This is great, mRNA tech is remarkable. But who will own the knowledge? Will a US company end up with monopoly control of a vaccine that almost exclusively affects Afrcans.

Oh for goodness' sakes @news.abc.net.au. The services weren't 'divisive' except for the tiny handful of people who were being horribly disrespectful to our war dead by trying to make the day all about their own racism. #AlwaysWasAlwaysWillBe 🖤💛❤️

We are calling for Equitable Remuneration (ER) to be embedded in Australian copyright law - ensuring creators are paid when their work is used, including by AI. This isn’t optional. It’s the foundation of a sustainable creative economy. #PayUp Learn more: meaa.io/payup

It’s always striking how the decline in alcohol consumption is covered as a business problem instead of a win for public health.

Oh hell yeah @amnesty.org comes out swinging: "Amnesty International finds that standalone generative AI systems... are fundamentally incompatible with IHRL. As such, Amnesty International is calling for a prohibition of such systems." www.amnesty.org/en/documents...

Important news from a meta-analysis of 69 (!! 🤯) studies. NO evidence for calcium +/- vit D for most people in the community. But an equally important caveat: insufficient evidence to make conclusions for patients already at high risk or in residential care.

New paper in Nature. The more a government controls its domestic media, the more it dominates AI training data, the more pro-regime outputs we get from AI. By scraping the open web, LLMs are unwittingly laundering state-coordinated narratives into seemingly objective answers.

Birth rate discourse is like “It turns out if you give women more choices, they’re less likely to make ones that make their lives harder.” Which is really helpful in figuring out how we can improve society somewhat. But instead people are like wow giving women more choices was a mistake

"Fake citations have turned into a nightmare for research librarians, who by some estimates are wasting up to 15 percent of their work hours responding to requests for nonexistent records that ChatGPT or Google Gemini alluded to." open access link: archive.ph/qt59c 2/🧵

our system of knowledge production is under attack from an extraordinary array of forces and if the people putatively on the side of maintaining it cannot commit to the most basic standards (not using fake citations, writing your own words, etc) I fear there is no hope

WHO has declared the #Ebola outbreak in DRC and Uganda a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). First time this has been done without consulting an emergency committee. Extraordinary move that speaks to how concerning the facts on the ground look right now

I’ve been trying to understand what we know and don’t know so far about the concerning Ebola outbreak in DRC. Still lots of uncertainty at the moment but here‘s what I have been able to find out so far. Story is here (thread coming later): www.science.org/content/arti...

"From a standpoint of transmission, every person does not pose the same risk, and that point has been missed." www.cidrap.umn.edu/misc-emergin...

For all the pandemic deniers out there: "COVID-19 pandemic inflicted a setback of historic proportions. An estimated 22.1 million excess deaths occurred between 2020 and 2023, with nearly a decade of gains in life expectancy & healthy life expectancy wiped out by 2021" iris.who.int/server/api/c...

The drug, ensitrelvir, “blocks an enzyme that coronaviruses need to make new copies of themselves, hitting the same target as one of the two active ingredients in [Paxlovid]. But whereas that ingredient, nirmatrelvir, failed to prevent household infections in trials, ensitrelvir has come through.”

OUR NEW BMJ editorial: Andes virus should reset WHO’s default approach to airborne risk. 🧵 1/ For severe pathogens with person-to-person transmission, the starting point should be precautionary airborne protections — not waiting for definitive proof after spread occurs. www.bmj.com/content/393/...

This is exactly why language matters: “women were given the vote” frames equality as a gift from men, instead of hard won political power extracted through organized resistance. Nobody gave women anything. Women fought, marched, strategized, endured violence, went to prison and died for it.

JC: GenAI can now produce realistic but fake photos. Image tools cannot reliably detect those images. If we cannot prove that something is fake, maybe we should prove that something is real. mikhoelias.substack.com/p/how-ai-bre... #WCRI2026

The Trump administration removed the entire board of the National Science Foundation last week without explaining why. @ryanequinn.bsky.social @insidehighered.com dug around and found out: www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

NHS data should be driving innovation & improvement – it’s an amazing resource We just published the sequel to our 2021 "Road to Hell" paper on using NHS data for research... things are worse! Buckle up for a long 🧵about *how COMPLETELY mad* system is for accessing NHS data for research 1/20

"Kennedy says the children are getting obsolete shots with dangerous ingredients that the U.S. has long since phased out. He is holding up $600 million Congress appropriated for the vaccines to pressure the international humanitarian group, Gavi, that distributes them."

