Mark Blumberg

Thanks for this great thread! These ideas cannot be communicated often enough. It seems that every generation seems to invent new reasons to invoke innateness. Today, many neuroscientists think that claiming innateness for their preferred phenomenon somehow makes their work more important. Sad...

The deadline for our open-area senior search is approaching. If you're looking for a new academic home and, perhaps, the security of a hard-money position, please consider applying.

If you have any questions about this position or the one in clinical science, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. We're a growing, interdisciplinary, closely-knit, and supportive department. And we're looking for exceptional junior and senior scientists to join us.

The ad for the tenure-track Clinical Science position is live. Please spread it around!
psychology.uiowa.edu/about/job-op...

"chronic venous insufficiency." So that's what they're calling _____ these days.

Two faculty positions in my department this year. Please spread the word! And don't hesitate to reach out if you want to learn more.

"WE'VE ARRANGED A society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?" "Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."

I think a lot about what Carl Sagan said in one of his final interviews.

How cuts at the National Institutes of Health could impact Americans' health Cuts and layoffs to the National Institutes of Health threaten medical research around the U.S., agency insiders warn.

The National Institutes of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, has fired 1,300 employees and cancelled more than $2 billion in federal research grants. https://cbsn.ws/4daiCrv

Our cover this week.

Geez, if only the University of Iowa were among those mentioned in this article. Is it really that difficult? Even Nebraska is ahead of us. Nebraska!

From The Atlantic: “The Trump administration is manipulating government-sponsored research to get the answers it wants.”

Who remembers Lysenko?

We are all Harvard now. (gulp)

Kerr is such a class act.

Well, at least we know something horrifies her. It just ain't the people around her.

I'm ashamed of the silence from campus leaders across the country as our international students are terrorized by threats, intimidation, and deportation. Ducking and covering is not the strategy they seem to think it is. Soon enough, they will find there's no place left to hide.

I’ve committed myself to learning James Gadson’s brilliant drum pattern on Bill Withers’ Use Me. I’ve got the pattern down now; making it groove is the next big challenge.

“Wildly destructive stupidity.” Nothing like simple clarity.

Oh Susan Collins. Bless her heart.

I’m totally with David Frum on this. We have a lot of farmers in Iowa. If Trump grants them a bailout from his tariffs, which they desperately want, I don’t want to hear them whine about welfare and socialism ever again. They voted for this pig sh*t. They can roll around in it with the rest of us.

Ouch. @benwikler.bsky.social has got game. Congrats and thanks to Wisconsin. We all needed this.

Very proud of my wonderful former doctoral student for Standing Up For Science!

As a developmental scientist, I find it fascinating that "the greatest country the world has ever known" will have been destroyed by economic and moral concerns about eggs, embryos, and fetuses.

Powerful response from Marc Elias to Musk's provocations.
"I will not back down. I will not bow or scrape. I will never obey." Damn right.

The problem with dreams Podcast Episode · Unexplainable · 02/19/2025 · 28m

I was more than happy to be interviewed again by the talented @nhassenfeld.bsky.social for the new Unexplainable podcast. This one is about the connections among sleep, dreams, and twitching. I hope you enjoy!

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/u...

Once again, we see that women (in this latest case, Danielle Sassoon) are the heroes we need in this time. Why are MAGA men such MEGA wimps?

Important and informative new Unexplainable podcast episode (nhassenfeld.bsky.social) entitled “Is science in danger?” It lays out the threats but also provides helpful counterarguments to the nonsense out there. Everyone concerned for the state of US science should listen and share.

I don't know anyone who enters science to receive awards, and there are far fewer awards than deserving recipients. But this one is particularly sweet and I am grateful to the SRS for the recognition, not only for me but for the many wonderful trainees and collaborators with whom I have worked.

Another wonderful essay from Eve Marder — with important lessons for trainees and faculty. I'm looking forward to discussing it in my next lab meeting.

I'm noticing how neuroscientists are increasingly sprinkling their papers with the word "innate." It's quite clear that most have no idea what that word means. Perhaps they think the word makes their papers sound more important. And journal editors seem to fall for it.