The best thing about travelling is seeing how ordinary things are done differently. Sometimes you discover that things can be done much better. Sometimes you're left with a new appreciation for how things are done back home!

The CDC was truly a marvel – some of the brightest minds in our country, working tirelessly to keep our families & communities safe, so effectively that they were a global resource for recommendations & support in emergencies, all for a couple bucks of our taxes every year.

To put 200 active measles infections in one state in context, the Disneyland measles outbreak a decade ago - which I did some work on in grad school - was 131 total cases in California. That was a notable outbreak. That's an outbreak with its own Wikipedia page. And it's just like this now

This isn't just bad apples. The problems stem from systematic underinvestment in US public education and social welfare. In that context, "elite" private education becomes the clearest path to upward mobility. Which boosts the power of "elite" institutions in ways that make them hospitable to abuse.

People in Minnesota are now using their key fobs to trigger their car alarms from the safety of their homes when they see ICE walking around.

Missing data, DAG, #stats folk: There was a paper that explained missing data mechanism w/ DAGs, showing they're equivalent to conditioning on collider &/or ignoring confounding.. It was a simple paper for dummies (like me!) but earching for papers I've only found scary c-DAG and m-DAG stuff...😨

Please share: Pew Research Center will provide $3,000 each for 19 new papers using our recent global datasets. We encourage reuse of our Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures data! https://www.pewresearch.org/2026/01/16/seeking-research-using-recent-pew-templeton-global-religious-futures-datasets/

this is the sickest shit ive ever seen

I have always told my white students that they can acknowledge the harm that white supremacy has done, and choose to repair that harm, but I've advised them not to stay there. You do have some fierce AF ancestors, too. It's just that we don't learn about them or what we learn is lies *on purpose.*

So moved by the people of Minnesota who—drawing on LA, Portland, Chicago, DC etc—are writing a shining new chapter in the history of nonviolent resistance. The rest of us need to be taking notes—and helping them! www.standwithminnesota.com

Reports said the trial was halted. HHS says it will proceed. The revised protocol remains unethical. Scrutiny must continue until participants are no longer placed in harm’s way. I read the revised protocol and wrote a follow-up. bktitanji.substack.com/p/lipstick-o...

As I walked down the block, folks from 2 diff schools reported being on semi-lockdown due to ICE agents being actively outside. All this week - this is the fucking whack-a-mole nightmare people, families, school staff across MSP are enduring. ~3000-ish agents inundating streets, bus stops, schools

We’re recruiting for two Associate Professors (or Professors) of Statistical Quantitative Finance / Financial Econometrics to join us and the Oxford Man Institute. 📅 Closing date: Monday 9 February 2026 ➡️ Details and application information: tinyurl.com/2xarsd4y

THREAD of offers of guest lectures (via Zoom) for Minneapolis-area classes so faculty can offer their students a top-quality education while dealing with other crises Seeing tons of extremely generous offers. I'll try to post 'em all here--please add your own w topics you can cover & how to contact

Whatever your thoughts on the upcoming RCT of HepB vaccination are, it is way worse. How bad? THEY ARE NOT TESTING MOTHERS FOR HEPB INFECTION IN A COUNTRY WITH A 19% PREVALENCE BEFORE RANDOMIZATION In depth breakdown from Dr Faust with input from Dr Boulware (who is an experienced trialist)

The full protocol of the study in Guinea Bissau provides no reassurance. If anything is spells out just how insanely unethical the planned study is. The PI who wrote the protocol tried to defend the indefensible by writing to me directly. I responded publicly. Read 👇 substack.com/@bktitanji/n...

New blog post! In which I explain the issue with mediation analysis and sketch out one way to deal with the underlying causal inference problem -- in just a bit over 1,000 words! If you have never found the time to read up on this, now is your chance. www.the100.ci/2025/03/20/r...

New paper – and my first ✨Registered Report✨: Do hormonal contraceptives affect women’s sexuality? We studied both average effects and individual differences in effects using longitudinal data: doi.org/10.1177/2700...

📢 Job opportunity! Are you passionate about advancing clinical trial design & statistical innovation? Join the newly established MRC CoRE in Clinical Trial Innovation team as a Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow in Statistical Methodology. 🔗Apply by Feb 6, 2026: www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

The Research Data Centre at IQB is offering a number of (online) workshops this spring. Moritz Ketzer will give an introduction to graphical causal inference! fdz.iqb.hu-berlin.de/en/services/...

