Thanks Tom! 🥲

Must acknowledge that Nicky McCreesh (not on Bluesky) driving force behind this work 🫡

Reported Tuberculosis Symptoms: An Inadequate Classifier of Disease State We provide evidence that self-reported symptoms are an inadequate classifier of disease state, heavily influenced by context and substantial interviewer va

This is a really lovely paper by @dopapus.bsky.social and team

Self report of TB symptoms depends on lots of external factors and there are more robust markers of disease extent / severity available to inform surveillance and clinical management

#TBSky #EpiSky

Excerpts from Copenhagen: The UNION World Conference on Lung Health 2025 Each year, many LSHTM TB researchers participate in the UNION World Conference on Lung Health, the world's largest conference on TB and lung health. This year, the conference takes place in

Join us 📆 9 Dec ⏰ 12.45 @tb-lshtm.bsky.social seminar
Free & Open to all
@kchorton.bsky.social @richardwhite321.bsky.social @reinhouben.bsky.social @dopapus.bsky.social @laragosce.bsky.social @danieljgrint.bsky.social

tinyurl.com/2s4y3jcd

@mjsaunder.bsky.social
@dopapus.bsky.social
@laragosce.bsky.social
@gasparrini.bsky.social
@raclark18.bsky.social
@juliapescarini.bsky.social
@richardwhite321.bsky.social
@reinhouben.bsky.social
@lshtm-tbmod.bsky.social
@tb-lshtm.bsky.social
@lshtm.bsky.social

About half of people with #TB are asymptomatic (aTB). Calls have been made to stratify treatment and estimate incidence based on aTB case definitions

In this preprint we raise concerns that symptoms are an inadequate & inconsistent classifier of TB state, being highly influenced by context

⬇️link

War wounds caused by explosive weapons in Gaza: data from a 2024 study by Médecins Sans Frontières As of July 23, 2025, Israel's military assault on Gaza has killed over 59 219 Palestinians, wounded an additional 143 045, and displaced nearly all of the 2·1 million people who live there.1 Triangula...

The true nature of the civilian suffering in #Gaza : 70% of war injuries were from explosive weapons.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan....
#Medski #Episky #conflict #amr @amrishbaidjoe.bsky.social @msf.ca

I’ve worked in data science for 25+ years—from graduate research to teaching at UCLA and serving as Editor-in-Chief of a major tech publication. The fundamentals haven’t changed: clean data, sound statistics, and reproducibility still win. #datascience #mathematics #statistics #machinelearning

SPIRIT 2025 statement: updated guideline for protocols of randomised trials Importance The protocol of a randomised trial is the foundation for study planning, conduct, reporting, and external review. However, trial protocols vary in their completeness and often do not addres...

A well-written protocol is key to quality scholarship. The SPIRIT guideline for protocols of randomized trials has just been updated - please share widely! 🗣️ #researchintegrity #openscience
www.bmj.com/content/389/...

Research to Advance Racial and Indigenous Health Equity We seek to build an actionable body of evidence to construct fair systems that determine resource distribution and support health equity. Deadlines: Rapid Response brief proposal 5/28/25; New Research...

My dear health equity peers, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is doubling down on their DEI efforts. 💪🏽 Here’s a grant opportunity tinyurl.com/3pnxhy2d with a rapid response option those whose “health equity research projects have lost federal funding.”

⭐️ Please share ⭐️

Sheffield friends, please check out the Gaza Remains the Story exhibit. It’s curated by the Palestinian Museum in the West Bank and brought to Sheffield by Annapurna Menon as part of the Festival of Debate. The exhibit runs until 9 May (11am-4pm) at Soft Ground, The Moor.

The potential impact of reductions in international donor funding on tuberculosis in low- and middle-income countries Background Tuberculosis services in many settings rely heavily on international donor funding. In 2025, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was dismantled, and other countri...

#Tuberculosis prevention and care relies heavily on international donor funding in many settings. In our latest preprint, we examine the potential impact of reductions in international donor funding for #TB - by the US and by other major donor countries. 1/8

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

A business woman in a grey skirt suit, pointing a rifle at a boxy 90s PC

trying to switch off the AI bloatware that has been pinned to the top of every single menu in every single app

In many ways, our future depends on science (e.g., medicine, mitigating global change, biodiversity loss, etc). However, increasing scientific knowledge, especially in new and unexpected ways, requires support. Support mostly exists in the form of grants & this work would be impossible #WithoutNSF 🧪

“We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces.”

~ Carl Sagan

Leaders listen. Leaders don't take refuge in their comfort bubble. Leaders accept responsibility. Leaders work with their people to improve conditions, not over or against them. Leaders do not have favourites or lean towards their acolytes. Leaders are not vengeful. Leaders avoid cronyism.
If only..

