Saloni
@scientificdiscovery.dev
Co-founder & editor, Works in Progress. Writer, Scientific Discovery. Podcaster, Hard Drugs. Advisor, Coefficient Giving. // Previously at Our World in Data. Newsletter: https://scientificdiscovery.dev Podcast: https://harddrugs.worksinprogress.co 🏳️🌈
Essentially just one Wikipedia paragraph for the Arch Eradicationist who successfully led the yellow fever elimination program across the western hemisphere, nearly eliminated smallpox there, and dramatically reduced malaria and yaws during his tenure too! Sad. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_So...
Fred Soper - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Something I learnt recently: Amazon stores all the highlights you make in Kindle here read.amazon.com/notebook which you can copy into an LLM to turn into structured notes. That way I can spend more time doing something I like (reading) and less time on something I don’t (making notes)
Wasn’t insecure enough already, thank you for bringing this to my attention. Keeping this info FAR AWAY from my mom
Similarly heparin was discovered by a second-year medical student, in a project originally designed to isolate pro-coagulation factors (the opposite activity of heparin) www.ebsco.com/research-sta...
Saloni@scientificdiscovery.dev · 2d agoTFW you realize the heat-stable version of the smallpox vaccine, used for global smallpox eradication, was invented by a graduate student as part of his MD thesis pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
TFW you realize the heat-stable version of the smallpox vaccine, used for global smallpox eradication, was invented by a graduate student as part of his MD thesis pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
If you wanna catch up on new research in your networks, I recommend this bsky feed! It's great. It shows you posts linking to academic papers - from people you already follow. I've found it very useful so far.
Whooops. I made a mistake while describing the mechanism of immortal time bias in our last episode. Ironically, it was just after I explained how confusing I found many explanations of it, but my own explanation was also confused! 😂🫠
![But one of the interesting things about that was that the evidence for this before the trials were done were observational studies. Some of these observational studies were affected by various biases. One of these biases is called immortal time bias. Have you heard of that?
Jacob Trefethen: I'm pretty biased myself as a immortal demigod. Yes. But what about you?
Saloni Dattani: I had, well, I had heard about this for a long time and I was like, what does that, why is it called that? I feel like hardly anyone had given me an explanation of this that made sense. It was like really complicated and people would explain it with these diagrams that were very difficult to read.
But the basic idea is that you have, you're looking at like, let's say hospital data or something, and you're comparing people who have taken a drug to people who haven't. You look at, while they're on the drug, what are their chances of developing the disease versus people who are not on the drug?
What a lot of these studies would often do is that they count the time that people are not on the drug, or before they start the drug, in the control group [Correction: in the treated group], and they take the time that they spend on the drug in the treated group [as well]. But that creates a problem.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:73aicoale2mqwrap63rdzwep/bafkreidkkn4ddx7n6mbfo2s5uwbx46he6etevi5d35ii6ylxk73zyvhkca)
I'm interested in finding and potentially supporting people who are interested in doing long-form writing on the big efforts in global health: Gavi, Global Fund, PEPFAR, etc. If this is you or someone you know, please make yourself known!
New blog post! Odds ratios are...a bit weird. Here I explain two problems (interpretation, non-collapsibility) and provide some simple recommendations for improved reporting. www.the100.ci/2026/07/30/r...
Reviewer notes: Odds ratios are really odd
When psychological researchers investigate binary outcomes, they routinely report odds ratios to quantify the strength of an effect or an association. This is quite understandable given that psycholog...
the100.ci
Nice piece by @wilsonmking.bsky.social on a surprisingly unsolved question: Why are Indian kids so short? (Even more than India's development would imply.) It felt a bit voyeuristic to me though, like reading about myself or something.
The Mystery of Short Indian Children – In Development
evidence and argument for a developing world
indevelopmentmag.com
This is a really beautiful website by @jdworkin.bsky.social on the everyday household items that were once only dreamt about – a music player, nightlight, family photos, clean water, ice, spices, and more. 10/10 would recommend exploring it! ordinaryabundance.com
Ordinary Abundance
A walk through a modern apartment, through the eyes of the people for whom everything in it was new.
ordinaryabundance.com
News in global health: Sen. Susan Collins announces that GAVI, the vaccine alliance, will get hundreds of millions of dollars in funding after all. Trump officials last year said they would halt funding.
I'm interested in finding and potentially supporting people who are interested in doing long-form writing on the big efforts in global health: Gavi, Global Fund, PEPFAR, etc. If this is you or someone you know, please make yourself known!
