William Brazelton

Nobel Prize in Physics Is Awarded for Work in Quantum Mechanics

Two things of note in today's announcement of the 2025 Nobel physics prize (besides the work being honored).

1: The US institutional dominance of the prize continues.
2: 2 of the three laureates are immigrants, drawn here decades ago by the then-unmatched opportunities for science here...

1/

My heart goes out to all the Chiefs fans who might have to suffer through a 10-7 season

I have been trying to get this published as an op-ed, but I am going to post it here since I think it is timely in light of the "consent" extortion events.

Deafening Quiet from the Scientific Establishment

jeremymberg.github.io/jeremyberg.g...

1/14

This is what's been going on at NASA since the Trump Administration took over again.

It's every bit as bad as we thought.

“The Destruction of NASA’s Mission” Whistleblowers reveal OMB’s Unconstitutional Plot to Gut the Agency

New from Committee on Commerce, Science, Transportation Ranking Member Maria Cantwell.

NOTE: This is indeed what I have seen going on inside NASA.
🧪🔭

www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...

yeah they're just murdering random people on these boats

New article on equitable reuse of public sequencing data, published in @natmicrobiol.nature.com!
Led by the Data reuse core team @lhug.bsky.social @environmicrobio.bsky.social Cristina Moraru, @geomicrosoares.bsky.social, @folker.bsky.social and with Anke Heyer and The Data Reuse Consotrium!

If you generate or reuse #microbiome data, check out these guidelines for equitable sequence data reuse. Grateful to @alexjprobst.bsky.social and his team for leading this important work and for bringing together 160+ microbiome scientists (myself included) to contribute!

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

At 88%, it's hard to find a topic that more Americans agree with each other on than the benefits of routine vaccinations. And with 62% for COVID vaccines (while sadly low), that is also something of a supermajority consensus as policies go in American politics

www.pewresearch.org/science/2023...

She Survived 141 Days in ICE Custody Thanks to a ‘Beautiful Sisterhood.’ Now She’s Fighting for Those Still Inside. 22-year-old Ward Sakeik, a Palestinian woman who has lived in Texas since she was 9, talks about her experience in federal detainment.

22-year-old Ward Sakeik, a Palestinian woman who has lived in Texas since she was 9, says her experience in federal detainment could only be identified as “human trafficking.” And she’s not staying quiet about the women she was forced to leave behind.

thebarbedwire.com/2025/09/22/w...

us. "151 Writing in National Review, the journal's editor Adam Keiper described The New Atlantis as being written from a "particularly American and conservative way of thinking about both the blessings and the burdens of modern science and technology". 61 New Atlantis authors and bioethicists publishing in other journals have also similarly referred to The New Atlantis as being written from a social conservative stance that utilizes religion. 71181[9][101

Today, the New York Times published a long essay glorifying Jay Bhattacharya, the Trump NIH director. What?⁉️

Here’s the explanation:
That essay was written by the editor of a Trumpist Republican journal, funded by a Trumpist org that hates science.
SHAME on the Times. 🧪1/

Hard-Fought Treaty to Protect Ocean Life Clears a Final Hurdle

The BBNJ "High Seas" Treaty has been ratified by 60 countries and is now officially in effect! What a journey it's been... 🎉

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/c...

The High Seas Treaty has been ratified by 60 countries! This is about protecting oceans beyond the coastal zones controlled by single countries. There are still lots of steps between where we are and the future we dream of, but wow, this is a big one!

apnews.com/article/high...

Any academic folks on H1B visas (even with stamps in passports) please get legal advice from your University attorneys before leaving the US.

Censorship Is the Authoritarian’s Dream The right to free expression must include the right to say horrible and evil things.

"More professors in the United States have been fired for controversial views in the past week than any other week in all of American history."
www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

The Third Reich didn't last 1,000 years.

Pinochet was ousted with a referendum.

