'Tylenol' is known in the civilised world as Paracetamol 2.4 million children born in Sweden between 1995 and 2019. Studied 186,000 children whose mothers were treated with paracetamol during pregnancy. news.ki.se/no-link-betw...

“Acetaminophen use during pregnancy was not associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability in sibling control analyses. This suggests that associations observed in other models may have been attributable to confounding.” jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

🎥First time at #ASHG25? You’re not alone! Join our upcoming webinar to hear from ASHG volunteers on how to navigate the ASHG 2025 like a pro—from badge pick-up to networking tips. 🎟️ Register now & get your questions answered live! 🔗 https://bit.ly/3VrkgNl #ASHG #HumanGenetics

Looking forward to reading this piece by a number of colleagues: Should a genomic diagnosis be a ticket or a roadmap? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

MMR vaccines do not cause autism (see my 🧵 of studies) At the same time, one potential cause of autism is rubella, which is *prevented* by MMR vaccines. Which means...vaccines may actually help prevent autism. 🧵 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21592401/

Looking forward to hearing thoughts from both researchers and the autistic community 🧬

PSA: To find grants from a specific institute/center in the new grants.gov format, you can search by the “Assistance Listing” number for the specific IC. NHGRI’s number is 93.172.

On Dec. 18, Olivia Li turned 4. Barely five weeks later, she slipped into unconsciousness, a rare and unexpected consequence of a flu infection. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/h...

🎉 Lab paper alert: “Autism ableism seen through research abstract contents: A mixed-methods analysis of language in NIH-funded genetic and genomic autism research.” We found ableist/stigmatizing language ubiquitous throughout grant abstracts from 1980-2022. journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10....

How Vaccines Work 🧬🧫🧪🔬💉🥽

Best of luck to the brave soul who would like to be the next Director of the National Institute of Mental Health hr.nih.gov/jobs/search/...

Science has already saved countless lives and will save many more if we let it. Hearing firsthand from patients whose lives have been saved by medical research (tinyurl.com/m65339fh) shows how vital this funding is, even for those lucky enough not to have needed it yet. Please share #ScienceSavedMe

Good summary by my friend @helenpearson.bsky.social of what we have been saying for years: if there’s an epidemic in autism, it’s of diagnoses, which is not a bad thing www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Another lovely night in DC

Update from supposedly crime-ridden DC

Applications are due August 25, and I’m happy to talk with anyone who wants more details

Let's fight together to ensure biomedical research funding is preserved or increased in FY2026 by— ➡️Attending town halls ➡️Offering lab tours ➡️Meeting with your local congressional offices ➡️Writing to your elected representatives Take Action: bit.ly/45vp0WP #ASHG

“Budgets for science agencies are not subsidies – they are investments in the future. The investment by the federal government in basic research across all fields has real value, and that work is done by people, not machines.” www.chemistryworld.com/news/its-car...

These are the most challenging times for early-career scientists and engineers. My team is doing its bit to help by maintaining and even expanding our database of funding opportunities for early-career researchers. We found 437 of them. Download it freely here: research.jhu.edu/rdt/funding-...

NIH wants to hear from you. No really. Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

🚨New webinar just announced = August Journal Club with @jayatirsharma.bsky.social & @genandgenes.bsky.social! On August 13, they'll investigate the role of genetic ancestry & sociocultural factors in considering the genetic risk for BMI in a Hispanic/Latino cohort. Register: bit.ly/44RvgsK #ASHG

An independent civil service is so important for so many reasons. One overlooked one is that it offers economic opportunities to people who would not otherwise get them from the private sector. bethesdamagazine.com/2025/07/29/d...

Lovely work and great thread. I just read another work today who needs to cite this already!

Very much remember walking into my postdoc in 1998 thinking NBD, the lab will just sequence through Xist and learn all its secrets — how hard could it be? 🫠

Interested in using functional data to understand clinical variants? Been hunting for a good review of the topic? We just wrote one! rdcu.be/exaEU

I hadn’t seen this 2019 video of @stephencolbert.bsky.social singing with Oscar the Grouch until today, and man oh man, was it just the hopeful reminder I needed. 💞

If y’all watch Dr. Collins’s interview from last night, you’ll hear his concerns about being able to do science at NIH. Another example of an important behind the scenes service for federal scientists to do their jobs: www.statnews.com/2025/07/15/o...

