UPDATE: We learned that the folks behind Project 2025, are encouraging their base to write comments in favor of the rule. This suggests our efforts are working and they are shaken. IT ALSO MEANS WE NEED TO GO OUT WITH A BANG. MAKE YOUR COMMENT TODAY!!!

Stand Up for Science!@standupforscience.net · last mo.

🚨 HEADS UP: If you haven't submitted a comment on the OMB proposal yet, there's still time - but it's running out! There are only 11 days left to push back against Russell Vought's attempt to give political appointees unprecedented control over federal research funding. Take Action: zurl.co/R83IO

It is sad that Scott Atlas doesn’t understand basic economics. Paul Samuelson wrote about public goods—why NIH has been such a stunning success—more than 75 yrs ago. Also, to see why Atlas urges ending US success, just look at who elevates him: pro-privatization billionaires. 1/

NIH Grants Management people are truly heroic (as are Program officers)--mine is emailing at 8:50 PM--they are working overtime to keep science in operation in the US.

NEW: I reported on the FDA approval of Xocova (ensitrelvir). The post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) drug for COVID-19 will be available in mid-July in the U.S. with a list price of $1,400. thesicktimes.org/2026/06/23/f...

FDA approves COVID-19 antiviral Xocova as PEP. But will it be accessible? - The Sick Times

Shionogi, the Japanese company that makes Xocova (ensitrelvir), said the post-exposure prophylaxis drug will be available in mid-July in the U.S. and will have a list price of $1,400. But its impact w...

thesicktimes.org

#TripleTheNIHBudget

Eric Topol@erictopol.bsky.social · last mo.

Two of the most important biomedical breakthroughs came from science of the Gila lizard venom (GLP-1s) and yogurt (CRISPR genome editing). "The system that turned that lizard into a medicine is now being dismantled." gift link nytimes.com/2026/06/20/o...

Brutal grant-witness.us/posts/2026-0...

The NSF is on Track for its Worst Year in Generations – Grant Witness

Throttling of science funding is utterly unprecedented and radical when compared to the past 50 years.

grant-witness.us

Does the COVID 19 vaccine induce eye damage? A 2025 paper published in Ophthalmic Epidemiology is being promoted online by vaccine skeptics. But: reused images, impossible demographics, and an incomplete ethics approval number make *me* skeptical. scienceintegritydigest.com/2026/06/18/c...

COVID-19-vaccine-induced eye damage? Reused images, impossible demographics, and an incomplete ethics approval number

A 2025 paper published in Ophthalmic Epidemiology is being promoted online as proof that COVID-19 vaccines damage the eyes. Before accepting that conclusion, it was worth looking at the paper itsel…

scienceintegritydigest.com

Academic freedom assessment across the world. The US is on a steep decline, below >120 countries www.scientificamerican.com/article/see-...

In a new @cp-neuron.bsky.social article, members of the Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (SCENE) outline their plans to investigate how the brain links perception, cognition and action by encoding environmental affordances: https://bit.ly/49YfgaE

The Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience: Studying how the brain interacts with the world

The Simons Collaboration on Ecological Neuroscience (SCENE) seeks to uncover general principles of brain function through an ecological perspective: studying perception, cognition, and action in the c...

cell.com

NIH announces the creation of the Office of Research Innovation, Validation, and Application (ORIVA) to reduce use of animals in research. dpcpsi.nih.gov/oriva

One year ago.

Postdoc position available at postlab.psych.wisc.edu. Pls send cv to postle@wisc.edu

Many of the scientific questions we're interested in tackling require studying learning over long periods of time across the brain. This is challenging – which is why we're excited to say we've been developing a system for chronic wireless recording using long Neuropixels probes in macaque monkeys.

If you have applied or plan to apply for an NIH grant, if you have reviewed or want to review for an NIH panel, you must read this piece from @27unihted.bsky.social about the detrimental changes to NIH peer review. @jeremymberg.bsky.social @drugmonkey.bsky.social substack.com/inbox/post/2...

The Quiet Attack On Science: Subverting NIH Peer Review

Authored by anonymous current and former NIH workers with experience in peer review, this is an overview of all the changes to NIH's peer review over the last 18 months.

substack.com

🚨PREPRINT ALERT!🚨 I’m delighted to share new work from Yau Lab @bcmneurosci.bsky.social addressing thermotactile interactions. What happens when your hands get cold? A common experience is for your sense of touch to be impaired by coldness. 1/n

Frozen Hands Close-Up

ALT: Frozen Hands Close-Up

static.klipy.com

⚛️ In 1925, a 23-year-old on a state-funded university post retreated to a rocky island with hay fever and wrote a paper so strange he wasn't sure it was worth publishing. Schrodinger called it "nonsense." Einstein rejected it. It became the basis of modern technology.

