Freddy E Escorcia, MD/PhD

I don't think most people would say "it was fine before." Getting a sub 10%ile grant is really hard. But having 5th %iles go unfunded just feels bewildering. It's not that they are objectively better than the 10%iles, but getting 5 requires enormous luck and even that is now not good enough.

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

1/10

Now this is a goddamn paper

Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review The process of peer review is vital to contemporary science, but is also under enormous strain. This study uses mathematical models to dissect the threats to the long-term viability of peer review, su...

1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology.

We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.

My quote of the day

Science is fun. Science is curiosity. We all have natural curiosity. Science is a process of investigating. It's posing questions and coming up with a method. It's delving in.

Sally Ride

At this point, I'll pay people to stop writing Alzheimer's grants.

My quote of the day

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

Charles Darwin

💔

My quote of the day

All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don't. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity.

Robert F. Kennedy

🔔HIRI has opened a new call to recruit Group Leaders. If you are interested in opening an RNA Biology and Infection lab, join us! Deadline: February 15. More info here 👇

AOC: "Early reports are that he was an ICU nurse at the Mpls VA. So we are talking about Donald Trump accusing a VA ICU as being a terrorist against the United States. A man who was treating service members to our country ... his final act on early was helping a woman pushed to the ground."

He wasn't a domestic terrorist. A domestic terrorist was the Oklahoma City bomber. This was a VA nurse looking out for his neighbors.

“.. He cared about people deeply ..,” said Michael Pretti, Alex’s father. “He thought it was terrible, you know, kidnapping children, just grabbing people off the street. He cared about those people, and he knew it was wrong ..”

@washingtonpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com/national/202...

US science after a year of Trump: what has been lost and what remains A series of graphics reveals how the Trump administration has sought historic cuts to science and the research workforce.

Trump has been in office for one year. We at @nature.com did a deep dive looking at the administration's disruption of science in numbers.

Take a look—the numbers are staggering. By me, @dangaristo.bsky.social, Jeff Tollefson, @kimay.bsky.social, & help from @noamross.net @scott-delaney.bsky.social

This is how we first teach chirality to our undergrads !

I worked 16 years in the Office of the Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, including as the Intel & Ops briefer to the Secretary, the Department's Congressional Reports Officer, & as the Exec Sec for OGC. If I can be useful to your law firm, NGO, or Cong. office, please let me know.

The data show that when you let more women and racial/ethnic minorities into your academic society they tend to be overrepresented doing the service work of your society. Isn’t that interesting? #ACNP2026

It’s a fun read. Did you read The Martian? Sooo good!

All three? 🤔

6 years ago, our Nusayba rang the bell and was officially cancer free.

She's now a 9 year old diva. A stage 4 cancer survivor with a full liver transplant thanks to once anonymous donor Shawn Zahir who donated a piece of his liver to save the life of a girl he never met.

God is great.

💪🏽💪🏽! Nice jump in 2025 too!

This is so important.

I’ve taken care of children who didn’t die from their vaccine preventable illness but instead

-lost limbs
-developed kidney failure requiring dialysis
-had strokes and permanent deficits

Death isn’t the only bad outcome.
And sometimes it may not be the worst one.

When I explain to people what is involved with writing a successful grant, they simply don’t believe me.

I explained it once to a famous person from Pixar, and he looked me square in the eye and said: You mean all the cancer and Alzheimer’s grants work that way? You’ve gotta be &$%#ing kidding me!

I don't think you non-science people realize what it takes to get a grant funded by NIH. Started experiments in Sept 2021 to generate 3 new mouse mutants to model human disease. Prelim dara shows they have relevant disease phenotypes worthy of study. Need a small grant first to characterize /1

💯

The Quiet Power of Program Officers How invisible decisions shape what science gets done—and whether it matters

This is an outstanding essay describing some of the important roles and influences of NIH program officers (from an insider perspective).

Read!

elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/the-quiet-...

“The quiet power of program officers lies not in control, but in care. Care for the science, for the people who conduct it, and for the public it is meant to serve.”

Amen to that. Here’s to a saner 2026.

Off the top of my head:

Malty brown ale
Lambic
Mead

Just reintroduced my bipartisan bill, the NIH IMPROVE Act, with Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, Senator Katie Britt, and @booker.senate.gov, to fund lifesaving research at the National Institutes of Health to save moms’ lives!