"If you ask researchers, 'Why don't you do high-risk research?' they say, 'Well, the funding agencies won't fund it.' If you ask the agencies, they say, 'Well, the researchers won't propose it.'" #MetaSci

In 1970, Regan’s education advisor famously said “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go through higher education].” They said the quiet part out loud over fifty years ago. An educated public is a threat to fascism.

📣 Postdoc in Human Neurophysiology & Neurorehab 📣 The Real-Time NeuroRehabilitation Lab at the U of Iowa is hiring a Postdoctoral Research Scholar! Motor control, EEG/TMS, neurorehabilitation, and real-time multimodal methods. 📅 Summer/Fall 2026 📧 [email protected] Please share!

“The State Department is negotiating new health assistance funding agreements w/countries that used to have U.S.A.I.D. support. These come w/conditions, &Zambia’s has proved particularly thorny, because the State Department has tied support for the H.I.V. program to access to the country’s minerals”

Trump removes a thorn in his side by firing all 24 members of the National Science Board, NSF's oversight body. www.science.org/content/arti...

Nice coverage of what’s happening at NSF from @thehill.com! Two points from me: 1. NSF staff are hanging in like a hair in a biscuit and the admin isn’t making it easy. It’s a psyop every day. 2. Jim O’Neill is not the one to run NSF. Full stop. thehill.com/homenews/adm...

Preprint: What good is modeling? Introducing biology students to theory - arxiv.org/abs/2604.13344 - how to teach and think about what modeling contributes to science. How does it fit into the scientific method? This is often misunderstood.

"The spread of colleges into towns and cities across the country, which put a degree within reach of a growing share of the public, is one of the triumphs of postwar America," Jeffrey Selingo writes. "We’re now at risk of the process playing out in reverse."

Abstract Mad Libs

A new paper on guinea fowl gait biomechanics for National Biomechanics Day! 
 How do bipedal animals adjust movement to avoid falls in slippery terrain? We found that guinea fowl slow down, take shorter steps and adjust posture to reduce fall risk in slippery terrain, just like humans. 
 1/3

I was expecting more The Far Side content today 🌖

“The real threat is a slow, comfortable drift toward not understanding what you're doing. Not a dramatic collapse. Not Skynet. Just a generation of researchers who can produce results but can't produce understanding. Who know what buttons to press but not why those buttons exist.”

While the situation is grim at NIH, it's closer to catastrophic at NSF. They're just not able to move any money out the door. It appears OMB has them on lockdown. www.science.org/content/arti....

I am currently recruiting a PhD student to work on our "Motor complexity and aging" project funded by the @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jo...

"We are watching two disciplines trade their worst habits. Neuroscience is mistaking benchmarked prediction for understanding, and machine learning is mistaking mechanistic language for mechanism. ..."

State election officials testifying under oath say that voting by mail is secure. But an AI video in the MAGA2028 Facebook group says it’s rife with fraud. For busy Supreme Court justices, it can be hard to know who to trust.

During the second session of IMSI's Prepare to Play Workshop, students used their own data to build Python simulations and explore the physics of basketball shots—bringing biomechanics, computation, and hands-on STEM to life. Led by Dr. Christian Hubicki @chubicki.bsky.social. #MovementScience

Private money cannot replace public funding of science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I keep having to tell students that the true "product" on a homework, essay, or test is not the completed assignment, it's the brain that has gone through the thinking required to complete the assignment.

⏰ Reminder: Applications for the IMSI Summer Institute 2026 close March 21. If you’re interested in immersive, research-driven training in movement science this summer, we encourage you to apply. Learn more and apply: lnkd.in/gRPtTaS7

Come work with me! 🙌🏼 My lab is hiring a full-time research associate to support projects related to neurodivergent motor & visual development. (Makes a great gap year job! 😉) #psychology #autism #biomechanics #umich #disability (Postdoc ad coming soon! 👀) careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

Excellent article about Douglas R. Wilkie, FRS., trainee of AV Hill, and muscle/mechanics connoisseur par excellence. royalsociety.org/blog/2026/02...

This is a cool study. The idea is that perceptual understanding and prediction of gravitational effects implies the existence of an innate(?) internal simulation world model, with some representation of gravity (the study probes the nature of this representation). But... 1/2 doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

Call for applications to the 2026 Integrative Movement Sciences Summer Institute!

 This is a funded research internship, open to all career stages. We especially encourage undergraduates to apply. 
 Application deadline is March 21.
 More details here: cims.uci.edu/imsi-si-2026/ Please share!

This sound is why I’m required to keep the volume low while watching basketball 🏀 if my spouse is in the room 😂

As a US senator, I'd find it tragic if Americans replaced vaccines with psychedelics and scammy supplements. But it would be even more tragic if I lost in a Republican primary. Therefore, I will be voting to confirm the kooky wellness influencer that Trump nominated for surgeon general.

