Kelly Kersten

Congrats Tom!! 🎉

Congrats @hannahgarner.bsky.social!! 👏🏻

Sunsets in Del Mar #BlueSkyArtShow

One of the most powerful moments of the day came from Emily Whitehead who told the story of how she was the first pediatric patient to receive CAR T-cell therapy for her leukemia at age 5: “I stand up for science because science saved my life. And that’s a fact.” @standupforscience.bsky.social

Opinion | American Science is Under Attack The Trump administration hobbles research and endangers the public health.

"I've spent over five decades as a scientist in academia and the federal government," Harold Varmus, the former director of the N.I.H., writes in a guest essay. "Never before have I seen my profession so politicized as it is now under the Trump administration."

Thank you, AACR 🧪 🧬 🦀 @theaacr.bsky.social

www.aacr.org/about-the-aa...

𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 "𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬"? When I write a grant, I provide a budget of the estimated "direct" costs that it will take to complete the project. These direct costs include things like salaries (mine + my lab members), student tuition, lab supplies, computing, and specialized equipment. The "indirect" costs on NIH grants are added on top of this and they pay for things like building infrastructure, utilities (water, electricity, internet), and salaries of administrative support staff like people who help us submit the grants, safety personnel, and janitors. The description that NIH is subsidizing universities with indirects is false. These are costs that are essential to perform the research that the government has agreed to fund. Indirects are negotiated with the government ahead of time so these are mutually agreed upon numbers and can't be changed by universities (or the government) on a whim. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐍𝐈𝐇 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬? For this, I think some numbers are helpful. If I write a $100,000 grant, my institution's indirect rate is 62.5% so the university submits a total budget of $162,500 to the NIH for the project (100k for me, 62.5k for indirect costs). The new 15% rate is supposed to be effective immediately and applied to current grants (where we already agreed on the costs) such that suddenly instead of $62,500, the NIH will only pay the university $15,000. This will simply not cover the costs of actually performing the proposed research. Remember, the government set these indirect cost numbers - they were negotiated with universities that had to prove how this money is spent and follow very strict rules about what it can be used for. Let me be clear: these changes will destroy biomedical research in the US. 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞? Most people are not scientists, so why should they care about research? Universities are often among the top employers in their cities. Even …

I am starting this morning by reaching outside of my science echo chamber (posting on facebook) to explain why the NIH matters and why the new indirect rate policy will be catastrophic to everyone