Aaron Schwartz

FDA review staff was excluded from voting on whether to approve first priority voucher drug Top officials like Vinay Prasad and George Tidmarsh voted on the drug, a major break from the FDA's typical practice.

“You are taking the decision away from the reviewers, and you’re putting it in the hands of the political leaders of FDA,” Fernandez Lynch said.

It doesn't take an expert to understand how bad this is. More great reporting from @lizzylawrence.bsky.social

www.statnews.com/2025/11/21/t...

It's a bad time to be in the knowledge production business, Exhibit 9,341.

🚨 New working paper!

How well do people predict the results of studies?

@sdellavi.bsky.social and I leverage data from the first 100 studies to have been posted on the SSPP, containing 1,482 key questions, on which over 50,000 forecasts were placed. Some surprising results below.... 🧵👇

Science or Advocacy? The Global Rise of Policy Claims in Population Health Research (1990-2024) Should original research routinely contain prominent policy claims, such as recommendations for policymakers or broad calls to action? Growing emphasis on “research impact” might be welcome but also h...

1/ "Policy claims markedly increased in frequency from 17.6% in 1990-1999 to 35.8% in 2020-2024... Our findings raise questions about how scientists and journals balance evidence, advocacy, and credibility."

Important paper @emiliecourtin.bsky.social and team:

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Beth Israel has poached at least 18 Mass General Brigham primary care clinicians, worth potentially millions in business - The Boston Globe MGB says the latest departures represent "a small number" of its primary care providers, and vows to help patients with the transition.

Utterly deranged framing on this piece about labor mobility between two massive employers (and health care providers), @bostonglobe.com. Leading with costs to the employer? Poaching?

Antifungal 'Nystatin' is named for the NY State Department of Health.

'Statins', on the other hand, are from Latin 'stare' meaning to "stay or hold still" for their ability to slow or stop cholesterol production via inhibition of liver enzyme HMG-CoA reductase.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? Toward an Understanding of Fade-out in Early Childhood Education Programs John A. List & Haruka Uchida X LinkedIn Facebook Bluesky Threads Email Link Working Paper 33027 DOI 10.3386/w33027 Issue Date October 2024 An unsettling stylized fact is that decorated early childhood education programs improve cognitive skills in the short-term, but lose their efficacy after a few years. We implement a field experiment with two stages of randomization to explore the underpinnings of the fade-out effect. We first randomly assign preschool access to children, and then partner with the local school district to randomly assign the same children to classmates throughout elementary school. We find that the fade-out effect is critically-linked to the share of classroom peers assigned to preschool access—with enough treated peers the classic fade-out effect is muted. Our results highlight a paradoxical insight: while the fade-out effect has been viewed as a devastating critique of early childhood programs, our results highlight that fade-out is a key rationale for providing early education to all children. This is because human capital accumulation is inherently a social activity, leading early education programs to deliver their largest benefits at scale when everyone receives such programs.

"...the fade-out effect has been viewed as a devastating critique of early childhood programs, our results highlight that fade-out is a key rationale for providing early education to all... largest benefits at scale when everyone receives such programs"
#EconSky #PolicySky
www.nber.org/papers/w33027

NJ high court rules shaken baby syndrome testimony unreliable and inadmissible in child abuse cases New Jersey’s highest court has ruled that expert testimony about shaken baby syndrome is scientifically unreliable and inadmissible in two upcoming trials

Wow. This is a big deal! New Jersey Supreme Court rules shaken baby syndrome testimony unreliable and inadmissible in child abuse cases

NJ high court bars shaken baby syndrome as 'unreliable' in child abuse cases • New Jersey Monitor The N.J. Supreme Court declared shaken baby syndrome unreliable, affirming lower court rulings in two fathers' child abuse cases.

The Supreme Court of New Jersey found that "Shaken Baby Syndrome" "has not been generally accepted in the biomechanical community, making expert testimony about it unreliable and inadmissible in court.": newjerseymonitor.com/2025/11/20/n...

I'm on the #EconJobMarket! I study how policies and childhood environments shape outcomes of low-income & vulnerable kids.

In my JMP, I study the effects of allowing youth who would have aged out of foster care at 18 to stay until 21—offering support their peers not in foster care get from parents.

“the hardest hue to hold” according to RF

I just learned that AHRQ doesn't have enough staff to review dissertation grant proposals (R36). What a waste - of the time students put into writing the proposals, the administrative staff who process them, and most importantly of the potential research talent that would have been developed.

Update: Nothing gold can stay.

Rethinking Prior Authorization in Medicare Advantage Prior authorization can help encourage the efficient use of health care resources in Medicare Advantage, but there should be limits on when it’s required.

