Thrilled to share our work out in @nature.com today! Linking flexibility modeling, single-cell imaging, and targeted optogenetics allowed us to characterize how some prefrontal neurons, and mPFC-VTA neurons in particular, drive contingency degradation behavior. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Prefrontal to ventral tegmental area dynamics drive contingency degradation - Nature

This work provides a mechanistic understanding of how certain prefrontal circuits in the rodent brain permit flexibility to selectively stop learned behaviours through interactions with core subcortic...

nature.com

"IJALM" - @danielawitten.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

excited to share some big personal news: just read in NYT that side parts are back

…“What LLMs are doing are the same types of things that have been done for a long time, but at a much, much larger scale,”- @danielawitten.bsky.social Take note those wielding the funding guillotine – how would we have got here without those prior decades of study in statistics, linguistic theory?…

Thank you Gemini. h/t @yonahfreemark.com‬

Yesterday, the NIH R35 “Outstanding Investigator” grant to fund scientists in my lab studying antibiotic resistance was terminated for reasons not related to the content of the science, or any actions taken by me or members of my lab

Academia is cool because if you're doing it right, every paper you published in the last 3 years feels inadequate now that you understand the topic better, but it'll take 3 years to get out the version where you get it more right, and you get to do that until one day you die! Isn't that cool

Love the sentiment but wtf is this data graphic

Final_Version_of_Tarrifs_actualFINALcopy_version7_USETHISONE.docx

okay now that you all have gotten a taste of America's rational and predictable new trade policy, everyone who wants to build your new factories here just form an orderly line

The problem with most machine-based random number generators is that they’re not TRULY random, so if you need genuine randomness it is sometimes necessary to link your code to an external random process like a physical noise source or the current rate of US tariffs on a given country.

I want my government to be boring and competent enough so that I don’t have to think about it every goddamn minute.

I wrote something... about writing. #ScientificWriting to be exact, but I think it applies to all kinds of #writing.

An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write

Nature Biotechnology - An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write

rdcu.be

This is the best thing I have ever read in my life. I love it so much. Great advice for all of us, regardless of career stage and whether we self-identify as procrastinators!! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write - Nature Biotechnology

Nature Biotechnology - An open letter to graduate students and other procrastinators: it’s time to write

nature.com

It is best to get into a field that is small enough that people are incentivized to support each other's work rather than tear it down.

This year’s prize Rousseeuw Prize for Statistics honors Yoav Benjamini, Daniel Yekutieli, and Ruth Heller of Tel Aviv University for their pioneering work on the false discovery rate. magazine.amstat.org/blog/2025/03...

Have truly lost patience with the New York Times’ editorial coverage of AI, which has basically degenerated into industry cheerleading. They are completely misrepresenting what most academics believe about AGI. I detail some blunders here: open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...

Hype, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, the podcasters who love him — and how the New York Times’ commentary on AI has degenerated into industry cheerleading

Real journalists do due diligence

open.substack.com

A dear friend of mine just had all her funding pulled. All she has ever done is work exceptionally hard to do excellent science and help others do great science. This is heartbreaking

Wow. "NIH" canceled my co-mentored (with Dave Sulzer) PhD student's F31 funding. His work is on understanding the genetics and neuroscience of language learning disorders. F31 provides no indirect $ to Columbia, just pays his salary. Not that it should matter, but he's an American citizen. W.T.F.

Scientists: which NSF programs had their POs laid off? which NIH study sections have been allowed to proceed? have NoAs for non competing renewals been issued? If it were March 2020 then academic twitter would know the answers. As it is, are we operating in the dark?

I escaped poverty because I am a scientist. And I am a scientist because of the National Science Foundation. A 🧵:

Today I presented on "what is AI?" for family medicine at our hospital. After a smidgen of history I said that the practical definition is this tweet by @danielawitten.bsky.social And it really resonates. such a good definition.

This is a serious issue, and I’m worried that in today’s highly polarized climate, it is not receiving the attention it deserves.

Daniela Witten@danielawitten.bsky.social · 2y ago

@nytimes.com fact checkers- what now??!! surely “keeping it real” means “on the real number line” (versus nominal, ie categorical) in this context? these are dark days, the least we can do is over-explain our statistics jokes correctly www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/b...

@nytimes.com fact checkers- what now??!! surely “keeping it real” means “on the real number line” (versus nominal, ie categorical) in this context? these are dark days, the least we can do is over-explain our statistics jokes correctly www.nytimes.com/2024/12/06/b...

does this place like svd jokes ?

Alex Luedtke@alexluedtke.bsky.social · 2y ago

Welcome, @danielawitten.bsky.social!