A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue. The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea. From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

Coincidentally, another group published results today on a very similar question: What research wouldn't have gotten done had the NIH's budget been cut by 40%, as Trump proposed? Under that scenario, NIH-funded research on more than half of 557 drugs approved 2000-2023 would have never happened!

UCLA’s funds reinstated after yesterday’s court order! Thanks to the brave researchers and their amazing counsel, including Dean Chemerinsky, who brought suit. This is just another turn in the ongoing fight, but a great result for now.

First they came for the Immigrants. And I wrote a memo. Then they came for trans people. And I wrote a memo. Then they came for the comedians. And I wrote a memo. Then they came for me. And there was no one to write a memo for me.

It’s rare that one clip can both be grounds for a massive corporate lawsuit and grounds for the 25th Amendment at the same time.

Opinion| Could releasing the Epstein files cause autism?

Trump is pronouncing "acetaminophen" the right way. by Ezra Klein

New paper: We argue that linearization in language production is a foraging process, with speakers navigating semantic and spatial clusters. Lead author: Karina Tachihara, former UC Davis postdoc, now faculty at UIUC! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I cannot emphasize this enough: The regime has overextended itself. It is vulnerable to protest and dissent. They have not consolidated power and we are entirely capable of keeping them from doing so. Doomers are not realists.

me telling my grandkids what it was like to have vaccines

Can reasoned arguments shift moral behavior? In a new preprint, @eschwitz.bsky.social, Jason Nemirow, @fierycushman.bsky.social and I explore this question in the context of charitable donation. (1/10)

Today, the New York Times published a long essay glorifying Jay Bhattacharya, the Trump NIH director. What?⁉️ Here’s the explanation: That essay was written by the editor of a Trumpist Republican journal, funded by a Trumpist org that hates science. SHAME on the Times. 🧪1/

Tom Homan took a bag of cash from an undercover FBI agent the right way. by Ezra Klein

There is no world in which it is normal for the president to publicly call upon his attorney general to hurry up and prosecute his political foes. It’s like the Watergate tapes but posted on social media. Let’s get a grip on what’s happening here.

I have to keep this deliberately vague, but this is a total disaster for academic research. And imposing it so suddenly is just cruel. I’ve got friends scrambling to get back to the US before midnight tonight. Do you know how hard that is to do on 36 hours of notice?

"basic cognitive processes underlying explanatory reasoning give rise to a systematic inherence bias among practicing scientists—a tendency to explain phenomena in terms of their inherent properties rather than external factors" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

The recommendation from the West Coast Health Alliance of Washington, Oregon, California, and Hawaiʻi is that all adults get the flu and COVID vaccines. www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/PREVE...

NEWS --> Anna Gomez, the lone Dem on the FCC, tells me the Trump admin's pressure to oust Jimmy Kimmel may be unlawful as well as unconstitutional. FCC chair Brendan Carr may be committing censorship in violation of federal law. That and much more in my new piece: newrepublic.com/article/2006...

Donald Trump's assault on free speech presents the perfect opportunity for me to lecture my liberal friends about the dangers of trigger warnings.

“If people cannot access vaccines, we will see the return of diseases that once caused serious health issues for children. These diseases are now almost entirely preventable, and as a pediatrician it is heartbreaking to see a child and family suffer in this way." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/h...

We need to make No Kings 2.0 on October 18 huge. Find a protest near you here: www.nokings.org#map And tell everyone you know to be there. I'll be at this one: www.mobilize.us/nokings/even...

Whether it’s a kid at Oberlin asking for a trigger warning for the president of the United States convincing ABC to fire one of its biggest stars, both sides have shown a great deal of disrespect for the principle of free speech

The 800 articles I wrote explaining why I couldn’t vote Democrat because of free speech helped elect Trump and thus helped end free speech in America. I have no regrets.

