W. Carson Byrd

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

Sociology pulls back the curtain on power - how it's constructed, how it's maintained, and the (il)legitimacy of those in power - and that's why they're so afraid of it.

(It's also why Intro Soc is my favorite class to teach.)

Virginia proposes a law to teach facts in schools

Google data center water estimates go public, residents in Roanoke and Botetourt react A proposed Google data center campus in Botetourt County could use between 2 million and 8 million gallons of drinking water per day, according to an executed agreement between the developer and the W...

one google data center in virginia

two million gallons of water per day

information only released under court order & risk of contempt

For the first time, we now know how many Black-owned bookstores exist in the U.S. The National Association of Black Bookstores has released the “first comprehensive national report” on the state of America’s Black-owned bookstores.

For the first time, we now know how many Black-owned bookstores exist in the U.S.
open.substack.com/pub/phillewi...

This reminds me of when I was a PhD candidate during comps (prelims). I was surprised that *I* had to put together all 3 of my reading lists instead of my committee. But then I realized that the act of compiling was an important learning experience.

“UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf has shown that deep reading, defined as sustained immersion in a text, builds the cognitive circuits required for critical analysis, empathy and perspective-taking in ways that skimming, scrolling and short-form video simply cannot.”

Someone putting the Institute for Advanced Study chalkboards to other good use…

I want to take you back, for a moment, to 2020. We are at the beginning of the pandemic and many of us are working remotely. I don't remember this time particularly fondly--this was pre COVID-19 vaccines, and there was a lot of rhetoric around how the virus had come from China. 🧵

Delays in awards and funding calls worry NIH-funded researchers Many programs may be pushed into the next fiscal year, and some could face funding gaps

These NOFO delays have created so many gaps in longstanding programs, including programs that are congressionally mandated.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Despite increasing use of observational data in public health, researchers are still hesitant to use strong causal language (for fear of overpromising).

New paper and comment in @bmj.com sets out new guidance on appropriate use/misuse of causal language

www.bmj.com/content/392/...

How the Student Loan Repayment Pause Increased Latinx Borrowers’ Agency and Diversified Their Spectrum of Emotions - Daisy Verduzco Reyes, Melissa Quesada, Kimberly Garcia-Galvez, 2025 The coronavirus pandemic drastically reshaped how much of society functioned. Most of these changes were unfortunate in some way, but one change welcomed by man...

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology The Swedish Institute for Social research (SOFI) is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Stockholm University. The institute is an internationally leading research institute in the field of socia

📢 We are hiring a Postdoctoral Fellow in Sociology at SOFI, Stockholm University.

Interested in research on the causes and consequences of social policy for individuals and society?

Apply by 13 April 2026.

More information and application:
su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

#postdoc #sociology

Such a disastrous approach & frustrating situation. Students can ‘learn’ to do coding (& by extension stats models), but have little substantive background knowledge of what is going on, & other colleagues absolving themselves from teaching for reasons I’m sure we could correctly guess.

Exploring Factors Influencing Administrative Spending in Higher Education Despite increasing financial challenges facing much of higher education, relatively little is known about how institutions allocate resources to different activities, particularly in areas other than ...

New working paper: I use detailed spending data from HelioCampus to look at universities' non-academic spending. Institutional budget models and centralization appear to influence administrative spending, and there are some strategic decisions made during tough budget years. (1/)

can you teach something at Texas A&M? just follow this flowchart.

www.chronicle.com/article/insi... via @jasperjsmith.bsky.social and @mzahneis.bsky.social

Now hiring: #Postdoc in Rural Maternal & Perinatal Health (#NIH U01) at USC @uscarnoldschool.bsky.social

Seeking a scholar committed to #RuralHealth #MaternalHealth equity and high-impact #research dissemination.

Apply: uscjobs.sc.edu/postings/201...

@academyhealth.bsky.social @apha.org

COME WORK WITH ME! Our job ad is now up! Molloy University is hiring an assistant professor (TT) in Sociology - preferences toward specialties in health, gender, immigration. Small private college with teaching focus and commuting distance to NYC! #academicjobs workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...

