🙄 “Some of the dismantling” is important to keep in mind. These fuckers within the last month threatened a veto and forced a ‘compromise’ on MYF that will continue to harm a large number of people. Just the most recent example of their fuckery, but obviously not the worst.

We are watching in real time who some scientists are willing to sacrifice in favor of access to funding: early career researchers, trainees, scientists from historically excluded groups and immigrants.

A pretty stunning attempt at rewriting the last year. While there are exceptions, legal challenges were largely led by faculty, AAUP, and state AGs, while university leadership and scientific societies almost uniformly attempted appeasement and acquiesced in advance.

You don’t praise the people who were unsuccessful in their attempts to fully dismantle a scientific infrastructure it took 80 years to build. You praise the people who successfully resisted some of the dismantling bsky.app/profile/jere...

This a word cloud from the titles of ~1100 terminated NSF grants. It is hard not to see these grant terminations as an attack on the training of the future United States scientific workforce.

If you have an interest in mixing computation and experiments to understand microbial evolution (for example antibiotic resistance) and you think you might be a good fit for a postdoc in my lab, reach out. If it seems it might be a fit I’m happy to help you frame it as AI for Biology per this call

Been on multiple search committees For me (personally so YMMV)…I basically dismiss everything that’s labeled *submitted* unless there’s a preprint I can read

One of the most valuable comments I heard in grad school was in a mock review panel when the guest prof said, basically, sometimes reviewer comments are real concerns and you can get funded by fixing them, and sometimes they just didn’t think it was interesting and had to write something.

First they came for DEI and I said nothing for I hoped my success rates would improve. Then they came for gender identity research and I said nothing for I hoped my success rates would improve. Then they came for the NPRCs, and I said nothing for I hoped my success rates would improve.

NIGMS has had no official payline as long as I can remember. That said, funding was highly correlated with percentile, with exceptions for publicly stated policies (limits on total funding to one investigator). I’m expecting this to be the norm at other ICs.

This is not true. MYF is capped at FY25 levels, where 39% of all awards were MYF. We need to be very precise about this because the impact is enormous.

Please stop saying the bill allows "no more multi-year funding" - or at least be clear the 'more' is in reference to disastrous FY25 levels. The bill allows 39% MYF, same as in FY25, which contributed substantially to a 24% drop in new research. The bill has some wins. MYF is not one of them.

To bang a drum I often bang on about: Many programs will not give a grad student a degree without having papers out. Not caring to make the paper better is a 💯 predictable consequence.

This figure captures both the accuracy of the model in predicting research grant success rate and the project effect of multiyear funding at fiscal year 2025 levels. 2/2

Long post from me at the Good Science Project on success rates including the effects of multiyear funding. goodscience.substack.com/p/understand... 1/2

Obviously, secondary or tertiary at best to everything else happening, but the lack of blog posts and other forms of communication really bothers me. It is a form of both censorship and gaslighting, and is more salt in the wound caused by the effects of new NIH policies.

On the whole, though, looking at the current situation - if people can't see that we urgently need to work to build a better, more robust system to support scientific progress *while also trying our best to rescue what we've got*, then I don't know what to say to them. 🧪 bsky.app/profile/azfa...

the experiences of individuals from marginalized groups are almost ALWAYS the bellwether for weaknesses and stress points in systems. Trying to correct their experiences improves these systems FOR EVERYONE, not just them

I don’t say this to be a bitch but do you know who else had to resubmit and resubmit and resubmit and it felt unsustainable?

I've been thinking about this since MYF started killing paylines last year. Those in power want to dismantle our system of science, which is why their explanations ignore the pain inflicted on scientists and come across as gaslighting. They can't tell the truth without losing broad support.

As Dave rightly points out, resubmission absolutely feels brutal in this moment. Futile. It has the distinct feeling of buying a lottery ticket - it feels like a scam and winning feels out of reach.

💯 Instead of remaining calm, ICE approached protesters, and then violently pushed them to the ground, pepper sprayed, and started beating. All of that should not be happening, whether or not it culminates in shooting someone in the back.

Important context, this is the victim’s behavior BEFORE being tackled He’s not threatening, he’s not brandishing, he’s filming

Now applications are getting kicked to SEPs due to a "surge in applications". Everything is fine.

