I don't think people realize what an immediate impact this is going to have on outbreak response and containment.

MMWR stole the show in the first round of headlines about CDC cuts but in the chaos, many missed that the NHANES mobile team remains RIF'd. This is the backbone of this key survey that contains some of the only representative anthropometric, biochemical, clinical and dietary data on the country.

NCI:

2022 - 2963 new grants awarded
2023 - 2966 new grants
2024 - 2612
2025 - 1431

😐

This is why you can’t use ED diagnoses to decide whether to pay for the visit. Going into the visit, you don’t know if it’s something terrible or something self-limited/benign. You need the visit and all the provided care to distinguish. It’s bad faith by the insurance co and should not be allowed.

“As of this writing, some 40% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life… Now an extraordinarily successful scientific research system — one that took decades to build, has saved millions of lives and generated billions of dollars… — is being dismantled before our eyes.”

NC State Health Director has issued Standing Orders that allow 65 years or older and adults over 18 who meet certain criteria to get a COVID-19 vaccine at a pharmacy *without* having to get a prescription.

hi friends! It's almost the weekend. Have you planned something fun offline? It could be reading a book, taking a long walk, going to a museum, seeing a friend, doing a craft, or cooking an elaborate meal. If you are sad, try not to be sad alone. And if you can, charge your phone away from your bed.

Community colleges have been dealing with this problem for a bit. The typical reaction is that administrative burdens will increase for real students to prove they are, indeed, real.

www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

Brilliant piece on how to engage in conversation with strangers about vaccines and public health

@statnews.com @unbiasedscipod.bsky.social

www.statnews.com/2025/09/06/c...

My latest for MSNBC: CMS is adding new prior authorization requirements for traditional Medicare, implemented with AI. Prior auth is a key vehicle for coverage denials that then drive administrative burdens of appealing, which seniors are less well equipped to navigate. www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

PSA: Contacting a professor whose lab you would like to join? DON'T use generative AI to personalize the email. It will make up things like names of papers. Doesn't make a good impression and is frankly vertigo-inducing for the prof in question. ("I mean it sounds like a paper I would write but...")

The AI authorship issue is real. We've caught papers that looked OK but had references to works by the *journal editors* that *do not exist*. Like, don't send us papers citing papers we know we didn't write, right?

I am fascinated by this guy who was a Higher Ed administrator and has now moved into teaching classes as a faculty member. He is documenting his whole journey on TikTok. Over the summer, he had so much excitement 🧵

I’ve done this for 2 weeks now and it *absolutely rules*. Best class discussions I’ve ever had. Best engagement with readings. They write in this worksheet for 15 minutes, then talk about their responses in groups of 3-4, then groups share with the whole class, and *then* we talk about the readings

Breaking: BILL CASSIDY is calling for CDC's vaccine advisers meeting to be postponed.

"If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership."

Hi: Public administration professor here. This is not good.

It’s important to remember that PhD programs pausing admissions is a really bad sign. Grad students act as instructors for many lower level courses and a university can only go so long without admitting any before classes have to be cut.

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Any time you go for a walk in the evening around here this time of year you can see impressive work from our eight legged friends

everyone wants the computer to be my little buddy that I talk to and all I want is to use a mouse and keyboard and never have it talk back to me

Nature story about the Executive Order...

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I subscribed to STAT News this spring and have not regretted it. Very good coverage of what's going on at NIH.

I reject fatalism [a form of moral disengagement]. What happens next is not predetermined and depends in part on us.

1. Federal funding for research promotes tech, biomedical, and scientific discovery in the US, and provides training for the sci/tech workforce that has brought immeasurable wealth to the US over the past 75 years.

Today's executive order includes a provision that will obliterate both functions.