Isobel Beasley

Genetic Data From Over 20,000 U.S. Children Misused for ‘Race Science’

🚨🚨🚨 "At least 63 times since 2007, data from some of the 28 human genomic repositories that the N.I.H. controls was improperly released to researchers, used for unapproved purposes or made vulnerable to theft..." (Gift Link) www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

Proud to share our latest publication out in @pediatricresearch.bsky.social!

We investigated the effects of extended CPAP on the metabolomic profile and its association with lung function in preterm infants, providing insight into neonatal respiratory support.

Read it here: doi.org/10.1038/s413...

How likely is ‘likely’? Does ‘likely’ have a higher probability than ‘probable’? I put together a quick quiz so you can see how you interpret probability phrases, then see how you compare with others: probability.kucharski.io

Today is the day! Our reply to the two concurrent critiques (from the same set of authors) is now published in the journal Intelligence 🧵 1/

@joann-trejo.bsky.social, @marymunson4.bsky.social and I have a commentary in @natcellbio.nature.com on recent attacks on DEI in biomedical research: "If scientific research, especially biomedical research, is meant to serve everyone, then it requires that everyone has an opportunity to participate"

A chart of "Major concerns of PhD candidates." The top text says, "Financial pressures top the list of concerns faced by PhD candidates, but concerns differ among the sexes. Those studying in the United States rank the political landscape as their main worry." The chart shows that in the full survey, political landscape is the biggest concern for about 20% of students (a bit higher for women than men) but there's an annotation saying "In US PhD students, this rose to 64%". Overall, the highest-rated concern was financial pressures at around 40%.

That's quite the chart annotation.

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

Drosophila Genetic Database The Drosophila Genetic Database, FlyBase, is on the brink of collapse due to the sudden termination of the FlyBase NIH grant, which includes salaries for 5 literature curators based at the University ...

Flybase lost all of the NIH support overnight - it is a disaster for the community. Please consider donating. I just did! www.philanthropy.cam.ac.uk/give-to-camb...

Flyer with a stone and moss background advertising the Graduate Research Fellowship Writing Workshop for Plant Researchers. Large header text at the top announces the workshop. Main text explains that the Botanical Society of America’s 2025 workshop is open to students preparing research statements for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) or other graduate-level grants. Program includes: A panel discussion in late September (date TBD) on how to write a winning proposal. Small working groups with students, a grad student mentor, and a senior mentor to share proposals and give feedback. On the right is a QR code with the text “Students register here!” and a shortened URL. Logos of NSF GRFP, the Botanical Society of America, and Botany360 are at the bottom.

BSA’s Graduate Research Fellowship Writing Workshop is back! Whether you’re applying for the NSF GRFP or another graduate-level fellowship, this workshop will help you craft clear, compelling research statements.

Apply by Sept. 26: forms.gle/wfFPhVUELj47...
Workshop date to be announced soon!

If all the world were a monorepo The R ecosystem and the case for extreme empathy in software maintenance

Really insightful post from Julie Tibshirani (spotted in LinkedIn, can't find on Bsky) reflecting on #rstats 's unique governance structure and what can be learned for other languages

jtibs.substack.com/p/if-all-the...

A word cloud with dominant words "equity", "disparity", "diverse", and similar words.

Here is a word cloud of the words that were missing from the noncompetitive renewal awards but had been present in the parent award.

3/4

A higher resolution pic than my screenshot that captured the salute, from Alyssa Pointer (Reuters) – press weren’t allowed past the front gate for security reasons.

In general, thresholds provide a clear and consistent answer to 'how do I treat this patient in front of me' - making them very appealing to busy clinicians.

In terms of why we still use binary prs - I think it's reflective of current medical practice. Using thresholds to get yes/no assessments of risk / disease status is ubiquitous even though underlying continous measurements often provide more valuable information (e.g. high blood pressure cut-offs).

2) where it does hold, reducing a continuous measure of risk to a binary yes/no option reduces predictive power (and requires choosing a good threshold - which can be very hard)

How meaningful are heritability estimates of liability? It is commonly acknowledged that estimates of heritability from classical twin studies have many potential shortcomings. Despite this, in the post-GWAS era, these heritability estimates have come to b...

My understanding is the main issues are:

1) liability threshold model doesn't always hold (e.g. non-normality of risk, environmentally dependent effects, sex + age etc. differences in risk - this paper goes a bit into the first two: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...)

I just got the notice that all the FlyBase people at Harvard, including me, will be laid off on October 12. I'm devastated.

So delighted to congratulate @scimiguel.bsky.social on his PhD thesis being officially signed by his committee and accepted by the formatting gods! Just awaiting the conferral date to formally welcome Dr. Guardado to the club!!!

📣 New preprint from the SCIMaP team!

Across three studies, we show that communicating the economic impact of NIH funding cuts—especially with interactive quizzes and maps—decreases approval and motivates action to oppose the cuts, across the political spectrum. 🧵 1/8
osf.io/preprints/ps...

