Heeeey Ohio folks! Please take a moment to fill this out. We're targeting Husted as he's up for election next year. Let him know how his policies are awful for Ohio health. Also if you want to come to the event (Oct 15, Columbus) please reach out!

Kennedy Fires N.I.H. Scientist Who Filed Whistle-Blower Complaint www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/h...

Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, former Director of NIAID, is Fired by Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy in Retaliation for Filing Whistleblower Complaint with the Office of Special Counsel bit.ly/4gRA3yx

One of the loudest bells tolling for social science right now is that the decade of abundant data on humans is coming to a close. Whether you work on digital trace or surveys, LLM pollution is a serious problem, even while the wide roll out of LLMs creates an urgent need for social science.

This is true. In AI mode no reponses to question "Does Trump show signs of dementia" but long analysis if you ask "Does Biden show signs of dementia" So whole AI thing is now Orwell-level of corruption and monopoly abuse just three years into its public explosive introduction.

A landmark new study in JAMA Pediatrics shows the HPV vaccine is doing exactly what it promised & more. 17yrs after rollout, adolescent vaccination has slashed HPV infxns not only among those vaccinated but also those unvaccinated, showing powerful herd protection. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Here’s a small thing folks in Columbus can do - send a letter to our school board and superintendent telling them to take advantage of solar energy tax credits before they disappear. It’s a no-brainer. (Also that is my dog in the banner photo)

NEW: Judge Matt Kacsmaryk transferred ongoing lawsuit against the FDA over abortion drug mifepristone to the Eastern District of Missouri. (Trump DOJ said AGs of Missouri, Kansas, Idaho couldn't sue in TX.) Denies motions to intervene from AGs of TX, FL, LA storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

More here about the stakes of the Supreme Court siding with the AGs of Missouri et al. And yes the states really argued that improved access to abortion pills harmed them politically because it lowered teen birth rates and overall population slate.com/news-and-pol...

And an article on same advance by Rob Stein at @npr.org. (Also quoting me.) Same bottom line but feels a bit more positive about the way forward, tho also highlights some of the ethical and other problems. www.npr.org/2025/09/30/n...

"That medication, already purchased by a U.S.-taxpayer-funded program, was tantalizingly close — a little more than seven miles away. But it hadn’t reached the clinic where Suza was being treated because President Donald Trump’s suspension of foreign aid had thrown supply chains into chaos."

NEW: In a controversial step that raises the possibility of a new kind of infertility treatment, scientists made eggs from human skin cells. Spoiler: The resulting embryos were abnormal and importantly, they weren't used to start a pregnancy. My story for @wired.com: www.wired.com/story/scient...

Breaking news from Des Moines: ICE has detained Dr. Ian Roberts, the superintendent of Iowa's largest school district. The Des Moines Public Schools said "We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps." www.bleedingheartland.com/2025/09/26/i...

My review of Paddy McQueen's excellent "Regret" is out in Ethics www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Extremely excited to be welcoming @alybatt.bsky.social to Ohio State University next Friday afternoon! Please join us for this conversation about her wonderful new book _Free Gifts_ - we’ll be discussing climate change, value theory, social reproduction, existentialism, and much, much more.

NEW: Nature trained AI to predict which NIH grants from 2014 would have been cut if the Trump admin had its way back then — and what science would have been lost to history. "The results show the damage that cuts in funding can do to research, and the unpredictable nature of the research process."

The Trump administration announces a "review" of the safety of the abortion drug mifepristone—suggesting they may move to reverse Biden-era regulations that made the pill more available, including by mail.

ACOG reaffirms that acetaminophen is safe for managing pain and fever during pregnancy. No reputable studies support suggestions like those in HHS’s recent announcement linking acetaminophen use in pregnancy to autism; in fact, high-quality studies show no such risk. https://bit.ly/47Wxc59

A Republican House member introduced a federal informed consent bill that would require counseling on a crackpot theory known as abortion pill “reversal.” Watch this space for more on APR 👀 www.autonomynews.co/yet-another-...

The @washingtonpost.com story on Tylenol & autism leaves out a MAJOR 2.5M sibling-controlled study of children in Denmark, which "found no evidence that acetaminophen use during pregnancy was associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD or intellectual disability." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Retsef Levi is now saying that randomized controlled trials are the only evidence that matters. Someone on the zoom call said, audibly and correctly: “YOU’RE AN IDIOT”.

Discussed here. sciencebasedmedicine.org/methodolatry...

Okay, maybe some good news. @melodyschreiber.com has just informed me that HHS said that ACIP’s vote today *does* constitute a recommendation. This is important because it *should* mean that in every state, people should be able to get COVID19 vaccines without a prescription.

