CoreyWelch_STEM

A 1944 map by geologist Harold Fisk charts a 40-mile stretch of the Mississippi River from Friars Point to Gunnison, Mississippi. Fisk used aerial photos and maps to estimate the past and then-present channels. Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mississippi-rivers-hidden-history-uncovered-by-lidar?fbclid=IwY2xjawQYXkdleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFCZ2JBT2tWdVlXMmEzNU5Uc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHsbjW-Yuubr_o_Kfeh0Elzc94geDwfXIZmeNL7NyljEBAOEjH53m2QLSo1NF_aem__4NkCIJ_D8J6mI1e8eMByg

Rivers are living beings.

The data also reinforce a message that should be clear: American leadership in science and medical research requires far more than getting across the line on top-line budget negotiations and will require continued vigilance to track how HHS treats applications and existing awards.

The plot is only part of the story.

The data do not include lost science via terminations, freezes, stalled payments, and award delays. The collapse in awards rates will lead to job loss, gaps in research programs, and drive scientists to spend more time writing grants rather than doing science.

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

The team hopes enough chicks will survive this year to bring the world Kākāpō population to 300—a major milestone for a species that was teetering with just 51 individuals in 1995.

A massive bloom of rimu berries in New Zealand fueled a mating surge among the critically endangered Kākāpō. spklr.io/6044E87xp

📸: New Zealand Department of Conservation

Jesse Singal: “I don’t understand why all these experts with degrees keep disagreeing with me. So demoralizing. What could the explanation be??”

I love caves, inflatables and science communication. This month is #colorectal cancer awareness month - the disease that has been ruining me the last 20 months. Get a colonoscopy folks. It’s not as fun as what I’m doing here but it ain’t that bad either.

Private research that is useful for moving knowledge forward but not projected to be quite profitable enough never sees the light of day.

Then others, perhaps multiple other private or academic labs, will have to redo that research to gain that knowledge. That is the opposite of efficiency. (4/4)

Anyway, I think about this every time I see federal funding getting strangled by Trump and Russ Vought and the spineless Republicans that allow it.

The longtime conservative mantra is that "research can be privatized and be undertaken more efficiently" is complete BS and makes me so angry. (3/4)

The way he told me what I would find and the smug look on his face told me he clearly had done the research already.

Surely not as robustly as I managed by devoting years of my life to it.

However, he wasn't just predicting it based on background knowledge or intuition. (2/4)

When I first started PhD research on genetically modified poplar I went to a co-op meeting that helped fund the research.

I met a scientist who worked in private industry developing gm plants. He told me what my results would be and ended up being >90% correct. (1/4)

Delays in awards and funding calls worry NIH-funded researchers Many programs may be pushed into the next fiscal year, and some could face funding gaps

Delays in NIH funding and calls for proposals...

www.science.org/content/arti...

Private money cannot replace public funding of science Who should pay for American science? In the current political climate, many are looking to the private sector to compensate for cuts in public funding. At the Harvard School of Public Health—particula...

A response to the opinion that private $ can replace the NIH.

Businesses are not charities. They work on profit margins. Decades of $ is essential for research to progress from an initial discovery to treatment. Most of the dirty work goes on in academic labs.

🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Of course

Source: archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes....

Never forget that the primary tactic of this movement is distraction. They point to medical statements, procedural wins and tangentially related anecdotes because *they have no evidence of their core claim*

If lots of kids were transitioning without assessment they would be talking about that.

I think Harvard's plan to respond to the every-decade moral panic about grade inflation by capping A's is pedagogically obscene.

Grades should be a measure of learning, not competition.

Grade caps engender competition and anxiety where we should be teaching collaboration and a love of learning.

One of the most tangibly lifesaving efforts of @standupforscience.bsky.social to date was to send an on-the-ground investigator to Guinea Bissau to understand the context of the unethical &CDC funded Hep B infant vaccines study.

We presented to a packed room of horrified House and Senate folks.

Florida turtle ant (Cephalotes varians) Nature Ecology & Evolution - Corrie S. Moreau studies the evolution of extreme armour and gut microbiomes in turtle ants.

How fun! I was invited to write a "Species Spotlight" for Nature Ecology & Evolution @natecoevo.nature.com and I chose my favorite species the Florida turtle ant Cephalotes varians! rdcu.be/e5EZK Including a stunning photo of ants I collected by @alexwild.bsky.social

The boys’ club: How Epstein’s influence shaped the exclusion of women in STEM In one email, an AI researcher suggested it’s “hard to be brilliant if you are worrying if you look fat or why another woman hates you.”

There were so many of us, exactly when these emails were being written, expressly working to undo the harms of sexual harassment and sexual discrimination in science. And so many people refused to believe us that any of it was real. It was all real.

19thnews.org/2026/02/epst...

Holden Thorp’s slides from a recent talk.

The fundamental flaw with @holdenthorp.bsky.social’s argument is thinking that organizations and people can only do one thing at a time (even though he is really close to acknowledging it!)

Let’s break it down, bc I’m tired of this. 🧵

(cred: @ianlmorgan.bsky.social)

Yeah this “pre-Watergate worldview” where the president has more power and there was less influence of Congress is

1. Not the way NIH has worked since the 1940s and

2. Incompatible with successful science.

Congratulations!

THE UNBOXING IS UPON US

I'm not sure if it's worth adding this, but in case anyone's wondering, @AmandaAskell is a brilliant philosopher doing by far the most important philosophical research anyone in the world is doing right now (in terms of both impact and philosophical interest). I've had the privilege of seeing her at many stages along this journey, from a chance meeting in the hallways of Coombs (the building where ANU Philosophy used to be) back in about maybe 2015, to a visit with her at OpenAI's offices on the day, more or less, that she and others decided to leave OpenAI to form Anthropic, to a number of workshops and other things since, where she showed an incredible generosity of spirit to the folks both in philosophy and in the FAccT community who most needed to learn from her work.

I helped build the FAccT academic conference, and white men like Seth have to come along and make sure that the people we tried to get away from, the TESCREAL eugenicist ghouls, have every academic space in addition to the billions they're drowning in.

This Thread. UGH.

General challenge: Show me where AI and/or Private Equity have systemically improved things that outweighs their cost/damage.

YouTube video by Nightloop Jesse Jackson’s - Wattstax Music Festival Opening Speech (1972)

I. AM. SOMEBODY. ✊🏽

Rest in Power, Reverend Jesse Jackson.

youtu.be/NTVwT3j_zqY?...

I love it when the scientists reinvent the humanities for the 14th time in a decade.

The universe genuinely is bigger than the bad things that are happening to us! So today is a good day to preorder my new book The Edge of Space-Time, which urges readers to see the cosmos through new eyes and in the process learn skills we use to resist authoritarianism. #BookSky