The public comment period closes approximately July 13, 2026 (45 days from May 29 publication). Comments must be submitted to regulations.gov, Docket OMB-2026-0034

Excellent summary of how Vought’s proposed rule will destroy science. Please be ready to comment tomorrow, call Congress, tell your friends. If you’ve been waiting for the right moment to speak up, that moment is now.

TL;DR: We've identified more than 100 cases of apparent manipulation in Thermo Fisher Scientific's antibody verification data. @sholtodavid.bsky.social @johanduchene.bsky.social reeserichardson.blog/2026/05/28/h...

Small update: Since yesterday afternoon, when our article was published, 4 new awards have gone out to Harvard PIs—the first since December.

🚨UPDATE: We will launch our action center on this issue tomorrow. 📣JOIN US: Emergency Science Meeting (Virtual) June 2nd at 4pm et. Details to come. Our Policy Team has read through the entire 400 page hot mess express from Russ Vought...here are the high level details. A Thread🧵 1/x

The leadership and clarity of @MIT President Sally Kornbluth www.bostonglobe.com/2026/05/26/o...

Another former UCSF student does good! Elly was in Marc Kirschner’s lab in our Dept. She was part of a memorable band that played at the skits at the annual retreat at Asilomar.

To explain this for my non-science followers. Such a proposal would be to create a black box around review of scientific proposals - this reduction in transparency is what you would do if you wanted to make political or partisan decisions about funding and not scientific ones

NIH funded peeps: This is insane and coming for us.

Nice day for a stroll!

"I would like to emphasize the importance of question-driven science...young scientists might enjoy science more if they are thinking about questions rather than just collecting data" journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

The NIH is demanding that it's grantees cease collaborations with foreign scientists. Wait until NIH director Jay Bhattacharya hears about this! His stated top priority in the director role is to prevent government interference with or censorship of scientific researchers.

Good story from Stephanie Lee at the Chronicle of Higher Education on dealing with funding uncertainty with very highly rated grant proposals. www.chronicle.com/article/they... 1/2

Earlier this week I posted an example of a fake western blot provided by ThermoFisher to demonstrate the validity of a p53 antibody. I considered it an amusing curiosity. In fact Thermo Fisher Scientific has systematically manipulated antibody validation data!

This is fucking insanity www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

As a geneticist it always puts a smile on my face when we’re doing biochemistry in the lab. You need both to answer questions.

The NIH has been holding back grants from funds Congress has already approved. www.wsj.com/opinion/get-...

🚨🧪🧵URGENT INPUT NEEDED: NIH asks input for next strategic plan-including emphasis on non-animal models (NAMs) to replace animals. Per NIH insider, anti-animal responses now outnumber scientists 200-700x. Please please provide input. Deadline: May 26, 11:59 PM ET. grants.nih.gov/news-events/...

Bhattacharya often mischaracterizes multiyear funding as beneficial to early career scientists. In reality, it creates a hyper-competitive, resource constrained environment. Part 2 of @27unihted.bsky.social's fact check address MYF. 27unihted.substack.com/p/fact-check...

New fact check of Director Bhattacharya, this time regarding multi-year funding... 27unihted.substack.com/p/fact-check... 1/2

Surprised to discover that Thermo Fisher appears to show a fake western blot for the validation of one of their p53 antibodies. I've added a diagram to show the very similar bands. This does not appear to be one of the "published figures" but their own internal data.

It is unfortunate that this ‘alliance’ has been funded by NIH as a replacement for community-driven, human curated model organism databases. I don’t know anyone who uses it or finds it useful. SGD, wormbase, fly base, zfin etc need to be funded.

This is the horror cherry on top of the egregious fraud, waste, and abuse sundae. DOGE fired the people who send NIH money to research labs—which is a complicated process—so now even more labs are going to go under. All while Jay Bhattacharya goes on a podcast and says no NIH funding was cut.

Nothing like a threat to throw out tubes from then -70 freezer to bring the lab together. Found a box labeled 2005.