The apparent apathy to ongoing genocides (bar some), increased focus on maintaining arms sales by HIC governments and decimated funding landscape especially for TB only going to make things much worse…. 😔

Thinking fast and slow: the urgency of crisis response must not lead us to overlook chronic needs such as tuberculosis The number of people facing displacement due to humanitarian crises worldwide is increasing rapidly and is likely to continue. An average 10% year-on-year increase in the last 5 years resulted in 68.3...

In 2024, 68 million people were internally displaced by humanitarian crises, & are at increased risk of TB, the world's biggest infectious disease killer. We urgently need estimates to identify the scale of this problem & drive our response. We provide initial numbers here gh.bmj.com/content/10/3...

NEW COMMENT!

TB trials with purely microbiological primary endpoints give greater weight to outcomes that matter most, generalise better to non trial settings, are less biased if regimens differ in duration, and are often better powered

#IDSky @catherineberry.bsky.social @sgschumacher.bsky.social

A little story about this article & how teachers make a difference:

In 2013, I was a student in a social epidemiology class taught by the esteemed David Williams. He observed, with some frustration while we looked at a series of graphs, that we often lump people into the “Hispanic” category — 1/

Farewell and Thanks (Again) - Illegal Activity in the USAID Front Office Inbox Nicholas Gottlieb to amsofficercouncil, ALL, HCTM.ELR, Alpana, Danielle, Sheila, Sepideh, William, Anya, Stephanie, Lindsey - All: 4:19 PM (4 minutes ago) # Today, representatives of the Agency's front office and DOGE instructed me to violate the due process of our employees by issuing immediate termination notices to a group of employees without due process. I refused and have provided Acting Administrator Gray with written notification of my refusal. I have recommended in that written notification that his office cease ar desist from further illegal activity. It is and has always been my office's commitment to the workforce that we ensure all employees receive their due process in any of our actions. I will not be party to a violation of that commitment. I was notified moments ago that I will be placed on administrative leave, effective immediately. It has been an honor working with all of you at this Agency, which i treasure. Please be kind and considerate of my staff at hctm.eir@usaid.gov. who will be very short-staffed and pressed over the coming months. Until you hear otherwise, Kirsten Gunsolus will be acting in my absence. If you would like to stay in touch, I can be reached a wish you all the best. Sincerely, Nicholas Gottlieb Director, Employee and Labor Relations US AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT HCTM, Rm. 4.07A RRB, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20523 USAID gov | @USAID

A USAID HR director sent out this email today to staff letting them know he was placed on administrative leave.

“Today, representatives of the Agency's front office and DOGE instructed me to violate the due process of our employees by issuing immediate termination notices to a group of employees.”

#statssky #stats #episky

Check the @lshtm.bsky.social January free webinars on environmental epidemiology:

22.01 Causal inference in environmental health
www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/e...
29.01 Innovative methods for studying the health effects of #airpollution
www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/e...
#episky

I'm just saying this is syntatically correct #rstats code

WCE2024 - INT02 - Debate - Have DAGS fulfilled their promise? YouTube video by World Congress of Epidemiology 2024

"Have directed acyclic graphs fullfilled their promise?" - the recording of my debate with @margaritamb.bsky.social at the World Congress of Epidemiology 2024 is now available on YouTube!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG79...

#EpiSky #CausalSky #WCE2025

Please share widely. @madhupai.bsky.social @fvlscience.bsky.social @dopapus.bsky.social
@sgschumacher.bsky.social

My worlds are African worlds. I'd love to take credit for the culture that is in my worlds' DNA, but I can't. Those cultures existed long before me;I didn't have to imagine them. And my stories certainly don't exist because white male (or female ... let's not forget that white female perspectives also dominate female perspectives in science fiction and fantasy) perspectives refused to imagine them first. My stories aren't a " to whiteness. They exist wholly outside of white-male-anything. These stories that come from my own culture, experiences, from within me, from reflections of specific African cultures. By existing, I'd hope they help bring cultural, ethnic and gender balance to science fiction and fantasy, but that is not my work's reason to exist.

This was my response in The Guardian 3 years ago when I was asked if my work was a response to the prevalence of whiteness in science fiction.

I’m totally patting “January 2021 Nnedi” on the back. Yes, Nnedi. So much yes, 🙌🏾 :

NEW PREPRINT!

Enjoyed working with @tom-parks.bsky.social and @petedodd24.bsky.social on immortal time bias

In its simplest form, ITB results from misallocation of person time, i.e. pre treatment time in intervention group being counted as time on treatment

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

[1/n]

This program reduced TB incidence by 50+%.
Trusting families to spend this money as *they* saw fit (with some stipulations about kids going to school and receiving priority, proven public health services), with no stipulations about how that $$ is spent = another argument for UBI.

#episky #IDsky

OK, here is a very rough draft of a tutorial for #Bayesian #SEM using #brms for #rstats. It needs work, polish, has a lot of questions in it, and I need to add a references section. But, I think a lot of folk will find this useful, so.... jebyrnes.github.io/bayesian_sem... (use issues for comments!)