Scoop with @mercohn.bsky.social: Johns Hopkins University is laying off more than 100 employees in the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Carey Business School and central administration. Hopkins is suffering "debilitating" decreases in federal research funding www.thebanner.com/education/hi...

Johns Hopkins University lays off over 100 employees due to federal research losses

The layoffs this week impact the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Carey School of Business and the university’s general administration.

thebanner.com

School's out for summer but @ksjatmit.bsky.social, we're hard at work training the next generation of science journalists. KSJ HBCU Summer Camp led by the amazing @ashleythesmart.bsky.social

Knight Science Journalism @ MIT@ksjatmit.bsky.social · last mo.

A week at MIT. Ten emerging journalists. A closer look at what science journalism can make possible. KSJ’s HBCU Science Journalism Summer Camp brought undergraduate journalism students from five HBCUs to Cambridge from June 7–12. 📸 Photos by Leise Jones

In another smart piece of reporting for @science.org , former KSJ Fellow @kakape.bsky.social speaks to the experts trying to understand how the cruise ship hantavirus started — and what that says about the only hantavirus documented to transmit from person to person. www.science.org/content/arti...

How did the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak start? Scientists are investigating new scenarios

Understanding how the first patient became infected may shed new light on Andes virus’ transmission patterns and incubation period

science.org

Terrible and sad news. The number of journalists covering science at a time that coverage is so desperately needed continues to decline.

Dan Vergano@danvergano.bsky.social · last mo.

Scientific American is being sold to LabX Media, publisher of Discover: group.springernature.com/gp/group/med... They've fired me and other union staff, ahead of June 26 vote ratification. My rates are suddenly more reasonable, if you need editing or reporting - Argonaut2026@gmail.com

Excellent and thorough story by the amazing @aniloza.bsky.social “One problem is that such a meritocracy has never existed, and it’s ahistorical to believe that one could exist in the U.S., particularly by dismantling race-conscious policies.” www.statnews.com/2026/05/15/t... via @statnews.com

DOJ accuses Yale and UCLA medical schools of discriminating against white and Asian applicants

The Justice Department sent a letter to Yale School of Medicine on Thursday, alleging it was illegally discriminating against applicants who are not Black or Hispanic.

statnews.com

Follow @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social She’s fighting for science and freedom of speech And science — like work on racial disparities — that isn’t considered “clean.” As she says, language matters.

Jenna Norton@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Sharing this screen grab from a friend at NIH (with permission). This is a checklist program officers have to complete before a grant can be awarded. The first question: "Is this grant All Clean/Clear in the NIH Text analysis Tool?" 🧵1/3

This was fitting news to receive on May 1, international workers day. I will be returning to work on Monday after being kept on retaliatory administrative leave for 5 months and 3 weeks. I return along with the brave Katrina Declaration signers from FEMA, also reinstated this week. 🧵1/?

Sheryl Gay Stolberg@sherylnyt.bsky.social · 3mo ago

NEWS: The NIH whistleblower @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social, who was put on paid leave in November after criticizing the Trump administration’s cuts to medical research, has been reinstated — without explanation. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/01/u...

So honored to receive a Polk award today with STAT colleagues @mmolteni.bsky.social @aniloza.bsky.social @angusrohan.bsky.social @jonathanwosen.bsky.social @isabellacueto.bsky.social @lizzylawrence.bsky.social @jaspar.bsky.social @rickberke.bsky.social Gideon Gil Laura Chang+Sarah Todd. What a team.

Announcing the stellar new class of @ksjatmit.bsky.social fellows who will join us this fall. 💪🏽🧠✍️ Can’t wait to get started! ksj.mit.edu/news/2026/04...

Knight Science Journalism at MIT Announces 2026-27 Fellowship Class

An elite group of science journalists from around the globe will join KSJ at MIT this August to embark on a year of research and study.

ksj.mit.edu

I’m incensed that immigration policies are removing foreign doctors from their hospitals and jobs. We face a critical physician shortage. Many of these doctors treat the poor and underserved. This decision will cost lives. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/u...

Trump’s Immigration Policy Sidelines Foreign Doctors Amid Shortage

nytimes.com

I will say this again: Science isn’t just something that nerds do, it’s the foundation of the modern world. It’s why this app exists. It’s why child mortality rate isn’t 50% anymore. It’s how we’re able to launch people to the moon. It’s how we’re able to grow food that feeds half the world.

Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration

Budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing.

nature.com

My only guess is NYT wanted a way in on the FEMA teleportation traffic and sent intrepid correspondent to figure it out and well that story is gonna stretch no matter what.

So honored to host journalist, professor, and maritime explorer Michael Cottman this week @ksjatmit.bsky.social to discuss his work on studying the wreck of the slave ship Henrietta Marie. Powerful to learn about the network of Black scuba divers who continue this critical historical work.

Powerful to hear Khiara Bridges discuss her new book Expecting Inequity — showing even wealthy Black women experience high rates of #maternalmortality— with Ndidiamaka Amutah-Onukagha. “We cannot purchase our way out of structural racism.”

The term “gold standard science“ is so insidious. As Harvard’s Nancy Krueger wrote recently, “The reality is that federal agencies under this current administration are brandishing this ‘gold standard science’ as a cudgel, to make data, people, and problems disappear.”

