WARNOCK: What grade would you give the American economy?
WARSH: Well, if i gave a student anything other than an A, the dean would summon me because I would've hurt his self-image
WARNOCK: Consumer confidence is at a record low. That's Americans' grade on the economy
This interpretation is exactly right.
The task of de-Trumpification of science and public health will take a generation and a "Marshall Plan" to rebuild. Without a bold, expansive vision to guide us, there is no coming back. Small-bore, poll-tested versions of the future will not help us. www.thenation.com/article/soci...
Peer review is supposed to be thoughtful, rigorous, and carried out by experts who engage with the work. Lately, that’s not always what it feels like. We are being “ChatGPT-reviewed” not “peer-reviewed”.
Washington Post article on STEM cuts at federal agencies. NSF tops it at -42%!
“Between January 2025 and February 2026, STEM and health employees at science-focused agencies saw nearly 15,000 jobs cut. The rate outpaced cuts among other federal workers.”
OPM data - Figure from Wash Post article 19 April. (Where US science has been hit hardest.)
NSF at -42%!
Those of us doing research related to women’s health have been hit particularly hard by the govt’s sabotage of the NIH. I spoke to WaPo for this piece, as painful as it was to discuss the reality my lab is facing. www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026...
Hi Fam! 🌱
If you’re attending @aspbofficial.bsky.social Bay Area Plant Hub (Apr 22) coming week please free to get in touch with our @plantpostdocs.bsky.social Leadership Rep Dr. Aimee Uyehara ✅
Scan the QR code to know more! ✅
See you there ✅
This post was prompted by hearing from a former AFE who is starting their own lab, yay! If you've been in one of these mentored programs and have moved on, drop me a line and I'll update my spreadsheet. Or drop me a line just to say hi 😀.
Breaking: HHS’s ban on gender-affirming care is struck down. Rarely have I read a ruling this sharply worded.
“This case is one of a long list of examples of how a leader’s wanton disregard for the rule of law causes very real harm to very real people.”
www.advocate.com/politics/nat...
Each individual layoff notice that was issued to a postdoc in May of 2025 was itself a greater degree of direct government censorship than Bhattacharya has experienced in his entire life.
NAVIGATING UNCERTAINTY Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology LIGHTNING TALKS: 9:15 - 10:30 AM EDT Focus on the collective: what can our community do in a time of uncertainty? PROTHAMA MANNA, CLEMSON UNIV. MOHAMED NOOR, DUKE UNIVERSITY RUTH SHAW, UNIV. OF MINNESOTA JOSEPH GRAVES, NC A&T STATE UNIV. SCOTT EDWARDS, HARVARD UNIV. EMILY JOSEPHS, MICHIGAN STATE UNIV. ALISON DAVIS RABOSKY, UNIV. OF MICHIGAN WORKSHOP & BREAKOUTS: 11 - 12:30 PM EDT Focus on the individual: how scientists can respond constructively, creatively, and sustainably in the face of instability NELIA VIVEIROS, UNIV. OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS
👋 👋 SSE members, I hope you'll join me May 21 for the virtual SSE Presidential Symposium:
Navigating Uncertainty: Individual Resilience and Collective Action in Evolutionary Biology
Pls RT to help get the word out!
This is a handy little website if you want to keep track of how things are going with science funding.
sciencespending.org#overview
Happy birthday to Elizabeth Clark Phair, better known to fans as Liz, girly sound alt rock idol of the 90s, singer, songwriter, guitarist and actual person writing about her unvarnished lived and imagined experiences in the modern world. Born on the rock 4/17/1967. #LizPhair #RockHonorRoll
Congratulations to Ivan Kulich from IPMB, Biology Centre CAS for his new paper in Science looking at calcium, ROS and root growth @MOLIPEC www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
As a recipient of federal grants from #NIH (for now! 😭) that funds research in my lab, I'd like to sincerely thank American taxpayers on #TaxDay for investing in scientific research that lays the foundation for medical and technological innovation in this country and keeps us ALL safe and healthy
Bridge the gap in plant science. Make your work accessible with our newest article type: Methods for Plant Modelling. Submit your work today! - in silico Plants
Is your work accessible to everyone? 🌿💻
Submit a Methods for Plant Modelling article to assist non-modelling researchers and students use and build upon your ✅ Algorithms & software ✅ Models ✅ Frameworks, platforms, or languages
Click here for more information: academic.oup.com/insilicoplan...
Reason number 6,826,772 you should Stand Up for Science: the people who benefit from privatization and destruction of science are the Thiels of the world. And they are the only ones who benefit.
@standupforscience.net
www.thenation.com/article/soci...
