This smells distinctly like collider bias and/or selection bias and/or regression to the mean... You simply can't select teen prodigies, and world class athletes rom databases, and go run regressions without serious consideration of the selection process!

I drafted a letter to the editor, please help me out by DMing, commenting, emailing feedback if you are an expert on colliderbias, id obviosuly ad you as a author, Ideally we submit within 24-48 hrs, draft: zenodo.org/records/1800... (click download if the pdf doesnt preview on zenodo)

When benefit is established, withholding an intervention is no longer neutral experimentation it becomes premeditated harm

The government's keenness to protect "good jobs" in manufacturing contrasts with its inaction in the face of the destruction of "good jobs" in universities. What's going on here is something other than economics.

This week's budget included a number of measures that have gone under the radar but could have a real impact on the nation's health. From lifting children out of poverty to supporting high streets, find out what the measures mean for your health 👇 https://ow.ly/v05E50Xz2Ey

NEW! 🦠🦧 We revisited a perplexing paradox: do wildlife really pose less of a risk to human health as they become more endangered? Turns out, it's sampling bias all the way down: conservation risks correlate with disease surveillance blindspots. 🔓 esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Relying on personal nutrition and exercise as the main pandemic strategy is a nice idea, but it leaves huge swaths of the pop exposed. Individual agency just isn’t equitable! people don’t all have the same time, resources etc to ‘optimise’ themselves to safety www.theatlantic.com/health/2025/...

You cant parachute asylum seekers into deprived areas, in completely inappropriate housing, then say those migrants are 'dividing our country'. You divided the country because you can't organise a basic service and process claims in a timely way

I will never forget having to edit Jamal’s final, posthumous piece for the Washington Post, after he was murdered. He was calling for free expression in the Arab world. You can read it here : www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/glo...

Kids rely on adults for safety, but when adults & governments are intentionally spreading anti-vax misinformation, or actively reducing access to essential vaccines, who is to protect kids and safeguard their rights? @statnews.com with @stefanswartpet.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2025/11/12/c...

Important to understand the Epstein stuff and the fascism and the corruption are, in a lot of ways, really all the same story from different angles: powerful men who can and do abuse vulnerable people around them because they can, and because systems of elite accountability catastrophically failed

I was called “anti national” today. for so many of us, our Indian lineage can be celebrated only if you bow to Modi, embrace Hindutva, don’t utter the words Dalit, Ayodhya 92 or Gujarat 02, don’t mention anti muslim hate, don’t question power and pretend dissent is somehow a threat to the nation

In rural Liberia, reaching every child means crossing rivers by raft and navigating miles of dangerous, mud-slicked roads. But due to a lack of funding, many of these vaccinators do it without pay. 🧵

Some extraordinary work here By Freja and co. We are seeing an early flu season with a drifted strain currently but early vaccine effectiveness data are encouraging! Get your flu jab! www.gov.uk/government/p...

EVERY left-leaning media outlet contributes to this—most are instigators. + most Dem politicians, especially ones who pass legislation sponsored by groups like EWG. Selective science denialism crosses ALL ideologies —bc strong opinions replace logic even with those who think they follow data. 2/

Another risk of a vax-hesitent population: folks don't realize they're missing vaccines. Those in this story found out after enlisting in the military or starting hc jobs that require proof of immunity, or the hard way - by catching vax-preventable diseases. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

I don't know where this revisionism has come from about the suffragettes - people saying "if the suffragettes were around today, they'd be considered terrorists." The suffragettes were arrested and tortured, sexually assaulted and beaten by the state. They *were* considered terrorists!

🎨 Theming got a huge overhaul with the latest #ggplot2 release. In honour of that @teunbrand.bsky.social has written a comprehensive deep-dive into styling your plots, covering both old and new functionality. Grab a coffee and dive in! #rstats

I really struggle to understand what the endgame is for seriously damaging the health of your population. Yes it will disproportionately affect women and children but it impacts everybody. What is the intended goal?

