Asona Lui @ucsdhealthsci.bsky.social and I @sdsuresearch.bsky.social are PIs on one of those three funded applications! Our research is going clinical 😍😅🥳🧪 [I'll do a 🧵on how taxpayer $$ directly contributed to this shortly] #ShareGoodNewsToo

But it does it quickly and congratulates you for asking

Do better, universities

The erosion of the peer review process at the NIH is not just with the push back against in-person study sections, which I think are qualitatively superior to zoom sections. There were also in the last set of meetings: compression to 1 day meetings, and no chair summaries. Both comprise quality imo

Related but separate. I teach critical thinking and we talk about how telling someone they're wrong because facts, seldom works. But showing someone patterns that they can recognize in mis/disinformation empowers them to figure out for themselves which sources they can trust for information.

Hard agree. I created a Critical Thinking curriculum for our grad students because they craved that content. These are bright kids. Watching them kick ass once they grasp how to reason critically is amazing. But I shouldn't be the one seeing that transformation. That should be happening in school

100% this. That means the Cancer Biology class I teach is also partly a how to be a Biology student class. That means I can't teach all the cancer biology I want to because there's no point teaching intense biology concepts if we're struggling with the how to learn successfully question

The NIH has indicated a “leniency” period for implementation of the Common Forms (SciENcv) May 2026: grants.nih.gov/faqs#/common... Note: the “warning” that says your materials are not in compliance is also displayed if you submit using the Common Forms. This warning can be ignored.

It is ok to vote against making the middle third competitive if you haven't read those applications and therefore cannot really assess their competitiveness. They require a simple majority so make sure to ask clarifying questions before the first vote and then request a head count after the vote.

@sandiegostate.bsky.social recently hosted the SDSU Cancer Research Symposium, where cancer researchers, private-sector executives, advocates, and community organizations gathered to envision the future of cancer research at the university. Read the full story: tiny.cc/6eyx001

This should be said more often. The problem is not that the research that is funded isn't good, it's that we don't have the funding to fund all of the outstanding research ideas presented to us. ROI for NIH science funding is almost 2$ per $ spent. I'd like to see AI tech compete with that

Also, to get to the truly difficult-to-answer questions in a discipline, you have to steep yourself in the field for quite a while before you appreciate what we know, what we don't know, and what we know we don't know. True discovery takes time, and is a group project

“We cannot pursue our mission to improve the health and well-being of all Americans while DHS agents are murdering, assaulting, and terrorizing people who call this country home…We believe ICE and CBP are a greater threat to the health of our nation than the lapse of HHS services.”

Americans trust scientists more than any other groups in society. Understandably so. We are not driven by loyalty, money or politics. But many, if not most, of us are guided by truth, justice and humanity. This administration keeps trying to fool the American public, but they are a canny lot

What are we doing here? These are entirely preventable diseases. They can cause death. They can cause lasting damage. The misinformation, and disinformation, about vaccines has to be combatted with clear, compelling measages. We forget the past at our own peril.

But now we're taught by our mentors not to use the word "interestingly" when writing scientific papers. Nothing can be interesting anymore because we write like we knew all along. Most papers would be more fun if they were written as a journey, not a destination 🧪

Think about this when a boss insists Al is the future/the company will fall behind if it doesn't adopt XYZ tool. No. Gotta start with a vision for the end we want - what kind of company, country, values - and then ask what tools might get us there. Move too fast and this is where you end up. 3/3

For once paywalls performing a righteous function

Get vaccinated. I see so many of my students wiped out because they didn't get the shot

RT if you've never had a tab of ChatGPT open 'just to do quick research'

"The work now is the same as it was in 1911: document the failures, design the remedies, prepare for the moment."

While a 100 million$ is being spent to recruit an army against Americans, this administration is closing the door on so many outstanding scientists, who gave up much of their lives to earn the privilege of using science to uplift humanity.

