Biomedical scientists - a reminder that NIH proposes to "improve" peer review by hiding impact scores from Program Officers and applicants, and binning applications into broad categories of "Most competitive,""Competitive," or "Not discussed." Please provide feedback before the October 13 deadline!

🚨 The NIH is moving to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in infectious-disease research projects to the DOD under a secret 10-year pact. Here’s what’s happening inside “Operation Prevailing Edge” 🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Revealed: inside the US military's plan to tap huge sums from the NIH

An agreement paves the way for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of projects to be transferred from the NIH’s institute for infectious diseases to the Department of Defense.

nature.com

The NIH just released a proposal that will apparently hide peer reviewers’ impact scores and percentiles from the research team, their institution, and NIH program officers. All the better to obscure how funding decisions will be made primarily via political review, I’m guessing.

For Dysphagia Research Society members, check out the new Trainee Forum. I've responded to a post on Statistical Methods and appreciate the opportunity to engage with and learn from each other. #DRS #DysphagiaResearchSociety #Dysphagia www.dysphagiaresearch.org/forums/Posts...

I am giving away a free copy of the #BayesianWorkflow book by @statmodeling.bsky.social, @avehtari.bsky.social, @rmcelreath.bsky.social et al!! Please like, repost, and follow to enter. I will randomly draw the winner next Weds July 8. 😀 routledge.com/9780367490140 #RStats #DataScience #Bayesian

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

Been saying this for years: Don't submit to Frontiers. Don't peer-review for Frontiers. It's long been considered a predatory publisher by many in the field, including many who have worked as editor there.

Michael Okun@michael-okun.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

The amount of money these companies make off the backs of free labor is mind boggling. Flagship society journals like Dysphagia must separate from predatory companies like Springer.

Daniel Heck@danielheck.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I always had the vague feeling that Scientific Reports and Nature Communications are mainly APC business models. A paper estimated the total APC for gold/hybrid Open Access per journal 2015–2018: doi.org/10.1162/qss_... Surprise, surprise - there are 2 outliers at the top😐

An important write up from the NYT on the funding changes at the NIH. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine (Gift Article)

A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

nytimes.com

Looking forward to presenting at Boston University's Research on Tap on recent breakthroughs in Parkinson’s disease research—from uncovering its biological roots to developing innovative treatments to improve airway protection, speech, and cognition in everyday life. Register here: bit.ly/4nB0eMI

Honored to be selected as an NINDS Early-Career Rigor Champion. Meta-science has profoundly shaped my growth as a researcher and my commitment to rigor, transparency, & reproducibility. Grateful for the welcoming, collaborative community of scholars in this field. www.challenge.gov?challenge=ni...

Challenge.gov

Challenge.gov is the official government website supporting prize challenges and prize competitions that are sponsored by the US federal government. Here federal agencies provide prize awards to publi...

challenge.gov

🧪 Attention those with terminated grants, including for NSF, NASA, EPA, NIH, etc: Let Congress know about the impact of terminations via this form: democrats-science.house.gov/grantcancela... Only Dem staff on the House Science Committee will have access (unless if you explicitly state otherwise).

Interested in learning about data sharing? Dr. Micah Hirsch and I will be hosting a free webinar through CSDisseminate. 🗓 June 3 ⏰ 4-5pm EST 🔗 Register: www.eventbrite.com/e/open-data-...

Hello! We have finally made the leap to @bsky.app. We look forward to sharing our lab updates on #cough and #swallowing #clinical research here!

It's time for BU Giving Day 2025! ♥️ If you're interested in supporting the Stepp Lab this year, the link to donate is in our bio. We greatly appreciate any and all contributions, and we are immensely grateful for all of the support you all give us and our work year-round! ✨

We’ve got some exciting news: OpenCSD and CSDisseminate are joining forces and becoming 1 working group! Our mission is still the same: to spread the word about #OpenScience in communication sciences and disorders. But now we’re doing it together. www.csdisseminate.com/Announcement... #SLP #AuD #CSD

During my maternity “leave” last sem, I helped write 3 trainee fellowship applications to NIH & NSF. Probably ~50 hrs of my time, certainly hundreds of theirs. All have reviews occurring in ~month. In some cases it affects their ability to stay in my lab. This grant review shutdown is devastating.

Anyone know of a behavioral clinical trial that used a sequential analysis to potentially stop early for futility or efficacy? (eg onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....) Bonus points if it's publicly funded. I'm particularly interested in how one would justify this to a grant agency.

Performing high‐powered studies efficiently with sequential analyses

Running studies with high statistical power, while effect size estimates in psychology are often inaccurate, leads to a practical challenge when designing an experiment. This challenge can be address...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Excited to share a new preprint with @slpaustin.bsky.social & Elaine Kearney where we examine how synthetic data can be used to share sensitive data in CSD while maintaining participant confidentiality & statistical properties of the dataset. A brief 🧵... osf.io/dutga

First application on the job market submitted! Fingers crossed 🤞

#Bayesians- just read an article where they use Bayes theorem with values from the literature to determine 'risk' of an event (e.g., the prior is baseline prevalence and LR is odds of the event). Is this legit? @tjmahr.com @solomonkurz.bsky.social @rmcelreath.bsky.social doi.org/10.1044/2022...

Slowly working my way through some of Frank Harrell's resources. Amazed at his ability to communicate complex topics in such a clear and accessible manner.

For Bayesian ordinal models, I like McElreath's suggestion to multiply model probabilities by each level of the outcome and then sum those probabilities for a 'weighted ordinal outcome' that's expressed as continuous (e.g., bookdown.org/content/4857...)

Recurring dream where people keep asking what I’m doing after the post doc… What circle of hell is this again?

I have had many PhD students from one specific European university continually email me to request data in an excel doc for a “systematic review”. Has this happened to anyone else? I’m a huge proponent of open data but (1) I make it open for everyone and (2) only when published/preprinted.

It's bizarre that ASHA journals refuse to put open science badges on their pdfs... The whole point of badges is to signal that there are additional sources of transparency the reader can access (data, prereg). Not saying badges are THE answer but feels a bit performative on their part.

Anyone familiar with a regression alternative to determine minimal detectable change? Delving into this lit and most use the formula 1.96 x sqrt(2) x SEM… but wondering how this translates to a regression model (eg test retest design). Fixed effect of trial and use lower bound of the CI? #Statistics

Anyone familiar with papers/tutorials on why it’s important to consider the data generating process during data analysis? Particularly why certain models are inappropriate given DGP. Haven’t found much so I must be putting the wrong search terms in… #Statistics