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locasalelab

Jason Locasale

Verifiedactive
@locasalelab

Scientist and professor. Follow for science, health, and academic reform • dr.jason.locasale@gmail

16,512 followers · 629 following · Last polled 3h ago
Perf. Score
72.3
Rank #54
Value Score
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Median views
28K
p25 7.4K · trailing 7d
Followers
17K
+1.4% 7d
ER (impr.)
1.31%
eng ÷ impressions
ER (foll.)
4.04%
eng ÷ followers
Est. CPM
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WoW views
+529.6%
▲ rising

Rates & value · est. from 28K median organic views

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View distribution · trailing-7d posts

Each blue dot is one organic post. The Performance Score ranks by the median (28K), not the mean (51K) — so a single viral post doesn't inflate a creator's reach. The p25 floor (7.4K) is the level 75% of posts clear.

Recent posts · ranked by views

PostPostedViewsLikesRepostsRepliesQuotesBookmarksER
David won a small victory in court, but the jury’s $6 million award is nowhere near enough to compensate for losing his job, his life’s work, and the other damage done to him and his family. David faced a weaponized metoo situation involving an ex-girlfriend. He endured public ridicule, colleagues abandoning him, student protests, online bullying, and repeated pile-ons. STAT, Science, and many other outlets published hit pieces, including coverage that portrayed him as some loser who kept losing in court. MIT’s senior administrators recommended firing him. The board at the Whitehead, the MIT-affiliated institute where he ran his lab, backed his removal. These people dismantled a scientist’s career, yet there is little discussion within academia of accountability for their actions. Ruth Lehmann, Whitehead’s director, remains in her position, with a salary exceeding $1 million. She was appointed to another five-year term. I also remember news coverage of her publicly responding in a demeaning way to David’s claim that he had been discriminated against as a white man. MIT invokes evidence, merit, and accountability while its administrators escape the standards they say they want to impose on everyone else. Lehmann, the administrators involved, and the colleagues who contributed to and later celebrated his departure should be held accountable. Instead, I expect the same people will keep collecting appointments and honors while MIT congratulates itself on its values. STAT, Science, and other outlets will keep treating them as authorities without examining their conduct with the aggression they directed at David. Those outlets should answer for their own role in the pile-on too.frozen6d ago176K3.4K
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Now a jury has awarded David $6 million for defamation and tortious interference. The Boston Globe and The New York Times soon after reported the outcome. Science despite running countless negative articles shaming David is nowhere to be found today. Science repeatedly portrayed David’s efforts in court as futile or unsuccessful by emphasizing selected pretrial rulings on court motions while significant claims were still awaiting trial. Those decisions did not determine the outcome of the claims the jury has now decided. This goes beyond leaving out part of the story. Relentlessly publishing damaging allegations fuels the public shaming and online bullying of a person. That carries a responsibility to give a verdict in his favor comparable visibility—and to account for the narrative those articles helped establish. David has lived with the consequences of this coverage for years. Science owes him a prominent account of this verdict and a serious reckoning with its own role in the spectacle.frozen6d ago167K1.5K132267781.07%
After you are abandoned by a trusted institution and publicly shamed, the headlines and mobs eventually fade. What you are left with is isolation. People who claimed to be your friends abandon you. Very few will say anything positive about you. People generally pretend you are dead. Others dismiss or worse take credit for your work and try to write you out of history. Vultures swoop in from every direction. This is what happens when fourth-rate administrators make decisions affecting people’s livelihoods without concern for what they are doing to their lives. These are scientists who were among the best in the world at what they did. They passed up careers in pharma, finance, tech and administration that could have paid them vastly more for their skills. When I was younger, people in my programs who gave up on science early went on to make fortunes on Wall Street, in biotech, and in Silicon Valley. Those who stayed pursued their passion for the love of it at the cost of millions of dollars. When an administrator steps in and dismantles that life’s work, far more than a job is erased. Laboratories take years to build, and scientific problems take years to develop and eventually solve. Experiments, research materials, collaborations, and accumulated expertise cannot simply be restarted somewhere else. The field keeps moving while your work is stopped. The time lost is also the time lost that could have been spent making money - that part a court will never be able to figure out because juries are ordinary people not dedicated scientists. Then comes the gaslighting. People assume it must have been your fault because an institution like MIT or Duke is supposedly so