Some thoughts on optimizing prior authorization in Medicare Advantage, co-authored with some of my favorite scholars @hneprash.bsky.social, @michaelannica.bsky.social, and @egolberstein.bsky.social, and supported by @commonwealthfund.org

www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2025/re...

Autism and Vaccines QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS PAGE 2 OF 9 | ALL PAGES J For Everyone NOV. 19, 2025 KEY POINTS • The claim "vaccines do not cause autism" is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. • Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.

HHS Research on Plausible Biologic Mechanisms between Vaccines and Autism HHS will evaluate plausible biologic mechanisms between early childhood vaccinations and autism. Mechanisms for further investigation include the impacts of aluminum adjuvants, risks for certain children with mitochondrial disorders, harms of neuroinflammation, and more. * The header "Vaccines do not cause autism" has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.

CDC has overhauled its website to assert that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim”

To anyone who teaches ethics - the current Eagles team drama is a perfect case study of deontology vs consequentialism.

My NIH proposal wasn't reviewed as scheduled because of the shutdown.

FOIA-minded researchers of science policy- The shutdown could serve as a natural experiment to study the effects of funding delays on publications, promotion, patents, etc.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

yale campus at dusk

Come be my colleague! Yale School of Public Health has an open-rank search for Health Policy & Management. Focus areas are empirical research in health policy, healthcare management or health services research. You still have time! apply.interfolio.com/176891

Medicaid Insurers Promise Lots of Doctors. Good Luck Seeing One. Many doctors listed in insurer networks treat few or no Medicaid recipients, leaving patients with long waits. “Don’t get sick.”

Private Medicaid insurers list big networks of doctors to help get billions of taxpayer dollars. Many of those doctors don't actually see Medicaid patients.

Today brought us a new one in this genre. Life insurance offer! No medical exam required!

Clinical Trials Affected by Research Grant Terminations at the National Institutes of Health This cross-sectional study summarizes the number of trials with terminated grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and calculates the proportion of affected trials among those with previou...

Important new analysis identifying the scope of clinical trials disrupted because of NIH shenanigans.

> 74 thousand trial participants affected

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

1/4

Kosali Simon is one of my academic heroes. I'm so happy for her.

This is *extremely* bad (for the accuracy of my paper introductions about tech adoption)

Beta-Blockers after Myocardial Infarction without Reduced Ejection Fraction | NEJM Current guideline recommendations for the use of beta-blockers after myocardial infarction without reduced ejection fraction are based on trials conducted before routine reperfusion, invasive care,...

...we were wrong. A trial in this month's NEJM confirms what many cardiologists had already come to realize: beta blockers don't help most of the time in the reperfusion era. (2/2) www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

"Beta blockers after heart attack"- maybe the best known quality measure. It was often used in health services research. It was such a successful measure, it was retired by NCQA because hospitals were performing so well. There was a memorable mock eulogy in NEJM at the time. But.. (1/2)

Paul you are going to become the most famous economist in the world in like the next 90 minutes.

New in @thelancet.com: a follow-up to our @nature.com paper on cash transfers and mortality in low- and middle-income countries.

This studies explores *why* cash transfers reduce death, tracing effects on determinants of survival.

free access 🔗: kwnsfk27.r.eu-west-1.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F...

Interventions To Automate Medicaid Renewals Reduce Procedural Denials And Increase Coverage | Health Affairs Journal Burdensome Medicaid renewal processes are a known source of coverage loss among eligible people. In spring 2023, the pause in Medicaid disenrollment resulting from the COVID-19 public health emergency...

🚨 New research 🚨 "Interventions To Automate Medicaid Renewals Reduce Procedural Denials And Increase Coverage," published in Health Affairs from authors @pamherd.bsky.social @giannella.bsky.social, me, @lukef.bsky.social and @donmoyn.bsky.social

Full paper: www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10....

When Clinicians Take On Risk-Based Contracts in Medicare Advantage Value-based payment models are one of those rare ideas in health care policy that enjoy bipartisan support. The concept is appealing: clinicians are held responsible for total spending and quality tar...

And we're fortunate to have a thoughtful accompanying editor's note by @ishaniganguli.bsky.social jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Health Care Utilization and Low-Value Service Use After Risk-Based Contract Adoption This cohort study examined whether health care organizations’ transition to risk-based payment contracts in Medicare Advantage was associated with changes in health care utilization or use of low-valu...

🚨New Publication🚨 Risk-based provider payment is more common in Medicare Advantage than any other segment of US health care financing. What happens to broad categories of health care utilization, and low-value service use, when provider groups adopt these contracts? jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...