It's pretty depressing how many journalists and headline writers can't seem to parse the difference between telling the truth and providing a transcript of absolutely unhinged nonsense.

Free to attend virtually: a NASEM event "Rethinking researcher assessment and incentives at U.S. academic institutions: A workshop" October 28-29, 2025 Agenda: www.nationalacademies.org/event/45044_... Registration: events.nationalacademies.org/45044_10-202...

The anti-science announcements on autism were always about messaging, with a side of prioritizing belief over information. That’s why RFK Jr. cut the research doing what he claimed he would do—replacing it by drawing conclusions from inconclusive studies. www.propublica.org/article/rfk-...

WHO statement on autism-related issues The World Health Organization (WHO) emphasizes that there is currently no conclusive scientific evidence confirming a possible link between #autism and use of acetaminophen (also known as paracetamol) during pregnancy Full statement bit.ly/47YsgwI

Timely reminder about academic freedom from @aaup.org www.aaup.org/news/academi...

The release of personally identifiable information that was not relevant to the government’s Title VI investigation was improper. The Trump admin is investigating how the UC responded to claims of antisemitism, not the individuals named in the complaints. The AAUP condemns this move by UC Berkeley.

There are so many unforgivable actions of capitulation being taken by the institutions most well-positioned to stand up to Trump’s authoritarianism if they wished to do so. A must-read from @samtlevin.bsky.social:

Citing concerns about DEI, the Department of Education has halted funding for programs that support students with combined hearing and vision loss in eight states. “How low can you go?” one advocate asked. “How can you do this to children?” By @jodiscohen.bsky.social @jsmithrichards.bsky.social

A “National Weather Service” for public health 🌡️📊— real-time data at your fingertips. ✨Sounds brilliant, right?✨ Too bad this Admin shelved it. So much for their "transparency" 🙄 Shelving data doesn’t stop disease. It just keeps the public in the dark. 🫠

A good reason for faculty to join the @aaup.org , which fights for academic freedom and works to defend against attacks like this.

“As we consider how to ‘defend’ academic freedom, I think it is important to admit when it has been lost. Perhaps one day it may return, but at least for now, academic freedom is no longer present at one of the largest public institutions in the country.” ⬇️⬇️

Universities must be bastions of open inquiry, not battlegrounds for partisan intimidation. Please sign & share.

NEW: A lawyer for former Texas A&M Professor Melissa McCoul, who was fired over a lesson related to gender identity, said her client "has appealed her termination and is exploring further legal action." For @nbcnews.com: www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-...

Over 120 Americans die by firearm every day in America. One in ten of those deaths happens to a child. Every single firearm death is preventable and it’s a choice to continue to live this way.

Elizabeth Warren on people who say Dems needs to tone down their rhetoric: "Oh, please. Why don't you start with the president of the United States? And every ugly meme he's posted and every ugly word."

RFK Jr has promised to release a report on the causes of autism in September. To prepare, it's a good idea to make sure we know what the common types of observational research biases are. First up: confounding by indication. Read more here: open.substack.com/pub/epiellie...

"Harvard can't use race as a factor in admissions, but ICE can use race as a factor in detentions" is a retrenchment essentially to a pre-Civil War understanding of the Constitution. It's vanishingly few steps removed from "Latinos have no rights which the white man is bound to respect."

In the minds of most Americans, we’ve tended to mythologize the Warren Court as most representative of the Supreme Court, when in truth, for most of our history the Court has ruled against minority rights, upheld the power of wealthy white men, and rarely protected the most vulnerable.

If my top-percentile-scoring career development award grant was funded by AHRQ, I would be nearing the end of my first year...instead, professional societies are suing to keep AHRQ alive.

“Gold standard science” is what scientists at NIH, FDA, CDC, and AHRQ did before RFK Jr. became Secretary of HHS. It’s not happening now because grants have been rescinded or frozen and he’s brought in incompetents to do politically motivated garbage studies connecting vaccines to autism.

Linguists will really say "the forbidden experiment" like people aren't performing it on the majority of deaf children in this country every day 💀

🧪 A federally commissioned study detailing alcohol's health risks has been suppressed. The research shows a clear link to seven types of cancer, with mortality risk increasing sharply even at low consumption levels. #MedSky 🛟

Ossoff: Absolutely RFK JR should resign. He should have never been confirmed to begin with. He is utterly unqualified. This is someone who has embraced every piece of quackery and pseudoscience that he’s come across.

The House bill officially calls for the elimination of the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research (AHRQ), which my colleague @sundermannaj.bsky.social & I discuss in a forthcoming op-ed is based on a faulty claim that its function is duplicative. appropriations.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

The bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act is a necessary step to ban Members of Congress and their families from engaging in insider trading. It is time to pass this bill and make it clear to the American people that their elected officials put them first.

The oldest fossil evidence shows that humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago and would have had dark pigmented skin to protect them from intense UV rays. So if you're a believer in "God," and believe man was created in his image... then it stands to reason that God is a Black man.