Artificial intelligence is a very misleading term for a machine learning model, and certainly adds to the illusion currently being sold by tech billionaires. Great piece

"Whatever the defects of American universities may be, they disseminate no prejudices, rear no bigots, exclude no man because of his religious opinions" - Charles Dickens in the 1840s. Would that this administration could appreciate the treasure we possess as a nation renowned for higher education 🧪

One of the worst parts of these changes is they are asking scientists to legitimize them. In study section, they ask the panel to vote to confirm that a subset of the not discussed grant applications (that most of us haven't read) fall into a pile to be considered for funding. Don't stand for this.🧪

'Doctorow argues "AI isn’t the bow-wave of ‘impending superintelligence’. Nor is it going to deliver ‘humanlike intelligence’. It’s a grab-bag of useful (sometimes very useful) tools that can sometimes make workers’ lives better, when workers get to decide how and when they’re used.”'

No one says to legit business owners, "hey I see there's an underground market selling toxic knock-offs of your product: how will you incorporate the toxic product AND protect your customers against its harms?" But apparently it's fine to make this suggestion to educators with respect to AI.

Yes, the absolute absurdity of it is this is hoarding to the point where money loses any value. These people have some sort of mental illness.

www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/n... A 11 percentage point in grant funding for early career researchers in 2025. So it begins. 🧪

Watched Princess Bride today. RIP Mr Reiner

Good science news to greet the holidays. Our paper is now out @natcomms.nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Outstanding work by two of my postdocs, Aloran and Tyler, and collabs with Nic Fusco, Carol Manhart @templechemistry.bsky.social & Matthew Bainbridge @radychildrensoc.bsky.social 🧵🧪/1

Nice work by @amulyasreekumar.bsky.social 🧪🎇

If nature publishing group of making half a billion $ in profit, feels like maybe they can afford to pay reviewers for their time and expertise 🧪 group.springernature.com/gp/group/med...

When you develop a tool that is truly useful to scientists, you do not have to force it down their throats. I don't see Molecular Devices sending me an email about ten great things I can do with their spectrophotometer to extend my research. The day I need AI to tell me what to think, I'll quit🧪

"Pronatalists like Dean Spears and Michael Geruso worry that low birth rates mean “fewer and fewer people to discover new ideas”—but having more babies risks derailing the careers of already-born women today." Love it! What about the already-born and their new ideas? 1/2

Preprints are gold for getting your results out there, setting up collaborations, visibility for your lab, and convincing grant reviewers that you aren't blowing smoke when you say "manuscript in submission" #AcademicSky 🧪

The first administration that has proudly stood up to fight against cancer research. The folly and evil of purposeful ignorance and blatant lying is robbing the US of its position as a leader in science, and the world of its progress towards health and prosperity for all before our eyes 🧪

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

Can confirm, @sdsuresearch.bsky.social has seen increasing enrollment every year, coupled with threats of budget cuts from the state that squeeze faculty on both sides to continue to provide the quality of education that our students have (rightly) come to expect. #EduSky

I've already heard several of my colleagues say they don't see the point of participating in peer review because of the low funding rates. This could easily be the straw that broke the camel's back when asking scientists to spend valuable time evaluating the ideas of their peers 🧪

I gotta take this opportunity to pump up @sandiegostate.bsky.social. I love that we take our mission of keeping higher education affordable quite seriously. At least for now. And still an R1. At least for now.

Woot!!

It is important to listen to people who are using AI and understand how or why they're using them, and importantly whether they know that using it has different consequences from using, let's say, Google. I talk to my students and my lab members about this a fair bit. Many people just don't know.

Yet to ever buy a new car. My current car is one I bought in graduate school, second hand. Living the fat cat life here.

My 6 year old had to decorate this outline of a turkey for school. I came home to find him working hard at the dining table in the middle of what appeared to be a glitter explosion. His dad thinks it's the most Bollywood turkey ever. Can't disagree.

Such a thoughtful and heartbreaking piece (gift link). The actions of this administration, their war against biomed research, will leave resounding echoes of the silence of clinical trials that won't happen, and lives that won't be saved. For years to come www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/o...

Our latest story in preprint (www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...) and one of my favorites so far. More detailed thread to come. Tldr we show that the distinctive collagen patterning we see in black breast cancer patients is caused by tumor intrinsic signaling and is critical for metastasis 1/3 🧪

One of the many reasons I've often thought that grant awards for federally funded research should be based on performance rather than potential for success 🧪

We know they have the capacity to be "decent" to people whom they consider to be worthy of decency which is in itself indecent