On sabotage of our young scientists, by @holdenthorp.bsky.social @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

From global DNA screening standards to safeguards for benchtop synthesizers & AI tools, a new biosecurity playbook is taking shape. Experts like our head of biosecurity, @jdiggans.bsky.social are thinking about this playbook so you don’t have to: bigthink.com/science-tech...

We ran a randomized controlled trial to see if LLMs can help novices perform molecular biology in a wet-lab. The results: LLMs may help in some aspects, but we found no significant increase at the core tasks end-to-end. That's lower than what experts predicted. Our findings 🧵

Why universal gene synthesis screening protects American biotech www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-am...

LLMs are good at idea quality, but weak on idea variance. GPT-4's brainstorm pools are less diverse than humans, unless you prompt for diversity explicitly. CoT prompting gets closest to “team human.” papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

"Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as President Donald Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce." www.science.org/content/arti...

Google’s AlphaGenome deep learning model wants to do for DNA what AlphaFold did for proteins www.chemistryworld.com/news/googles... #biology #AI #bio #biotech

This 🧵- any ‘article of the future’ proposals must consider this first. Discussions about new features/formats for human readers make little sense until we address this.

Amazon is buying copper harvested by bacteria for its data centers

Tonight marked the last broadcast of PBS News Weekend for the foreseeable future. As the show signs off the air, anchor John Yang looks back at some of our top stories and highlights over the years. https://to.pbs.org/4pxYe7W

This afternoon, retired Army general Stanley McChrystal spoke at the retirement ceremony hosted by HRC for six trans service members who were forced out under Trump’s ban. “I shouldn’t have to be thanked for being here. First off, we shouldn’t be here. This shouldn’t be happening.” Full remarks:

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.

🤩 🎉 We’re thrilled to see our collaboration highlighting the importance of iterative improvement, cross industry collaboration, and foresight in biosecurity screening in the age of AI with @microsoft.com in this list: news.microsoft.com/source/featu... @twistbioscience.com, @jdiggans.bsky.social

@nti.org convened global experts at the 2025 MSC for a scenario involving an AI-designed virus to examine risks, opportunities, and needed governance. Hear insights from Brian Tse, @jdiggans.bsky.social, @bethcameron-dc.bsky.social, @jaimeyassif.bsky.social & Haley Severance.

@nti.org is launching its new AIxBio governance report emerging from a 2025 MSC tabletop exercise with high-level international experts. Hear insights from Brian Tse, @jdiggans.bsky.social, @bethcameron-dc.bsky.social, @jaimeyassif.bsky.social , & Haley Severance. 🔗 Register Now ⬇️

The outbreak in Ethiopia is #Marburg virus, the first such outbreak for this country. 9 cases so far, including some health workers. x.com/drtedros/sta...

Microsoft has a fabulous behind-the-science blog paraphrasing the Paraphrase Project. 😉 @erichorvitz.bsky.social, Bruce Wittmann, Tessa Alexanian, and our own @jdiggans.bsky.social are thinking about the latest threats to biosecurity so you don’t have to...

The 2025 Ebola outbreak in Kasai, DRC, is caused by a virus virtually identical (>99.5%) to the one from Yambuku in 1976. Half a century later, the genome hasn’t changed. That’s not supposed to happen with an RNA virus. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

$40 billion dollars is the size of the entire NIH budget.

Collaborators @erichorvitz.bsky.social, Bruce Wittmann, Tessa Alexanian & @jdiggans.bsky.social discuss the paper in this engaging podcast. Watch it here: www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear... Read the paper here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... @twistbioscience.com, @msftresearch.bsky.social

New blog post: Asymmetries in Biosecurity doi.org/10.59350/c5e...

How do we decide what not to share? I explore “information hazards” in this blog--on when openness in science risks misuse. Paraphrase effort led to a first-of-its-kind publishing model, accepted by Science: "When AI Meets Biology" aka.ms/AAy56z3 Full paper on the project avail here: aka.ms/AAy5e9c

In “Ideas,” collaborators Eric Horvitz, Bruce Wittmann, Tessa Alexanian, & James Diggans discuss a red-teaming effort that exposed & secured a biosecurity vulnerability in AI-driven protein design—& what the work shows about managing AI’s dual-use risks. msft.it/6010sLYsr

Venture capitalists in clean tech are starting to say out loud what they’ve suspected for a while: China’s dominance has left key sectors in the West uninvestable

Today makes a very good day to listen to people who actually practice public health, pediatrics, and those with expertise in infectious diseases, developmental pediatrics, and/or epidemiology.