trustworthy and meritorious that it would never do this to someone who was not guilty. Institutional prestige is a substitute for examining the evidence. I recently attended a meeting on academic freedome at MIT where Dorian Abbot’s name kept coming up as their fallen hero. They cited a cancelled lecture of his at MIT as their rallying cray. It was treated as an institutional catastrophe. It was insane. David was an afterthought among people supposedly concerned about the climate at MIT and self-appointed to change the culture there. They simply believed MIT’s PR messaging that they have always been focused on merit despite some small missteps like the canceling of a controversial lecture. I had to point out repeatedly that MIT is not the MIT they attended 30–50 years ago. The priorities reflected in its newer hires and leadership have moved far from the scientific excellence they associate with it.frozen4d ago145K9661082116980.83%
Some are saying that because MIT and Whitehead were not held liable, they are exonerated from this mess. Nothing could be further from the truth. These institutions have sophisticated, eight-figure legal operations and substantial resources devoted to shielding them from liability. They know how to word damaging public statements while protecting themselves against defamation claims. They also know how to invoke attorney-client privilege, work-product protection, and other privileges to shield their dirty business from public scrutiny. Their ability to defend themselves legally should not be confused with institutional integrity. Faculty employment is generally at will. That means an employer can fire someone for any or no reason. Tenure is a policy, not a legal right. Faculty are sold the promise of its security, but finding out what protections they can actually enforce when push comes to shove can take years and enormous legal fees. Sally Kornbluth, now MIT’s president, even admitted in court once that tenure does not carry the legal protections faculty believe it does (Shaughnessy v. Duke, see her deposition excerpts in the summary judgment materials). Employment law provides no remedy for many destructive decisions universities make. Civil rights laws offer protection against discrimination, and pursuing those claims is often the only recourse faculty have in court against a university. But proving discrimination is difficult, especially for a scientist with a unique position and record. David pointed to Knouse as someone treated differently. She also ran a laboratory and had NIH funding, but I think the court ruled they were not similarly situated. He did have a more senior rank and a larger lab. So be it. But discrimination law only addresses discrimination. You can treat people like garbage and run your institution into the ground without committing actionable discrimination. This is where public accountability must come into play. The jury found that Knouse defamed David and unlawfully interfered with his livelihood. MIT, Whitehead, and HHMI held the authority, and through their actions, the false allegations against him became career-destroying consequences. That is why this verdict demands accountability from those institutions. They bear responsibility for the damage those actions caused.frozen4d ago117K58456125550.61%
MIT claimed that its actions against David were based on findings about the culture in his lab. The $6M verdict invalidates that explanation. The jury awarded David $6M for damages caused by Knouse’s defamation. This means not only that false statements were made, but that those statements were proven to have caused a huge amount of damage. A causal connection between Knouse’s statements and the harm David suffered was established in court. The damage he endured came from the actions of MIT, Whitehead, and HHMI and their authority over him. The implication of the court ruling is that those actions occurred because of the false statements, rather than for other reasons such as a vaguely defined lab culture. A “toxic work environment” is a vague, slippery, often unfalsifiable slur that can be attached to anyone directing a laboratory or any group of people. Falling back on that label was a way to hide the real reasons for their actions from the public and look good to their base. Nobody likes an abusive boss, especially students who like to protest. But I knew so many people who had worked under his supervision. They did not see him or his lab that way, even though they were not speaking publicly.frozen3d ago94K78670184480.98%
David’s life’s work was a disposable prop for MIT to market its virtue to a woke audience. Some are even arguing that David deserved to lose his career because he was romantically involved with a woman in the workplace. That is an absurd and hypocritical justification for what MIT did to him. Reducing the destruction of his career to a workplace relationship policy violation is grotesque hypocrisy. A romantic relationship at work is an ordinary part of academic life for administrators and an excuse for destroying a laboratory when it involves someone they don’t like. His relationship with Knouse even began before Whitehead updated its relationship policies in August 2018. If a workplace relationship warrants professional destruction, MIT and all universities, for that matter, have a great deal of firing to do. Erin O’Shea, who was instrumental in firing David from HHMI, dated and married someone who earned his PhD in her own laboratory. Ruth Lehmann, who