Conceptualizing Academic Freedom Academic freedom is an unusual and complex set of norms and practices. It arises out of the combination of the corporate self-governance of medieval universities and the spirit of disciplinary scienti...

This is well worth your time. It's systematic and carful and also contains pithy passages that bring things into focus.
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

The Retreat from DEI: The Impact of Legal and Political Developments on DEI Language in U.S. Private Foundations Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, large private foundations in the United States widely adopted language related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) on their public-facing websites. In 2023, a series of legal and political developments began reversing the institutional pressures that had encouraged this adoption: first the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023), then state-level anti-DEI legislation, and culminating in President Trump’s Executive Order 14151 (2025). Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, we constructed a longitudinal corpus of 3,612 archived web pages from thirteen large U.S. private foundations and tracked the frequency of sixty-seven DEI-related terms from 2019 to 2025. Among the nine foundations with data in both years, a Wilcoxon signed-rank test indicates a decline from 2023 to 2025 (one-sided p = .029, two-sided p = .059), with median usage falling approximately 40 percent. The decline was broad-based across many terms. These patterns are consistent with coercive isomorphism: the same process that drove widespread, convergent adoption of DEI language after 2020 now appears to be reversing it. The findings establish an empirical baseline for tracking how political pressure reshapes organizational communication about equity.

🚨What if some intrepid students and I decided to see if private foundations' public stances on justice were thin enough to fold under anti-DEI pressure? We tracked their website language using Wayback Machine. The retreat is real and it seems political vibes alone supercharged it. osf.io/29gda_v1

ProPublica Sues Education Department for Withholding Records About Discrimination in Schools Under Secretary Linda McMahon, the work of the Office for Civil Rights, which aims to protect students from discrimination, is cloaked in secrecy.

ProPublica has sued the U.S. Department of Education
W/ @jsmithrichards.bsky.social

www.propublica.org/article/educ...

Is there an alumni group for IES-funded PhD’s?

IES supposedly funded over 1000 PhDs, of which I am apparently one of the last. With the training grants dying, it’d be great to have a formal alumni network where we could share jobs, grant opportunities, etc.

Do You Agree? Do You Strongly Agree? The Effect of the Number of Response Categories on Response Processes and Verification of Substantive Hypotheses Abstract. This study investigates how the number and labeling of response categories in survey scales affect respondent behavior, psychometric properties,

This is consistent with earlier psychometric work that suggests 5-7 is the best response scale options, but good to see that the finding holds up in contemporary research. Also, good to see that labeling scales whether anchored or not has little impact on findings. academic.oup.com/ijpor/articl...

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

1/10

UNC-Chapel Hill scraps secret recording policy in surprise reversal Chancellor Lee Roberts announced Friday that the university is reversing course.

Glad this was reversed, but more to be done

NEW IN TSQ

Ingrid Nelson, Jeremiah Brown, and Nicole Nigro employ racialized organization and inhabited institutionalism theories to explore how athletes and non-athletes experienced campus life before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Free to read through the end of April at bit.ly/4aFLDeR

SOCG 264 – Economic Sociology Last Minute Economic Sociology What do sociologists even know about the economy? Surprisingly, maybe as much as economists[*]! In this ten-week graduate course, we will explore recent sociological …

The syllabus for my grad course in Economic Sociology is ready!
A bit different, I hope, than other econ soc courses.

pardoguerra.org/socg-264-eco...

NSF officials break silence on how AI and quantum now drive agency grantmaking Leaders acknowledge White House role in controversial moves

NSF leaders have just acknowledged what many scientists have long suspected: Presidential directives to boost AI and quantum have upended its traditional way of doing business. www.science.org/content/arti...

Hey Universities: @columbiauniversity.bsky.social paid the Trump administration’s “protection racket” in full

Did it protect the University, the leadership, or the students? No it did not. Paying off bullies never works.

We've got beyond the practice of agents wearing masks to outright deception and abuses of trust. The lesson they are teaching the public is to not trust their government.