From a little over two decades ago, but hasn't aged a day. www.nature.com/articles/422...

Feels like it might be a long year.

Katherine was an intellectually intrepid writer and editor. She had great ambitions for what physics journalism could be and she pushed those around her to meet that mark, as this eulogy attests. It is just devastating to lose her.

Science has named the seemingly unstoppable growth of renewable energy worldwide as the 2025 Breakthrough of the Year. Learn more about this year's #BOTY and other big advances in science: https://scim.ag/493Tpgx

Took their time with this one...

Hearing for Thakur v. Trump (over terminated grants for University of California researchers) starting now: www.courtlistener.com/docket/70459... Zoom link: cand.uscourts.gov/judges/rfl/l... I'll try to follow along live.

Huh. Well that's about 5% of the way there. Large enough to make a dent, small enough to probably not change much about its relationship to taxpayers.

The National Science Board, which oversees NSF, has published recommendations to update the foundation's merit review (which was just updated). Below are the main points. www.nsf.gov/nsb/updates/...

Here's our reporting on the proposed dismantling of the jewel of US atmospheric science, @ncar-ucar.bsky.social. The plan is to break NCAR apart and disburse some parts to other locations (like the research aircraft fleet) and eliminate others. www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪 #AGU25 #climate

Scientists have expressed their shock and sadness following the death of plasma physicist Nuno Loureiro, a researcher at MIT, who was shot at his home on Monday go.nature.com/3MI0sUD

These are understandable concerns, given all that has happened at NSF, so I think it's worth addressing. Here is the exact language about internal reviews: "in those rare circumstances when an ad hoc or panel review request process fails to produce the minimum of two external reviews."

I think it's fair to argue that many reductionists (then and now) hold a 'strong reductionist' view that goes beyond just 'everything is reducible' to 'everything can be derived up from the smallest things'. The latter is what Anderson took issue with.

A state program in Wisconsin for deafblind children helped a 3-year-old, born with poor vision and no ears, learn to communicate. The Trump administration cut the program’s funding over goals related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Fermilab appoints a new permanent director, Norbert Holtkamp, following Young-Kee Kim's tenure as acting director.

Amid a whole host of other upheaval—their last day in the building is this Friday—NSF is making some changes to its grant review process. I spoke to staff about the potential benefits and drawbacks:

When should a paper be corrected? Last December, @elisabethbik.bsky.social and other sleuths began flagging papers by a prominent bioengineer, Ali Khademhosseini. They found over 80 with image issues. Khademhosseini and his colleagues have issued over 40 corrections, but avoided retractions.

washington navel oranges, painted by royal charles steadman, 1927

NSF reorganization is, frankly, a bit odd, and we haven't run a story on it partly because it's hard to know what to make of it. The impetus for reorg, as I understood it, was to limit the siloing that occurs because NSF has so many (35ish) divisions. Now there will be 50+ sections.

Bit late on this, but yesterday DoD appealed this case about indirect costs to the First Circuit.

Dark matter experiments are dipping well into the neutrino fog at this point.

Fired CDC director Susan Monarez is one of Nature's 10 people who shaped science in 2025. “I always challenge the status quo because that’s what you do in science,” Monarez told me. “You challenge it to try to do better, but you don’t compromise your moral and scientific integrity for expediency.”

The best part about this is that it's still a bit of an open question because fluid dynamics is, well, tricky. Here's an extremely accessible article from just last year.

Not ideal. "If Uzbekistan were excluded, they found, the damages would look similar to earlier research. Instead of a 62 percent decline in economic output by 2100 in a world where carbon emissions continue unabated, global output would be reduced by 23 percent."

The LSND anomaly has been extremely dubious for a long time. Hopefully this puts things more to bed. As a side note, always nice to see null results getting published in top journals.

Machine learning is a useful tool for plenty of scientific areas. The reason 'AI' is getting grouped with quantum computing specifically—at companies like Google and now at DOE—is because of branding and wishcasting. www.science.org/content/arti...

While the Trump administration is imposing de jure and de facto restrictions against Chinese nationals, I am not aware of any policy that would reject visas for Chinese nationals in fields of "interest" to the PLA. Please be careful about generalizing from individual cases.

An excellent visualization of changes to NSF and NIH funding.

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

BREAKING: Northwestern University has agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury $75 million, over the course of three years as part of an agreement with the federal government to restore funding and end investigations into the university Full statement from NU below:

Happy Thanksgiving!

There are currently about ~250 active doctoral dissertation research grants, which support early career researchers (mainly in the social/behavioral/economic sciences) to the tune of ~10-30k. Sure looks like NSF is sunsetting the program.

Following Trump's DEI cuts, attendance has plunged at some conferences for scientists from underrepresented groups. The loss of federal support means fewer chances for people to network, share science, and develop new career paths. Still, attendees say "the sense of solidarity remains strong".

Some meta commentary inspired by this piece. There are basically four kinds of science policy stories about federal agencies these days: -unprecedented/illegal actions (mass RIFs) -changes to funding (budget, indirect costs) -policy change w/clear intention (EPA overturning endangerment finding)

A lot of clarifying details in here about how DOGE's influence waned after Musk's departure in May and what many of its key figures are now doing.

"As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines" www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

About that exclusive, "closed-to-press" MAHA summit last week with RFK and JD Vance: I got in. Here's what I saw. 🧵 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Interesting update on avian magnetoreception. This is neat, but given the existing evidence I would be a bit surprised (sotto voce: and disappointed) if the cryptochrome mechanism with its elegant quantum biology turned out to be for naught.

HEADS UP: CDC website now officially asserts that vaccines may cause autism.“Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.” Also says the “vaccines do not cause autism” header remains b/c of an agreement with Cassidy.

NSF sent about the same amount of money out as the previous year, but to about 20% fewer new recipients (8800 new grants this year vs. 11,000 last year). NIH did something similar.

First results taken with 59 days of measurements from JUNO, which studies neutrinos emitted by nuclear reactors off the coast of China. Already exceeds previous leading measurements for two parameters that govern solar neutrino oscillation. Not bad! arxiv.org/abs/2511.14593

Unclear how this will hold up in an inevitable court case, but worth noting:

Researchers publish paper about the promise and perils of post-publication peer review (e.g. Pubpeer). Turns out the paper has several hallucinated citations, which are pointed out on... Pubpeer. Commenters have also spotted that the last author (and EIC of the journal) has 11 retractions. 🤷‍♂️

I realize that this is not the main takeaway for most, but this [gesturing at Epstein scandal] probably has significant implications for federal science funding, which depends largely on Congress rejecting the sweeping cuts proposed by Trump/Vought.

Stunning local reporting from Syracuse about how the community came together to help someone escape from ICE. Also poignantly self-aware about who gets help, and why.

Terrific. You've created a metric that will consign all writing to AI.

BREAKING: NSF will be relocating to the "Randolph Building," about half a mile from its current location in Alexandria, where they will co-locate with the US Patent and Trademark Office. The lease will begin January 1, 2026. Below is a transcription of an email shared with me by NSF staff.

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

After a bruising 42-day shutdown, the government has finally reopened. We took a look at what's next for federal science—how quickly things will get back up to speed and whether there will be long-term consequences. With Jeff Tollefson and @alexwitze.bsky.social:

High false alarm rate, but would be a hell of a thing to spot.

Alright, I think that's enough of these damn files for tonight. G'night and good luck.