forced David out of Whitehead, has a long-time partner who was a fellow scientist at NYU, where she worked. MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, is married to an MIT biology professor. These administrators know perfectly well that scientists form romantic relationships within their professional communities. Scientists spend enormous portions of their lives in their laboratories and around other scientists. They develop relationships within that world because they devote themselves to their craft and have little social life outside it. Universities know this, and so do their administrators. The court also rejected Knouse’s claim that she experienced quid pro quo sexual harassment from David. The court found that David did not condition professional benefits or consequences based on sex. She directed her own lab and she went on to obtain a tenure-track position at MIT. Invoking a poorly defined “power imbalance” does not erase the court’s rejection of her claim. https://t.co/DQWDZ8saem2d ago62K3543694430.72%
Tao is as shortsighted and self-interested about AI and biology as he is about university funding. He seems unable to see much beyond his own small bubble. He may be a math genius, but he has been treated since childhood as if that makes him an authority on everything. That’s why these stupid takes of his gain traction. His reaction to AI, especially now that it apparently outperforms humans on the kind of math he is known for, looks like mostly concern for his ego. He reminds me of Bobby Fischer, who was a genius at chess but had crazy views outside it. Being brilliant at one thing doesn’t mean we should take your opinions on everything else seriously.frozen11d ago57K566423791031.34%
Science magazine’s account is riddled with inaccurate and misleading reporting. Start with the verdict. The jury awarded David $500,000 for defamation, $3.2M for interference with contractual relationships in a category explicitly naming MIT et al., and $2.3M for interference with prospective professional relationships. It rejected Knouse’s claims of sexual harassment, hostile workplace and educational environments, and retaliation. These are findings in a court of law, not competing opinions to balance against the losing side’s disappointment. Of the $6M awarded, $5.5M concerned interference with David’s professional relationships. Science obscures the connection to MIT et al. and the administrators whose actions inflicted those losses. Causation was central to what David had to prove. In “but for” legalistic terminology, the losses would not have occurred without the conduct at issue. If David would have suffered the same losses anyway because of a culture survey, an investigation, or anything else independent of Knouse’s conduct, those losses could not be attributed to her interference or her words. Science never examines that implication. MIT et al.’s actions on based Knouse's behavior were how allegations became lost employment, a lost laboratory, and a lost career. Yet Science tells readers the verdict “has no direct impact on the conclusions of Whitehead’s probe.” That framing ignores the causal connection established by the interference and defamation findings and treats the institutional investigation as insulated from the verdict. Science also returns to allegations of a sexualized or “toxic” environment as something David merely denies. Knouse sued him over those allegations. The verdict form explicitly asks whether she proved a sexually hostile workplace or educational environment. The jury answered no to both. Recycling those allegations while giving the losing attorney space to attack the jury’s competence protects the institutional narrative from scrutiny. Allegations retain their authority. The verdict becomes an inconvenient opinion. MIT et al. exercised the power that destroyed David’s career. Science should scrutinize their actions with the same aggression it directed at him. Institutional prestige is not evidence, and “independent investigation” is not a magic phrase that makes the verdict disappear.2d ago52K66069176731.60%
I generally reserve singling people out for university and hospital administrators collecting large salaries while greasing the system. But it is entirely reasonable to examine her record and the hiring standards MIT used. We need to look at the standards adopted and what those standards are producing across academia. In the 2010s, universities increasingly emphasized DEI in faculty recruitment. MIT sets an example that institutions across the country aspire to follow, including places like Duke and Cornell. Hiring rewarded alignment with institutional priorities while giving too little weight to tangible scientific accomplishments. Publication records that would previously have been considered insufficient appeared acceptable when candidates fit the institution’s preferred politics, activism, or demographic priorities. By 2026, those hiring decisions are shaping the next generation of scientists. The consequences extend far beyond MIT, particularly in biology which already struggles with too much soft science in its discipline.frozen4d ago45K37923112741.09%
Somewhere a scientist is explaining a $47 purchase to someone whose job costs $180,000 a year.frozen27d ago39K63738165331.86%
