A series of studies shows that the dehumanising language in academic and media descriptions of autism directly drive dehumanisation of autistic people, and subsequent social rejection of autistic people and willingness to use harmful and risky 'treatments'.

The word “autism” was first used to describe behavioral differences in children in 1911 but autism has been documented using available records going back to the 1700s (definitively) and further. Acetaminophen (Tylenol, paracetamol) was discovered in 1878 and first sold in the United States in 1950.

Vaccines cause adults Tylenol causes pain relief Neurodiversity is good

Autistic and neurodivergent people deserve far better than a government looking to prevent their existence, let alone one that will invent fictitious ways to do so that puts everyone in danger

IT'S OFFICIAL: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New York City have formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative. The collaborative will issue their own vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health efforts.

I want our young people to know that there is a path forward, that a better world is possible. I don't want them to give up, to become cynical. They deserve to be young and full of optimism. They are owed a world that supports and sustains optimism.

PSA: If you haven’t yet, it may be a good idea to get your COVID shot this week. Reports suggest that CDC may further restrict COVID vaccine access to people aged 75 and up, unless you have an condition. The committee that advises the CDC on vaccines meets this Thursday.

you are SUPPOSED to be able to trust the news! you are supposed to be able to trust public officials! none of us are supposed to make sifting through every piece of data we consume to test its veracity our full time job!

Biology is so badass.

🌟 Calling Autistic Researchers! 🌟 We’re building a searchable database of Autistic researchers to celebrate Autistic excellence + connect researchers, students, allies & community. ✅ Learn more and join our database here: www.aidanlab.ca/autistic-res... Join us and be part of something bigger! 💙

Something that comments in this thread are pointing out is that this person was in a non-tenure track position. This speaks to both the importance or tenure protections as well as of ensuring that non-tenure track faculty have due process protections if we care about academic freedom

Good grief...as a long-time science educator, I am not happy that a school like this exists. Don't force kids to specialize at age three. Yuck. Boo. I mean, let's be real: Most people aren't even ready to specialize when they go off to *college*.

It turns out that protecting hate speech did not create the conditions to protect other kinds of speech; instead, it protected hate and allowed hate movements to take over all the institutions of that might have defended the rest of us.

'By integrating gen AI into the teaching and learning process, we are not only misleading ourselves into thinking we are tackling education’s challenges, but..outsourcing a social, civic and democratic process of cultivating the coming generation to...capitalist enterprises whose priority is profit'

It's incredibly weird that folks have convinced themselves that the Covid vaccines - which had an ~82^% take up rate - were unpopular.

This ⬇️ is also an important list of Qs for all of us to ask about the media we read/watch/listen to. Reporting on scientific studies is often incomplete, and these days, that's especially dangerous. We need to be extra selective about who and what we give our attention to.

I used to teach my AP Bio students about spurious correlations in my first lesson of the school year, so that they didn't make similar errors when analyzing data. Now, it seems, there are people in charge of **public health** who make these errors ON PURPOSE. Sigh.

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

Learning scientists! 🗓️🙀 About one month left until the submission deadline for ISLS 2026, to be held in Irvine, CA, USA. Friends don’t let friends miss deadlines. 2026.isls.org

This isn't abstract. Ending vaccine mandates will kill children. Any one who is trying to do this should be removed from office immediately.

Deanna's thread ⬇️ is a treasure trove of K-12 teaching resources!

This statement may be one of the most dangerous statements ever made by a Presidential Cabinet member. You have to hear RFK Jr say it to believe he actually said it.

Good.

The CDC is gutting a program that monitors foodborne illnesses. The program will now only track infections caused by two pathogens, rather than eight. Hello? How does this “Make America Healthy Again”?

I've noticed a trend in requests for tenure reviews, asking letter writers to compare candidates to other "top" scholars at the same career stage. Can we please not do this?!? Making tenure a moving and competitive target risks ratcheting up increasingly untenable expectations for productivity.

