Trump has been in office for one year. We at @nature.com did a deep dive looking at the administration's disruption of science in numbers. Take a look—the numbers are staggering. By me, @dangaristo.bsky.social, Jeff Tollefson, @kimay.bsky.social, & help from @noamross.net @scott-delaney.bsky.social

This is how we first teach chirality to our undergrads !

I worked 16 years in the Office of the Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, including as the Intel & Ops briefer to the Secretary, the Department's Congressional Reports Officer, & as the Exec Sec for OGC. If I can be useful to your law firm, NGO, or Cong. office, please let me know.

The data show that when you let more women and racial/ethnic minorities into your academic society they tend to be overrepresented doing the service work of your society. Isn’t that interesting? #ACNP2026

6 years ago, our Nusayba rang the bell and was officially cancer free. She's now a 9 year old diva. A stage 4 cancer survivor with a full liver transplant thanks to once anonymous donor Shawn Zahir who donated a piece of his liver to save the life of a girl he never met. God is great.

This is so important. I’ve taken care of children who didn’t die from their vaccine preventable illness but instead -lost limbs -developed kidney failure requiring dialysis -had strokes and permanent deficits Death isn’t the only bad outcome. And sometimes it may not be the worst one.

When I explain to people what is involved with writing a successful grant, they simply don’t believe me. I explained it once to a famous person from Pixar, and he looked me square in the eye and said: You mean all the cancer and Alzheimer’s grants work that way? You’ve gotta be &$%#ing kidding me!

I don't think you non-science people realize what it takes to get a grant funded by NIH. Started experiments in Sept 2021 to generate 3 new mouse mutants to model human disease. Prelim dara shows they have relevant disease phenotypes worthy of study. Need a small grant first to characterize /1

This is an outstanding essay describing some of the important roles and influences of NIH program officers (from an insider perspective). Read! elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/the-quiet-...

“The quiet power of program officers lies not in control, but in care. Care for the science, for the people who conduct it, and for the public it is meant to serve.”

Just reintroduced my bipartisan bill, the NIH IMPROVE Act, with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, Senator Katie Britt, and @booker.senate.gov, to fund lifesaving research at the National Institutes of Health to save moms’ lives!

Anyone else have a coauthor who is so much fun to write with that you just find yourself grinning in some combination of satisfaction and pride as you edit a manuscript? If not, get yourself one.

Helene was so giving to others about her battle, and went through to make it into maybe the top 1% of survivors of pancreatic cancer, before succumbing Dec 19, 2025 all while losing her father to it. She supported @letswinpc.org and the family asks for you to consider supporting them as well.💔

Helene was *truly* special. She was an outstanding scientist, colleague, friend, spouse, and mom. Many of you know that Helene had been battling pancreatic cancer for ~7 years and shared her courageous fight. My thoughts are with her husband, Michael Polymenis, and their two children.

Helene Andrews-Polymenis @hpolymenis.bsky.social passed away on Dec 19, 2025 There will be an on campus memorial service in Jan or Feb

My quote of the day Masha Gessen

My segment on CNBC today Gottlieb: ‘If We Go to the Danish Model and We Substantially Reduce Vaccination … We’re Going to Have to Build New Pediatric Hospitals’ grabien.com/story?id=562...

UBC is hiring elite senior faculty for the generously funded Canada Impact+ Research Chairs Program. Requires recruitment from outside Canada, but welcomes Canadians abroad to come home. Expressions of interest due 15 January. research.ubc.ca/federal-rese...

Maaaaaaannnn, if I did not already just move… I’ve already recommended a colleague at another institution for one of the slots at McGill. Canada is not playing with these positions.

The ACS Catalyst Award for early-stage investigators with high-scoring but unfunded research projects. (Applied to NCI for an NIH R01 in & scored at or below the 15th percentile, or applied for ACS Research Scholar Grant & scored Outstanding). Deadline & details ⬇️ www.cancer.org/research/we-...

BIER: Immigrants today are assimilating faster than prior generations. They are more likely to know English, graduate college, be economically productive, & beneficial to govt budgets than in the early 20th century. /1

Postscripts from the frontlines of Trump's attacks on science: no simple happy endings www.statnews.com/2025/12/11/a... via @statnews.com

What was killing the Swedes in 2013-2017? I was rereading the excellent post about the atrocious op-ed by the occupants of the NIH leadership positions (Bhattacharya and Memoli, hereafter BM) noting their assumptions for excess death modeling. kucharski.substack.com/p/excess-mor... 1/5

This is my all time favorite Onion headline (complete with picture to make the joke work), which is apropos today given the passing of architect Frank Gehry. theonion.com/frank-gehry-...