This is what the culture around Retraction Watch produces. Online bullying and trolling, with people demanding prison while knowing almost nothing about the situation or the investigation. An opaque internal institutional investigation is not a fair trial. The institution has its own interests to protect. Certain scientists have more influence with the administrators controlling the investigation. One of the senior authors held an administrative position at that institution. We’re getting the account the institution chose to make public, without the full record of how it reached its conclusions. That account deserves scrutiny, especially when responsibility lands on the person with the least power. An admission doesn’t settle those questions. For all we know, it could have been part of a quid pro quo with the institution, with him receiving benefits in exchange for making an admission or taking some blame. We don’t know what the circumstances were. Repeating that he admitted to something doesn’t establish that the process was fair or that the institution’s account is complete. The holier-than-thou attitude overlooks how common lapses in lab notebook documentation and other mistakes in data presentation and recordkeeping are. Anyone who has run a lab knows that not every experimental detail gets recorded and original records aren’t always readily available when figures are prepared. The extent of the issues, whether they affected the conclusions, and whether the results reproduce and generalize should matter when deciding what consequences are appropriate. We don’t have the full investigation, but people are comfortable calling for prison and encouraging a public pile-on.frozen6d ago38K16711161310.59%
This verdict was a resounding vindication for David. Defamation cases are very difficult to win, and he prevailed in a case involving metoo allegations in politically left-leaning Massachusetts. A $6M award is an enormous sum to ordinary people serving on a jury. The jury’s findings invalidate the narrative used to explain his treatment. They demand intense scrutiny of MIT, its peer institutions, and what they did to his career. Their legitimacy as institutions is called into question when conduct they relied on is found to be unlawful. The victory is small in relation to the institutional transformation still needed. That change requires administrators held accountable for their actions, colleagues willing to speak, media outlets committed to reporting honestly, and institutions that put truth ahead of politics and image. Hopefully, David’s victory will help make some of that change happen.frozen5d ago34K54445151221.86%
My take is that Cornell wanted the embarrassment of a drug-fueled orgy at a frat house to go away. The university investigated, closed the matter, and left evidence out of what it shared with outside police. Now the president is trying to express contrition. But they knew about this for two years. What changed wasn’t how the university felt about the matter or some newfound concern for truth and process. What obviously changed was that the university could no longer keep the fallout contained.frozen19d ago26K14916615150.95%
It is sad how many billionaires are still living in the philanthropic imagination of 1910. They accumulate fortunes then decide the highest use of billions of dollars is to pour it into the same sprawling bureaucracies that have been expanding with excess money for years. $3 billion could build something genuinely new. Instead this rich guy is giving it to an already enormous university to fund another major expansion. A hundred years ago, large philanthropic gifts to universities helped create institutions that did not yet exist. Those institutions are now old, and have been decaying for years. CMU’s recent response to its most recent controversy is just one example. Today many of these universities are already among the wealthiest institutions in the world and have enormous administrative structures. There are many things that could be built from scratch with $3 billion, including new scientific institutions, different models for education and training, and research organizations designed around the technology and problems of 2026. Instead, another enormous fortune is being used to make a wealthy university even larger.frozen22d ago25K14415442310.96%
David was actually employed and fired by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute HHMI’s investigator program was built around identifying the best scientists in the country and giving them the resources to thrive. They became HHMI employees, receiving salaries and substantial research funding, including payment for their lab space, while keeping their university appointments and access to students. David was identified as one of those talents. By the late 2010s, HHMI had become far more interested in identity politics than the merit that had given the program its standing for decades. Following MIT/Whitehead’s metoo investigation, HHMI fired him. The jury’s findings raise serious questions about the integrity of HHMI, a non profit organization that gets enormous tax benefits, including what it is actually funding, and the people it chooses to select, retain, or dismiss.frozen4d ago22K35228111131.84%
This is public humiliation marketed as science journalism. An opaque internal investigation becomes the basis for putting a former student on display and dragging his unrelated interests into the coverage. Readers do not know what happened, the full story behind the paper, or the former student’s own account. The institution and apparently this Retraction Watch hit piece presents its conclusions as beyond reproach while the individual faces damage that could make him unemployable well beyond science. I feel sorry for this guy. They have displayed so many people this way while promoting themselves as champions of transparency. The institutional proceedings remain out of view, but the person’s entire life becomes fair game.frozen8d ago22K81371330.58%