Dear people who are saying that the CDC directors who quit yesterday should have “stayed and fought”, With all due respect, you do not grasp the magnitude of the problem of RFK Jr. He is asking them to do unethical and immoral things that will actively harm the people of the United States. 1/3

Hi, immunologist here: (a scientist who studies immune & inflammatory processes) RFK Jr is talking absolute bullshit when he says he can “see in kids faces that they have inflammation” That’s NOT how immunology works. He is an anti-science profiteer. Start calling him such.

This is a really bad sign - signals a desire to start prosecuting academics and/or university administrators for political speech

My job now is to go school to school, university to university trying to help them sort through the challenge of teaching in a world with AI and the first thing I recommend to improve the teaching of writing is cut the number of students per instructor in half. No one is going to do that, though.

Brief 🧵, as someone who has studied mass shootings for 13 years: -gender does not cause them -SSRIs, no -mental illness, no -internet/gaming, no Above can be compounding factors—but motive is complex, often very. The most fundamental combo: suicidality + rage + isolation + easy access to guns

10 years ago today, Steve Silberman's groundbreaking book NeuroTribes was published. It changed how the world discussed autism and inspired many autistic people to write their own books. Stay tuned for information on a 10th anniversary edition coming very soon.

Last call for this survey, which closes next week! Men are currently under-represented in our sample, we'd love to hear your experiences!

The DOJ subpoenas to providers of gender affirming care wanted the therapy notes, social security numbers, and addresses of patients. This is an unprecedented and disgusting violation of medical privacy. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

Chattel slavery was so bad that when we tell you how bad it in fact was most of y'all shut down and tell us we're making it up and pass laws against us ever telling you how bad it was again because your brains literally cannot handle how bad it in fact was.

The largest ever data analysis of the US trans population is out today •2.8m trans ppl total, including 724K youth •3.3% of youth are trans •Minnesota had highest rate of trans adults + Hawaii had highest rate of trans youth, tho trans ppl are widely represented in similar ranges in all 50 states

ATTN: Robert Wood Johnson has money to support “canceled” research on racial-indigenous health equity www.rwjf.org/en/grants/ac...

It'd be nice to have an NIH Director who can accurately explain how vaccines work

The flu episode of Parks & Rec is top-notch television. I've seen this episode countless times and it still makes me laugh.

It is insane to me that the government can find money to pay ICE agents increasingly larger sums of money, yet teachers have to buy their own pencils.

100% agree. I encourage my grad students to be judicious with abbreviations because they really do increase the execution function demands of reading. If we want people to read (and understand) what we write, we need to make the reading experience cognitively pleasant.

This is not a massive decision or any kind of change. Costco has never carried mifepristone in its pharmacies. An anti-abortion group is taking credit for something that didn't happen, possibly to generate disingenuous left-wing ire against one of the few corporations that hasn't gone MAGA.

Ah yes, the humerus, famously known for helping to form the hip joint. 🤦🏻‍♀️

The "data" package Secretary Kennedy used to bolster his argument for discontinuing #BARDA funding for #mRNA research doesn't support his argument. @jakescottmd.bsky.social lays it out in a must read for @statnews.com. www.statnews.com/2025/08/13/r...

A great option for those of us who don't like making phone calls but want to do something to defend science! ⬇️

This study was published in Annals of Internal Medicine; the journal is NOT retracting it just because of political pressure from the world's most extreme & dangerous anti-vaxx activist The lead author, Anders Peter Hviid, says "I have not been targeted by a political figurehead in this way before"

RFK Jr. is upset that a recent large Danish study in Annals of Internal Medicine, conducted over 20 yrs in 1 M kids, found no association between aluminum in childhood vaccines & 50 different health conditions. His request for the retraction was rejected. 🧪 www.reuters.com/business/hea...

STEM isn’t a pipeline—it’s a braided river. Verónica Segarra offers a new model to support inclusion and rethink how we view scientific careers. www.molbiolcell.org/doi/10.1091/... #ASCB #CellBiology

We can add "What should universities do about AI?" to the list of questions that are answered by Fund. The. Damn. Public. Universities. Like. We. Used. To.

A reminder that the mRNA vaccine technology saved millions of lives during the Covid pandemic and received the 2023 Nobel Prize for Medicine