More on the big picture and what we have to be doing in the months ahead: samwang.substack.com/p/building-h...
Public Comments Form Half Of A Plan To Stop the Takeover of Science...
...here's the second half.
samwang.substack.com
Ethan Solomon
@esolomon.bsky.social
Instructor on K99/R00 in psychiatry @ Stanford, MD/PhD @ Penn, SB @ MIT. Interested in the neural electrophysiology of cognition, perception, and psychiatry. ethanasolomon.com
Once again, @dereklowe.bsky.social is not holding back and I am here for it. www.science.org/content/blog... 1/2
The Current Crisis: What's Happening to Science in America
science.org
I hope all interested in science are paying attention: Trump and Vought are bypassing the strong bipartisan support for biomedical science and halting funding thought administrative delays. Call Congress if you want to save American science 🧪
Denis Wirtz@deniswirtz.bsky.social · 3mo agoThe NIH has been holding back grants from funds Congress has already approved. www.wsj.com/opinion/get-...
The most impt change at #NIH and to US science this year is bigger than grant cancellations— it’s how the agency is governed. For 75 years NIH has been largely independent of presidential control. That’s changed this year. New piece from me and @nataliebaviles.bsky.social in @nature.com 🧪
How Congress can restore the independence of US science
Members must go beyond reinstating US government research spending and re-establish decentralized governance at the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.
nature.com
This recent RCT of an "AI stethoscope" claims the technology "shows promise" for diagnosing cardiovascular conditions. It does not. It is a textbook example of the risks of conducting unprincipled 'per protocol analyses'. Once again, peer review at a major medical journal has failed. 🧵 1/
The Lancet@thelancet.com · 5mo agoAI-enabled stethoscopes show promise for improving diagnosis of cardiovascular conditions, UK trial finds. Explore the research: spkl.io/63326AsjJ8
Just added this to my WordPress site, so it's free to read. homunculusmusic.wordpress.com/2026/02/14/e...
Epstein’s ugly world of science
As with Peter Mandelson, so in the science world: the Epstein files are not telling us anything that most ordinary punters didn’t already know, but are revealing the full, rotten, appalling extent …
homunculusmusic.wordpress.com
🚨 New from me: Grant review at more than half of NIH's institutes could be frozen by the end of the year. That's because crucial NIH grant-review panels are slated to be empty at those institutes by Jan 2027. A wonky bureaucratic problem with big implications. A short 🧵
Exclusive: key NIH review panels due to lose all members by the end of 2026
Thirteen of the agency’s advisory councils, which must review grant applications before funding is awarded, are on track to have no voting members.
nature.com
Just published my review of neuroscience in 2025, on The Spike. The 10th of these, would you believe? This year we have foundation models, breakthroughs in using light to understand the brain, a gene therapy, and more Enjoy! medium.com/the-spike/20...
2025: A Review of the Year in Neuroscience
Enlightening the brain
medium.com
New paper from @stanfordpntlab.bsky.social in collaboration with @coreykeller.bsky.social, @neuro-engineer.bsky.social, Nick Trapp, and Aaron Boes at UIowa! We explored how TMS to the DLPFC changes neural activity in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, a key mood regulator. 1/
DLPFC TMS suppresses high-frequency neural activity in the human sgACC
Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is increasingly used to treat major depressive disorder and has demonstrated durable improvements in d...
brainstimjrnl.com
Ezra Klein went beyond opposing political violence to extol Charlie Kirk for doing politics "exactly the right way," making up a fictional version of Kirk to praise. That distortion, with its indulgence of bad faith, is a perfect illustration of the larger media failure that helps Trump. My latest
Ezra Klein Accidentally Shows How the Media Brought Us Trump
The prominent liberal pundit made up a fake version of Charlie Kirk to praise, laundering his reputation the way a lot of mainstream media launders MAGA
arcdigital.media
From @coreykeller.bsky.social's amazing team, led by @chrisclineneuro.bsky.social: x.com/DrCoreyKelle...
x.com
Would love some insight into what has happened to @nytimes.com. Is a president embroiled in a child sex trafficking scandal with underwater poll numbers on a "winning streak"? Is Trump usually cool, calm, and collected, only now "displaying his volatile side"?
Even if you think these deals are worth the tarnished academic integrity and freedom (they're not), paying an extortion fee to get your grants back doesn't make much sense when the rest of the government is working hard to gut NIH/NSF/etc on a larger scale anyway.
