Figure showing number of competitive grants mentioning women from 2015-2025. The number was rising until recently, with a precipitous drop in the last year.

At the end of 2024, the National Academies put out a report concluding the NIH has woefully underfunded women’s health research, and they suggested $15 B should be invested over the next 5 years.

Here’s what’s happened instead. Hard to study women’s health if you can’t say “women.”

wapo.st/4euUt1c

How hidden contributions power modern research The people who work behind the scenes to keep research moving say that there should be more recognition for their roles.

Research of today is a team sport. Much of it depends on scientists in research-support roles who remain largely unseen, uncredited and frequently underpaid.

Research is an ecosystem; every niche needs to be recognised

🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Modeling Brain Aging and Resilience Over the Lifespan Reveals New Individual Factors Modeling the aging brain requires more diverse data than traditionally captured, as cognitive neuroscientists are presenting at CNS 2026.

Hi, I'm a science writer and the Public Information Officer for the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (write for and run their blog):
www.cogneurosociety.org/modeling-bra...

www.cogneurosociety.org/cns-blog/

you too!

weird -- I woke up with one too! aura have passed, fortunately, hence me logging in... headache part still lingering. Hope yours passes quickly!

Pregnancy vaccine reduces baby hospital admissions for RSV by 80% A study confirms the vaccine gives excellent protection for babies against life-threatening chest infections.

Vaccines are humanity’s greatest scientific achievement.

I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

Saw a psychology story about menstrual cycles with quotes from @kateclancy.bsky.social & a cool story about the people who recover deep-sea fiber optics cables & yet another with great ideas for day trips this summer not too far from DC (3 different mags! 😀 APA, Wired & Washingtonian) 2/
#scicomm

Been in a few reception areas lately where I have rediscovered just how much I enjoy printed magazines, and not just because I used to manage one! Reading online is not the same as tangibly flipping through pages and scanning without exactly knowing what you might be interested in, in advance... 1/

The head of a Sable Shearwater being held, illuminated with a headtorch light

New paper with @seabirdsentinel.bsky.social in ES&T: We know Sable Shearwaters show measurable harm from plastic ingestion but this isn't just a story about one species. 🧵 1/3

📄 doi.org/10.1021/acs....

Vulnerable is a great word for it!
Congrats! I am looking forward to reading your new book

that puts a twist on my bleh day today, as tax day, and oddly makes me feel better...thanks!

How disturbing that people even think of this!

Deep-sea wildernesses are more important than the promise of seafloor mining (analysis) When I set sail on the MV NorSky in the summer of 2008 to probe the depths of Manus Basin off the coast of Papua New Guinea, I believed in the promise of deep-sea mining. As an early-career deep-sea e...

The only thing inevitable in the deep sea is discovery.

Deep-sea wildernesses are more important than the promise of seafloor mining.

news.mongabay.com/2026/04/deep...

Love this, thanks for sharing!
"resilience is not about sealing the wound and pretending it no longer aches. It is about learning how to carry the wound without letting it consume your entire story."

For months now, I have been reading about how I must embrace AI or be "left behind." While AI tools are transforming data analysis in scientific research, finance, and other industries, I am... For months now, I have been reading about how I must embrace AI or be "left behind." While AI tools are transforming data analysis in scientific research, finance, and other industries, I am a proud a...

So I wrote a post last week on LI and it may have a better audience here, a short bit about being a human-powered authored in an increasingly AI world:
www.linkedin.com/posts/lisamp...
#scicomm #authors #writers

For months now, I have been reading about how I must embrace AI or be "left behind." While AI tools are transforming data analysis in scientific research, finance, and other industries, I am... For months now, I have been reading about how I must embrace AI or be "left behind." While AI tools are transforming data analysis in scientific research, finance, and other industries, I am a proud a...

Here is the post in case anyone wants to see it:
www.linkedin.com/posts/lisamp...

Yes, sadly
Tough, though, for an author trying to continue to make a living from being a human :-)

So true! I am still trying to break through though

Did this recently in a post on LinkedIn and feel like I got crickets, relative to other posts...
Will keep fighting to show the power of humans in content creation!

It is too much to ask to have one press release on a scientific discovery that does not try to make a connection to AI? Maybe even that directly says: These results were not made possible by AI nor will they help make "better" AI. *Sigh*
#scicomm

The real space science behind 'Project Hail Mary' The science fiction blockbuster wowed audiences with its depiction of space travel and more. Here's what NASA staff and other scientists say about the basis for the amazing events of the film.

Finally saw Project Hail Mary, and it was such fun! Loved seeing the confluence of so many different areas of science on the screen -- astronomy, microbiology, climate science, astrobiology & more, in both the lab and field.
A good Q&A here on the plausibility:
www.npr.org/2026/04/12/n...
#scicomm

"Climate science is not innately politically charged... No one I worked with had (or wanted) the power to make policy. It was our job to study the laws of physics, which remain true no matter who’s in power."
#scicomm

Pamphlets from the University of Rhode Island, Bowdoin, University of St Andrews, and Dickinson against a backdrop of a college fair in an arena

Took my older daughter to her first college fair this week! Was fun to talk to reps at universities where I've visited and given talks on #WomeninScience while the kiddo was exploring on her own. Really hoping higher ed can create a new chapter for itself, one that can help grow all young minds

Yes!

Hallucinated citations are polluting the scientific literature. What can be done? Tens of thousands of publications from 2025 might include invalid references generated by AI, a Nature analysis suggests.

"What can be done?"

Human review. Human work.

Publishers need to harness people, not AI.

#scicomm

they really said "they should have sent a poet"

View of the spacecraft (bright, on the left), a dark thin crescent of Moon, and a very small, bright thin crescent of Earth next to it

"Orion, the Moon, and the Earth. EVERYONE, in that picture" - #Artemis II Mission Control.

Christina Koch’s facial profile backlit by Earth in the background, through the spacecraft window

So, to sum up, a couple of days ago Christina Koch became the first woman to see Earth in its entirety, and today – right now, in fact – she is the first woman to see the Moon up close, and the first woman to see the far side. 🥹

A book about the challenges women scientists face and that highlights research-based solutions to help overcome these obstacles:
bookshop.org/p/books/wome...
Also available at Amazon, etc. :-). Thanks Erin!
#WomeninScience