Scott Barrett

📣 Our Director Rick Bevins & Joyce Besheer are organizing the 73rd Nebraska Symposium on Motivation! The event will focus on the intersection of interoception, conditioning & motivation on addiction, health & well-being.

Apr 16-17, 2026 | Hybrid | Free & Open to All

🔗 Details: motivation.unl.edu

ATTN: Two faculty positions are available in my department (neuroscience) at the University of Minnesota. This is a general search with no topic focus. November 20th application deadline.

Apply here: hr.umn.edu/jobs/Find-Job
Assistant Prof job code: 364920
Associate/Full Prof job code: 364921

College athletics does not exist independent of college academics. There is a critical "student" component of "student athlete." Pouring this amount of funds into college athletics while firing tenured faculty, cutting programs, and charging students more for less is farcical absurdity.

They say the athletic department is financially independent from UNL and self-sustaining, yada yada yada. Fact of the matter is that the football team would not exist without the university. The scam of student athletics cannot function without a university.

We're facing $27.5M in cuts at UNL, on top of $75M since FY20, and they're closing departments and cutting programs while further raising tuition. Meanwhile, they're sparing no expense on extravagant luxury for a football team with a cumulative losing record over the past 12 seasons.

Regarding the first suspect.

Regarding the first suspect.

Peer reviewers more likely to approve articles that cite their own work Preprint examines how citations can influence the review process.

Reviewers are more likely to approve manuscripts if authors agree to cite their work than those who don't get cited.
Thanks to @aidybarnett.bsky.social, @balazsaczel.bsky.social and @econfeld.bsky.social for chatting with me for this story!

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

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

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.
🧵(1/5)

The NIH has not issued a single new call for proposals since the end of January.

"This is what we were voting for!"

From a friend in academia:

>>I was with a public health professor from [major university] last weekend and he said that NIH is now euthanizing whole cohorts of animals from animal studies because there is nobody around to feed them<<

Great work.

All NSF GRFPs to students choosing to attend Harvard in the Fall were just terminated

Trump administration cancels grant to recruit engineering students from rural Nebraska Among the hundreds of National Science Foundation grants terminated by the Trump administration were programs to recruit engineering students from rural Nebraska and improve math instruction at the co...

A $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation was supposed to help the University of Nebraska-Lincoln recruit engineering students from rural parts of the Cornhusker State.

The Trump administration canceled the grant last month: journalstar.com/news/state-r...

What losing billions in federal grants means for universities, and the nation The Trump administration has so far frozen about $11 billion in research funding. University leaders say no other source can fill the void.

The Trump administration has so far frozen about $11 billion in research funding. University leaders say no other source can fill the void.

The World Is Wooing U.S. Researchers Shunned by Trump

A handful of US scientists will continue their research in foreign countries. Most of them will simply stop doing research altogether.

Experts warn Congress cuts to addiction funding will mean more overdose deaths A broad coalition of addiction experts wants Congress to maintain healthcare funding for the nation's response to fentanyl and other street drugs.

My latest for NPR www.npr.org/2025/05/13/n...

Trump picks conspiracy theorist with no medical license to be Surgeon General Previous nominee was withdrawn amid claims she had misrepresented her medical education

Trump picks conspiracy theorist with no medical license to replace Fox News contributor as Surgeon General

Heaven help America

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

RFK Jr. says autism database will use Medicare and Medicaid info The National Institutes of Health will partner with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to create a database of Americans with autism, using insurance claims, medical records and smartwatch data.

The National Institutes of Health will partner with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to create a database of Americans with autism, using insurance claims, medical records and smartwatch data.

“AI is a tool”

Imma stop you right there… the purpose of the exercise is not “essay”

The purpose of the exercise is organized thought that builds and supports an argument

If AI builds the argument you’ve missed the entire purpose of the exercise

Scientists reel as turmoil roils National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation, a major government funder of basic science research, is being shaken up with over 1,000 grants already terminated and the White House looking to halve its budget

The National Science Foundation, a major government funder of basic science research, is being shaken up with over 1,000 grants already terminated and the White House looking to halve its budget.

I just got the official email from the NSF about the drastic cuts and I think the correct translation is "if you are a young researcher who still wants to do science strongly consider leaving the United States if you can." which, really, is not an ideal message to be sending.

Exclusive: NSF stops awarding new grants and funding existing ones US science funder also plans to screen grant applications for compliance with ‘agency priorities’.

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Trump’s War on Measurement Means Losing Data on Drug Use, Maternal Mortality, Climate Change and More By slashing teams that gather critical data, the administration has left the federal government with no way of understanding if policies are working — and created a black hole of information whose…

By slashing teams that gather critical data, the Trump administration has left the federal government with no way of understanding if policies are working — and created a black hole of information whose consequences could ripple out for decades.

Working on this review gave me much joy. One highlight was sharing stories and successes of the past trainees. Another was learning more about my current team.

Congrats @solaryeti.bsky.social @katiermcnealy.bsky.social @mknabel.bsky.social and those not on bsky

psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

DOGE takes over federal grants website, wresting control of billions A DOGE engineer removed users’ access to grants.gov, threatening to further slow the process of awarding thousands of federal grants per year.

Scoop: DOGE now controls how grant opportunities get posted across government.

DOGE engineer removed users’ permissions to post to Grants-dot-gov without telling them. Now requests flow thru DOGE-controlled mailbox.

with @carolynyjohnson.bsky.social + @hannahnatanson.bsky.social

Suffice it to say, there is more than one mystery introduced in this review. We introduce several questions about the role of associative learning involving interoceptive drug stimuli in substance misuse and dependence. And there are many unanswered questions about "Dani." Can you solve them? 🕵️

They sure seem to share a lot of things in common and frequent the same spaces. Perhaps that's not surprising for best friends? But I have it on good authority that no one has ever seen Dani in the school library, but they have seen Jesse studying there—alone! Makes you think.

It hasn't escaped notice that both Jesse and Dani describe their favorite vape flavors as "yummy." Maybe they share a vocabulary because they spend so much time together, or because their dialogue was written by the same author, or ✨maybe✨ they've been the same person all along.

Jesse doesn't vape at church. Is that particularly surprising? Not really, but Dani doesn't go to church. Jesse doesn't vape around her mother, who has never met Dani or even heard of her for that matter. But now they're vacationing in Florida together for spring break? Really?