There's no better feeling that having some major thing I know that I need to fix or update in my upcoming lecture, and then discovering that past me already did it the last time I taught the course! #AcademicSky

Meet Autumn Routt, a PhD student at Georgia Tech studying how pregnancy impacts balance. She uses computational modeling and human-subject research to examine fall risk and prevention during pregnancy. Part of our Women at IMSI spotlight series. Follow along for more. #WomenAtIMSI #WomenInScience

This #PictureOfTheWeek emphasizes just how high figure skaters jump. Discover the physics behind the sport’s hardest skills with researcher Deborah King, from reducing the moment of inertia midair to the g-forces endured when landing a quadruple axel. Learn more with our podcast: buff.ly/EthY5Zl

Are you interested in the role of visual information in controlling gait stability? In this new paper from our group we exploited optic flow perturbations to study the relationship between gait stability and gait speed. First-authored by Chunchun Wu, read it open access here: doi.org/10.1016/j.hu...

When you finish a run, your muscles may feel like they did all the work, but new research from JAX and the @upenn.edu have discovered that what happens in your brain after a run may determine whether you gain endurance over time. 🧪🧠 https://go.jax.org/brain-exercise

Come join the summer research institute hosted by @movementscience.bsky.social. Lots of great opportunities to start (or continue) your research career in a supportive environment tailored for you!

"Wearable robotics is blurring the boundaries between human body and machines, yet how humans perceive the new body when adapting to these wearables remains unclear." Check out our new PNAS Nexus paper "Projecting the new body: How body image evolves during learning to walk with a wearable robot"

La Retraite de Hugues de Payens, by Georges Mathieu, 1958 (rotated), 📸 by @tiltoncreative

Ho-lee Shit. This is phenomenally good news. Department of Education rolls back— for now— its attempts to destroy Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility initiatives. Keep an eye on them, of course, and watch for the hidden knife, always, but for now: Fantastic news.

Now recruiting an experienced Post‑Doc in Skeletal Muscle Molecular Physiology @nih-sport-sciences.bsky.social Oslo, Norway Join our multi‑omics EMMA project on mitochondrial epigenetic memory in human muscle aging 4‑year position Start May Apply at Jobbnorge: www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Join us in welcoming @jennicholsphd.bsky.social to our group of Associate Editors handling Musculoskeletal Biomechanics papers. Dr. Nichols directs the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Lab and co-directs the AI-Powered Athletics initiative at the University of Florida.

Meet Hansol Ryu, a Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Tech and Emory University, whose research bridges physiology and control theory to understand human sensorimotor adaptation. Part of our Women at IMSI spotlight series. Follow along for more. #WomenAtIMSI #WomenInScience #Biomechanics #STEM

For International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we’re kicking off our Women of IMSI spotlight series. Stay tuned for more! #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience #WomenOfIMSI #WomenInResearch #STEMCommunity #Biomechanics #ScienceMatters

Our federal leaders, punching down on the next generation of U.S. scientists 😡

Ilia Malinin, the Quad God, became the first—and still, the only—skater to land the quadruple axel in competition in 2022. Here is a diagram showing the path of this difficult jump. spklr.io/6048DVWu2 📊: @unamandita.bsky.social

Professorship in Early Hominin Evolution at the University of Tübingen: uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet... Application deadline: 11/03/2026

RVC will be advertising 2 new faculty posts soon, broadly in comparative biomedical science (our department name). Email me [email protected] to get informed (I am not on the search panel; just helping). www.rvc.ac.uk/about/the-rv...

Humility Revolution "Humility is not a threat to scientific authority; it is a strength. It shows disciplinary maturity, intellectual honesty, and methodological pluralism. A humility revolution must, surely, lead to better science." By @maddipow.bsky.social #PsycSci #MetaSci #Methodology

These data show that the NSF terminations targeted STEM Ed and Soc Behav and Econ Sciences almost exclusively with an 11.4% drop in active EDU grants and a 7.4% drop in SPE from FY2024 to FY2025 and most other Directorates essentially unchanged (with an overall drop in the number of active grants)

More on NSF Here are the number grants that were active in each year (at least part) including the effects of grant terminations (data from grant-witness.us) by directorate from 2021-2025. The only directorates showing losses are STEM Education and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.

Statistical Tests as Thought Experiments “The only populations that can be referred to in a test of significance have no objective reality, being exclusively the product of the statistician’s imagination through the hypotheses which he has decided to test” (Fisher, 1956, p. 77).

"Big Tech has taken the social out of social media, it's just media." — @seabass.bsky.social

More on NSF funding data A deeper dive into the numbers of awards by Directorate. 1/9