🆕 What motivates Aussie adults to get their flu vax? Most want to be vaccinated and trust in healthcare professionals has risen, but cost and appointment access remain barriers. 🔗 doi.org/10.1016/j.an... @julieleask.bsky.social @sydney.edu.au @publichealthaus.bsky.social

The skills the market had dismissed turned out to be the ones the machines could not do. Judgement. Interpretation. The ability to read between the lines of something that presents itself as neutral. The capacity to hold two contradictory ideas[.] theslowai.substack.com/p/why-humani...

Australia’s investment in sexual and reproductive health is delivering measurable results worldwide, with strong impact across Asia and the Pacific. Our latest analysis highlights the impact and why sustained leadership matters. Read more: https://gu.tt/3P3hJcs

"The results suggest that, in the first few months after vaccination (September–December 2025), this year’s vaccines were 53–55% effective against hospitalizations among the study’s population of adults without immune compromise." insidemedicine.substack.com/p/exclusive-...

“The Washington Post reported last week that HHS has shelved a study CDC scientists were on the verge of publishing showing that this past winter the vaccines reduced the risk of needing emergency care or hospitalization for Covid by 50%.”

1. In a draconian new policy, Texas Tech is banning writing about LGBTQ+ topics. The ban is the first don't say gay or trans policy to apply to students themselves. It applies to any thesis/dissertation moving forward. They are using AI to scan everything. Subscribe to support our journalism.

A former tobacco executive quietly joined CDC senior leadership last month — a move raising concerns over the industry's influence over public health and revolving doors. www.statnews.com/2026/04/22/n...

“If you criticise Palantir’s platform one more time, you are going to lose your job.” Solidarity to all NHS workers opposing this toxic corporation. Shame on those bullying them. But they won’t stop us. We’re going to ditch Palantir. www.ft.com/content/ff70...

can’t say what i want to happen to these people for legal reasons

This makes me SO angry! We developed a vaccine that effectively prevents a deadly CANCER! And the argument is "cancer is good because it keeps people from having sex". It's evil, it's ridiculous, and yet people are saying it out loud and not being immediately shouted down.

Weird to me that this is the thing everyone cites, because there's so much that's so much worse. In 1974 the first laws against marital rape were passed, but all 50 states did not classify it as a crime/remove the exemption until 1993.

61st and 62nd retractions for the IHU in Marseille. 49th and 50th for Didier Raoult. Lack of ethical approval, retrospective approval, conflicts of interest with the ethics committee, and the use of code 09-022 for 258 articles.

Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests. #ResearchPublishing #Academicsky 🧪

This is so, so well-articulated.

A project offering researchers up to 3,500 Swiss francs for finding errors in published academic papers is having trouble finding people to do the work. My latest for @science.org: www.science.org/content/arti... @erichehman.bsky.social, @malte.the100.ci, @ruben.the100.ci, @conjugateprior.org

Pfizer has ended its large Phase III Trial of an updated COVID19 vaccine. They were not able to enroll enough people to meet their goal. A major problem is the FDA’s wholly unreasonable demand that people with chronic conditions, who benefit most from the vaccine, not be allowed to participate.

The CDC has paused testing for rabies and pox viruses, the family of viruses that includes smallpox and mpox — and by July will have no experts to advise states on clinical aspects of the diseases Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/01/h...

New South Wales is the first state in Australia to ban new coal mines! This is a monumental policy shift and the first real acknowledgement by an Australian Government that fossil fuels must be phased out. #auspol

“Abortion is legal across Australia and this research shows a majority of Australians support access to abortion, whether they live in cities or country towns, or where they sit on the political spectrum.” - Ebony Bennett Read more: https://theaus.in/4sUeAKp

“The State Department is considering withholding lifesaving assistance to people with H.I.V. in Zambia as a negotiating tactic to force the government of the southern African country to sign a deal giving the United States more access to its critical minerals” Extractive, colonial, & depraved 1/2

I have now written up the issues with this study. Turns out it's even worse than I initially thought! gidmk.substack.com/p/multivitam...

Bombed a school & then, 30 mins later, bombed it again—ensuring any kids who survived & any rescue workers would be killed “People were pulling out children’s arms and legs. People were pulling out severed heads” One of the worst war crimes in modern history. It was a school—not an IRGC base.

No happy #IWD 2026 marked by the grim reality that it took a dead man’s emails for the world to believe the testimonies of 100s of women & girls. I urge scrutiny of how Epstein’s cabal & abuse have been health-washed And for more attention to the survivors of #VAW 👇 www.bmj.com/content/392/...

The next time politicians say there is no money for health or humanitarian aid, I will remember this: $1 billion per day on war

The only remarkable thing about this is that the journal editors have not yet retracted every one of these papers. Making up data - even if it is a case report - is an astonishing breach.

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed. Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

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I want to tape this to my office door: "What’s more, this excessive reliance on AI leads me to the inescapable question: Why are you in this field?" mirandayaver.substack.com/p/in-defense...