Alt-NIHscience4ALL@alt-nihscience4all.altgov.info · 5mo ago

Today at NIH, we were offered yet ANOTHER AI platform to use. And we also have a brand new lecture series beginning. The Scientific Freedom Lecture series. The video cast is open to the public. If you can stomach all of the “freedom.” videocast.nih.gov/watch/244438...

and if you haven't read this backstory on the messy, contentious fight to remove race from eGFR by @usha.bsky.social & @katiepalmer.bsky.social, you really should www.statnews.com/2024/09/05/e...

Inside the bruising battle to purge race from a kidney disease calculator

Kidney specialists now acknowledge millions of Black patients may have been undertreated and even denied transplants because of a race-adjusted test.

statnews.com

Star tribune just doing amazing work breaking our hearts but amazing work

Matt DeLong@mattdelong.bsky.social · 5mo ago

"Each person plucked from their day-to-day existence left a whole life behind. There are shoes by the front door and an empty bed. There’s a car in the driveway and a job undone. There are pets that need feeding, bills that keep arriving and leases with months left to pay."

Amazing to see the change that can be possible to reduce longstanding racial health disparities. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽Story by @aniloza.bsky.social Comments from @thenephrologist.bsky.social whttps://www.statnews.com/2026/03/10/kidney-transplants-black-americans-race-based-test-discarded/ via @statnews.com

Removing race from kidney function algorithm helped more Black patients access transplants

Removing race from the eGFR had a big impact, resulting in 5.3 more kidney transplants per 1000 Black candidates.

statnews.com

This is the horrifying xAI "Colossus" Musk has unleashed on the South. "The sound continues through the day & often intensifies at night...making it hard to think clearly & even harder to fall asleep." Solidarity with Devan Jenkins & her neighbors fighting for their community's health & well-being.

Mississippi Free Press@mississippifreepress.org · 5mo ago

“You can feel it rattling your eardrums,” Devan Jenkins, who lives in Memphis’ Whitehaven neighborhood, said while describing the sound of the turbines that power one of Elon Musk's xAI data centers. “It makes you feel like you're going insane.”

Have you seen this one? Dubbed the mad hatterpillar, it wears it's own old heads as a hat. www.newscientist.com/article/mg24...

Weird caterpillar uses its old heads to make an elaborate hat

Meet the mad hatterpillar, the invertebrate that keeps its old moulted heads attached to its body to make a beautifully bizarre headpiece

newscientist.com

ICE has arrested and detained a Nashville journalist who reported stories critical of ICE. She’s married to a U.S. citizen and has been seeking asylum here after fleeing death threats in Colombia because of her journalism there. They’ve already sent her to Louisiana.

ICE detains reporter Estefany Rodríguez in Nashville - Nashville Banner

Reporter Estefany Rodríguez, detained by ICE with no arrest warrant, may face deportation. Her attorneys seek immediate review of the legality of her case.

nashvillebanner.com

@mmolteni.bsky.social of @statnews.com with the scoop on #Epstein and Harvard geneticist George Church. "Thirteen years later, the whereabouts of the sex offender’s skin cells are a mystery." www.statnews.com/2026/02/24/e...

Jeffrey Epstein’s tissue samples ignited a furor in the Harvard lab of George Church

Exclusive: Harvard geneticist George Church knew more about Jeffrey Epstein's activities than he has previously said, before accepting new donations from the sex offender.

statnews.com

Have been listening in to today's hearing. So far, she's dodged questions on vaccines and Tammy Baldwin noted Means made $325K shilling supplements over the last 2 years. But sure, vaccine advocates are the one making bank. 🙃

Gregg Gonsalves@gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Still time to write to your Senators (and get your friends to do the same). Casey Means is a charlatan with dangerous views on contraception, raw milk, vaccines and has a whole lot of conflict of interest--she's making money off it all. Just say no to the quack. actionnetwork.org/letters/oppo...

Who will be the first reporter to ask Trump for a comment? Lawrence Summers Will Resign From Harvard After Epstein Revelations www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/u...

Lawrence Summers Will Resign From Harvard After Epstein Revelations

nytimes.com

New from @katherineeban.bsky.social in @rollingstone.com: CDC appointees bypassed the agency’s scientists to rush-fund a study questioning the hep B birth dose. The ethics committee president says his name was used on the approval without his knowledge. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

New Documents Reveal a Controversial Vaccine Study's Unusual Path to CDC Approval

A new investigation has found irregularities in the ethics review of a grant to study effects of a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine in Guinea-Bissau.

rollingstone.com

it’s very difficult for me to reread old pieces of mine, but I am sharing this for the Olympics, for nostalgia, for Asian American women of a certain age, for little Asian girls everywhere gift link:

What I Learned From Kristi Yamaguchi (Published 2016)

nytimes.com

The $100 whole human genome sequence finally reached! www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/02/19/s...

Hilarious

This is perhaps the most tragic of the consequences of the attack by Trump and colleagues on NIH. Gutting the next generation of American science 🧪

Jenna Norton@jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Check this out straight from the NIH website, acknowledging that multiyear funding was likely responsible for a 20% decrease in early stage investigators. And that it was expected. A strange approach for someone so committed to the next generation of scientists. grants.nih.gov/news-events/...