There are countless people who have suffered the same fate as David. But he was one of the most prominent biologists in the country at the time and held one of the most coveted positions at MIT. His case got attention after MIT publicized it, exposing him to worldwide condemnation over allegations of sexual misconduct. Yes, Ackman took up his case, but David was also one of the few who chose to fight it out and go the distance in a five-year court battle. Most don’t have the stomach for that. Very few choose to fight, and those who do are labeled troublemakers, with a shadow cast over them in perpetuity. I know so many people this has happened to, and they remain unemployed for years. The older ones typically retire and drop out of the spotlight. I even know someone who went through 25 years of medical and doctoral training, only to end up coaching tennis in his later years.frozen5d ago13K47535172364.19%
There is a rumor that one of these guys had a substantial metoo allegation that his university helped keep under wraps. If he had been cancelled and his lab destroyed back then, he almost certainly would not have won this award, even though his scientific achievements would have been exactly the same. There is a good chance he would still be unemployed today. Instead, he is now receiving lavish praise for his Nobel Prize. The university can now use that award to promote itself while continuing to hide whatever lurid details may exist behind the allegation. If the rumor is true, the administrators who handled his case appear to have bet correctly that this scientist provides additional value for marketing their university as a place of merit, so they covered it up. Universities decide whose merit is allowed to survive.frozen17d ago13K32162230.50%
I agree it’s an interesting paper and I wish there was more foundational science on exercise. However, the senior author was likely forced out, resigned, and lost his lab following a metoo situation. Now his work is being celebrated as an important contribution to the field. Will any scientific institution employ him or invite him to contribute again? My guess is none. Performative praise and virtue signaling cost nothing. Hiring him would require an institution to act as though his scientific contributions matter. I doubt any will.frozen7d ago12K26120140.35%
I actually agree to a large extent, but there is a bigger issue. When I was younger, I let more established people take credit for some of my bigger discoveries. I didn’t care because I thought the science would progress anyway, and I would just get more ideas and discover more things. That was my focus. A couple of them even used those discoveries to get top-level administrative jobs at Harvard and MIT. They contributed very little intellectually but were happy to take as much credit as possible. I really didn’t care at the time. The issue with doing that is that you let those less deserving get more authority and power. In this case, Boyden is fine. He has plenty of money, prestige, and power for himself and his lab, and he can keep doing more science if he wants. Nevertheless, we still need a better merit system for scientists. Otherwise, those who talk the loudest and are the most politically savvy will absorb the credit and use it to gain power, while the people who actually made the discoveries have less ability to keep making them. If you keep doing that, the system decays to zero.frozen17d ago12K1091182181.24%
Taxpayers give Cornell billions of dollars in public support, and parents pay a fortune in tuition. Apparently, what they are paying for is the opportunity for their children to partake in drug-fueled sex parties. Cornell could have defended its findings. Instead, they choose kowtow to students and politicians, Cornell’s president is insinuating that the university did something wrong. He talks about change without saying what its investigation actually got wrong. Cornell does not want the public asking what families and taxpayers are funding. The president is trying protect the institution from that more important question, not defending the truth of its own findings.frozen18d ago11K53511220.69%
This illustrates the naivety and hubris of many in the physical sciences toward biology. They see a soft science because most of what they were taught in school about biology was stamp collecting. Often they are right that the science is weak. But they have little appreciation for how difficult the problem is or how little we still understand the human body. Much of medicine is still medieval empiricism with some statistical analysis to soup it up. Most chemotherapies and many other drugs for that matter were discovered through heuristics and trial and error that would astound people who assume medicine follows from rigorous understanding. Their mechanisms remain murky despite decades of use, with many competing explanations for their effects. This should be a call to spend much more time on biology because our understanding is so far behind.frozen11d ago10K16520141392.34%
