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Bailey Weatherbee

@bailweatherbee.bsky.social

Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellow studying Developmental Biology in the Zorn Lab at Cincinnati Children's | PhD Cambridge University/Gates Cambridge | BS University of Delaware Honors | 🇵🇭 🇺🇸 | she/her | my opinions

90 Posts376 Follower694 Folgt
derek guy@dieworkwear.bsky.social · last mo.

Justice Brown Jackson's argument for birthright citizenship is very moving. I recommend reading it in full. An excerpt with alt-text below. “The Reconstruction Amendments were an anticaste, antisubordination reset for the Nation, not a mere spot treatment for the dark stain of slavery.” — KBJ

Still, most freed Blacks resisted the pressure to self-deport. Instead, many started organizing toward the creation of the kind of Nation the colonizationists opposed—one that guaranteed liberty and justice for all. In the decades leading up to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, Black Americans organized and gathered at more than 600 local and national conventions across the country. There, delegates erected the political and intellectual scaffolding for the Fourteenth Amendment and, later, for the Black Civil Rights Movement more generally. Critically for present purposes, these visionaries already understood themselves to be American citizens. “The refrains ‘we are Americans’ and ‘we are citizens’ echoed in conferences throughout the North.” Moreover, “[b]irthright figured importantly” as “delegates frequently characterized their status as that of native-born citizens.” The delegates argued that, as such, they had the requisite allegiance, so, at a minimum, the Federal Government owed them the duty of protection. The famed orator Frederick Douglass was one of these delegates. Capturing the spirit of the moment, Douglass proclaimed that Chief Justice Taney—the author of the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1857)—“[could] do many things, but he [could not] … change the essential nature of things.” In the absence of the artificial evils of slavery and racial subordination, Douglass explained, “the glorious birthright of our common humanity, will become the inheritance of all the inhabitants of this highly favored country.” Do note this: The citizenship thesis of the Colored Conventions was thus not that some new status should be created and conferred on freed Blacks.It was instead that freed Blacks already had a rightful claim to citizenship because they had been born on American soil. After all, the Nation, from its founding, had “boldly proclaim[ed] that all men are born free and equal, and that consequently life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are inherent in every individual, vested inalienably by natural birthright.” No ideal was more inherently American. Now, “rest[ing their] cause on the republican standard of the revolutionary Fathers,” freed Blacks were “knock[ing] at the doors of the constitution and demand[ing] an entrance.” And “[i]f … asked what evidence [they] bring to sustain [their] qualifications for citizenship, [they would] offer them certificates of … BIRTH and NATIVITY.” Would the Nation live up to its promise? Such universalist appeals were a conscious choice. Yes, Black Americans had suffered a singular wrong. And yes, they had “fought and bled” for the Union, paying a steep price for their freedom. But the delegates did not rest on these laurels. Rather, they drew upon the moral and political force of the universal principles that were already core to the Nation’s identity. That bears repeating: Freed Blacks did not advocate for a unique set of rules that catered only to their situation. Nor did they seek to advance their own position relative to, or at the expense and exclusion of, other marginalized groups.Instead, those whose gatherings helped galvanize the push for full equality understood that “[a] diverse origin does not disprove a common nature, nor does it disprove a united destiny.” The firmest foundation for freedom would require an anticaste reset—“both for his sake and for ours”—and would benefit all. During his U. S. Senate candidacy, Abraham Lincoln developed a similar vision. In the lead-up to the now-famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln explained that the promise of liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independence “was held sacred by all, and thought to include all.” Lincoln expressly and intentionally linked the fate of Black Americans and immigrant groups (“among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all” of the Founders), and noted that the Nation’s future hinged on a universal definition of citizenship that excluded neither. He explained that the Declaration’s promise that “all men are created equal” was the “electric cord … that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together,” regardless of race or descent. The case was made. First, there was war. And then, the delegates’ (and Lincoln’s) universalist view of citizenship made its mark on the Constitution.
Max Kozlov@maxkozlov.bsky.social · last mo.

Top NIH officials have repeatedly said there's no "banned words" at the agency. But the NIH created an algorithm that checks every application for 235 "disfavoured" terms (eg 'gender', 'fossil fuel'). If it finds one, the grant is classified internally as “not clean.” We've published the list.

Max Kozlov@maxkozlov.bsky.social · last mo.

Applications are often sent back bc they have - disfavored words - a foreign component w/o “clear benefit” to the US - alleged “lobbying activities”, or projects that aim to inform policy - “vague language”, e.g. ‘social determinants of health’, which is deemed not to include “measurable concepts”

Max Kozlov@maxkozlov.bsky.social · last mo.

NIH grants have been under political scrutiny since early 2025. But what does the screening process actually look like? What is being flagged? I spent a month digging into leaked docs and emails. We've published the 235-word list that are being flagged by an internal AI tool. And so much more. 🧵

Inside the new political screening that’s stalling NIH grants

Mandatory reviews by top health officials and checks for 235 disfavoured terms have left hundreds of vetted grant applications in administrative limbo.

nature.com

Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This is the destruction of federal funding for scientific research & universities as we know it. A total, comprehensive politicization of the process & an end run around Congress.

Stand Up for Science!@standupforscience.net · 2mo ago

BREAKING: New proposed OMB regulation, applying to all federal grants, requiring grant reviews by senior political appointees and re-emphasizes that "peer review remains advisory and does not replace agency discretion". #standupforscience public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-10817.pdf

Igor Ulitsky@igorulitsky.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Now out @natbiotech.nature.com ! Do lncRNAs commonly bind 1000s of genomic sites? Maybe they do, but the dozens of studies that report genomic binding maps of lncRNAs are deeply flawed, with probes binding suprious DNA sites rather than RNA-bound ones.

Igor Ulitsky@igorulitsky.bsky.social · 9mo ago

A preprint‼️that's bound to ruffle some 🪶 "Widespread DNA off-targeting confounds studies of RNA chromatin occupancy" led by our Micah Goldrich and Louis Delhaye from Pieter Mestdagh in Ghent. TL;DR we show that many of lncRNA chromatin occupancy obtained are flawed www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Tom Rawlings@tom-rawlings.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Hey all! New to bluesky! Very excited to first share a mini review I wrote recently with Emma Lucas. This mini-review explores the recent developments in producing reliable in vitro models of the human endometrium and embryo! Let me know what you think! academic.oup.com/humrep/artic...

New models of implantation: towards a whole better than the sum of parts

Abstract. Recent advances in the development of stem-cell-based embryo models and endometrial assembloids have fuelled understanding of their respective bi

academic.oup.com

MadScientist@mads100tist.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Let me post a spicy take here: most people don't read or cite other model organisms' work. Because of this, they keep rediscovering things and, most importantly, re-writing the timeline in favor of fewer and fewer models. That, plus an artificial limit of citations per paper equals this 🧪

Science Magazine@science.org · 5mo ago

An analysis of published papers on eight widely studied “model” organisms suggests work on them is fading, but not everyone is worried. https://scim.ag/3PaOvIs

Bailey Weatherbee@bailweatherbee.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Out today at @cellpress.bsky.social from @zernickagoetz.bsky.social and @slavov-n.bsky.social www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... I watched Lisa Iwamoto-Stohl lead this project over several years with incredible resilience. Some of the most technically challenging experiments I've ever seen!

Fertilization triggers early proteomic symmetry breaking in mammalian embryos

Single-cell proteomics finds asymmetries between sister blastomeres from the 2-cell stage in human and mouse embryos, defining two states: alpha and beta. Alpha-beta asymmetry can be traced back to th...

cell.com