This week's cover @thelancet.com

As someone who has (unfortunately) been elbow-deep in Epstein's emails, I can tell you: "Jewish in-group bonds" was not the "currency" Epstein used to facilitate his crimes. It was power, $$, and a deep-seated hatred of women. Any insinuation otherwise is weird. jewishcurrents.org/the-line-bet...

Many living people carry fragments of Neanderthal DNA, remnants of ancient interbreeding events, with uneven distribution across chromosomes. New work by @sarahtishkoff.bsky.social lab suggests patterns are most consistent with Neanderthal contribution to human populations being highly male biased.🧪

What an awful backwards decision 😠

The ESI program has helped jumpstart careers so that more junior investigators aren’t compared to the more experienced individuals. This absolutely needs to continue. It’s incredible to see the hypocrisy of the NIH director, saying he supports early career scientists followed by these statements.

Scoop: The Climate Prediction Center is being folded into other agencies overseen by the National Weather Service The change follows moves by the Trump administration to dismantle climate science programs By @weathersullivan.bsky.social & @laurenthal.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

New and Competitive Renewals Only 803 grants have been made compared to ~2650 in fiscal years 2023 and 2024 through February 20. All institutes and centers (include OD now) have made awards except NIAAA, NLM, NCCIH, and FIC. 3/4

Making sense of a chaotic planet: How understanding weather and climate risks depends on supercomputers like NCAR’s theconversation.com/making-sense...

Our statement on the House passage of HB 500, the House budget

This is going to kill people. Save science. Protect health. Defend democracy. March 7th, 2026. DC and nationwide. @standupforscience.bsky.social Deets: Standupforscience.net/march7

1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology. We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.

I wrote about the Epstein files and what they tell us about men in academia. In a field where climbing the career ladder is only possible through a combination of luck, mentorship and networking — the files show the ways sexism and misogyny still hold women back. 19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

Pretty reasonable summary of the state of COVID origin debate: what most experts think (zoonosis), where information is missing (some virology lab activities), what's clearly nonsense (cold chain), what's unsupported (deliberately made) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Coming up in March! Join @sortee.bsky.social for a webinar with @daxkellie.bsky.social on good, shareable, and reproducible R code - register here: events.humanitix.com/sortee-webin...

New work from the lab: Miles @milesroberts.bsky.social tried out machine learning to estimate sweep times to fixation and (spoilers) it didn't really help www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... As always, we'd appreciate any feedback!

100x this

There were so many of us, exactly when these emails were being written, expressly working to undo the harms of sexual harassment and sexual discrimination in science. And so many people refused to believe us that any of it was real. It was all real. 19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

This administration must not be allowed to continue their dismantling of the nation's scientific structure. Join us in fighting to protect science on March 7th in Washington D.C. or at your local rally! Learn more at standupforscience.net/march7 #March7 #rally #standupforscience #ImpeachRFKJr

Happy 38th birthday to the #LTEE! #BOTD in 1988. Keep on evolving! #science #evolution #microbiology

This reflects my feelings that the folks who think LLMs are perfectly good substitutes for doing a lit review are generally folks who never liked doing the reading in the first place and probably didn't actually do it.

When @lilymasonphd.bsky.social & I sent Sean the proofs of our book, after he had cited it disparagingly, but hadn’t read because it wasn’t out yet, he wrote back half an hour later to say our book’s content didn’t change any of his misleading critiques. Maybe he fed it to an LLM for a summary?

Nope.

There was a coordinated campaign to convince people that scientists were liars. Americans were fed a deluge of this 👇 for years from all over, every angle. Today, these actors claim they merely want to restore trust in science, as if we can't see that they taking a wrecking ball to it.

State of Florida's new mandate for public college Intro Sociology curriculum: "The following should not be included in any course content... "Discussions arguing a causal association between institutional sexism and unequal outcomes between men and women" Indoctrination, not education nor science

#alysaliu WOKE IS BACK BABY MAKE OAKLAND CALIFORNIA THE US CAPITOL NOW!