This is the type of misinformation that is going to lead to decreased vaccination among pregnant women and result in more sick infants. WILD statement being made. The data is clear that the COVID vaccines are not associated with birth defects.

Here is one example: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... "In this multisite observational cohort study, of 42 156 pregnancies ending in live birth, first-trimester COVID-19 vaccination was not associated with increased risk for selected major structural birth defects."

Attorneys representing the state of Ohio and women's health clinics made oral arguments Tuesday over whether other provisions in the state's 2019 six-week abortion ban law can be maintained, even though the ban itself has been struck down.

What to see where Trump's administration is destroying the science base? There's an app for that.

“The messages could get incredibly violent, saying, ‘I hope what happened to this person happens to you and your family.’” matternews.org/community/ta...

Ohio’s historically Black colleges lose millions after canceled ‘discriminatory’ grants Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said the Dept of Education will cease funding the grants because MSIs have “racial quotas,” which she said are discriminatory. by Katie Millard www.nbc4i.com/news/local-n...

If you need a quick antidote this morning, here's a piece I wrote about how David Lynch fans tend to be the nicest, most creative and interesting people you'll ever meet. www.timeout.com/news/log-lad...

“…putting solar arrays above water can help keep panels cool, in turn improving their efficiency and electricity output. Shade from the panels can also prevent water loss through evaporation in drought-prone regions and can limit algae growth in waterways.”

🚨 Important update on yesterday's story that the admin destroyed $10 million worth of birth control. They haven't been destroyed yet. The U.S. government said the products were destroyed, but local Belgian authorities found them. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/w...

The #FDA is shifting away from longstanding practice of having outside experts review drug applications. This could mean less public scrutiny and external input on agency decisions, USC Schaeffer Sr. Scholar @profgenkanter.bsky.social tells @kffhealthnews.org.

The ethical, legal, and social implications program successfully protected society from many risks of harm in genomics. Alondra Nelson argues we need such a framework - post haste - for AI in this thoughtful letter to Science Magazine : https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeb0393

🚨 Breaking News 🚨 The Admin just destroyed $10M of birth control purchased by USAID for women in low-income countries. That birth control would have prevented 362,000 more unintended pregnancies, 110,000 more unsafe abortions, and 718 preventable maternal deaths. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/h...

Maria Rojas, a midwife in TX, was arrested in June for allegedly providing illegal abortions. But the indictment only has details about 1 case, which shows that Rojas was providing miscarriage care ‼️ The witness says Rojas prescribed misoprostol b/c she thought the pregnancy was not viable.

I wish more people were talking about this case as the prosecution of miscarriage care. More on the case here: www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston...

Adam's parents, Matt and Maria, printed out his ChatGPT transcript from September when he started using it, until April 11 when he died. They organized it chronologically by month. That huge stack is March, and the one next to it is the first 11 days of April.

My Ohio state rep, Mark Sigrist, stands up for immigrants and basic decency: "We know immigrants and their families add tremendous value to our communities, and they deserve to thrive and live with dignity. We know that standing together across race, income and national origin makes us all stronger"

Love this from ericturkheimer.substack.com/p/the-new-eu... "So what we mean wh/we say that a polygenic score for depression is pleiotropic, we mean that something that is (by design) correlated w/depression is also correlated w/a million other things. There are no behavioral polygenic scores for

Yes, a judge ruled that the Trump administration has to keep making Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthoods for now but that doesn’t mean access is unchanged. More than a dozen clinics have said they’d close since the bill was signed into law and these 16 Ohio clinics are reducing access to care

Hope this works: wapo.st/41057FL

Funding for this groundbreaking research on Alzheimer's was terminated by the Trump Administration www.bostonglobe.com/2025/08/06/m...

1/ I'm excited to share our new open‑access paper in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy (with Leda Berio, Benedict Kenyah‑Damptey, Steffen Koch & Alex Wiegmann). Part of an ongoing project in comparative philosophy of race, exploring the peculiar & often fraught dynamics of race talk in Europe.

A transgender Brown University student told me they now feel unsafe at the school that is “functionally inaccessible" for trans people after the administration bent the knee to the Trump administration. www.advocate.com/news/transge...

The mRNA vaccine platform has already been assessed across diverse clinical indications, many with remarkable progress: —cancer neoantigen vaccines [in patients with refractory disease (e.g. pancreatic)] —more than 15 infectious diseases —autoimmune diseases —rare disease for genome editing

I really love the Museum of Jurassic Technology, and earlier this month it was damaged in a fire. I just donated a little money to help out while they’re closed, and so can you: www.mjtgiftshop.org/products/don...