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...

I've spent yesterday and today talking to researchers across the globe trying to understand the hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius. My story in @science.org is here (and some threaded thoughts coming): www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪 #IDsky

Trump Fires Board Members of Group That Oversees U.S. Science Funding. Gift link: nyti.ms/4u7I3kr

“They’re just saying, ‘We’re getting rid of all the science.’” How the Trump Administration Ended Independent Science at the E.P.A. Gift link: nyti.ms/4ugMo59

Breaking news: The Trump administration’s move to drop the long-standing recommendation for newborn hepatitis B vaccination within 24 hours of birth will likely lead to additional infections and millions in added health care costs, new studies show.

HIV drove Zambia's life expectancy down to 37. A program backed by the US helped raise it up to 67, as hundreds of lives were saved. Now cuts to the US HIV program are causing a jump in AIDS deaths, as @stephanienolen.bsky.social reports. Gift link: nyti.ms/41V2Uvq

Motivated by the devastation the Spanish flu inflicted on WW1 troops, the US military was key in the development of #flu vaccine. Keeping troops battle ready is critical, which makes Hegseth's decision to drop mandatory flu shots ill-advised, Paul Friedrichs writes. www.statnews.com/2026/04/23/m...

NEW from me: According to USAID whistleblower Nicholas Enrich, the DOGE takeover was even worse than we knew, rife with conflict between political appointees who wanted an orderly "drawdown" and a DOGE team that wanted to flip the kill switch. @wired.com www.wired.com/story/usaid-...

Spending on new medical research by the National Institutes of Health has fallen roughly $1 billion behind the pace of years past, delaying thousands of scientific projects. Story by Ben Mueller & @irenatfh.bsky.social Gift link: nyti.ms/4ctOSqM

The CDC will not publish a study showing that Covid vaccines reduce the risk of hospitalization, despite passing scientific review, and despite using the same methods in studies published in its own journal, and in other journals. Story by @lenasun.bsky.social wapo.st/4cLQkDH

Let’s do this!

Pentagon ends mandatory flu vaccines for service members www.politico.com/news/2026/04...

A Year After U.S.A.I.D.’s Death, Fired Workers Find Few Jobs and Much Loss. Gift link: nyti.ms/48d7s3M

AI Data Centers in the Land of Diminished Local News www.cjr.org/feature/ai-d...

Bruce is a New Zealand parrot missing his top beak. It’s a serious disability, but he has managed to become the alpha of his group, through creativity. Here’s my story about Bruce and the mostly mysterious natural history of disability. Gift link: nyti.ms/4cwVGT5

A badly worded poll is making vaccine skepticism look more common than it is. www.statnews.com/2026/04/17/v...

Bill Nye and hundreds of Planetary Society members are heading to DC on Monday to protest the White House's proposal to slash NASA's science budget in half. These cuts were announced as the Artemis astronauts were on their way to the Moon:

HHS just published an update to its Scientific Integrity Policy. Notably, it has removed the concept of political interference, and no longer calls it out as something specifically to be prevented. www.hhs.gov/sites/defaul... (deletions in red, insertions in green)

Yesterday, Senators asked NIH director Jay Bhattacharya how Trump can justify a 40% cut to NIH's budget. He declined to say. www.science.org/content/arti... by @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social

Until now, scientists have identified only a few dozen variants that went through natural selection in humans in the past 10,000 years. A new study claims to find hundreds--maybe thousands. Here's my story on the provocative research, and the mixed reception it's getting. Gift link: nyti.ms/4tSJH9G

NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health. 'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:

Hungary’s Orbán concedes defeat as opposition heads for landslide win ft.trib.al/QyIb0GJ

So, let’s game this out. A Chinese flagged tanker pays the toll and transits the strait. We interdict it? What if the tanker is escorted by a Chinese warship?

Experts found that the White House budget request for the upcoming fiscal year could defund 54 NASA science missions, including a spacecraft currently studying Jupiter and two planned Venus missions: www.scientificamerican.com/article/whit...

The National Science Foundation has proposed eliminating the directorate that includes most of the federal funding for fieldwork and research in human origins. It's a sudden acceleration of a decades-long trend. I comment on what this means. www.johnhawks.net/p/us-federal...

A three-decade long study of chimpanzees has revealed a primate version of a bloody civil war. It's now at risk of getting eliminated due to cuts at the National Science Foundation. My story here (gift link): nyti.ms/4mhr5NQ

The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delayed publication of a CDC report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half, @lenasun.bsky.social reports wapo.st/4ccudpF

🚨 TRUMP: “I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks.”

Earthset, courtesy of Artemis. Story by @katrinamillerphd.bsky.social Gift link: nyti.ms/4bVvp1R

Breaking News: President Trump warned that a “whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran does not meet his deadline to open the Strait of Hormuz.

Air-Borne continued: Wildfire smoke and antimicrobial resistance: A hidden link demanding global attention link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Preprint: "Our findings indicate that SARS-CoV-2 maintains high household transmissibility and requires substantial medical resources in the post-pandemic era." (Over a third of Covid transmissions in the study occurred before infected people showed symptoms.) doi.org/10.21203/rs....

Can confirm. We failed to replicate that one. The pancakes, however, were delicious.

My story on science replication is in today’s print New York Times. The juxtaposition is interesting…

New at @nature.com: what the #ArtemisII crew will see as they fly past the Moon on Monday 🧪🔭 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

NASA just dropped this image of Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch looking back at us. The first woman to ever see our planet in its entirety. I’m not crying you’re crying 🥹🔭🧪 📸: NASA

Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A glimpse of the aerobiome

Artemis looks back at the home planet. www.nasa.gov/image-articl...

Researchers at Stanford University modeled how many people could die or be disabled in 25 years if vaccines for polio, measles, rubella or diphtheria were no longer available. We decided to illustrate it.

A data center being built with investments from Google will be partly powered by a natural gas project that emits the yearly emissions equivalent of putting more than 970,000 additional gas-powered cars on the road. www.wired.com/story/a-new-...

Vaccine makers Pfizer and BioNTech halted a large U.S. trial of their updated COVID-19 vaccine in healthy adults aged 50 to 64, saying enrollment in the trials had been too low to generate the needed data. www.msn.com/en-us/health...

I wrote today about a big study on replication--and why it's so hard to know if a study will hold up or not. Gift link: nyti.ms/4sNu3MF

@adambecker.bsky.social at Yale!

Rice's whale could go extinct after Trump administration overrode the Endangered Species Act this morning to expand oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Story by @maxinejoselow.bsky.social Gift link: nyti.ms/3NBOUDr

@vscooper.micropopbio.org & @isabelott.bsky.social let me crash their high-school bacteria hunt while I was working on my book "Life's Edge." Their paper's now out, featuring lots of mutants (including my very own CZ1A).

the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has more All-In podcast hosts than professors

The research exaggeration pipeline. -Unpublished paper -One outlier: "min & max can be found at 0.3°C and 9.1°C" (95th pct "between 1.5°C & 2.4°C") -No causal identification; just pre/post that could be result of many factors Do you really believe data centers are warming *10km* away? Really?

Sixteen years after it came out. Better late than never, I guess.