Holden Thorp is an institutionalist. He's been a university chancellor, provost, now EiC of Science. When institutionalists pull the fire alarm, we listen, because the call to action he issued this week exposes the dire nature of the threat we are facing. 1/ www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Another red alert for American science

Although research has bipartisan support in the US Congress, and trust in science is above 75% across the country, the Trump administration seems as determined as ever to mortally wound the nation’s s...

science.org

💯

Jon Douglas@atranscendedman.bsky.social · 2mo ago

NIH taught me one thing. If you want to be heard, put it in the federal record. Now it's FDA's turn. Long COVID should be prioritized for drug repurposing, adaptive NIH/FDA platform trials and insurance coverage. Comment here by June 11. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

From Tom Waits, with Massive Attack: www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-57...

Massive Attack / Tom Waits - Boots on the Ground

YouTube video by Massive Attack

youtube.com

We have written to the editors @wired.com & requested: 🔹Editorial Review 🔹Apology 🔹Right of Reply 🔹Review to investigate whether the Levinovitz article meets WIRED standards for fair & evidence-based reporting in health & disability. 📨 Letters can be sent to: mail@wired.com

Long Covid Advocacy@longcovidadvoc.com · 2mo ago

🧵OF KEY CONCERNS We've now read Alan Levinovitz's WIRED piece on Long Covid. Our concern isn't that it discusses psychological theories. Our concern is that it repeatedly conflates criticism of evidence with creating a "climate of fear". Those are not the same thing. /1

Indeed. NAS President says main changes science needs are design grad programs more with & for industry, run basic research, by robots/AI not grad students, & only problem with OMB proposal to eviscerate/fatally politicize science is increasing PI paperwork. Could there be deeper failure to moment?

Kevin Mitchell@wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Jesus, this is all so, SO disappointing and depressing. What is the National Academy even for, if it can't meet this moment?

If you oppose the systematic dismantling of US science and the federal grant system generally, now is the time to speak up! elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/what-we-ne...

What We Need to do NEXT: OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule (OMB-2026-0034)

What OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule Means in Practice

elizabethginexi.substack.com

We are launching Interoception Circle! A new seminar series on embodiment, psychophysiology & body-brain coupling 1st online talk tomorrow: “What Role for Interoception in Perception? Evidence from Heartbeat-Evoked Potentials” (Marie Loescher) 3 June, 12pm CEST. All welcome! 🔗 ace2lab.com/2581-2/

🧵OF KEY CONCERNS We've now read Alan Levinovitz's WIRED piece on Long Covid. Our concern isn't that it discusses psychological theories. Our concern is that it repeatedly conflates criticism of evidence with creating a "climate of fear". Those are not the same thing. /1

WIRED@wired.com · 2mo ago

Six years since the height of the pandemic, the scientific community remains baffled by long Covid. But there might finally be a way forward for long Covid treatment—if only you were allowed to talk about it.

After more than 5 decades of parallel development, #corticalstimulation for artificial #vision & artificial #touch is beginning to converge rdcu.be/flRzh Our new @natrevbioeng.nature.com review brings together shared principles and modality-specific strategies across both fields

Restoring vision and touch with cortical microstimulation

Nature Reviews Bioengineering - Cortical sensory prostheses aim to restore vision and touch by stimulating primary visual and somatosensory cortices. This Review examines shared challenges and...

rdcu.be

I’ve been saying this for a minute, but China is going to ascend to dominance by providing stability and filling the vacuum the US left when we pulled out of literally everything we did reasonably well around the globe.

Reuters@reuters.com · 2mo ago

China is sending medical team to assist with DRC Ebola outbreak reut.rs/4uLMoL0

One year ago, I gave this interview to CNN about leaving the U.S. because of cuts to scientific funding and because immigrant scientists like me no longer felt welcome there. What followed was a difficult year. (1/7) edition.cnn.com/2025/06/01/w...

The US has long been a research powerhouse. After Trump’s cuts, other countries are stepping in | CNN

Growing up in Brazil, neuroscientist Danielle Beckman always dreamed of moving to the US for work. So, in 2017, when Beckman got the opportunity to work at the California National Primate Research Cen...

edition.cnn.com

A few years back we started a collaboration to try to work out the mechanisms engaged by DBS for depression. Published today we found that it changes functional networks (expected) but also remodels specific white matter tracts (unexpected). Read more here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Deep brain stimulation induces white matter remodeling and functional changes to brain-wide networks - Nature Neuroscience

In a nonhuman primate model, Fujimoto et al. show that deep brain stimulation promotes white matter remodeling and reorganizes brain-wide functional networks, detailing a mechanism through which this ...

nature.com

#longcovid #autoimmune www.cell.com/cell/abstrac...

A causal link between autoantibodies and neurological symptoms in long COVID

Passive transfer of IgG from long COVID patients induces pain behavior accompanied by intraepidermal nerve fiber damage in mice.

cell.com