A New Thread on NIH Forward Funding I recently posted an analysis of forward funding of NIH grants from 2015-25. This analysis was flawed and should be ignored. I apologize for the misleading information I present an analysis of my error and a revised analysis which I am confident is right. 1/25

Join APHA & our partners Nov. 5 @ 2:30-4 p.m. ET on the National Mall to Rally for the Public’s Health. Be inspired & energized by powerful stories & bold ideas as we highlight urgent public health priorities. More info: www.APHA.org/Rally #SpeakForHealth @bradyunited.org @publiccitizen.bsky.social

Over the weekend, the Director of the NIH accepted an award from a RFK Jr.-allied anti-public health dark money group founded by an accused serial sexual harasser. Throughout the speech, he repeatedly joked that his current job is “terrible.” www.importantcontext.news/p/nih-direct...

Breaking: Democrats flip two Public Service Commission seats in Georgia, the first victories in 25 years.

Grudge Standard Science

There's something that could be written about how the NIH Director's disdain for the collaborative models of editing on Wikipedia and content moderation on Reddit fit with his approach to grant review

The NIH has insisted there are no banned words But, an analysis by @jeremymberg.bsky.social found over 700 hundred grants changed their titles from '24 to '25 Some see it as a small price to pay to keep their grant, but others are worried about what comes next www.statnews.com/2025/10/29/n...

NEW: The entire staff supporting ACIP was laid off, and most working groups haven't met in months. That means the US may not make routine vaccine recommendations for more than half of children in 2026, and it could halt new vaccines in the pipeline. My latest: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Amidst a government shutdown in which the White House has proposed slashing federal support of science by billions of dollars, our #SCIMaP team continues to assess the impact of research cuts on communities nationwide. Learn more about our efforts: scienceimpacts.org With more to come... a 🧵

Amidst the shutdown, we are continuing to work towards both reactive and proactive steps to communicate what will be lost now and in the future if America steps away from its commitment to medical and basic research. scienceimpacts.org /🧵

The #SCIMaP project has included these terminations as part of our analysis flow, again linking the site of grant terminations to local economic impacts. The scope of grant terminations remain a surprise to many, both to those who oppose and to those who support them.

This was one of the key moments for me from the #STATSummit last week.

Very cool/unexpected coverage of our work...article in the National Catholic Reporter about Pope Leo's contribution to relief efforts after Cyclone Yaku cites our pre-print, mentions extreme March precipitation in NW Peru has become more likely with climate change www.ncronline.org/news/pope-mu...

I will be presenting on this project as part of the #IDWeek session on environmental upheaval and infectious diseases at 3:15 today.

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya is slated to attend the annual conference of Tucker's Brownstone at the end of the month, where he is being honored. They are also currently fundraising for a movie about him, produced by RFK Jr's running mate substack.brownstone.org/p/the-story-...

A must-read @politico.com piece about the man behind the Great Barrington Declaration & the Brownstone Institute, two groups that were foundational and central to RFK Jr’s rise and to his MAHA agenda (I was interviewed for the piece; there’s a quote from me) www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

It's that time again. For the next 24 hours, drop any infectious disease and/or vaccine-related questions below in response to this post, and I will do my best to answer them. Responses are for information only and are NOT medical advice. #AskAnIDDoc October 2025 edition.

Happy "No Kings" Day! I just sent this email to Director Bhattacharya regarding the recently appointment of a new NIEHS Director.

Panelists included Mallory Harris (of #SCIMaP and UMD-College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences), whose work has been essential to assessing the community-level impacts of federal cuts to science. Preprint: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... Panel: www.statnews.com/2025/10/16/f...

Things are at a standstill with the govt shutdown, the year has been one of 'constant chaos' at the NIH — & the worst may be yet to come folks said on my panel Read a recap of our talk w/ @jeremymberg.bsky.social @malar0ne.bsky.social & Eric Green here www.statnews.com/2025/10/16/f...

I think I can hear baby KJ babbling backstage 🥺

If there are NIH folks who would like to watch our STAT summit (including a panel on the state of the NIH), please reach out and we can get you access

The director of the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion has just been laid off.