And the US isn't exactly dealing with the smartest, most competent fascists.

Those of you insisting that 2025 is forever need to read a book, touch grass, go to therapy, anything other than trying to make others quit.

YouTube video by Scientific American Nodules: Deep-Sea Life Giver or Key to Our Energy Future?

After a long day of discussing future field work to study #DeepSeaMining, this short documentary was a welcome reminder of the why - there is still so much we don’t know about the deep sea! www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jcm...

NASA Astrobiology Program Call for Applications: NASA-DARES Task Force 2 - Astrobiology The NASA Astrobiology Program is seeking approximately 47 individuals to serve on NASA DARES

NASA Astrobiology Program Call for Applications: NASA-DARES Task Force 2
astrobiology.com/2025/09/nasa... #astrobiology #NASA #NASADARES

"There is nothing new under the sun. But there are new suns." - Octavia Butler
🧪

This is so true for science. Why did the US attract top minds from all over the world to want to study, work, stay, and start companies? Instead of go, say, to Germany, Japan, or China?

In large part because the US was a multicultural, open, pluralistic democracy. People felt comfortable here.

Opinion | Academic Publishing Has Become a Racket Scientists write and review papers without getting paid, and their institutions have to pay for access.

Excellent editorial by my friend and colleague @pracheeac.bsky.social:

"Academic Publishing Has Become a Racket"

www.wsj.com/opinion/acad...

Don't Do a Ph.D. Now At least in the United States

I love my job as a professor, but increasingly it feels like being a lottery winner in the academic hunger games. The best advice for most people thinking about a PhD is: don't.
substack.com/home/post/p-...

Though it’s traumatic for me to bring this up, I was targeted by a group allied with Turning Point USA in 2018, with the help of Tucker Carlson on Fox. My home address circulated online and I got death threats. 1/

When Turkey purged their universities, "The 'to be expelled' lists were prepared by the university administrations. The few universities where massive dismissals did not take place were the ones who did not submit any 'to be expelled” lists."
merip.org/2018/12/turk...

TurningPointUSA and the Professor Watchlist with Matthew Boedy - American Campus Podcast Are you on the Professor Watchlist?References mentioned this episode:Matthew Boedy. 2025. The Seven Mountains Mandate: Inside the Sweeping Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy. WJK Books...

Thoughts and prayers for Charlie Kirk

In total coincidence, we released a TurningPointUSA episode today so I’m gonna use his tragedy to plug that

www.buzzsprout.com/2396665/epis...

Everything You Need To Know About The Girlboss Ants That Give Birth To Another Species In Order To Exploit Their Offspring (Slay Ant Queen!) | Defector This month, there’s one story on everybody’s minds. I’m speaking, of course, about the Iberian harvester ant queens who can clone ants of an entirely different species to breed a subaltern army of hyb...

Everything You Need To Know About The Girlboss Ants That Give Birth To Another Species In Order To Exploit Their Offspring (Slay Ant Queen!) - defector.com/everything-y...

Even though I don't know much about this case, what the Texas State University Star has reported is enough to point out what distinguishes these kinds of cases from the "cancel culture" freakouts about left wing "censorship" our media treated us to over the last 8 years. (1/6)

NASA has a proposal to re-commission the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft for the exact purpose. It's healthy, & up for a 2029 mission—total cost $200 Million, $50 Million already spent. President Trump wants to kill it. Here's more on the OSIRIS-APEX mission - osirisrex.arizona.edu/osiris-apex

This Martian Rock Might Be the Closest We’ve Come to Finding Alien Life The Perseverance rover’s new findings set the stage for bringing Martian samples back to Earth to test whether microbes once inhabited the Red Planet

Without the Mars Sample Return mission to return the core sample to Earth, however, we will never know if these are 3.5 billion yr old signs of fossilised microbial life or just a normal chemical process ☹️

Fab @sciam.bsky.social write-up here:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-t... 🔭🧪