We shouldn't be proud of this. It shows we're chumps willing to squeeze more and more work out of our days and nights as the university gives us less and less.

What a great article not only on faculty workloads, but how little our salaries actually factor in to most university budgets. A few highlights. First, our salaries are falling:

Faculty salaries are a declining contribution to university expenditures. Trying to drain even more from overworked faculty (who are often teaching 3, 4, or even 5 courses per semester) is not a way to corral costs, it’s a way to decrease effectiveness

Cool that James Madison envisioned everyone having a rocket launcher but the authors of the 14th amendment explicitly stating their intentions doesn't count for some reason.

Many bonkers words on this list, but at least when I applied for an R16 you had to have a section about your student recruitment plan. ‘Recruitment plan’ is on the disfavored words list now. I’m sure all clinical trials also use that phrase as well.

NIH grants have been under political scrutiny since early 2025. But what does the screening process actually look like? What is being flagged? I spent a month digging into leaked docs and emails. We've published the 235-word list that are being flagged by an internal AI tool. And so much more. 🧵

Bio/science friends, how is it that I only heard of the "In Preparation" blog/substack today? Every article hits hard, so very hard, like headline @theonion.com articles from Jan 18, 2001 and Nov 7, 2012. Just banger after banger. For example: inpreparation.substack.com/p/german-sci...

The “innovations” ppl care about 2day (new cancer therapies, GLP1s, AI, etc) came from the creativity of people trained decades ago. New policies are ~implicitly~ telling trainees that supporting them is no longer a priority. Nor is broadening the perspectives present in science. Sad to see!

A 20 year study on 2 NIH diversity programs in Science Advances shows they doubled undergrads' odds of getting a Ph.D. That is, before the funding for those programs and for the study itself was terminated last year: www.statnews.com/2026/06/17/n...

this opener by krugman is how every musk story should be framed open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...

Neuroscientist here, who has talked about the US losing science ground to other countries: The biggest problem for generating future cures for brain diseases is the ongoing utter destruction of US basic neuroscience. It’s not about regulation.

Very helpful discussion of the pros and cons of cognitive offloading. We all do it, the question is how and for what kinds of tasks. Cognitive offloading for performance of things you've learned how to do? Okey-dokey. Cognitive offloading during learning? Much less okey-dokey.

And the number of Black NIH-funded folks was already too damned low, and not representative of the population. Historical NIH success rates show that Black applicants are roughly 10% to 13% less likely to receive investigator-initiated research awards (like R01s) compared to white applicants.

The Trump Administration’s racist science policies have achieved some of their goals. The number of Black Principal Investigators has dropped by 10% between 2024 and 2025; while the number of Hispanic PIs has fallen by 7%. For research trainees, the numbers are far worse.

The number of Black NIH-funded Fellows has plummeted by a staggering 40% from 2024 to 2025; for Hispanic trainees the number has fallen by 33%. These figures are nothing short of horrifying. The Trump administration is stealing the future of science.

I’ve been teaching Neurophysiology for 14 years & the past two years (after a 3 yr break from the class) have shocked me for how much more difficult students are finding problems that past classes could master w a little effort. We problem solve in class & I have a lot of scaffolding built in. 1/?

I know we’ve all read 100 articles like this, but I do recommend this one, especially for the series of questions at the end about how universities (not individual instructors) could change our practice. I’d love to discuss those

The ADA called the cops on attendees--one of them a former ADA president--for distributing reprints of an article pulblished in the ADA's flagship journal. "Failing to meet the moment" is starting to feel like the understatement of the century when it comes scientific organizations in the US.

This is extremely chilling - virologists being targeted for what appears to be minor (if any) "offenses". We all know _why_ this is happening, so I'm not going to belabor that point - but I want to provide some context on the technical details. 🧵 www.science.org/content/arti...

Every day in this country, 130 people are shot and killed and over 200 more are shot and wounded. No other peer nation would accept this, so why should we? Today on National Gun Violence Awareness Day, #WearOrange to call attention to this crisis.

It's not just the legislation itself; it's the chilling effect, the climate of fear, it's designed to create. Enough time in that climate and eventually people are conditioned into reflexive self-censorship

It is pretty straightforward to post a comment. I posted one from the perspective of a federally funded scientist and helped my husband write one about the potential impacts to his job & the tech industry--which relies on federally funded basic research to innovate. 🧪

How the brain encodes social isolation and the need to be together, a wonderful update on the latest neuroscience by @inkfish.bsky.social

This was rough to read because it’s clear the CSU system is one of the places that could make a huge difference in a ton of lives but is struggling and they’re hoping that AI will be the miracle they need, when the real problem is they’re chronically underfunded.