🚨Happening Tomorrow 🚨
Plant Science Postdocs, Senior Grad Students, and ECRs: don't forget to join us next TOMORROW, Tuesday, April 14th from 2-3 pm PT / 4-5 pm CT / 5-6 pm ET for our @plantpostdocs.bsky.social webinar "What's new with NSF?" 🌾 🧪 🌱
Registration: tinyurl.com/PlantPostdocsApril14
A lumpy yellow velvet footstool that looks remarkably like a corncob
Saw this footstool online and thought of @jrossibarra.bsky.social
How important do you feel discovery research and ‘basic’ science is for understanding disease? Well, I have a little bit of a biased view on the topic, since I'm a basic scientist myself. The lab has made more and more discoveries with very strong therapeutic implications, and often people ask me why we are not pursuing these further ourselves. Part of it is that I think about this very much as an ecosystem. People have different skills – I have colleagues who are very good at the application side of things and I have other colleagues, including people in my lab, who are very good at the basic science. There are a lot of very smart people at every stage in the ecosystem and, sometimes, we have to acknowledge that we can't all be experts in every step. A lot of basic science discoveries will end up having profound implications in the clinic – if you don't have the full imagination about how to get it there, that's okay, because you're still a very important piece of the jigsaw puzzle and other people can help. If the basic science discoveries didn't exist, then it's quite possible that the well would run dry. We cannot simply rely on the idea that the therapies currently in clinical trials are going to be enough because we already know that – for diseases, such as cancer, and with rapidly evolving viruses – there needs to be a constant influx of new ideas to stay ahead of the arms race. I'd also make a plug for the fact that, ultimately, we are all interested in human disease, but disease research in humans is not ethical or possible. This is why creating and studying model organisms in a high-throughput, low-investment context is incredibly important. We cannot just say ‘okay, we're going to stop work on anything that is not related to human research’, because – actually – it's all relevant to humans.
Do you think basic science is particularly threatened by cuts to funding? Science itself is quite uncertain. We do experiments wondering if they will even work. It's discovery, and you don't know where it's going to lead. It could lead to a billion-dollar company, something like mRNA vaccines or CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, or it could simply be something that interests you. Sometimes it might appear esoteric from the outside, but there are very smart people dedicated to this work. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that most of this work is paid for by taxpayers, but funding uncertainty creates a very unstable foundation. If the foundations are weak, people are going to get much more conservative about the science that they're doing and worry that ‘blue-skies research’ is not worth pursuing because it won't get funded. And that would be a mistake because all innovation in science really originates from blue-skies, basic research. The second thing that uncertainty does is send a message to our young trainees – who are our future – that this is not a career option that will provide professional and personal stability. I worry that this kind of uncertainty will mean we lose an entire generation of people, and that would be a loss we might not be able to overcome.
I was interviewed by @katiepickup.bsky.social recently for @dmmjournal.bsky.social. This has a little bit of my background, a little bit on science and mentoring, and a little bit (ok, more than a little bit) on funding in science.
Check it out at: journals.biologists.com/dmm/article/...
2,599 applicants offered NSF GRFP awards! Congrats to all the NSF GRFP award winners and recipients of honorable mention. https://www.research.gov/grfp/AwardeeList.do?method=loadAwardeeList
Massive and important positive news...
#NSF #GRFP awards are out.
2,599 awards!
+
1,440 Honorable Mentions.
A significant boost from last year.
Congratulations to the winners (and HM-s)!
& many thanks to the reviewers & program officers who made this possible.
www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...
This reality check by Rebecca Solnit grabs you right from the killer first sentence. Do yourself a favor & give it a read.
An mRNA treatment for PANCREATIC CANCER was in trials, among many other uses. Choosing to end this research is choosing to sentence millions to an early, painful death
I love this photo of astronaut Christina Koch looking back at Earth from Artemis II.
She's the first woman to see the full sphere of our beautiful planet.
Welcome home to the crew, and thank you for reminding us of all we can discover together.
National Forest lands, and their forests, belong to the People of the United States. The many employees of Forest Service - rangers, scientists, foresters, administrators - have been our stewards, caretaking the forests for a wide range of public goods. These changes are a disaster for us all.
This may be lost in the noise--this is as impactful or more than the cuts to NIH and NSF 🧪
"Light Fossils" dinosaur light painting by artist Darren Pearson, known as Darius Twin, using a unique photography technique.
The artwork is created using long-exposure photography, where the camera shutter remains open while the artist moves handheld lights to "draw" the figures in real-time.
Misconceptions about human genetic differences fuel genetic essentialism—but educational intervention can change that. Join @robbeewedow.bsky.social during the upcoming April 8 Journal Club Webinar as he shares how & breaks down his @hggadvances.bsky.social paper: https://bit.ly/4rF8FrE #ASHG
You have more in common with the people of Iran than you do with anyone in this administration, any member of the technocracy, anyone who is profiting from this war, or any billionaire. When you see Iranians forming human chains outside key infrastructure sites, you should feel a sense of kinship.