Who among us

The biggest clue to cranks that there is no vaccine conspiracy is that Doctors and Scientists continue to vaccinate their own children at record rates.

I send money to @wikipedia.org every year. This is something you can do to make a difference and fight against AI slop.

Fifteen Years xkcd.com/3172/

Love this so much

This memo dates shortly after the 8/7 “Improving Oversight of Federal Garntmaking” EO. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential... Many took comfort that Institute Directors would continue to make NIH funding decisions. They (except NCI) have been civil servants not politicos. That seems to be shifting.

Unreal, the impact this is having on scientists. I spent over 700 hrs writing 4 grants submitted Apr-Sept that *might* have been funded next Apr; 2 abt to be 3 apps missed review bc of shutdown. In normal times takes 9-24 mo to get a grant funded. No hope for labs like mine. Literally no hope.

This, right here. The best predictor of productivity is funding the damn grant.

I’m begging institutions not to outsource your judgment of faculty to this ridiculous and useless scheme

Just got an email from my SRO for the study section that was missed in October. Good news is that they are trying to reschedule ASAP (Dec/Jan). The bad news is that CSR is mandating that only the the top third (not half) of applications will get discussed for the next 2 rounds.

Jenna Norton, an outspoken signer of the Bethesda Declaration. was welcomed back to work by being placed on Administrative Leave (for No Disciplinary Reason). www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Dteoop/ 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

Trump’s HHS put me on “non-disciplinary” admin leave today. This was retaliation for speaking up. Moves like this are designed to silence us. Let’s not let. www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Dteoop/

According to a source, Jenna Norton, who led a letter criticizing Trump's decimation of the NIH (see below), has been placed on administrative leave. She's the first at NIH to be put on leave, joining EPA officials who criticized Trump policies. www.pbs.org/newshour/nat...

Up to 323 cancelled CSR study sections. That's more than the 204 sections cancelled earlier this year. Rescheduling is going to be a hot mess with NIH staff reductions and study section members heading into finals and holidays that limit availability. 🧪

Are you an early-stage graduate student (2nd or 3rd year) or early-stage postdoc based in the US or Canada, working primarily in Drosophila? Would you like to help improve the experience of all trainees working in Drosophila research? If so, read on. (Please repost to reach a broad audience.)

Come and join us here in Cambridge! Applications open for a new faculty position, for a researcher in computational and/or theoretical biology, based jointly in Genetics and Mathematics. Happy to answer questions about research, teaching and working here. www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/faculty...

Looks like a chair position in the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has opened up. Any peeps looking to relocate to Pittsburgh?

Please! papers gather ridiculous amounts of data, asking for more because it would be interesting is just too much… It is not your research, it is not supposed to fulfill your curiosity. This is how I like to think when reviewing. Just read it, confirm claims are supported and science is well done.

Friends, if you have the means to donate to a local food pantry financially via online giving, I highly encourage you to do that. But I don’t want to discount the importance of actually showing up at the pantry, even if it is just to drop off food. (1/5)

A New Thread on NIH Forward Funding I recently posted an analysis of forward funding of NIH grants from 2015-25. This analysis was flawed and should be ignored. I apologize for the misleading information I present an analysis of my error and a revised analysis which I am confident is right. 1/25

And importantly, while a few years to settle out might seem no biggie, it sure as heck is a big deal to those PIs who have been on the job for just a few years and are looking at the tenure decision looming ahead.

Multi-Year funding analysis, a 🧵 I have been trying to find a robust way of quantifying and understanding multi-year (forward funding). First, some background: Most NIH grants are for multiple years (2 to 5, typically). However, the are usually funded on an annual basis. 1/18

Between grants getting politically targeted and my lab’s building getting literally fucking bombed, 2025 is going great thanks

Paul Nurse describing the main job of a PI (From ‘The Thinking Game’, 2024)

New York declares state of emergency to fund food banks as federal food aid set to lapse reut.rs/4qBqZT8

I just learned about this amazing program that matches high schoolers interested in STEM with mentors, including many past and present NIH trainees. These types of programs are even more important in this day and age. If you're able to help support it, they have a gofundme.