ABC immediately caves to tiniest bit of gov’t pressure. If you don’t defend basic free speech rights, you’ll lose them. Simple as that. Gov’t hasn’t just threatened us at media matters, they’ve actually used power against us. We don’t fold, we fight in court. If we can, ABC has no excuse

Monarez: "Kennedy demanded 2 things of me that were were inconsistent w/ my oath of office. He directed me to commit in advance to approving every ACIP recommendation regardless of the scientific evidence. He also directed me to dismiss career officials responsible for vaccine policy without cause"

Participation has been outstanding at every level, across diverse science fields. We’ve published nearly 300 articles in local hometowns. 🧪🏠 Write yours today with help here: sciencehomecoming.com

I'd like to commend the lawyers who wrote this complaint on behalf of the professors and employees of the University of California against the Trump administration. It's a sober legal document with strong claims, but also, this is a fight for public opinion, and this reads like the writers know it.

out now in Open Mind: "People Evaluate Agents Based on the Algorithms That Drive Their Behavior" by Bigelow & me Paper: direct.mit.edu/opmi/article... OSF: osf.io/yzbrq/?view_...

Every $1.00 spent on research generates $2.50 in economic returns. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/u...

Ex Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro faced justice much too quickly. by Merrick Garland

One in six species on Earth experienced extraordinarily high temperatures across more than 25% of their range in 2024--the hottest year on record. For most, this was the second year of extreme heat, likely compounding risks. In PNAS: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Can a single cell learn? Even without a brain, some microbes show simple forms of cognition. Can this basal cognition be engineered? Check our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social on the minimal synthetic circuits & their cognitive limits. @drmichaellevin.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

There's a NASA presser happening now in which acting admin Duffy said "This very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars." That doesn't mean it is a sign of life. We covered this cool rock in 2024, paper in Nature is out today: 🧪🔭 www.sciencenews.org/article/nasa...

Great to have another paper with @chazfirestone.bsky.social @ianbphillips.bsky.social and the brilliant Hanbei Zhou out! In this paper we demonstrate that stimuli within events are perceived further apart in time — an event-based analog of “object-based warping”. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

The Economist was not alone, at all, in its terrible both-sidering of the “free speech” debate, but this cover is basically a Platonic Ideal of “aged like milk.” On the left: students yelling at speakers. On the right: state power used to silence speech.

“Universities are the incubators of medical breakthroughs.” Long Island native Sam Cermak, now a biomedical PhD student at Northwestern, studies how chronic pain rewires the brain and fuels opioid addiction. Progress takes years, but has already saved many lives 🧪🏠 tbrnewsmedia.com/your-turn-ho...

I don't think I'm spoiling the last line by quoting it, from this fine essay: "We need to get up from under our desks and persuade our fellow citizens that the institutions that they have helped create with their tax dollars are incredibly precious and important." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/o...

Are you an early career researcher (undergrad to postdoc) who could use advice about navigating peer review? Are you stuck on a manuscript submission or revision? Have general questions about peer review? Schedule a 30-min chat with any member of @reviewerzero.bsky.social! We'd love to help 😊

(1/X) I was listening to an interview with someone from Wire about how DOGE cuts have gutted the monitoring of invasive species (specifically ants) and how this could lead to various disasters. For a minute, I thought, well a disaster like that would hurt Trump, and then I realized that no...

Incredible clip of tech CEOs fawning over Donald Trump. Someone store this clip in the underground archive vault

The fact that the anti-university rhetoric we’ve been using for the last 15 years is now being used by Trump shows that we were right all along

How much do people really reject science? New paper out doi.org/10.1177/0963... In four studies, we asked Americans—including flat Earthers, climate change deniers and vaccine skeptics—whether they accepted basic scientific facts. The result? A surprisingly high level of agreement. 👇

New in @pnas.org. Preschool teachers were less likely to accept participation attempts by children from working-class backgrounds, regardless of their perceived language level. With a great team: @andreicimpian.bsky.social @sebastiengoudeau.bsky.social & Louise Goupil. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

NIH whistleblowers say HHS manipulated the grant review process to undermine vaccines. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/09/04/h...

He literally is wheezing and gasping as he destroys our nation's public health care system.

"Living organisms are assumed to produce same-species offspring. Here, we report a shift from this norm..." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here is a link to share, to spread the news about the importance of science for healthcare nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com?url=https%3A...