Here's one of the horribly screwed up molecular structures ChatGPT was giving me when it integrated RDKit last year and OpenAI's president claimed it could do chemistry.
bsky.app/profile/brit...
🧪⚗️ #realtimechem #chemsky #research #science
I don't have access, so I can't test it, but I'm looking forward to @dereklowe.bsky.social's inevitable In The Pipeline take.
Or if any other scientists have access to it, tell me your takes! I'm also at brittany.trang@statnews.com
1a) Does it have a window to draw molecules, or does it expect chemists to type in IUPAC names?
1b) Can it accurately convert between IUPAC, SMILES, and graphic molecular structures?
🧪⚗️ #realtimechem #chemsky #research #science
My BBQs (big, basic questions) about OpenAI's new life sciences research model GPT Rosalind are:
1) Does it do anything that's actually useful for scientists? 🧵
🧪⚗️ #realtimechem #chemsky #research #science
#CDC has been without a director for most of Trump 2.0. A new nominee was put forward today, Erika Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general. (Nomination was scooped earlier this week by @ddiamond.bsky.social & @lenasun.bsky.social).
Let's see what happens. www.statnews.com/2026/04/16/e...
For a few years, devices the FDA deemed "breakthrough" technologies" had an easier time getting payments through Medicare.
Now Medicare is saying "not so fast."
This doesn't mean the devices are bad; "It just means that maybe we should think twice before paying a 65% premium for those products."
Africa (95% of deaths), and children in Africa (76% of those deaths), account for a disproportionate amount of malaria deaths. It was about one child death every 1.2 minutes in 2024.
Today I had to fact-check the sentence "A child in Africa dies of malaria every minute."
My glee at making theater nerds proud by being able to use "525,600 minutes" to do this math was quickly wiped out by finding that this is essentially true.
www.who.int/news-room/fa...
“But what if AI scribes raising patient bills means that they are working as intended?” 🎯
Automated documentation products also record sensitive interactions, threaten trust, extract from patients and providers, and spam/overload an imperfect yet critical information resource (the EHR). 1/
decade ago, a new class of Duchenne drugs sparked a civil war in the FDA. There were anecdotes, boys and parents in dire need, but little data
Today those drugs are back. For a small subset of patients, they have led to among the best results experts have seen
www.statnews.com/2026/04/08/d...
And I have another story on this: Even while waiting for data to roll in, both providers and payers agree that AI scribes are driving up the cost of care in the middle of an affordability crisis. What, if anything, are we going to do about it?
🖥️🩺
Coding intensity for patient visits is rising. Did AI scribes do that?
You may have seen the Trilliant study that alleges AI scribes are making visit coding go up. But what does the study actually say? An analysis of that, and much more, in this week's AI Prognosis: www.statnews.com/2026/04/08/a...
Song of the Week: “Still Want to Be Here” by Frightened Rabbit Ten years ago today, Scottish indie rock band Frightened Rabbit released what would become its final album. No one was better at putting into words the complicated confluence of desire and dread than lead singer Scott Hutchison. That shines through on “Still Want to Be Here:” “I still want to be here, want to be here / And I would live in a devil’s ditch just to be near you.” Hutchison died in May 2018, succumbing to the dark thoughts he often sang about struggling with.
Happy 10th anniversary to Painting of a Panic Attack. RIP Scott.
The worst part is that this wasn't a study; this is a company that was launching a product
Oh, so it's hard to gather new information and you can't just replicate what local journalists do with AI? Who knew???
h/t to @thekibosch.bsky.social
www.poynter.org/ethics-trust...
#ai #journalism #localjournalism
You have to write down the standard operating procedure so everyone knows how to do it!
Why are we relying on word of mouth when we can write this all down so everyone knows? 😅
@sciencewriters.org @theopennotebook.bsky.social @aaasmassmedia.bsky.social
And don't forget, I've also compiled a list of *early-career* science journalism internships and fellowships.
These opportunities would be reasonable for one to apply to with experience ranging from "some freelance clips" up to the MMF or another fellowship:
As part of the refresh, I wrote a guide to applying to the AAAS MMF. I learned some do's and don'ts from both my experience reviewing applications and my retrospective on the two times I applied:
#sciencejournalism #journalismjobs #sciwri #sciencewriting #stem #science 🧪✍️📝
Bri Barbu and I, at the time, had just written "The beginner's guide to a career in science writing," where we sought to help other students go from zero to where we were.
In 2026, the guide is sorely outdated, so we gave it a refresh for today's science writing landscape:
Asian woman with glasses in a blue surgical mask takes a selfie, smiling. She is outdoors at golden hour on the sidewalk of a college campus.
Please reshare! Two more #scicomm resources: "The beginner's guide to a career in science writing, 2.0," and a guide to applying to the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship. 🔗👇
Five years ago today (pictured), I found out that I got the AAAS MMF, which changed the course of my life.
On his 1st anniversary of starting as #FDA commissioner — & the 1st anniversary of FDA losing 3,500 staff in DOGE-ordered cuts — Marty Makary said FDA is trying to hire 3,000 scientists, inspectors & support staff. @lizzylawrence.bsky.social heard his address. www.statnews.com/2026/04/01/f...
I've never fully understood why Insilico Medicine is so popular.
But talking to CEO @elonverse.bsky.social, you start to understand why the AI drug discovery company is the way it is — and why he wants to model it after SpaceX.
Only in @statnews.com:
www.statnews.com/2026/04/01/i...
🧪🧬💊🖥️
Screenshot of STAT’s newsletter, morning rounds. It reads, “Fact-checking Jay Bhattacharya on Vannevar Bush We’ll forgive you if you don’t remember the name Vannevar Bush off the top of your head. In 1945, he wrote a report for Congress that served as the guiding document for the longstanding social contract between researchers and the federal government. Nobody loves thinking about, talking about, or sending a custom Slack emoji of Bush more than STAT’s Anil Oza, who first wrote about him in our Polk award-winning series, American Science, Shattered. So when Anil heard that NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya invoked Bush and the “endless frontier” in a recent speech, his ears perked up.”
guilty as charged 🫡
NEW: ASTP/ONC is going back to just "ONC." The name change also comes with a re-organization.
More on what that means for the nation's health IT:
www.statnews.com/2026/03/31/h...
Health records giant Epic Systems has "opened up a Pandora’s box," @brittanytrang.com writes. What happens now?
www.statnews.com/2026/03/23/e...
Also, I just saw the second part of your comment — yes, we do have big discounts for faculty!
You can check out our discounts for teachers of all stages, students, recent grads, and health care workers here:
www.statnews.com/stat-subscri...
In some ways, it's fun that medicine has events like white coat ceremonies and Match Day that involve people's loved ones and are a tangible measure of progress and are very exciting! We don't have that on the PhD side of things.
Happy Match Day to any new physicians out there! STAT is running a sale just for you, so you can stay abreast of what's happening in medicine with our journalism.
Through March 29, get 4 months of STAT+ for $29 — less than 25¢/day — and then graduate to a highly discounted rate!
This one has been in drafts since 2023: The Match is like something out of a dystopian novel but we do it to our nation's physicians anyway and that is just wild to me