Sign up here! Polio continues to remain a very very real threat

the most important thing to remember when you see eugenicists who don’t believe that autistic people should exist rambling about “the autism epidemic” is not that they’re wrong about the “cause” (although they are absolutely wrong about it); it’s that they are eugenicists

It’s easy to disregard the value of vaccines and modern medicine and science when 9 out of 10 of your siblings didn’t die prematurely. How do we convey that to people - that the absence of tragedy is not the absence of risk

May this portion of the dissent by Ketanji Brown Jackson haunt John Roberts forever and be the final word on his tenure as Chief Justice.

🗨️ “The stagnation and reversals of progress for women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health...are devastating and enraging.” Helen Clark and Rajat Khosla outline how @pmnch.bsky.social is doubling down on its strengths: bit.ly/45tItXB

Wondering whose White House job it is to protect Americans from bio threats - and why that matters? As of this week, it is *nobody's* full-time job. Here is what that means for all of us. Thanks to Jon Finer & @spsaki.bsky.social who lay it out with me here: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Trying to change the population is creepy and dangerous, full stop. But pronatalism is also wrong on the science, particularly the US brand of it. Here's a nice explainer on some of its more egregious logical flaws. From @lesja.bsky.social @karenguzzo.bsky.social and @shelleydclark.bsky.social

I would real the hell out of this. I suspect it's linked to what Jefferson Cowie describes in FREEDOM'S DOMINION: a perverse notion of "liberty" rooted in oppression. "Personal responsibility" becomes the freedom to be reckless with not only one's own health, but others.

NEW PAPER in @bmj.com "Dealing with continuous variables and modelling non-linear associations in healthcare data: practical guide" --> www.bmj.com/content/390/... #methodologymatters #StatsSky #EpiSky

Spent the morning teaching measles epi and MMR campaign rationale. The antivax stuff is completely unhinged. It’s like the lack of evidence becomes proof of the conspiracy ie “The reason there’s no proof is because the conspirators (we) did such a good job covering it up”

Measles just reached a 33 year high in the U.S. both predicted and predictable. Here are my 4 recommendations for things we can do now (but choose not to, unfortunately) @plosglobalpublichealth.org journals.plos.org/globalpublic...

Infectious Disease ↔️ Chronic Disease The story of EBV and MS is a powerful reminder that the line between infectious and chronic disease is not as sharp as we once thought (and why infectious disease deserves sustained investment). #episky #idsky #medsky jenndowd.substack.com/p/from-mono-...

“Having the freedom to defend science is a privilege. Those who have it owe it to everyone the world over to make their voices heard.” Our editorial calling for global academies to speak out like the Pontifical Academy just did - www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

This article doesn't present one piece of evidence for the lab leak theory. Read it closely, it literally doesn't offer one reason why you should think that this is what happened. Instead it relies on the classic conspiratorial tropes about 'cover ups'... www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

the most basic, enduring plea from medicine: stop obsessing over tech solutions for tiny marginal returns when we haven't even mastered the basics of 19thC public health reform, let alone anything more sophisticated.

One of the best parts of this year’s NIN conf was the intro to @jitsuvax.bsky.social - a tool that tackles vaccine hesitancy with empathy first, then facts. It breaks down common antivax arguments & shows how to respond in a way we can all use in public health jitsuvax.info/discover/

New piece on why it’s unhelpful to characterise COVID debate as ‘lockdowns are bad’ vs ‘lockdowns are good’ when it was really about people who claimed that COVID was 100x less fatal than it was + optimal to have a massive epidemic immediately before vaccine… vs those who sense checked these claims.

My latest for American Scientist Magazine helps give scientists the tools to fight back against politicized charges that our research is silly or pointless- tools that will work whether you’re asked “why are we funding this” from your asshole uncle at Thanksgiving or an asshole US Senator. 🧪🌎

Fab funded PhD opportunity using whole genome sequencing measles data to advance the understanding of measles evolution and nomenclature to assist in global measles epidemiology and disease elimination at University of Birmingham and UKHSA! 🦠 www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

It’s Code Red for Vaccines The number of changes to vaccine policy is dizzying & RFK Jr is just getting started! Dissolving the group of experts that drive policy is declaring war on “what was” I write in @nytimes.com about what is and is not working www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/o...

The purge of the federal vaccine recommending committee goes even deeper than the public knows @lenasun.bsky.social & @laurenweberhp.bsky.social have new reporting on the chaos inside the CDC and the backgrounds of the new vaccine advisers wapo.st/3SROTKy