The department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences at Ghent University is proud to present a lecture series on the topic of eugenics. As philosophers and ethicists, we are concerned about the revival and normalization of eugenic discourse. humanitiesacademie.ugent.be/eugenics

#FundSocSci #EconSky www.nber.org/calls-papers...

We are collecting information on terminated SAMHSA grants at Grant Witness: grant-witness.us/submit-samhs... If you worked on one of these programs, please let us know at the link! And please share with your colleagues. We need a comprehensive record of these terminations to fight back!

A child infected with measles passed through locations in Maryland and Virginia and rode a train that was headed to D.C., authorities said in warnings about the highly contagious illness prevented through vaccination.

The ICE discussions around perceived lack of deference to authority somehow justifying violence are reminding me of this.

PI positions at ELLIS Institute Finland. DL 12th Jan. These include professor position (tenure track, different levels) affiliated in a Finnish university. See universities and preferred research areas at www.ellisinstitute.fi/PI-recruit-2... Some of these would be good for Bayesian flavored PIs!

U.S. Measles cases continue to rise unabated - with 125 new cases in South Carolina alone. This is BEFORE the expected increase in transmission from holiday travel. Ps: the MMR vaccine works. www.slideshare.net/slideshow/ys... for most recent @yalesph.bsky.social report

BREAKING and HUGE news for transgender people: The bipartisan final negotiated text for these spending bills REMOVED language to restrict gender-affirming care as part of the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program. docs.house.gov/billsthiswee...

Video message from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell: www.youtube.com/watch?v=KckG... www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

Also in here: I spoke with a person who has been out monitoring ICE in Minneapolis — a religious high schooler who has done the same in Chicago for months. He told me ICE’s response to observers like them in Minnesota is already more aggressive — on average — than they’re used to.

If I am going to have drama in my life… this is the kind of drama I want. (All the other stuff could please now stop)

The first patient I ever cared for when I was on my peds rotation in nursing school was a tiny dude ≈2 years old who had RSV. He had a history of lung problems from being 4 months premature and spending time on a vent in the NICU. When he would start coughing, his oxygen level would plummet…

Hey, remember that period of time when the most distressing thing in the news was finding out that random objects were secretly cakes? Was it a dog? Nope. Cake. Was it a glass of wine? Nope, cake again. Anyways, that is the level of stress that I would be comfortable returning to. Thank you.

Check out the new website for the Vaccine Integrity Project, which provides evidence-based data on immunizations. vaxintegrity.cidrap.umn.edu

Read it here!

The woman killed by ICE today was a poet. She won the 2020 Academy of American Poets, University & College Poetry Prize at Old Dominion University. (And this is Renee from confirmed socials- a photo of a different woman with red lipstick is going around, but that was a classmate.) /

There are people who still don't understand that you can do everything right--you can do everything they tell you--and you will still be shot in the face.

This is Renee Good. She was a mother of a six-year-old child. She was an American citizen. She described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom and shitty guitar strummer from Colorado.” And she was gunned down in cold blood and broad daylight by Trump’s ICE agents.

We want to uncover wrongdoing. We can with your support. Bellingcat is a not-for-profit. Consider donating so we can continue to create impact in 2026. www.bellingcat.com/donate

Great opportunity to join us at JHU!

Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to memory-hole Jan. 6, thousands of videos from the riot live on ProPublica’s website and other places. Additionally, much of the deleted DOJ database can be found on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. (Published Jan. 2025)

New hour of stand up Friends

The CDC changed the universal vaccine schedule & no longer recommends Rotavirus Hepatitis A & B Meningitis Influenza RSV I’ve cared for previously healthy kids who died from RSV, influenza and meningitis. We all are going to be caring for a lot more now. In our already overflowing hospitals

If anyone is or knows a PhD with EEG experience who is a) eligible for a Marie Curie post doc and b) interested in an ecological neuroscience project based in Leeds, let me know. I have an idea that needs a person!

But we are still the helpers, and we will keep trying. One at a time.

It’s just so amazing to spend your life trying to help people, only to watch a few incompetent men casually endanger the lives and health of so many more people than you could ever help

What a catastrophe.

As if having cancer or an immune deficiency as a kid isn’t bad enough, those patients also can’t receive vaccines. They rely on herd immunity, others doing the right thing. It’s the same with infants who are too young to be vaccinated but are also at increased risk of morbidity and mortality.

Routine vaccination prevents the targeted infection, but in many cases prevents other conditions. Some of these are the dreaded chronic illnesses that RFK Jr. likes to focus on. For example, the rotavirus vaccine prevents many cases of type 1 diabetes. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...