My friend's NSF CAREER received the highest possible score (Excellent, Excellent, Excellent: High Priority) and it was rejected today. This would have been my friend's first extramural award, 5 years after starting their lab, exactly when grant $ is make or break for an Assistant Professor's career.

"Right now, in some underfunded lab, a scientist is chasing a question that sounds pointless...a century of experience says that funding people to do this work is a good bet. If we stop making that bet, we will pay for it in cures no one will know to miss."

A Federally funded doctor was curious about a lizard's biology. That work became Ozempic. The administration just proposed a rule requiring grants to "advance the president's policy priorities." The lizard would never have been studied. My piece in today's NYT: www.nytimes.com/2026/06/20/o...

“The Auburn University Board of Trustees on Friday gave itself complete control over course offerings, curriculum, degree requirements and academic credentials while eliminating shared governance at the Alabama land-grant university… The policy leaves many questions unanswered”

The ADA called the cops on attendees--one of them a former ADA president--for distributing reprints of an article pulblished in the ADA's flagship journal. "Failing to meet the moment" is starting to feel like the understatement of the century when it comes scientific organizations in the US.

What is the role of #poison-exon in regulating splicing factors in stem cells and development? Check out new work from Nathan Leclair and Mattia Brugiolo and many others in my lab @jax.org #RNA #splicing www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

If not now, when? This is an emergency.

Top story on the @nytimes.com app. A big sign that this all-important story is breaking into mainstream consciousness.

This is what has me scared the most- the dry language that attempts to justify a legal sounding framework to do again what they have already tried- to ban entire institutions from receiving Federal funds and to reward "red" states and punish "blue" ones.

This Vought policy is an attempt to choke out American higher education. America's fascists view its institutions of higher ed—and the people who staff them—as existential enemies of the purified nation

tl,dr; Scientists no longer allowed to use federal funding to publish, attend meetings, or talk to the public. They cannot collaborate internationally. Grants can be cancelled for any reason, at any time, political appointees have a final say over what gets funded, and who gets funded.

Powerful piece! www.ms.now/opinion/canc...

This is the horror cherry on top of the egregious fraud, waste, and abuse sundae. DOGE fired the people who send NIH money to research labs—which is a complicated process—so now even more labs are going to go under. All while Jay Bhattacharya goes on a podcast and says no NIH funding was cut.

The groundbreaking research into the KRAS protein that led to the development of daraxonrasib was funded in part by the NIH. Public funding is the bedrock of pharmaceutical research.

This was a hard story to report. Newborns who don’t get a vitamin K shot are 81 times more likely to develop a condition where they bleed uncontrollably. But more and more families are declining the shot. And babies are dying. www.propublica.org/article/more...

SCOOP: The F.D.A. blocked the release of studies finding that Covid and shingles vaccines were safe. In the case of Covid, FDA staff had to withdraw studies heading toward publication: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/u...

I take Lexapro. I have taken Lexapro for over two decades. The times that I have discontinued taking Lexapro have ended very badly for me. RFKJ is trying to kill millions of Americans like me. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/s...

The United States now has the most government restrictions on academic freedom of any high-income country. www.chemistryworld.com/news/academi... Raw data from @vdeminstitute.bsky.social —> academic-freedom-index.net/research/Aca...

Jay Bhattacharya has ordered that a paper showing the effectiveness of COVID19 vaccines in preventing severe disease and hospitalization be suppressed and hidden. This man has been crying nonstop about political censorship for 6 years. But he’s the one who is actually doing it.

Delighted to share our latest research from the 23andMe Research Team, just published in @nature.com ! We looked at data from >27,000 participants to uncover how human genetics influences weight loss efficacy and side effects of GLP-1 medications like semaglutide. A short thread 🧵👇

This is a really important paper in an area that is hard to study. I would recommend any student read this preprint to see how confounding issues arise even in clever assays. Internal Ribosome Entry Sites (IRES) are very interesting because they bypass normal translation initiation mechanisms. 1/

This is quite something from Singapore's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, in an interview with Reuters. The end of the post-war order, diagnosed in technocratic language. www.mfa.gov.sg/newsroom/pre...