Germany used to lead the world in science. The language of science was German—until the Nazis came to power and chased out, imprisoned, or killed all the non-Nazi scientists. Fascists break good things, and it is happening here. (2/2)

Looking to build a community of folks working to improve and advance scientific #research, #innovation and #STEMworkforce development. #competitiveness #policy

@chrispickett5.bsky.social @ubadahsabbagh.com @scipolguy.bsky.social @matthourihan.bsky.social @jpflores.bsky.social

go.bsky.app/FQk37Ba

A map of the US with the states the republican senators are from marked in red and states the democratic senators are from marked in blue: Senator Susan Collins (Republican - Maine) Senator Mitch McConnell(Republican - Kentucky) Senator Lisa Murkowski(Republican - Alaska) Senator Lindsey Graham(Republican - South Carolina) Senator Jerry Moran(Republican - Kansas) Senator John Hoeven(Republican - North Dakota) Senator John Boozman(Republican - Arkansas) Senator Shelley Moore Capito(Republican - West Virginia) Senator John Kennedy(Republican - Louisiana) Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith(Republican - Mississippi) Senator Bill Hagerty(Republican - Tennessee) Senator Katie Britt(Republican - Alabama) Senator Markwayne Mullin(Republican - Oklahoma) Senator Deb Fischer(Republican - Nebraska) Senator Mike Rounds(Republican - South Dakota) Patty Murray(Democrat - Washington) Richard Durbin(Democrat - Illinois) Jack Reed(Democrat - Rhode Island) Jeanne Shaheen(Democrat - New Hampshire) Jeff Merkley(Democrat - Oregon) Christopher Coons(Democrat - Delaware) Brian Schatz(Democrat - Hawaii) Tammy Baldwin(Democrat - Wisconsin) Chris Murphy(Democrat - Connecticut) Chris Van Hollen(Democrat - Maryland) Martin Heinrich(Democrat - New Mexico) Gary Peters(Democrat - Michigan) Kirsten Gillibrand(Democrat - New York) Jon Ossoff(Democrat - Georgia)

Are you from one of these states? Then we need your help to save American science!

The Senate Appropriations Committee will be marking up the President's Budget Request for science on Wednesday. People have been saying the proposed cuts "decimated" US science, but that's wrong: they are apocalyptic

Excellent work, Adrienne! Thank you so much for sharing, and speaking to the public about your work and why federally funded research matters.

Iowa: Sen. Ernst Maine: Sen. Collins Missouri: Sen. Hawley North Carolina: Sen. Tillis Ohio: Sen. Husted Utah: Sen. Curtis West Virginia: Sen. Capito

If one of these people is your senator, it is incredibly important that you call them today.

Urge them to vote NO on the Senate budget bill that would make most Americans poorer to give billionaires a tax cut they don't even need.

🚨 BREAKING: Nearly 4 months the NIH cut its first grants, a judge has ruled that the directives and process that led to cuts are arbitrary and capricious.

"The explanations are bereft of reasoning — virtually in their entirety... unsupported by [facts]."

Each of them are VOID and ILLEGAL, he says.

I wrote about science cuts and my family's immigration story as part of The McClintock Letters organized by @cornellasap.bsky.social. Haven't yet placed it in a Houston-based newspaper but hopefully it's useful here

gargnikhil.com/posts/202506...

Research cuts will strangle our nation’s progress The benefits of basic scientific study take time, even decades after an initial finding. Research cuts will hinder our progress.

Op-eds across the country and an open letter are out today to fight for the future of science in honor of Barbara McClintock's birthday - including mine. Thanks to @cornellasap.bsky.social @sciencehomecoming.bsky.social and @standupforscience.bsky.social!! www.dallasnews.com/opinion/comm...

Since we featured the Stand Up for Science letter in the Good Trouble segment of the Daily Beans podcast this morning, signatures have gone from roughly 5,000 to 15,000! You can add your name by clicking the link below:

Variant-specific priors clarify colocalisation analysis Author summary Evaluating whether two traits, such as disease risk and gene expression, are affected by the same genetic variants is crucial for understanding the molecular mechanisms through which ge...

Very happy that my first PhD paper is now out in PLOS Genetics! journals.plos.org/plosgenetics.... We describe our implementation of variant-specific priors in coloc. We show that using distance to the TSS as information about which variants are causal can improve colocalisation performance, 1/n

Front-page-style graphic titled “BREAKING NEWS” with photos of RFK Jr. and Dr. Bhattacharya in front of a government hearing chamber. Text reads: “NIH Scientists Sound the Alarm as Health Research Faces Historic Threat” and “NIH Employees Send Trump Cronies Scathing Wake-Up Call.”

🚨BREAKING: 300+ NIH employees call out the harm of censorship & politicized science in scathing email to Bhattacharya, demanding an end to political interference, a lift on funding freezes, & rehiring of fired staff whose work saves lives.

This is historic - insiders are blowing the whistle.
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