. But a recent paper suggests it might be more than you think.

#DC ❄️❄️

A necessary move, but it highlights a larger question I’ve wrestled with: how do you balance the need for Mertonian universalism with the need to establish trust, especially in a system where there are definite bad actors? #metascience

Bill Foege, a health giant who led the eradication of smallpox and then led the CDC, has died. Bill's commitment to humanity and to selfless leadership contrasts with the fecklessness of today's health leaders who try to undermine vaccines. RIP, Bill. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

This is really is a great piece, and Kevin makes an important point in it: “the data was made vulnerable because our scientific institutions assume good faith in people. There needs to be an acknowledgment that there are bad-faith researchers. The rules and regulations need to catch up with that”

🚨🚨🚨 "At least 63 times since 2007, data from some of the 28 human genomic repositories that the N.I.H. controls was improperly released to researchers, used for unapproved purposes or made vulnerable to theft..." (Gift Link) www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

I love NIH. We need NIH. NIH is full of good, good people. Being good people and wanting good things is not, on its own, enough to ensure that good things happen.

My father had polio in his back, my uncle in his leg. The worst day of my father's life was while spending more than a year in the hospital at age 11, his father showed him the newspaper story that a polio vaccine had been found. But it was too late for him. He didn't know if he'd ever walk again.

When all the evidence from independent studies points in the same direction, believe it. Vaccines work.

Been hearing some horrifying chatter about dealing with the new #NIH common form and #ScienCV system, so I put together a short video with some tricks for mitigating some of those pain points. Hope it helps? 🧪 open.substack.com/pub/emptymod...

🧵. For myself I take two lessons: (1) it’s important to work with what you’ve got ✨and✨ (2) at the same time you’re doing that work, invest in a new approach

"We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there "is" such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action." -MLK

Nice piece by @beenwrekt.bsky.social that echoes a problem I’ve long seen in biomedicine: people confusing “new” with “new-to-them”. This is imho a pre-existing problem related to a failure to read the literature deeply, but chatbots have put it on steroids:

The National Science Foundation sign on our Eisenhower Av building is now gone. The NSF mural in the foyer is removed and torn off in sheets. We were supposed to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the agency in May 2025. That never happened.

Funny, but also one of the two best career pieces of advice I got -- get exercise, especially when you are too stressed or don't have time for it.

Oh to be a little Tardigrade walking across a microscope slide. 🫧🐻🧪

A thought I find myself coming back to lately.

Americans overwhelmingly support science, but their views on how science is faring in the U.S. compared to other nations vary by political party. Read the full article here: www.scientificamerican.com/article/amer...