I keep saying, I think it’s wildly irresponsible of any educational institution, from kindergartens to universities, to be embracing this technology with zero information on its effectiveness or long term impact

🪼 Your tax dollars paid a scientist to squeeze jellyfish through cheesecloth. Osamu Shimomura processed tens of thousands on an NSF grant to understand why they glow. He found a protein that glowed green under UV light. Called it "green protein." Nobody cared. For decades.

Calling all Scientists! Research Administrators! Deans! Fans of Science! No one is coming to save us. Here is your assignment. I have written a step by step, easy to understand "how-to" document to help you comment on the proposed OMB rule. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/what-we-ne...

This is a great summary of actions to oppose the OMB rule changes and links to a great summary of the key changes by Elizabeth Ginexi (that is extremely helpful in drafting your own comment and having talking points for your legislators). CA people should contact your Asm to support 'CA NIH' SB895

Of all the harm this administration has done to US science, today's proposed changes to the way federal grants are awarded and administered is the most damaging yet. The text of the federal register document is impenetrably tedious by design, so here's an excellent summary of what it says.

PLEASE HELP SPREAD THE WORD AND SUBMIT YOUR INFORMATION IF THIS IS YOU. With no transparency, documentation is a team sport.

In the reply to this post, I am going to put a screenshot of what doctors told this woman she would have to do on her own, at home, because they aren't allowed to give her & her fetus care to save her life and treat them both with dignity. It is horrifying. www.propublica.org/article/arka...

“Why are women less bullish overall on AI than men” is not actually that mysterious of a question

Part of the CSU’s justification for this renewal is that 85% of students use it regularly. No digging into whether that use supports or hinders learning-as an instructor I can tell you a lot of use is short circuiting actual learning. Or hurts their mental health (sycophantic chat bots).

“Units of the NIH are privately directing grantees to request permission in advance for any co-authorship with a scholar affiliated with a foreign institution, even if all the work was done in the United States.” Grantees also told to remove papers with foreign authors from progress reports.

UC Berkeley Law creates new AI policy that bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)." That's what I'm talking about.

“Dr. Antaki, a biomedical engineer, had been building an artificial heart for babies and young children, a pump the size of a AA battery, and he was getting close. But with his research grants stopped, Dr. Antaki slowly drained his lab’s rainy day funds, and he was forced to lay off all his staff.”

Tuition is flat, enrollment and graduation rates are stable or up, outcomes are generally good, most students feel comfortable expressing their views on campus. Political control is intense and science is under threat. The centrist account of higher ed doesn’t have the story right.

Two new facts stand out: 1. 85% of hallucinated citations in preprints are also in the subsequent journal version (thanks, peer review!) 2. Fake cites more likely to use the names of (male) scholars who are already highly cited, creating a fake-citation Matthew effect. arxiv.org/abs/2605.07723

Tear gas and pepper spraying children is unacceptable. Period.    We cannot accept this level of barbaric cruelty as normal. The agents responsible for harming kids must be held accountable for these heinous actions.

Are you worried about hantavirus? Well research on this virus and other emerging infections is disappearing in real time, right now. My Yale colleague just lost $5 million, which the National Science Foundation (NSF) has refused to release to his group. It is so twisted and sick.

Universities Should Make Our Own Software, Please. I Know It Is Expensive. But Our Course Content Matters To Our Mission And Should Not Be Given To These Dingbats.

Is it bad that I found out from Bluesky and not my University that Canvas is down during the last week of classes? Looking forward to all the emails from students about this.

SURPRISE!

Greene: "AI is welcomed as a silver bullet precisely because there is no silver bullet for high-quality, accessible education, just the usual boring solutions: small classes, cheap or free tuition, well-resourced students."

horrible. this country’s turn away from science based medicine in the name of “wellness” is killing children and will kill a lot more. www.propublica.org/article/more...

University administrator challenge: actually find ways to support your researchers in these times rather than saying the same only tired meaningless words

After a great American Physiology Summit I have some time to explore Minneapolis before my flight. I enjoyed the sculpture garden and music during lunch. Last song got a lot of cheers telling ICE to ‘get the f right out of town, no MN nice’.

Happening soon @apsphysiology.bsky.social Summit: Amanda’s award talk about impaired proprioceptors in Angelman Syndrome. CNS Awad session starts at 1:45 on the Innovation Stage