1/23 New preprint! Been thinking about the origin of cellular life. Specifically, how protocells (or *any* compartments) just aren't enough to support the evolution of increasingly complex cells. You gotta de-Darwinize the parts! The ribosome/genome do this. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Online Now: Salmonella effector SteE reprograms the macrophage regulatory network to drive specific hyperactivation of STAT3 target genes Online now:

Nice piece that includes my colleague Kevan’s pioneering research. Yet another reason to fund more science, not less! How an ‘Impossible’ Idea Led to a Pancreatic Cancer Breakthrough www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/h...

The +1 nucleosome functions in Pol II transcription initiation and the transition to elongation https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.05.11.724227v1

This is good. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Waymoland..

Fungi are more closely related to you than they are to plants. Yes, really. We share a common ancestor with fungi — and more genes with them than plants do. Oh, and the largest organism on Earth is a single honey fungus in Oregon! #FunFact #Fungi #Evolution

Exciting study from Leonid Mirny and co: Cohesin bridging as a physical principle of enhancer-promoter communication www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Sooooo... Several people shared this slide with me. NIH is apparently working on a new parent mechanism called an RP1. I have many questions (and only a few answers). (EPMC is the NIH-wide Extramural Program Management Committee co-chaired by Jon Lorsch). 1/4

a big surprise in @deeparajan.bsky.social recent paper identifying molecular pathways of single-cell learning in Stentor, was how effective RNA sequencing turned out to be, revealing CamKII and EF hand proteins that were then shown by RNAi to actually play a role. www.cell.com/current-biol...

Thanks for visiting and sharing your amazing science with us! I'll always have a place in my heart for U2-U6, even if we mostly talked about DNA

This Canvas outage across campuses reminds me of an opinion that I have which is that universities should run off homemade software maintained by two people for 50 years at a time that does one specific thing well and otherwise has no commercial value.

Tagging @dsashital.bsky.social !

Thanks to Sudhir Kumar for hosting me at Iowa State today. I had a lovely visit to the Biomedical Sciences Dept. at their amazing vet school. Great to also catch up with Dipa Shashital, one of my RNA world friends. Once a splicing person, always a splicing person.

I’m sticking with Arial. Don’t @ me. #arial4ever

It isn't an exaggeration to say that I am alive and well today because of antidepressants. This war on medicine, on science, will kill people.

New preprint out!🧬 How do cells keep replicated sister chromatids linked for DNA repair while folding 3D loops for gene expression? Extrusion folds DNA but separates sisters, while cohesion connects them, risking mutual interference. How do they coexist?🧵👇 🔗 doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.02.722390 1/6

Last year I looked at NIH grants for which the the titles had changed in the course of administrative renewal. These title changes were part of the negotiations required between program officers and applicants (a process referred to as "remediation" by Deputy Director Jon Lorsch). 1/5

Assembling IKEA with someone is a true test of a relationship.

Nice day for a lab lunch at the Ramp, a legendary local dining establishment currently serving a bacon lobster tail cheeseburger aka the “Full send” burger. I substituted a salad for fries to make it ‘healthy.’ And yes, it was as good as it looks.

Not a lawyer, but the fact that these keywords are kept secret seems a violation of the administrative procedures act.

A good way to end the week. @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social has been reinstated. [Gift Link] www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/u... Her lawsuit continues...

Thanks Hiten @hitenmadhani.bsky.social for highlighting our preprint! Folks working on #DNAmethylation, please check it out and tell us what you think ⬇️

New study by Erin Curtis and Aarshi Jain from the Lew lab @mit.edu shows that the fungal “Cell Wall Integrity” repair pathway is silenced at contact sites between #yeast mating partners to allow cell wall degradation and fusion. rupress.org/jcb/article/... #CellSignaling #Microbiology

Sharing this screen grab from a friend at NIH (with permission). This is a checklist program officers have to complete before a grant can be awarded. The first question: "Is this grant All Clean/Clear in the NIH Text analysis Tool?" 🧵1/3