Very annoyed by this brainworm, heroin narrative that RFK is some kind of incompetent. He may very well be mentally ill, I'm not a doctor, but it's kind of beside the point. He's calculating; he has said he wanted to do all these things for years, and now he's doing them. 🤷🏻

Dr. Dmitri Daskalakis, who resigned from the CDC says that RFKJr said he believes that Avian flu should be allowed to "burn through" the chickens and then children and others, so we can propagate a "stronger species". RFKJr believes in eugenics. RFKJr needs to resign or be fired.

Disabled people: RFK Jr. is a dangerous eugenicist who wants people to die. Nondisabled people: DP: Here are examples of his eugenicist policy. NP:... DP: He actually wrote all this out in a book years ago. NP: Hey why can't I get a Covid shot??

“The grim reality is that the effects of this mass exodus are likely to reverberate in every corner of our nation's public health infrastructure and across every specialty in medicine. The evisceration of the CDC is a disaster for all of us.”

Here's something I think a lot of folks don't yet understand, but 16 states' worth of CVSes refusing to give out Covid shots *is* actually preventing people from accessing them. They are the biggest pharmacy chain in the country and they own Aetna insurance, often forcing those clients to use CVS.

I’m so grateful that I have tenure and the academic freedom to call it like I see it. “Dr. Kathleen Bachynski, a professor of public health at Muhlenberg College, described Kennedy’s comments as “absolute gibberish” and slammed the HHS secretary as a “dangerous buffoon” who is “threatening us all.”

Feeling very defeated today as I look at other grants to apply for this fall. My K01 application at AHRQ scored in the 1st percentile over a year ago, and hasn't been funded because of Congress failing to pass a budget last year + the mess this year. So many people's careers and lives impacted.

AHRQ-supported research saves lives & reduces health care costs. The ongoing pause in grantmaking puts the future of evidence-based care at risk. At @academyhealth.bsky.social, we're standing with our partners to protect the science that drives better care: academyhealth.org/blog/2025-08...

Please do not comment on my posts that: 1. A bad thing happening isn't really happening b/c some unknown entity will make sure it doesn't happen. That's a harmful combo of wishful thinking & diffusion of responsibility; 2. Recommended civic engagement/action items are pointless. That's sabatoge.

Kennedy “is trying to fully dismantle the nation’s vaccination apparatus, regardless of what science says or what most people want. And less than a year into his tenure as health secretary, he is succeeding brilliantly.” We are all at deep risk unless we push Congress to actually act. NOW.

Information on federal spending is public again, thanks to a court ruling against the Trump administration this summer. See how funds are being apportioned for public health: apportionment-public.max.gov Via The Hill: thehill.com/business/bud...

Not trying to call out this post in particular but something I think about a lot is George Lakoff's observation that liberals respond to budget cuts by replacing them with private charity instead of with directing money to try to reverse the budget cuts

As he unleashes troops to combat "crime," Trump is simultaneously gutting the cops on the beat that stop corporations from harming us — the EPA, IRS, SEC, Labor Department, FTC, CFPB, Consumer Product Safety Commission, FDA, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Hello?

So let’s talk about healthcare for veterans. Not all of us can use the VA system. Some are stuck with Tricare. Who is actually United Healthcare. I am forced to go to an army base to get my healthcare. It takes them 3 months to get me an appointment. It takes them a week to fill my Rx.

RFK Jr. doesn’t like that a study of every child born in Denmark from 1997-2018 showed no link between aluminum in vaccines and 50 adverse health outcomes. This study included more than a million kids. RFK Jr. wants the study retracted. The journal, which is a very prestigious one, refused.

The independence of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is vital. If politicized, it can't be trusted as a source of information. Who did Trump just put in charge of the agency? E.J. Antoni — chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and contributor to Project 2025.

So this happened... Useful if you want to make economic (and health) arguments about the importance of NIH.

Young people need to understand what RFK Jr. just did Before Obamacare, insurance companies could deny you coverage for CHEMOTHERAPY because you had acne as a teenager. They considered PREGNANCY a pre-existing condition. Childhood asthma too. And could deny you. This is bad.

Heard from #AHRQ that the entire grants staff has been let go! They are unable to issue funds for grants already funded, let alone fund new grants. This is outrageous and will make Americans poorer and sicker. Why? A brief thread about just some recent AHRQ-funded research: #MedSky #HealthPolicy

Oh, for fuck's sake. We knew this was coming after Braidwood, though. We have the most anti-health health secretary imaginable. www.wsj.com/health/healt...

🚨 Lancet report to highlight: 49% of 232 US public health datasets were quietly altered this year. Most changes? Swapping “gender” for “sex.” Only 13% logged it. Silent edits undermine data integrity and trust. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Trump’s EPA has: -Killed $15 million in research into forever chemicals in farmlands -Attempted to roll back forever chemical limits in drinking water -Delayed rules requiring corporations to report their forever chemical usage How does this “make America healthy again”?

Brett Hankison fired 10 shots into Breonna Taylor’s Louisville home. He was convicted of civil rights violations. Trump regime is recommending a ONE day sentence. It was an illegal entry. He fired through closed blinds. An innocent black woman lost her life. This is not justice. This is racism

New paper! In collaboration with health behavior, health services researchers, and geographers, I examined differential access to acute care at the nexus of ethnicity, immigration status, and language dominance among rural-dwelling Latine people in the South link.springer.com/article/10.1...