Harvard Is Said to Be Open to Spending Up to $500 Million to Resolve Trump Dispute
nytimes.com
Calling these outcomes 'deals' or 'agreements' is in the interest of both university administrators (who do not want to appear passive) and the White House (which does not want to appear authoritarian). They are extortions—displays of power & dominance designed to coerce all universities watching.
Anna Schapiro@annaschapiro.bsky.social · last yr."this deal is unlikely to end the attacks. The federal government, and this administration, is simply too powerful and too arbitrary to be credibly bargained with." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/o...
Excited to announce award of my K99/R00 "Theta burst modulation of hippocampal-cortical rhythms in schizophrenia," under amazing mentors at Stanford including @coreykeller.bsky.social! We will ask whether hippocampal oscillations can be systematically influenced by stimulation in schizophrenia.
RePORT ⟩ RePORTER
reporter.nih.gov
New paper showcasing the incredible effort from the amazing Human Neural Circuitry (HNC) team! Beyond the great science, one can appreciate the poetic story told about human emotions. Looking forward to what's coming next! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Conserved brain-wide emergence of emotional response from sensory experience in humans and mice
Emotional responses to sensory experience are central to the human condition in health and disease. We hypothesized that principles governing the emergence of emotion from sensation might be discovera...
science.org
Keller lab is an awesome place to work! Great science, great mentorship, amazing group of people at a world-class institution.
Corey Keller@coreykeller.bsky.social · last yr.We are still hiring! Please do reach out if interested in joining a collaborative and energized team of engineers, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists developing new methods to probe the human brain in an effort to improve our treatments for mental health disorders!
🚨 This MUST READ essay and call to action spells out, in very clear terms, how the Trump administration could get away with slashing the NIH budget. NIH scientists and Dems in congress need to read and understand it. This is where we win or lose the battle to save the NIH and US science. 🧪 🧠 🧬 🔊
The NIH budget is on a fast track to disaster
An NIH insider explains what Republicans are likely to do next, and what we can do
donmoynihan.substack.com
Why is Stanford not a signatory? President Levin has already publicly supported Harvard's stance against the administration -- strange he would do that yet find this objectionable. www.aacu.org/newsroom/a-c...
A Call for Constructive Engagement | AAC&U
A Call for Constructive Engagement
aacu.org
Wherein the NYT parrots Trump talking points, leaves claims of "campus antisemitism" entirely devoid of correction/context, and *not once* mentions that the unilateral cancellation of grants is *illegal*, instead framing it as an "aggressive stance." Unreal stuff from our paper of record.
Inside Trump’s Pressure Campaign on Universities
The opaque process, part of a strategy by conservatives to realign the liberal tilt of elite universities, has upended higher education.
nytimes.com
🧠 NEW PAPER: How do we capture excitability noninvasively in mood and emotion networks in the human brain? Here, we used real-time optimization to improve these measures! @saraparmi @KellerStanfordU @ClinicalNeuroph doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2025.02.261 1/7
NEW: After cancelling nearly all projects on trans health, the Trump admin has now directed the NIH to study the negative consequences of transitioning. This will create “a distorted research ecosystem where only politically favorable findings are permitted to exist”, researcher Harry Barbee says.
Exclusive: Trump White House directs NIH to study ‘regret’ after transgender people transition
After cancelling nearly all NIH projects studying transgender health, Trump’s team instructs the US biomedical agency to study negative consequences of transitioning.
nature.com
When we use TMS to treat depression, we think it alters neural activity in a deep brain structure known as the subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC). But this is hard to test directly, until our preprint with @coreykeller.bsky.social, @neuro-engineer.bsky.social, Nick Trapp, and Aaron Boes (UIowa) 1/
DLPFC Stimulation Suppresses High-Frequency Neural Activity in the Human sgACC
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is hypothesized to relieve symptoms of depression by inhibiting activity in the subgenual anterior cingulate corte...
biorxiv.org
Science is under threat in the US. @elife.bsky.social have commissioned a series of articles discussing the implications and what we can do. The first three articles are now live. More to follow: elifesciences.org/articles/106... elifesciences.org/articles/106... elifesciences.org/articles/106...
Science Under Threat in the United States: How scientists and institutions should respond
Individual researchers and university leaders need to make the case for science to their elected representatives and to the public at large.
elifesciences.org