This study leveraged data from a long-term field project in Amazonian Ecuador to examine whether and how circulating Epstein–Barr virus antibodies (EBV-Ab)—a common biomarker of chronic stress in high-income settings—

Super happy for this paper to come out in AJHB! It was a big team effort with a rich dataset developed over a decade of field and lab work led by Josh Snodgrass (@jjosh1313.bsky.social) and others. Check it out to see what we learned about using EBV antibodies as a biomarker of adversity.

Sen. Alex Padilla, who was just forcibly removed from a DHS press conference, is the ranking member of Judiciary’s subcommittee on immigration, citizenship, and border safety, which has “oversight of federal agencies with citizenship, asylum, refugee, and immigration enforcement responsibilities.”

I’ve spent a lot of time researching this topic, writing about it, and teaching about it. This is the time everyone needs to act to prevent societal collapse in the US.

To my Eugene friends, let me know if you want to meet up at the Eugene protest.

Be safe everyone ❤️ Stay strong!

Over the course of my career, I’ve had the opportunity to see firsthand what happens when societies collapse—initially in my work in the former Yugoslavia (literally identifying murdered people in mass graves) and then later studying the aftereffects of the fall of the USSR on the health of Russians

Please be part of a protest on Saturday, June 14. The more people who are out on the streets the safer we all are, and the more likely those in congress will worry about their own futures and stop what Trump is doing.

Peaceful protest and solidarity are what we need

Webinar: Responding to Federal Research Grant Terminations Join AAAS on Friday, March 28 at 12 PM ET The AAAS Center for Scientific Responsibility and Justice and AAAS SEA Change will host a roundtable discussion on the laws and regulations that govern federal grant terminations, including procedures for appeals. Speakers will include a legal expert, former officials at scientific funding agencies, and a grant recipient who will share their personal experience. NIH and NSF will serve as case examples.

🚨 Attention NIH & NSF grantees!

AAAS is hosting a rapid response webinar this Friday, 12-1 pm ET, on responding to federal research grant terminations.

NIH and NSF will be case examples.

Register here: aaas.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Does anyone know of a petition or open letter being organized for scientists to protest against the Trump wrecking ball being aimed at our funding agencies? We need something signed by massive numbers of researchers.

Stand Up For Science Rally Boston YouTube video by The Natural History Museum

Next week the world's top scientists will gather in Boston for the #AAASmtg.

In 2017 we held a #StandUpForScience rally at AAAS, which kicked off a year of huge protests organized by the scientific community, which helped fight off censorship and budget cuts.

This week is a good time for a repeat.

My feed is overwhelmed with scientists right now calling out the catastrophic consequences of the NIH indirect cost order from last night. If those same people aren't also speaking out against the anti-trans, anti-DEI, anti-immigrant orders...we are lost. The only path forward is solidarity.

I also think there’s a huge amount of power in some of the more trusted professions marching to bring attention to the risks of the current trajectory--perhaps bringing together scientists and medical providers. We need to start building this momentum. Nobody will be able to hide from this.

As we head into a deepening constitutional crisis, my take is that the only way this is averted is through mass demonstrations. These will need to build and grow for them to have any effect.

But this work in the former Yugoslavia, along with 12 years of work that I did co-directing a project in Russia examining the health effects of the fall of the Soviet Union, convinces me otherwise. It terrifies me.

The situation in Yugoslavia degenerated fast into a full-scale societal collapse and genocide yet this seemed like it shouldn’t have been possible given extensive intermarriages. You may think that something like this could never happen in the US, that we are somehow special or immune.

Yes, there were ethnic tensions that emerged in the post-communist period and lit the match, but people I spoke to talked about killings being in response to killings which themselves were responses to killings. Once it starts, it is almost impossible to stop.

Those wars of the 1990s are often characterized as ethnic wars or wars of independence—as Yugoslavia split into separate countries including Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia, & Serbia—but what will always stick with me from my time there is how so many locals characterized the war as the result of revenge.

I worked on one of the first UN forensics teams to gain entry into the region after the wars, with our goal to identify the dead and document trauma in order to provide evidence for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Most of the deceased had been tortured and murdered.

This past week I’ve been thinking a lot about the forensics work I did in Croatia and Bosnia in the 90s. It’s never too far from my mind given the tattoo that memorializes the massacre sites I worked at to identify the dead—Ovcara in Croatia and Srebrenica in Bosnia (it’s a fractured peace dove).

So at the #AAASmtg in Boston in 2017, scientists had the "Rally to Stand Up for Science". In 2025 we meet again in Boston for #AAAS2025. Any plans?

(I also know that so many of us feel overwhelmed by the demands of work and life. I write this feeling underwater at work with hundreds of unanswered emails and way too much to do. And I'm working from home with a sick kid. But we have to do this!)

The situation is 1000 times worse today. And it feels even more risky to protest today than 2017. But the consequences of silence will be devastating to science, medicine, public health, and the world. I know we are overwhelmed and scared but we have to organize and make our voices heard!

It’s surreal to think back about the march, to look at pictures of the signs people carried warning about the dangers of a pandemic if science was defunded and decisions about public health politicized. About what will happen if we don’t address climate change. We should have pushed back harder.

It was about raising awareness about the effects of climate change, the dangers of pandemics, and the consequences of politics driving medical and public health decisions. And about the real costs of defunding science.

The march was deliberately not anti-Trump but was pro-science, and while many were uncomfortable with political action we also knew we had to organize and make our voices heard.

We had an estimated 7,000 people march in New Orleans and it was energizing to the community and helped us find the strength and develop plans for coordinated action.

Scientists need to organize and make our voices heard--the world needs us now! In 2017, I co-organized the March for Science in New Orleans and we coordinated with scientists around the country (and world) to bring public awareness to the dangerous changes brought about by the Trump administration.

I am confident that scientific societies will play an unusually important role in the coming years. If you are a microbiologist of any kind, please consider joining @asm.org if you haven't already. There are many ways to get involved, including advocacy.
To learn more:
asm.org/About-ASM/Vo...

🧵: I am getting texts on what scientists should do in this perilous and scary moment. My advice: your biggest power is to organize through your professional societies. A few ideas -

What I didn't say was that as someone who teaches human growth and development I would have given this executive order a D- if written by a student. Not an F only because they didn't go all homunculus and argue that men place a little man inside a woman for growth into a child. That's next week...