Looking forward to this later this week!

Looking forward to this discussion at the STAT Summit in Boston this Thursday.

No words

"The administration may claim that some of these RIFs were ‘errors’. By extension, they may try and argue that many RIFs were ‘correct’. We should assume otherwise: the wholesale use of RIFs is a form of political retribution that does not serve federal agency missions. This is a failure by design."

New reporting: many apparently fired at CDC in 'error'. This is a failure by design given that the admin does not care about fulfilling agency missions. This is the kind of error that should have political consequences. Unserious people cause real-world harm. 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/h...

Finally scheduled an appointment for COVID vaccine next week. Prescription is no longer required in GA to get the booster. I get vaccinated to: - Protect myself - Protect others - Model what I preach georgiarecorder.com/2025/10/08/g...

Lost Science is a new NYT series of accounts from scientists who have lost their jobs or funding. You can send your story to the Times here www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...

I went to a talk by NIH Director Bhattacharya last month where he detailed evidence that opportunities for ECRs have declined over the past few decades. Then he moved on to the next slide without offering any solutions (or explaining the actions he's taken so far). Here's a good place to start 👇

Happening now!

I got my first dose of MMR almost exactly a year before Wakefield published his fraudulent, unethical study arguing it should be broken into 3 shots. Almost 30 years later, my antibodies (and, unfortunately, this bad idea) are still going strong.

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

New post at Science Matters, reviewing "The War on Science" a collection of 30+ essays that views the war as having a single source - the left - while neglecting to reckon with longstanding (and accelerating) corporate and political threats from the right. joshuasweitz.substack.com/p/not-all-wa...

Amidst the shutdown, it looks like the next meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which was scheduled for October 22-23, is being rescheduled.

One more plug for this webinar tomorrow afternoon. Not too late to register!

The relentless Jessica McDonald has spent two weeks and hundreds of emails to fact check claims about the safety of #CovidVaccination in #pregnancy made at the #ACIP meeting. She couldn't have been any quicker. A lie can get around the world before the truth can get its shoes on.

Even though it's crisis #192308 in our current time, I don't think it's sufficiently sunk in with ppl in the academic community that getting federal funding for your research will primarily depend on whether Trump political appointees find you and your work useful kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

IMO this hasn't gotten enough attention: a recent memo at NIH announces that peer review will be devalued in determining which grants get funded, granting more power to political appointees to make decisions based on the admin's whims over scientific merit kffhealthnews.org/news/article...

One month later and as far as I can tell, there's been no follow-up on this (thankfully). www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

Thursday 10/9 at 1 PM Central, @sciencewriting.bsky.social is hosting a webinar on covering scientific funding chaoes with @stephaniemlee.bsky.social @katherinejwu.com and @scott-delaney.bsky.social. Sign up: connector.casw.org/event/casw-c...

The sequel to We Want Them Infected is done! COVID killed 1.2 million Americans while vaccines saved millions. Yet, disinformation superspreaders were empowered, where they are taking a wrecking ball to science & medicine. How did that happen?🧵 sciencebasedmedicine.org/everyone-els...

Come join our team at SCIMaP!

A year ago, I warned university leadership to not help Jay Bhattacharya fashion himself a champion of open debate while he actively worked to undermine academic freedom. Now, as NIH Director, he's waging a campaign of censorship to advance a political agenda. stanforddaily.com/2024/10/03/f...

CDC changed vaccine recs in 2019 for Tdap, so if your tetanus booster was before then you may not have gotten the "p" (whooping cough) part in a while...I learned from experience 😖 www.voicesforvaccines.org/my-pertussis...

I'd love to get 35 new free subscribers (then 200 more, but start small) to Gravity Is Gone, with my independent reporting and writing on science, politics, and policy. I got laid off a month ago, trying to build this, lfg! www.gravityisgone.com I published two things just yesterday; the first:

"I worked so hard for this, and then it's just all gone. We might lose a generation of early-career researchers."