Brianne Barker

Helping my parents clean out their attic

NIH Directly Saved Millions of U.S. Lives and That Has Been (Intentionally) Forgotten Over the weekend, Russell Vought, Chief Theocrat and head of OMB, launched a nonsensical rant about NIH. Many arguments on behalf of NIH, and they’re not wrong, focus on long-term research th…

“It was the NIH [that played an integral role in the development of a vaccine in record breaking time that saved at a minimum, one million U.S. lives]…It’s our responsibility to remember what really happened and remind other people of this.” 🧪

mikethemadbiologist.com/2025/07/30/n...

Really interested to read these papers

Trump Administration Puts New Chokehold on Billions in Health-Research Funding The National Institutes of Health can’t award grants to outside researchers under a new White House restriction.

NEW
The White House is blocking the NIH from awarding new research grants for the rest of the fiscal year

Chokes off billions in research funding

Gift link www.wsj.com/politics/pol... with @nidhisubs.bsky.social

I can’t even

Comic. [3-column table with headers Period, My Favorite Part, and My Biggest Complaint] [Row 1] P: *Precambrian*, MFP: Life develops, MBC: Snowball Earth episodes [Row 2] P: Cambrian, MFP: Trilobites!, MBC: Evolution could stand to calm down a little [Row 3] P: Ordovician, MFP: Earth might have had rings, MBC: Scary volcanic eruption in North America [Row 4] P: Silurian, MFP: First land animals, MBC: Earth’s newfound mold problem [Row 5] P: Devonian, MFP: Big mountains in Boston, MBC: Yeah, sure, what those giant killer fish needed was *armor* [Row 6] P: Carboniferous, MFP: Cool forests, MBC: Bugs too big [Row 7] P: Permian, MFP: Pangea, MBC: Google “The Great Dying” [Row 8] P: Triassic, MFP: Tanystropheus [dinosaur with extremely long neck next to tiny person for scale], MBC: Damage to Canada still visible from space at Manicouagan [Row 9] P: Jurassic, MFP: Birds, MBC: Parasitoid wasps [Row 10] P: Cretaceous, MFP: Raptors, MBC: Raptors [Row 11] P: Paleogene, MFP: Pretty horseys!!!, MBC: Paleocene-eocene thermal maximum [Row 12] P: Neogene, MFP: Forests of *Dracaena* Dragonblood Trees, MBC: Zanclean Flood [Row 13] P: Quaternary, MFP: Burrito invented, MBC: Whoever picked this name for the third period of the Cenozoic

Geologic Periods

xkcd.com/3120/

Given the lack of significant outrage, people are either unaware or believe they can weather this storm. The latter set reminds me of folks confident they would get on the lifeboats when the Titanic was sinking. At 5% success & a six-grant application limit, there aren't enough lifeboats. /2

With news that NIH grant success rates are now below 5%, consider the effort that goes into one of these grants (apart from you, who submitted 60 AI-written grants)- why would you put in that much effort knowing your chances are only slightly better than winning a lottery? 1/

few outcomes, except for 99% of FDA-approved drugs, 174 recipients of 104 Nobel Prizes, training ~30K MDs and ~10K PhDs per year to enter the workforce, and a 34% reduction in age-adjusted cancer deaths since 1990 -- the largest decrease in history

It is an extraordinary loss of intellectual expertise that the American people invested millions in developing

Every scientist who earns a graduate degree in the US is the product of an investment by the public

This is like setting money on fire

And now we know what I will be trying to solve tonight #YesIAmANerd

Who can get their flu shot this fall? My latest newsletter breaks down how access to flu vaccines, especially for kids and people on Medicaid, could be disrupted if HHS doesn’t adopt routine CDC recommendations.
1/

The NIH’s 2024 budget of just under $37B generated $95B in economic activity in 2024 alone. 99.4% of new pharmaceuticals approved from 2010-2019 came from NIH-funded research. I’m hard pressed to think of anything that generates as much direct economic benefit as our NIH did before they destroyed it

My linocut portrait of Rosalind Franklin (1920 – 1958), in a gradient of magenta from her shoulders up through dark blue to her hair. Her necklace is a double helix of DNA. Her brooch is the Tobacco Mosaic Virus. The pattern on her jacket is based on her publication of the structure of non-graphitizing carbon. ⁠ Behind her in shades of robin’s egg blue is an image of the famous X-ray crystallographic Photo 51, produced by her grad student Gosling and important to deducing the structure of DNA.