Just finished listening to this excellent episode. Repurposed drugs sound like a really low hanging fruit -- they're already around, plenty of safety data exists -- but then you usually can't make a lot of money with them. So: how do we get people to pour in the necessary money for trials?
Saloni@scientificdiscovery.dev · 2w agoNew episode of HARD DRUGS! GLP1 drugs have transformed obesity & diabetes, help treat heart disease, kidney disease and sleep apnea. They're far from the only drug with multiple uses. But sometimes, it takes several decades - and public funding - to learn about new uses.
That Dexamethasone was the very first thing we found helped for COVID was the ultimate rebuttal to anyone going "they just want to suppress that HCQ and Ivermectin work because they are cheap!" From what I can tell, a full course of Dexamethasone for treating a hospitalized COVID patient costs ~$1.
Saloni@scientificdiscovery.dev · 2w agoI love this clip of @jacobtref.bsky.social on the wonder of drug repurposing in the RECOVERY trial:
I love this clip of @jacobtref.bsky.social on the wonder of drug repurposing in the RECOVERY trial:
Tune in to hear about: Immortal time bias, confounding by selection, regression discontinuities, platform trials, the uncanny mountain of p-values, high-throughput screening, patent and exclusivity laws, push vs pull funding, indication-based pricing, Focused Research Organisations, and more!
Saloni@scientificdiscovery.dev · 2w agoNew episode of HARD DRUGS! GLP1 drugs have transformed obesity & diabetes, help treat heart disease, kidney disease and sleep apnea. They're far from the only drug with multiple uses. But sometimes, it takes several decades - and public funding - to learn about new uses.
New episode of HARD DRUGS! GLP1 drugs have transformed obesity & diabetes, help treat heart disease, kidney disease and sleep apnea. They're far from the only drug with multiple uses. But sometimes, it takes several decades - and public funding - to learn about new uses.
Are miracle drugs hiding in plain sight?
Hard Drugs · Episode
open.spotify.com
New episode of HARD DRUGS! GLP1 drugs have transformed obesity & diabetes, help treat heart disease, kidney disease and sleep apnea. They're far from the only drug with multiple uses. But sometimes, it takes several decades - and public funding - to learn about new uses.
Are miracle drugs hiding in plain sight?
Hard Drugs · Episode
open.spotify.com
New preprint w/ Leo Tiokhin & @lakens.bsky.social! Registered Reports (RRs) are great for science b/c publication is guaranteed before results are known, reducing publication bias & QRPs. This feature supposedly also makes them great for *scientists*. But is that really true? 1/ tinyurl.com/4sy993rr
Career incentives make Registered Reports unattractive under realistic academic conditions
Registered Reports are a publication format designed to reduce publication bias by guaranteeing publication before results are known. This guarantee is considered attractive in the prevailing ‘publish...
tinyurl.com
Kalshi recently opened prediction betting markets for clinical trials and drug approvals. It's intriguing, but in my view also risks weakening the integrity of trials and worsening participant dropouts. Short post by me:
Ask your bookie if this drug is right for you
What we're reading spotlight
open.substack.com
These backronyms need to STOP (Seriously this isn'T funny Or apPropriate)
Strep A kills hundreds of thousands of people per year, but there's no vaccine for it – yet. Some of my wonderful colleagues at Coefficient Giving and lots of great scientists are trying to change that. Please share this with researchers who might be interested in working on it!
Katharine Collins@kat-a-collins.bsky.social · 3w ago📣Exciting announcement 📣 The First Global Strep A Vaccine Conference Call for abstracts will open soon! 🌏Venue update: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, first week of February 2027 📝Abstract submissions open 30 July 2026. #GSAVConference2027 Read the full announcement here ⬇️ lnkd.in/eiu95fXm
📣Exciting announcement 📣 The First Global Strep A Vaccine Conference Call for abstracts will open soon! 🌏Venue update: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, first week of February 2027 📝Abstract submissions open 30 July 2026. #GSAVConference2027 Read the full announcement here ⬇️ lnkd.in/eiu95fXm
I just noticed that Naomi Wolf, of all people, follows me on Substack 😂 I wonder what she gets out of it. Maybe she's interested in the latest developments in time travel technology.
New CBO paper: every $1 of federal R&D returns ~$3–$4 of GDP in present value over 30 years www.nber.org/papers/w35472
