John Belmont

Fuck Elon Musk

Fuck Trump

course schedule as a table. Available at the link in the post.

I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students.

I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

They know nothing about Pediatrics. The lazy fucks.

Rayas in Spanish

Averted hospitalizations. A wonderful counterfactual.

In Ireland we probably averted about 500 newborn RSV hospitalizations once nirsevimab was introduced last year (~75% risk reduction). Uptake was > 80%, and that's what's threatened by these cynical safety concerns from the antivaxxers in the US government.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

RFK Jr.’s CDC panel: No more hepatitis B vaccine for some newborns The CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, stocked with anti-vaccine activists and loyalists to RFK Jr., voted on Friday to stop recommending a birth dose of vaccine.

RFK Jr.’s CDC panel: No more hepatitis B vaccine for some newborns - a vote without any real data to support it and against experts' recommendations. www.ms.now/news/rfk-cdc... via @brandyzadrozny.bsky.social

Great to see @greally.bsky.social ‘s Epigenetics book in the wild at #cellbio2025 - all that pestering paid off

In Maine it’s about 7 and a half hours, but in Managua it’s only 1 hour 20 minutes

The difference between the longest and shortest days of the year is about 3 hours and 48 minutes

You are not magicians but we suspect that you call the rest of us muggles behind our backs.

He has never in his life discovered a new fact about nature and is on a mission to destroy everyone who has.

why won’t the democratic party pledge to abolish ICE and CBP? they can’t be reformed or redeemed

The Anti-Vaccine Movement: A Litany of Fallacy and Errors | Request PDF Request PDF | The Anti-Vaccine Movement: A Litany of Fallacy and Errors | Vaccines have tremendous benefits and low risks. In spite of that, a vocal minority argues against using them. This chapter ex...

Myself and @doritreiss.bsky.social wrote in 2018 about the tactics now being used at the CDC and FDA.

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

AAP on the ball and already out with comments about the ACIP meeting:

www.aap.org/en/news-room...

“This irresponsible and purposely misleading guidance will lead to more hepatitis B infections in infants and children.” Read our full statement by AAP President Dr. Susan J. Kressly:
www.aap.org/en/news-room...

The decision by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to downgrade its recommendations to protect infants from hepatitis B is a dangerous move that will harm children.

Click here to read AAP's full statement: bit.ly/3Y9ZQJT

Don’t skip the whole thread. Well worth the read.

Ding an sich the ‘thing in itself’

Summary of what happened at Temu ACIP this morning:

As expected, they overturned the 30+ year recommendation for the birth dose of HepB vaccine, which has reduced the incidence of pediatric HepB by 99%.

They provided no credible evidence to support this decision.

Shameful

If all the research participants also get whole genome sequencing one could use another powerful method from causal inference. Genetic variants can be used as instruments- Mendelian Randomization - to evaluate biomarkers as causal mediators.

It would be interesting to have immune correlates and other longitudinal biomarker data.

The point of regression discontinuity study designs is that RCTs may be impractical or unethical

Those ‘top scientists’ are assholes

I put together two roundups from posit::conf(2025):

• Shiny talks + full workshop materials
shiny.posit.co/blog/posts/c...

• Quarto talks playlist and summaries
quarto.org/docs/blog/po...

Without a functioning FDA, CDC and NIH we are in big trouble. And we are moving close to the precipice.

a night time view of a city with a few buildings lit up ALT: a night time view of a city with a few buildings lit up

The US is close to an institutional collapse across multiple public health agencies. Trump/RFK have purged anyone with expertise, many have fled and they’ve been replaced w functionaries who are either incompetent or malicious. I don’t think many understand how close to the edge we are right now.