Applications opening soon for the @geneticssociety.bsky.social Human Genome Scholars Initiative! Deadline is Aug 18 for this wonderful two-year program for early career researchers. ashg.org/membership/a... 🧬 🧪

New preprint: Absolute and relative declines in NIH-funded basic science publications, by Michael S Lauer 👀 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Trump Seeks to Cut Basic Scientific Research by Roughly One-Third, Report Shows. Gift link: nyti.ms/44KFFFv

Last branch seminar today for my wonderful colleague Mr. Vence Bonham’s Health Disparities Unit. Was not expecting to start today off verklempt! Vence & his team’s contributions have been field-changing; I look forward to seeing their future work throughout genetics, health disparities, & beyond.

The "reproducibility crisis" in science constantly makes headlines. Repro efforts are often limited. What if you could assess reproducibility of an entire field? That's what @brunolemaitre.bsky.social et al. have done. Fly immunity is highly replicable & offers lessons for #metascience A 🧵 1/n

Starting off the week with a paper acceptance is

Jim Henson for your weekend closer

We're seeking our next EiC! Are you passionate about human genetics & open science? Apply at apply.ashg.org/a/page/hgga-...

I am very proud that the public, through NIH, has built such a powerful and successful enterprise to understand and treat diseases like cancer. I am very sad that this research enterprise at NIH is suffering such damage. That’s bad for patients, bad for the economy, bad for all of us. 🧪

Honored to be the keynote speaker for the NIH Three Minute Talk Challenge today. Break a leg, trainees! Looking forward to some awesome #scicomm in small packages.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the announcement of the draft of the human genome sequence! I’m sure our amazing @genome_gov comms team would have had amazing memes for today, but heartbreakingly, they are still on admin leave. Instead of celebrating: www.statnews.com/2025/06/26/n...

Last week the National Advisory Council for Human Genome Research met and approved a new initiative: ancient DNA for Modern Genomics (aDMG). You can watch the presentation and discussion here at the 1:54:00 mark. videocast.nih.gov/watch=56826

The #SCIMaP team announces a major update: an analysis of the economic impacts of the White House's NIH FY26 budget. Bottom-line, we estimate $46B in total economic loss, 202K lost jobs, and impacts in communities nationwide. Interactive map and shareable report: scienceimpacts.org/fy26 a 🧵

Zachary Utz was the head archivist of the History of Genomics Program. Now he's out of a job, his office is completely disbanded, and the future of his work is unclear.

Thank you, Justice Sotomayor: “By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims. In sadness, I dissent.“

We are former NIH comms staff that are working to continue doing the work we love and care about - science communication! Check out our new account and listen to us on the latest episode of @dnatodaypodcast.bsky.social Episode here: dnapodcast.com/episodes/202...

Naomi Judd stopped me on a jet bridge to tell me she loved my hair. 💔

We're spending today polishing #ASHG25 abstracts - are you? Friendly reminder that abstracts are due at 5PM Eastern on MONDAY! 🗓️ ⏰ Showcase your science, network with @geneticssociety.bsky.social 🧬 friends and colleagues 🧬 in Boston this fall. Can't wait to see you there!

Present your work. Make an impact. Join us in Boston. Abstract submissions for #ASHG25 close in 7 days—are you ready? 🗓️ Submit now: www.ashg.org/meetings/202... #ASHG #HumanGenetics

Are you an early-career researcher working on the computational analysis of population-level human genetics data? We want to hear from you about if, how, and why you use population descriptors in your research! Fill out our short survey: forms.gle/SCiNUq71wgi5...

The NIH archives of the Human Genome Project could fall victim to Trump administration cuts, writes a former archivist. buff.ly/H1WkRpn

New collection available from the ‪@igvfconsortium.bsky.social‬! Developed through the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), this growing collection of plasmids will power a better understanding of genomic variants’ impact on genome function and phenotypes. www.addgene.org/depo...

The good news: novel antibiotics may be coming to the clinic. The bad news: they may not stay effective for long if we don’t do a better job preventing antibiotic resistance in the first place. My latest for Salisbury's Take. salisburys-take.beehiiv.com/p/new-antibi...