More cowardly actions by Harvard. I was genuinely considering going to my 25th reunion this year, because there are friends I'd love to see. No more. I DO have a talk scheduled there in April. Guess I'll have to bring this up! www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

US Citizen, Ruben Ray Martinez, was shot 3 times through the driver's side window & killed on South Padre Island in Texas by Homeland Security Investigators while celebrating his 23rd birthday on March 15th, 2025. This DHS & #ICELawlessness must stop. Remember his name: Ruben Ray Martinez 💔

Neither a scientist nor an engineer. Just another ineptotist, who will be way in over his head. Ineptotist (n) [in-ep-ta-tist] 1. Describes an unqualified individual being hired by another unqualified individual based on favoritism and incompetence. 2. See also — The current Regime’s administration.

New from me: What do Jeff Bezos, Bari Weiss, and RFK Jr. have in common? Each has used the trust trap: they bemoan a loss in institutional legitimacy as a justification for radical actions that further undercut trust in their institutions. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-trust-...

#HigherEd #AcademicSky *Please* amplify this risk. The US DOE wants to implement an earnings test on all undergrads and grads--if grads of your programs do not earn a specified amount upon receiving their degrees, your programs risk losing federal funding. The earnings tests begin *this October*.

This is an educational catastrophe designed to weaken the humanities at University of Texas.

Remember the moral panic about safetyism? Trigger warnings? Snowflakes? Well, its actually happening in Texas.

After Researching Tenure’s History, Tennessee Lawmaker Drops Bill to End It www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

The next BAPG has been announced! April 11 at Davis organized by the inimitable @jrossibarra.bsky.social! bapg-conference.github.io

New round of NSF GRFP declines without review. If you were affected: 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at [email protected] so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter This is the link to the post: bsky.app/profile/noam...

In the concentration camp universe, this is what's known as a filtration camp. A government preemptively takes a whole class of people to interrogate and detain extrajudicially in order to inflict duress on them while arbitrarily assessing their (supposed) culpability.

New paper from my team detailing a greatly expanded genomic database of Asgard archaea revealing of high energy metabolism those related to eukaryotes! Led by @katyappler.bsky.social lots of help from @jameslingford.bsky.social @valdeanda.bsky.social @kassipan.bsky.social doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Join us tomorrow for an evolutionary medicine special of internal conflicts!

The Guerrero Lab at NC State University seeks a postdoc in computational evolutionary genetics. Ideal candidates have quantitative skills. Apply by March 10, 2026, via [email protected]. More info: rguerrer.org #postdoc

BREAKING: The Department of Education has ended its directive that attempted to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in schools nationwide. This is a victory for academic freedom and education equity.

Epistasis in...mechanical spring networks? Dope! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Write Congress to Restore $600 million of CDC Cuts! While this public health funding is in limbo, with a judge granting a 2-week restraining order on terminations, its up to Congress to take back the power of the purse! @defendpublichealth.bsky.social actionnetwork.org/letters/writ...

Political scientist Dan Gillion analyzed presidential speech and found that Obama talked about race and racial issues less than any other modern president

Great response by @anthonylfisher.bsky.social that very much tracks my experience.

Registration is open for the inaugural GRC conference in the Function of Evolving Systems. Aug 9-14, 2026, Waterville Valley. Truly stellar speaker lineup. Student/postdoc fellowships are available! Please come join us! www.grc.org/function-of-... @joybergelson.bsky.social

It’s actually fine that @penamerica.bsky.social didn’t put my book on their 100 most anticipated books of 2026 but it’s disappointing that there were no science books at all on it given that they give a science writing award and we are in the middle of a science literacy crisis 😞

The SAVE Act is bad. While lots of people are talking about the ID portion, It creates a criminal cause of action to put election workers in prison for (even accidentally) registering someone to vote without ID. campaignlegal.org/update/what-...

Postdoc alert in spatial biology! Building upon our previous work with MSI cancers (e.g. de Vries et al, Nature, 2023), the Voest Group at the NKI is hiring a (fully funded) postdoctoral fellow with strong expertise in spatial cancer biology. Learn more / apply here: www.nki.nl/careers-stud...

Scoop: The NIH infectious-diseases institute (NIAID) will soon scrub “pandemic preparedness” and “biodefense” from its web pages, according to e-mails I obtained. The directive is the start of a broader shake-up at NIAID, which has long been attacked by Republicans.

A leading American research lab is slated to lose its critical supercomputing facility, according to a letter released by the National Science Foundation.https://cnn.it/3MoF7zU