I can't stress enough that you should take every opportunity that comes your way to support your local public libraries. Many of them are currently struggling and are being DEFUNDED. Local action matters on this front. Don't sit back until those libraries are gone before taking ACTION.

NEW from me - NSF cancels grant scheme for social science research. Seems the NSF quietly archived ALL calls for DDRIG grants in the SBE directorate. This is a massive blow for PhD students wanting to do cutting-edge social science research. 🏺🧪

"We followed everything we were supposed to do" Legitimate green card applicants with US spouses are being arrested by armed, masked men at scheduled immigration interviews, taken away from their children, sent to prison www.nytimes.com/2025/11/26/u...

Help a family today eat this #thanksgiving by donating to your local food bank.✨ feedingamerica.org/find-your-lo...

Just an absolutely gutting essay by Tatiana Schlossberg, a writer, mother of two young children, and cousin of RFK Jr who is dying of leukemia. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Campus is looking lovely and autumnal outside my window

This. And literally any college will allow you to do this. We are still giving students that opportunity, despite everything. Yes, there are many pressures to do things other than engage deeply, and no, not all students are equally able to ignore those pressures. But the opportunity is still there.

new paper by Sean Westwood: With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

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.

PSA for people with NIH grant periods starting January 1st (including most NIGMS MIRAs): your RPPR is due Saturday, but they haven’t sent out the usual automated reminders, presumably due to the shutdown

#MedSky: In August, we reported that the VA lost more than 600 doctors and nearly 2,000 nurses this year. We know that for many of you, the decision to leave the VA could not have been easy. Here’s how you can share your story with us ⤵️

DARTMOUTH OUT! We are at 6 rejections. Vanderbilt is the only private left standing "considering" the compact along with UT Austin and the University of Arizona.

It's that time again. For the next 24 hours, drop any infectious disease and/or vaccine-related questions below in response to this post, and I will do my best to answer them. Responses are for information only and are NOT medical advice. #AskAnIDDoc October 2025 edition.

In Connecticut, the health care advocate office — whose services are free — has been able to resolve or overturn insurance denials in the patient’s favor about 80% of the time. Check to see if your state has a similar consumer assistance program:

BREAKING: UVA rejects the Trump Administration's Compact.

Inspired by this post to join that group.... Quite a ride!

15 US states and territories have formed a new Public Health Alliance, which will counter the absence of federal leadership by tracking outbreaks, issuing guidance, buying vaccines and more. Members of the new alliance include CA, CO, CT, DE, GU, HI, IL, MD, MA, NJ, NY, NC, OR, RI, WA.

I don't think people realize what an immediate impact this is going to have on outbreak response and containment.

MMWR stole the show in the first round of headlines about CDC cuts but in the chaos, many missed that the NHANES mobile team remains RIF'd. This is the backbone of this key survey that contains some of the only representative anthropometric, biochemical, clinical and dietary data on the country.

NCI: 2022 - 2963 new grants awarded 2023 - 2966 new grants 2024 - 2612 2025 - 1431 😐

This is why you can’t use ED diagnoses to decide whether to pay for the visit. Going into the visit, you don’t know if it’s something terrible or something self-limited/benign. You need the visit and all the provided care to distinguish. It’s bad faith by the insurance co and should not be allowed.

“As of this writing, some 40% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life… Now an extraordinarily successful scientific research system — one that took decades to build, has saved millions of lives and generated billions of dollars… — is being dismantled before our eyes.”

NC State Health Director has issued Standing Orders that allow 65 years or older and adults over 18 who meet certain criteria to get a COVID-19 vaccine at a pharmacy *without* having to get a prescription.

hi friends! It's almost the weekend. Have you planned something fun offline? It could be reading a book, taking a long walk, going to a museum, seeing a friend, doing a craft, or cooking an elaborate meal. If you are sad, try not to be sad alone. And if you can, charge your phone away from your bed.

Community colleges have been dealing with this problem for a bit. The typical reaction is that administrative burdens will increase for real students to prove they are, indeed, real. www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

Brilliant piece on how to engage in conversation with strangers about vaccines and public health @statnews.com @unbiasedscipod.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2025/09/06/c...

My latest for MSNBC: CMS is adding new prior authorization requirements for traditional Medicare, implemented with AI. Prior auth is a key vehicle for coverage denials that then drive administrative burdens of appealing, which seniors are less well equipped to navigate. www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

PSA: Contacting a professor whose lab you would like to join? DON'T use generative AI to personalize the email. It will make up things like names of papers. Doesn't make a good impression and is frankly vertigo-inducing for the prof in question. ("I mean it sounds like a paper I would write but...")

The AI authorship issue is real. We've caught papers that looked OK but had references to works by the *journal editors* that *do not exist*. Like, don't send us papers citing papers we know we didn't write, right?

I am fascinated by this guy who was a Higher Ed administrator and has now moved into teaching classes as a faculty member. He is documenting his whole journey on TikTok. Over the summer, he had so much excitement 🧵

I’ve done this for 2 weeks now and it *absolutely rules*. Best class discussions I’ve ever had. Best engagement with readings. They write in this worksheet for 15 minutes, then talk about their responses in groups of 3-4, then groups share with the whole class, and *then* we talk about the readings

Breaking: BILL CASSIDY is calling for CDC's vaccine advisers meeting to be postponed. "If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership."

Hi: Public administration professor here. This is not good.

It’s important to remember that PhD programs pausing admissions is a really bad sign. Grad students act as instructors for many lower level courses and a university can only go so long without admitting any before classes have to be cut.

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Any time you go for a walk in the evening around here this time of year you can see impressive work from our eight legged friends

everyone wants the computer to be my little buddy that I talk to and all I want is to use a mouse and keyboard and never have it talk back to me

Nature story about the Executive Order... www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I subscribed to STAT News this spring and have not regretted it. Very good coverage of what's going on at NIH.

I reject fatalism [a form of moral disengagement]. What happens next is not predetermined and depends in part on us.

1. Federal funding for research promotes tech, biomedical, and scientific discovery in the US, and provides training for the sci/tech workforce that has brought immeasurable wealth to the US over the past 75 years. Today's executive order includes a provision that will obliterate both functions.

The newest executive order makes major changes to federal grantmaking, including additional review by presidential appointees and prioritizing applications with lower indirect cost rates. To the extent that federal funding remains, this is a big deal.

@katherinejwu.com got me on the record. My terminated colleagues are scientists and were committed service members. The #NIH lost so much talent.

They’re going to have all sorts of endowed scholarships but no staff to administer them. www.insidehighered.com/news/busines...

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

I grew up hearing relatives describe feeling brushed off in clinics and spoken to like their concerns were a nuisance. Those stories pushed me toward a PhD in Population Health Sciences and my 1st project on discrimination in healthcare. @journalgim.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

There's not a week that goes by that I am not asking someone the questions: "what do you want people to DO and are you doing what you want others to do yourself?"

The difficulty with writing anything about anything is that any given thing, on closer inspection, appears to be connected to every thing, and now you’ve gone from writing about anything to writing about everything 😅