Happy birthday Rosalind Franklin (1920 –1958), #chemist & x-ray crystallographer whose x-ray diffraction images were instrumental to discovering double-helix structure of DNA, made important contributions to carbon & virus research, was 1 of the great scientists of the 20th century.⁠ 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬 #histsci 🧵

The Saga of the H5N1 Freedom Ostriches CFIA murder drones, baptisms in bird shit, and poorly attended anti-vax music festivals: what the hell is going on up here in Canada?

Next-level public health clownery here in Canada with these bird flu ostriches, with accusations of CFIA murder drones, impromptu baptisms in ostrich farm runoff, and putting on the anti-vax bird flu version of the Fyre Festival.

open.substack.com/pub/rasmusse...

@goastromo.bsky.social At a bookstore in Montreal

Completed my term as Dept Chair and am now excited to spend more time thinking about science! At conferences for the next week and a half getting my science brain back. :)

Also can’t say enough about the museum special events I have participated in so far in 2025. Wow! Definitely planning to keep this membership.

Went to @amnh.org for Member Hours last night with a data visualization talk about the new planetarium show and tonight to see a talk/show about the making of the planetarium show. I thought the show was amazing before, but now I am truly in awe. You HAVE to go see it.

Research situation I am trying to figure out. If you have (recent) experience receiving human cell lines from international investigators via FedEx, could you PM me?

YouTube video by MicrobeTV Immune Booster #12: Innate immunity to Archaea with Holger Heine

See the full episode here

From the 2024 Society for Leukocyte Biology meeting, Immune talks with Holger Heine about the discovery of immune recognition of bacterial lipopolysaccharide and innate immunity to organisms within the kingdom Archaea. 🔗👇

@cindyleifer.bsky.social
@bioprofbarker.bsky.social

Anyone have access to a pdf of this?

YouTube video by MicrobeTV Immune 90: Immunology of injury

Immune 90: Immunology of injuryFrom the 2024 Society for Leukocyte Biology meeting at Michigan State University.

Immune's Cindy and Brianne talk with Liz Kovacs and Jim Lederer about their careers, dirty mice, old mice, and immunity during trauma.

@bioprofbarker.bsky.social

YouTube video by MicrobeTV Immune Booster #10: HIV in the brain with Amanda Brown

Have you checked out the Immune Booster this week? Special guest Amanda Brown of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine sits down with hosts @bioprofbarker.bsky.social and @cindyleifer.bsky.social to talk about research mechanisms of neuro-inflammation in disease, especially during HIV infection.

Two truths and a lie

Truth: There are adverse events from MMR and all vaccines.

Truth: People die, albeit very, very, VERY rarely.

BIG FUCKING LIE: the MMR does NOT cause measles or any sequelae. It prevents measles. It’s safe and effective. Measles disables & kills children. Vaccinate your kids

My talking points in recent interviews, please use as you see fit:
1.Every $1 in NIH funding returns ~$2.50 to the economy.
2.Every $1B in cuts from NIH extramural = 7500 lost employees, just in science.
3.These don't include priceless improvements in health.
1/x

BREAKING: Volunteers have recreated the Old CDC Website from before Trump took office here: restoredcdc.org Please Share

restoredcdc.org/www.cdc.gov/

Nearly 90 Higher Ed Organizations and Researchers Urge Congress to Protect Postsecondary Data IHEP, alongside over 60 organizations and 24 individuals, sent a letter to Congress urging the protection of student and transparency regarding recent cancellation of key contracts and grants at the I...

Oh hey, me and some of my cool higher ed policy friends signed a thing!

www.ihep.org/press/nearly...

$405M to researchers in NJ in FY2025 supposed 5411 jobs and generated $1.37B in economic activity unitedformedicalresearch.org