Michael Love

Text from an FAQ in Okbay et al 20222: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z a similar same statement is made in an FAQ in 2025: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.653986v1.supplementary-material Text reads: "The results of SSGAC studies have sometimes been used by online platforms, including some companies, to predict individual outcomes. We recognize that returning individual genomic “results” can be a fun way to engage people in research and other projects and to feed or stoke their interest in genomics. But it is important that participants/users understand that these individual results are not meaningful predictions and should be regarded essentially as entertainment. Failure to make this point clear risks sowing confusion and undermining trust in genetics research"

It is depressing, but all too predictable, how swiftly we’ve gone from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium offering reassurances about the uses of behavioural polygenic scores to one of their lead authors marketing embryo selection for IQ

Larry Summers: "This is way beyond anything Nixon ever did ... this is the stuff of democracies giving way to authoritarianism. Firing statisticians goes with threatening the heads of newspapers, launching assaults on universities, launching assaults on law firms. This is really scary stuff."

The US could see a 30-40% decline in new international student enrollment, resulting in nearly $7 billion in lost revenue and more than 60,000 fewer American jobs. https://www.nafsa.org/fall-2025-international-student-enrollment-outlook-and-economic-impact

So sorry Amy. We are in deep trouble.

My first conference ever was at IPAM as an undergrad, bringing me into scientific research.

When I branched out into new topics, my first conference as new faculty was also at IPAM.

My R35 was suspended. A lot of personal feelings, but more I worry for the future of the country.

Terence Tao (@teorth.bsky.social) has written a thread on Mastodon about the impact of the federal grant freeze to UCLA, particularly to his own field of Mathematics. UCLA's IPAM (Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics) could shut down entirely

mathstodon.xyz/@tao/1149568...

A few thoughts on Herasight, the new embryo selection company. First, their whitepaper (drive.google.com/file/d/1EpFi...) implies that competitors like Nucleus have been marketing and selling grossly erroneous risk estimates. This is shocking if true! 🧵

My book Epigenetics: History, Molecules and Diseases will be published in exactly one month (September 2).

Finalizing cover (looks great), probably going to printer this week.

Nervous anticipation is the mood right now.

one of the single best deals in streaming. i've been paying for PBS Passport for years. it rules

This workshop is going to be great fun, and I really look forward to meeting everyone!

It would mean a lot to me if you signed up!

Can you explain it to me like I'm five 🤣 You mean the variance explained that is beyond marginal effects from two sites? Does it matter to center the two genotypes for this sim?

It’s been 4-years since the Mass Ave Bridge added separated bike lanes. Despite initial opposition, it’s been a massive success for bikers, drivers & pedestrians.

Fall 2023 data saw an avg of 6,160 bikes crossing the bridge, a 51% increase. Vehicle travel times remain unchanged.

Congratulations Dr Carr!!

Is that all?

Or do you have supplementary

🧬 New study from the Kinkley Lab! 🧬 In collaboration with the Vingron and Hnisz labs at the MPIMG the team has gained new insights how the epigenetic reader PHF13 regulates it´s affinity to bind to chromatin.
Read more: www.molgen.mpg.de/2025-07-28-o...
Congrats to first author Francesca Rossi!

CSV is arguably the default data storage format for analytics teams. CSV format is advantageous for its simplicity. When the data size is small, it is easy to inspect the CSV data using a spreadsheet… CSV to Parquet: Managing data for multi-language analytics teams - Viswadutt Poduri

UseR 2025: CSV to Parquet: Managing data for multi-language analytics teams www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnFQ... #Rstats

Description Positron is a next generation data science IDE built by the creators of RStudio. It has been available for beta testing for a number of months, and R users may have wondered if they… A first look at Positron - Julia Silge

UseR 2025: A first look at Positron www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKSr... #Rstats

Virtual #useR2025 has officially started, but you can still register throughout the day!

If the scheduled times are no good for your time zone, you can always catch up with them when it's a better time of the day for you. The registration confirmation contains info to access the videos. #RStats

An #rstats thought from @visnut.bsky.social bubbled up in my brain, I wanted to share: "#rstats pkgs with example data should include data visualisations for their datasets." Di wrote about this (in 2013!) with Antony Unwin and Heike Hofmann. Well worth a read! journal.r-project.org/articles/RJ-...

“The committee also rejected the administration’s plans to cap payments for research overhead, also known as indirect costs. Researchers have argued that these payments cover key administrative and facility costs linked to research, and that reducing them could grind scientific progress to a halt.”

Just checked #useR2025 registrations and we're just 44 people shy of hitting 1000 signups for the virtual conference! If you're in the mood for some #RStats from the comfort of your home, register at user2025.r-project.org/register and join the fun!

The NIH budget will INCREASE by $400 million — not slashed by 40%, as Trump proposed — according to a proposal by Senate appropriators, says Sen Murray.

"Some have asked if there will even be an NIH by [2029]. The commmittee's resounding message is yes—Congress has your back", she says.

Full Committee Markup of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Acts | United States Senate Committee on Appropriations United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

Senate Appropriations has a modest *INCREASE* in NIH funding but it will need to be recconciled with the house cut. If you have not been calling your representative of late now would be a good time to start again
www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/ful...

Full Committee Markup of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Acts | United States Senate Committee on Appropriations United States Senate Committee on Appropriations

🧪 Senate appropriators say: NIH's budget gets a... boost!

Rather than 40% cut, NIH gets a $400M *increase* in the Senate committee bill for FY26 (about +1%).

"Congress has your back," said @murray.senate.gov.

ADVOCACY MATTERS! There's still a long road (esp in the House), so keep up pressure.

bioRxiv bat signal going up. We have a big backlog of submissions. If any affiliates have time to do some screening, we (and all the authors) would be immensely grateful! 🙏

From left to right, Dr. Albert Mulenga, William Tae Heung Kim, Dr. Thu Thuy Nguyen, Dr. Alex Kiarie Gaithuma, Dr Hassan Hakimi and Emily Bencosme Cuevas. Kim is a Texas A&M researcher who was detained in San Francisco last Monday despite being a permanent resident of the United States and a green card holder. COURTESY OF TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

I NEED to tell you the story of Tae Heung “William” Kim.

He's a graduate student at Texas A&M where he's working on a vaccine for Lyme disease.

He's a *legal permanent resident* of the United States.

And he's been in ICE detention for 12 days & counting, transferred Tuesday to South Texas.

U.S. Visa Bureaucracy and Its Burdens Among Early Career Scholars Foreign-born research scholars on temporary visas are essential to the U.S. scientific workforce and economy, yet they face systemic challenges shaped by restrictive immigration policies. While schola...

📣 Thrilled to share the first paper from ReForm Lab

Are you an international scholar on a visa? Faculty with international students in your lab and class? Student center workers? For the 1st time, we report data on visa burdens from over 700 ECRs.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Yes we've used Paperpile with multiple authors working together

Promotional poster for the useR! 2025 conference at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA. The design features the event logo with a blue bull and “useR! 2025” text. Below it, the event details note August 8–10, 2025 for the in-person conference and August 1, 2025 for the virtual one. A banner reads “Ticket Sales End August 1st.” The background image shows a tree-lined road in autumn leading toward Duke Chapel.

Ticket Sales end on August 1st!

Register for in-person and virtual events:
user2025.r-project.org/register

useR! 2025 will be held from Friday, August 8th to Sunday, August 10th, Duke University in Durham, NC, USA.
#rstats #useR2025

Vision Zero is achievable in an urban context.

We know how, we just have to do it.