Writing out a conversation I’ve been having a lot at this conference: Things in US science are far, far worse than people know. Far worse than even other scientists know. 1/

Genuinely just bonkers to watch the USA do this to one of the most successful and innovative hubs of scientific research the world has ever seen. All those years of Free Speech On Campus debates and it turns out they actually wanted less cancer research. Absurd.

I’ve spent all my free time this month thinking about training and data leakage in protein/RNA models. What models learn vs what you think they learn. You can find interesting and powerful things if you do it carefully. Looking forward to reading this.

Mom, come pick me up, the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.

We have an open position for a #PhD student (last week to apply!) & a lab technician/TA. For more information see: www.beuschlab.org/join-us Interested in understanding post-transcriptional regulation and how #RNA #splicing decisions are made? Then take a look or share with people who might be! 🧪🧫

Congress rejected massive cuts to US science budgets for 2026, but much of the money still isn’t flowing to researchers. The culprit? The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is quietly slow-walking the release of funds. 🧵👇

This is my love letter to mRNA: an Ignite talk I gave as a fundraiser for the Lawrence Hall of Science. Custom mRNA cancer vaccines could be a game changer, but anti-science policies make their future so uncertain. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUlu...

A lot of people, including me, were wondering how an IRB could ever approve this study. The answer is that no IRB did. The person who “signed off” on approval from the only ethics board that reviewed it had resigned three years earlier. His signature was used without his knowledge.

Of so many things to be infuriated about, this is perhaps my biggest gripe. Pancreatic cancer patients, who face a future without hope, are being denied a potential game-changing therapy www.mskcc.org/news/can-mrn...

In terms of what cures are being lost: - Epstein-Barr virus is perhaps the major trigger for multiple sclerosis - herpes simplex virus causes cold sores, genital herpes, infections in babies, deadly meningitis - shingles virus causes an intensely painful disease

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

Let's celebrate #DarwinDay by reminding ourselves that everyone has moments when they feel worse for wear. Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell in 1861: "But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything." www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-L... So, hang in there, #academicsky! 🧪🌏🐵

“Success in US science has come from sustained funding and welcoming the best talent from around the world, yet both of these advantages are in decline” www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The flu and pneumonia kill over 45,000 people a year. Moderna developed a new mRNA flu vaccine for people 50 and older--who are most at risk. Prasad, unilaterally, against the recommendation of experts within the agency, denied Moderna's appplication. www.statnews.com/2026/02/11/m...

Do you want to understand how RNA #splicing decisions are made? We‘ve got a PhD position open for you (see 👇👇)!! Please share #RNAsky and RT! tinyurl.com/4ztu9cb9

You know what they’re going to store in those warehouses? People

I love absolutely everything about this piece about life after college in Davis Square, Somerville. It's 15 years before my time but every single thing rings true. "I wanted to be edgy but I had no edges at all. I was a blur." www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Judge Biery signed the order with a photo of Liam and two bible verses: The first is "But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." The second is simply "Jesus wept." Astonishing thing for a judge to do.

A Minnesota woman observing ICE agents in her car was cornered on one-way streets. An agent approached, called her by name—citing facial recognition. Days later, her Global Entry and TSA privileges were revoked, with no explanation.

We could have 4 JWST’s or a science mission at every planet. The NIH could be funded for two years. Or 1.5 years or so of USAID funding, if it still existed. This is how they’re spending our tax dollars. This is our money.

"I didn’t realize, in the hours before his name was released to the public, that the man millions of people had seen lying facedown on the pavement from multiple angles of eyewitness video was my childhood best friend." Read more from @kristenradtke.bsky.social: www.theverge.com/policy/86856...

Thank you Minnesota

As a someone with a 33 year NIH-funded lab whose grant is supposed to be reviewed this week, shut NIH down if that is what's needed to end ICE terrorism. Innocent lives are more important 🧪

in case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today

This is the first example I’ve seen of an American government using AI to meaningfully misrepresent actual events with the intent to deceive the public. We are at Stalinesque levels of propaganda. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/past-the-b...

He goes on to describe one of his officers being stopped when she was off-duty solely because she's non-white, harassed by ICE goons who slapped her phone out of her hand as she tried to record, only to be let go when she finally revealed she was a cop.

The conference (agreement between House and Senate) appropriations bill that includes HHS and NIH was released this morning. www.appropriations.senate.gov/news/majorit... 1/5

These are concentration camps. And these are the numbers they're comfortable sharing.