Brandon Barba

As a grad student, I am having a hard time getting this message through in my research teams. I might have to steal that line “regression and storytelling”.

Same. My in-laws are there and trying to find more reliable info.

#Statistics thought of the day: If you think you can find new disease subtypes by empirically clustering patients, think again: www.fharrell.com/post/cluster... #StatsSky

Today marks a major moment for child health: the AAP has released its updated 2026 childhood and adolescent immunization schedule. Updated annually to reflect the latest scientific evidence, this year’s schedule is formally endorsed by 12 leading medical and healthcare organizations.
bit.ly/4r5KbaQ

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

I was invited to do some live Decoders at Davos but didn’t go because new baby. But the only tech question worth asking in that forum right now is what American big tech companies are planning to do when the European markets slam shut as NATO collapses

YouTube video by Charalanahzard I'm angry.

Twitter is the world’s largest generator of CSAM & non-consensual porn by a margin of about 8000%, and somehow… MSM isn’t even reporting on it.

(also includes advice for reporting ‘deepfake harassment’ to police if it escalates to a point where restraining order is necessary)

youtu.be/p71qQKmIGhQ

Springsteen Denounces ICE Deployments and Renee Good’s Killing In a surprise appearance in New Jersey, the musician dedicated his song “The Promised Land” to Ms. Good, who was killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis this month.

In a surprise appearance in New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen denounced the Trump administration’s ICE deployments and dedicated a song to Renee Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis this month.

=9 THE HILL Kamala's newest lie: Trump will send the army after you BY DEREK HUNTER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 10/16/24 8:00 AM ET GE FOLLOW ON Google News f EDOM HARR THE HILL PERISTIVANIA DAILY DEBRIEF

© Reuters My News Q Pentagon readies 1,500 troops for potential Minnesota deployment, US officials say By Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart and Chandni Shah January 18, 2026 8:33 AM CST • Updated 33 mins ago 贝 Aa NO TROOPS IN OUR CITIES!

How it started/how it's going

Tylenol during pregnancy is safe without increased risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability of offspring
A new review of the evidence just out
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Great day to have functioning eyes and a working brain

A former resident from our program. Trying to help a neighbor.
Threatened at gunpoint for it.
Not allowed to do his job: help people.

🤬🤬🤬

Trump and RFK Jr are dismantling public health—aided and abetted by powerful doctors High profile physicians should be using their positions of power to resist Trump and RFK Jr’s damaging policies, not collaborating with them, say Gavin Yamey and Jonathan Shaffer President Donald Trump and secretary of health and human services Robert F Kennedy Jr have held many press events during which they have promoted dangerous health misinformation.1 2 Despite taking an oath to“first do no harm,” influential doctors have stood by Trump and RFK Jr’s sides during these briefings, lending their support. The wider medical community needs to tackle this phenomenon with evidence based strategies, including warning the public about the risks of misleading information, highlighting scientific consensus, mapping the institutional networks that spread controversial information, and countering them using political and legal strategies.3

Trump & RFK Jr.'s coterie of bootlicking doctors are real pieces of shit, we argue in the British Medical Journal, essentially.

Link: www.bmj.com/content/392/...

It is simultaneously true that ML tools are incredibly useful and that many of their most intense adherents are selling snake oil

Becoming a U.S. citizen takes years and involves immigrants acquiring a green card, extensive interviews, background checks, classes and a citizenship test. The naturalization ceremony is the final step to the process, where the oath of allegiance and a citizenship certificate are granted. Immigrants approved to be naturalized went to Faneuil Hall Thursday - known as the country's cradle of liberty - for that long-awaited moment to pledge allegiance to the United States. But instead, as they lined up, some were told by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials that they couldn't proceed due to their countries of origin.

Read this: www.wgbh.org/news/local/2...

This is unhinged, unadulterated white nationalism that is so off-the-charts fascist not even David Duke would have said that in public.

NEW data I've received: Just 5% of people detained by ICE since October 1 have had violent criminal convictions, 3/4 had no criminal convictions at all. Most "criminals" had immigration, traffic, and vice offenses. Not the "worst of the worst"...

As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers; slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world's largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings. Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were cancelled, affecting thousands of patients. I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission. Early in my illness, when I

Just an absolutely gutting essay by Tatiana Schlossberg, a writer, mother of two young children, and cousin of RFK Jr who is dying of leukemia.

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Slide titled: The non-experimental psych workaround - introduction: relies on a causal reading of the literature - methods & results: implicitly (but never explicitly) causal inference-y - discussion: only makes sense in terms of causality - IMPORTANT: add a paragraph that your study was only observational and no causal conclusions are warranted. future longitudinal or experimental studies will surely fix this problem.

This slide unfortunately generalizes well 🥲

This is one of the most remarkable academic debacles I've ever seen.

A large RCT got published in BMJ. There are currently 44 Pubpeer comments, mostly about the data, including...well. Read for yourself.
pubpeer.com/publications...

My Dad lives in a China and he messages me frequently about this. Just this morning he texted me about some anti-aging pill. It’s hard to temper his enthusiasm.

I sat in a seminar where someone showed how they used it to do essentially an entire systematic review process (selecting papers, data abstraction, code for analysis, etc.) in a few hours. I don’t think they have published anything yet, but my guess would be soon. Seemed crazy to me.

“Tell your children who the cowards were.”

OK, having heard a report on some AI bracelet which is always recording audio with the idea that you could go back and audit your day's interactions or ask it questions about what you did that day...

look if you actually want this I think you're forgetting what it means to be human.

The University of Arizona has given a non-answer on joining the Compact of Academic Excellence in Higher Education (as did Washington University in St. Louis) earlier today. UA President Suresh Garimella wrote that he welcomes "the opportunity to engage" in a letter to Linda McMahon.

The future I saw through the Meta Ray-Ban Display amazes and terrifies me This very first-gen device raises several questions about where the next chapter of mobile computing is headed.

It feels like a huge failure on multiple levels that there's so little attempt to articulate an alternative to totally unregulated big-corporate ownership of technologies like AR and AI, which have some actually real use cases just vastly outweighed by the harms of their business models

There are basically only two positions in the debate about AI.
1. I’ve barely invested any time in learning how to use it effectively. AI sucks.
2. I’ve invested in learning how to use this tool. Holy cow, it’s transformational.

Position #1 has lower barriers to entry.

Private equity takeover of hospitals led to rise in Medicare emergency patient deaths, says study Study found seven more deaths per 10,000 patients in private equity hospitals’ versus non-private equity hospitals

Private equity acquisition of hospitals have led to an increase in deaths among emergency department patients receiving Medicare, according to a recent study published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Big Belly Option

Extra wide zone