Big Tech's embrace of President Trump has left many of us wondering: What the hell happened to Silicon Valley? In our new politics issue, we're getting into it. Also, we're taking this cover across the US in billboards, posters and a mural. Clues to find us in the 🧵: www.wired.com/politics-iss...

Serious scholars have examined what happens when we change the number of H1-B visas issued. Cities that get more H1-B immigrants subsequently see the wages of natives *rise* substantially. Skilled immigrants bring new ideas, fill labor shortages and make us all more productive.

As national medical, scientific, public health and patient organizations, we call for the resignation of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to ensure the health of the American people. Read our statement: asm.org/press-releas...

NSF won't renew the funding for an academic center squarely focused on AI for weather forecasting, located right in the heart of US weather research in Oklahoma. (Notably, AI2ES was funded and created under the first Trump administration.)

Great article by my former colleague ADM Brett Giroir who led Operation Warp Speed: "This speed and precision... to recognize and eliminate threats − from COVID to cancer − provides America a critical weapon against pandemics, bioweapons, and other deadly diseases" www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

House LHHC bill is out. Lots of hits to HHS, but the top line number for NIH is 1% decrease, mostly due to cuts ARPA-H. This seems like a huge rejection of the president's budget request.

New study by @brendannyhan.bsky.social, @jasonreifler.bsky.social & colleagues demonstrates that prebunking election fraud rumors — by warning about anticipated false claims & filling conceptual gaps that those claims exploit — helps to reduce belief in falsehoods: www.science.org/content/arti...

Enough is enough. The health of the country is in danger. Read our resignation letters: insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-n...

FUCK YEAH SCIENCE arstechnica.com/science/2025...

If US Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s anti-vaccine views continue to be the basis for public health policy, communities should prepare for diseases that have been gone for decades to reemerge, writes Jennifer Herricks.

Promising support for proportional representation in our new poll. Could approximate with multi-member districts by a simple act of Congress. 9-in-10 adults say that fair elections are more important to them than their party winning (higher than I expected tbh) www.gelliottmorris.com/p/democrats-...

AI-generated scientific hypotheses lag human ones when put to the test | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

Want to get solar on your roof, an EV in your driveway + a heat pump in your garage? Or want your family + friends to go electric? There's still time to get federal incentives before they expire. Tune in to A Matter of Degrees to get all the details + share! www.degreespod.com/episodes/cas...

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued a convoluted, 36-page emergency order about NIH grant terminations. Two main takeaways: -$2 billion (not the government # of $780 million) in NIH grants will likely be re-terminated -future legal challenges will be much harder w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social:

3/2 link to RAND's Truth Decay project, which I have taught for years in my public policy ethics courses. www.rand.org/pubs/researc...

Trump's latest push to suppress voting rights: eliminating mail-in voting. He knows his extremist policies are wildly unpopular going into the 2026 election, so he's attacking free and fair elections using misinformation & conspiracy theories.

New: I spent the week looking into the cancelled mRNA contracts. Interviews with HHS officials and MAGA and MAHA influencers reveal an HHS agency plagued by dysfunction as Kennedy chips away at the nation’s public health. www.msnbc.com/news/news-an...

We're thrilled to be working with colleagues at project lead @ai2.bsky.social and academic partners @unm.edu, University of Hawai'i at Hilo, and University of New Hampshire on this exciting #NSFfunded project that will create open #AI tools to support scientists and their groundbreaking work. 👇

“This isn't scientific disagreement. It's either staggering incompetence or willful misrepresentation,” writes infectious disease physician Jake Scott. www.statnews.com/2025/08/13/r...

RFK has announced that he is developing a vaccine against all viruses. Yes, every single one. The whole, uh, "phylum"

Scientists! @skypeascientist.bsky.social matches scientists with classrooms, libraries, & more for virtual Q&As! It's easy and fun! We are looking for 750 more volunteers by 8/15 If you're down to chat with 1-5 classrooms this semester, sign up here www.skypeascientist.com/sign-up.html

AstraZeneca has elected not to move forward with a COVID-19 preventive in the US, despite approvals in other parts of the world, after resistance emerged in a late-stage clinical trial. cen.acs.org/pharmaceutic... 🧪

"The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced the beginning of a coordinated wind-down of its mRNA vaccine development activities...." cc: Sen. Bill Cassidy

Wanted to flag this interesting study led by our collaborators @kinglabipd.bsky.social suggesting that at least in some contexts, the immunogenicity of H5 influenza vaccines can be improved by mutations that stabilize the HA protein.