Madeleine Becker

Sharing my portrait of Isabella Aiona Abbott for #AdaLovelaceDay to celebrate #womenInSTEM and #IndigenousPeoplesDay.

🐡🧪👩🏻‍🔬 #histsci #ald25

Your Genes Are Simply Not Enough to Explain How Smart You Are Seven years ago, I took a bet with Charles Murray about whether we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence by now.

In 2018, Charles Murray challenged me to a bet: "We will understand IQ genetically—I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks—but we’ll know basically what’s going on." It's now 2025, and I claim a win. I write about it in The Atlantic.

I am deeply grateful for the work of NSF staff this year to keep research & grants moving in a difficult environment. I view this petition as a means to demonstrate impact & interest in ensuring access to a vital grad research program.

450+ signees and counting:
laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/

a meme using the format of a rudimentary sketch of a factory worker on an assembly line. the assembly line consists of an industrial machine outputting widgets onto a conveyor belt. 3 of these widgets are pictures of normal DC metro buses. however, among them is also a picture of a DC metro bus entirely wrapped in an ad for L. Ron Hubbard's "Dianetics". the factory worker says "i guess we doin scientology buses now"

I can't keep up with DC these days

Flyer for the award. Has images of three students interacting with collections materials; text reads: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Student Collections Study Award October 1st, 2025 Application Deadline Application and Details: https://nhm.org/student-collections-study-award

Are you an undergraduate or graduate student whose research would benefit from visiting a collection at the @nhm.org? Apply now for our Collections Study Award! Deadline is Oct. 1; learn more at nhm.org/student-coll...

A work study student helps prepare specimens for digitization. There are many folks at the Museum that make Ranges possible, and there are even more volunteers helping out online at Zooniverse.

🦇 Outlined in a new paper published online in the Journal of Mammalogy, our Ranges Digitization Network will bring even more detail to digitized mammal collections in western North America, including biodiversity hot spots like L.A.: go.nhm.org/digitized-ma...

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

While full solicitation isn’t up, looks like we have 2025 proposal deadlines for the GRFP: www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

This infographic describes the main results from a survey of members of 14 scientific societies. There is a pie chart showing that both academic (58%) and non-academic (42%) responded to the survey. It lists statistics: 85% of respondents reported uncertainty about the future; 71% reported federal training programs were "very" or "extremely important"; 83% reported negative impacts or irreparable harm on their field of science. There is a word cloud summarizing open-ended responses with the largest words "student research fund federal grant". Eight major themes in the responses are listed: disruption of research with societal important; concerns of closure of the USGS Bird Banding Lab; Early Career Bottleneck; Restricted Freedoms including travel and speech; Decline in Government Efficiency and Expertise; Concerns about Biased/Removed Data and Data Gaps; Concerns about the Ability to Meet Legal Mandates; and From Positive Impact to Irreparable Harm. There are icons for each participating society and a QR code for website and data availability.

Today 14 scientific societies in #ecology #evolution and #marineScience are publishing the results of a survey that finds negative impacts of federal policies on food security, flood mitigation, infectious disease preparedness, and wildlife conservation: 🧪👩‍🔬 www.firsthandaccounts.org/impacts/2025...

OpenAI claims new GPT-5 model boosts ChatGPT to ‘PhD level’ GPT-5's release comes as tech firms continue to compete in an effort to claim the world's most advanced AI.

Obviously a lie, since the definition of PhD-level expertise, standard across universities worldwide, is that you can produce original knowledge.

DOJ Investigation into George Mason Faculty Senate Sparks Academic Freedom Concerns AAUP President calls federal probe "gross misuse of power" as university faces fifth inquiry in five weeks.

“If the DOJ can investigate faculty governance bodies for citing a university's own strategic plan, then no campus is safe.

"Let's call this what it is: a gross misuse of federal power to chill speech, silence faculty, & undermine shared governance.”

— Todd Wolfson, AAUP President

🌊❄️🧪 🇦🇶 Please share:

We have learned that the National Science Foundation is moving ahead with plans to decommission the U.S. Research Vessel/Ice Breaker Nathaniel B. Palmer this October.

If you care about Antarctic research, please read on (1/n)

there is a certain liberal anti-affirmative action scholar who has insisted, like a rube, that once racial preferences are gone we can build support for class-based affirmative action. but the people who oppose affirmative action also very obviously oppose redress for class inequality!

The US government is aiming to get rid of a quarter million people involved in science research and education by 2026.

5 photos of gray squirrels in various poses

Congrats to the top 5 DC squirrels of June 2025 #sqrlpix

We’re in a really bad place when the government is calling mainstream academic journals “junk science.”

Hey #Evol2025 crew! If you enjoyed your time in Athens, here’s a great way to support the thriving immigrant community that makes it such a vibrant place to visit ❤️

genius!! there are so many good options in walking distance!

met a legend today. shout-out to the tree that owns itself! #Evol2025 #AthFest

A single panel of the comic strip SMBC. A white person with dark hair and glasses says "I like evolution and me and my friends look at evolution all the time and sometimes the evolution is neat and we tell our other friends about it and our friends also like evolution and sometimes we have evolution parties and so now we know a lot about evolution". The comic is captioned "The life of a scientist sounds way more fun when you describe it like you're a six year old". The word "evolution" is conspicuously in a different font than anything else in the speech bubble, almost as if it has been digitally altered from the original text.

With apologies to @zachweinersmith.bsky.social , I fly out for #Evol2025 tomorrow, and thus:

what talking to professors is like:

Everyone involved in trying to pass off that ChatGPT-extruded disinformation manifesto as a scientific report should be, at the very least, barred from public office for life. The MAHA report is dangerous criminal misconduct and an offence to the process of science.

luckily only >10,000 years old 😅 so no special sequencing, but you're right that there will still likely be significant damage. the nice thing about damage though is it helps verify that you're actually sequencing the subfossil, instead of any [younger] contamination!

more like🐁🐭 from the late pleistocene, but I'll have to wait for sequencing to know exactly what it is!!!

subfossil library ever so slightly amplifying

Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades (Gift Article) The lag in funding extends far beyond D.E.I. initiatives, affecting almost every area of science: chemistry, computing, engineering, materials and more.

NSF Physics was cut by 85%, basically wiping out most of its capacity for supporting research.

NSF Astronomy was cut by 53%

Undergrad education was cut by 71% and research on learning by 79%

Graduate education was cut by 100% to ZERO.

#GiftLink ⚛️🔭

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

notgoodbob.gif

It is astonishing to live through a moment when race science, eugenics, and some pseudo-scientific sexism are aggressively laundered and openly embraced by the Smart White Boy fraternity of self-identified arbiters of reason who are salivating at the chance of solidifying their status at the top.

"Imagine the auto industry without 3D printing. NSF funded that. Artificial intelligence? NSF. MRI machines that help doctors diagnose you? NSF. Doppler radar technology that makes aviation safer by conquering wind shear? NSF. Duolingo‘s underlying programming? NSF. The internet itself? NSF."

Racist and sexist roots in the cancellation of NSF grants under Trump:

Grants with female PIs canceled 2x more than men
Grants with Black PIs canceled 4x over White PIs
Grants with Hispanic PIs canceled 2x over White PIs
Grants with PIs with disabilities canceled 2x more than without