New paper with @smishra677.bsky.social! How many different trees can be generated by just one duplication event? It turns out A WHOLE LOT, if you consider the coalescent process. 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Sent an email last night to the members of my department encouraging them to contact our Congressional representatives with a simple ask: use 2024 multi year funding levels, NOT 2025 multi year funding levels, in the 2026 NIH funding bill

Just called my Senators to push for a minibus amendment to block multiyear funding (MYF), a gimmick cooked up by OMB to underfund cancer research and other programs that are meritorious and critical to our nation’s health, economy, and global leadership in science and medicine

"It’s this snowball, domino effect that’s going to take decades to build back from, if we’re even given the opportunity to...This is not about like, ‘Oh, if we just get Democrats in power in the next couple of years, like, everything will just be fine’ … We’re looking at decades of damage”

Here is the article, which IMO shows the breadth of damage quite well. So my team doesn't get too freaked out, I'm misquoted slightly in terms of how long my lab has until it would have to close--we'll be ok this year* but I need a good score in ~6 months or we're cooked. thehill.com/homenews/edu...

the original language in the Senate appropriations bill kept the MYF policy to 2024 levels ask your congressional representatives for the current language in the funding bill to be replaced with this language: keep MYF at 2024 levels, NOT 2025 levels 🧪

The NIH's MYF policy in 2025 resulted in 4000 fewer grants and fellowships that touched every area of biology and medicine; continuing it in 2026 would be disastrous for science, technology and health in the United States 🧪 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

So what can we do? Start now and demand no votes for this bill unless the MYF provision is returned — to ban MYF at NIH this year, to set it to zero. We can still do this. But if scientists stick their heads in the sand and deny reality, we cannot even begin to fight. Realistic optimism.

Just spoke to The Hill about how the dismantling of the NIH is impacting science in America. We still face a cliff of unfathomable heights, w easily 1000+ labs poised to close in the next year due to funding ending. A generation of young scientists lost because there is nowhere for them to train.

The conference (agreement between House and Senate) appropriations bill that includes HHS and NIH was released this morning. www.appropriations.senate.gov/news/majorit... 1/5

IMO, continuing to do science, to support science and to do so in pursuit of truth & support of human rights is a form of pushback. It’s not to say “put your head down, do good science & things will be fine” but to say as long as you can, it is resistance.

I’ve heard this as well. I’ve also heard that the veto is (I quote) a “bullsh*t” threat. Regardless, I hope Congress is smart enough to let the White House take the political hit of vetoing an NIH funding bill (and along with it the DoD funding bill) rather than removing that language.

We made a new lager beer! "Indomitus" for wild and untamed. Brewed with a wild yeast strain from Patagonia! This is the result of a super fun collaboration (and lots of hard work) with Francisco Cubillos in Chile (@fcocubillosr.bsky.social) and Andrés Furukawa at the Nils Oscar Brewery in Sweden.

Gotta put pressure here on the House to limit MYF. Vetoing the budget over MFY is really weird.

This the ask for the NIH budget. Multi year funding (MYF) has an important role for some funding mechanisms but this regime wants to expand MYF and that will have disastrous consequences for how many grants get funded. MYF should be limited to how it was used in 2024.

Multiyear funding q. Volkow confirms 50% time. Very concerned. Especially for younger investigators. Nothing about how NIDA Blew it off last year. Koob- dramatic cut to success rate. Mentions 36% hit but unclear on what he meant.

I have been modeling the impact of multi-year funding. Based on fairly reasonable assumptions, 50% multi-year funding, the number of new and competing awards is anticipated to drop to approximately 6000 compared to 10,000 had there been no multi-year funding above the historical background rate.

Guys. It's time for some game theory. Let's assume your manuscript is ready to go, and your competitor is weeks behind. Your choices: 1/You preprint your manuscript. You have an independent, public record of priority. There's always proof that you were first.

Other are bringing this up but we always have to ask: WHO are we talking about when we say “Science is doing okay?” Science is NOT just about how much funding gets allocate, it is about WHO is getting funded. The staffing issues and changing policies are STILL affecting THOSE decisions

Or what structural issues interfered with making changes so we can discuss whether they are important checks or actual roadblocks to be removed

I would like to see an interviewer follow every descriptive point from Lauer with direct questions about what he did and did not do to address each problem.

This rings, & I ask myself everyday if it’s time to go. But I went to NIH to support future careers. I’m in 1 of the divisions hardest hit by terminations. Pushback from the community has helped us lessen some of the damage. We can still support trainees & take our oaths seriously.

This is a HUGE win…and one that happened because we ~collectively~ said “NO!” But AAAS coming in and saying on record to the NYT “Science is doing ok. Things are not bad at all…” is baffling. If things are hard for you as a scientist, please share in the comments. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/10/s...

I wrote a short bio for our Biochemistry book about Dr. Khorana, a remarkable man.

#Yeast #Genetics Meeting abstract submission and registration sites are open! Abstracts due March 5! community.alliancegenome.org/t/yeast-gene...