Adam is right that the dramatic skew of NIH funding toward older people is a serious problem. Younger scientists tend to generate fresher ideas and possess more current technical skills, while funding flows to established researchers through the old-boy networks that pervade academia. Too many scientists are still living off a high-profile paper from 25 years ago—whether or not that work ultimately held up, and in many cases it did not—using the prestige and relationships it conferred to absorb grant money long after their most productive years are behind them. But this misses two important points. First, many scientists continue to innovate at an advanced age. They are simply obscured by the larger and more visible group of older scientists who have been coasting on reputation and connections. Second, directing an NIH-funded laboratory requires more than scientific creativity. It resembles running a business: raising money, assembling a team, ensuring compliance, managing conflict, motivating people, promoting the work, protecting the lab from outside interests, and making sure the work actually gets done. These organizational and executive skills tend to develop with experience and are often more important than generating the original ideas. Still, the direction of Adam’s argument is correct: too much money in the NIH system is controlled by older, entrenched scientists at the expense of younger talent. One key is distinguishing senior professors who remain innovative from those whose funding is sustained primarily by past accomplishments and institutional power. Another problem is NIH’s current affirmative-action like preference for younger applicants, which disregards merit and only makes matters worse. The goal should be to fund the best scientists and the best work—not to substitute one form of age preference for another. I have many ideas about how to move in that direction, such as possibly abolishing the F- and K-series training grants.frozen27d ago9.7K971081181.38%
This is why Science does not deserve the enormous amount of federal funding it receives. Rather than focusing on science, its editors promote fluffy, woke commentary about personal identity and social agendas. A scientific journal’s role is to advance science, not lend scientific prestige to the editors’ preferred social causes.frozen14d ago9.5K145138191.86%
The broader conclusion is that MIT and its administrators were not truthful about their actions and cannot distance themselves from the unlawful conduct that caused the damage. The tortious interference claims, proven through a unanimous verdict from a majority-female jury, make this even clearer. The jury awarded the majority of the damages on those claims, finding that Knouse unlawfully interfered with David Sabatini’s employment and prospective jobs. This further established a causal connection between her conduct and the destruction of his livelihood. The implication is that Knouse’s conduct drove the loss of his lab, his job, and future opportunities, rather than those losses occurring for unrelated reasons arising from a so-called "independent” and opaque investigation or MIT’s purported findings about his lab environment. That is the basis for calling MIT’s public explanation dishonest. It is a repudiation of the dirty tactics universities use to take out faculty they don’t like while claiming to be fair and objective. This should prompt a further reckoning with the lack of trustworthiness in our academic institutions.3d ago9.2K2962933123.73%
Bryan is spot on about the gap between sequencing a genome and knowing what to do with it. The Human Genome Project was hyped as the be-all and end-all of understanding human disease. Meanwhile, areas concerned with how our bodies interact with the environment, including diet, physical activity, environmental exposures, pharmacology, and toxicology, were neglected for decades. We’re left with Bryan leading the way because scientists don’t have good answers to the questions most people are interested in. Leading institutions such as NIH and FDA helped entrench those priorities. We became extraordinarily good at reading genetic sequences while leaving fundamental questions about human physiology and metabolism unanswered. It’s time to change those priorities and give these neglected areas the scientific attention they deserve.frozen8d ago8.3K58513191.04%
After my PhD, I switched to cancer research because of stories like this. I wanted to use science to make a difference in people’s lives. Reading Susie’s story brings me back to that decision and the hope behind it. When someone shares something so personal and painful, we owe them more than sympathy. We owe them honesty about what we know, what we don’t, and what our scientific research can realistically accomplish. Patients’ experiences should never become fundraising appeals that serve institutions more than the people whose suffering gives those appeals their urgency. Their stories should push us to ask harder questions about where the money goes and whether the work deserves the promises made on its behalf. That includes pursuing basic science whose benefits we cannot yet predict. We need room to discover things we don’t understand. But we should make that case honestly, rather than promise patients or the government that every project is bringing us to a cure. Stories like Susie’s still inspire me to believe that science can make a difference. They also remind me that our responsibility is to earn that hope through the work we do.frozen25d ago8.2K5173050.80%
Quid pro quo is rampant in academic peer review and publishing. But I would be shocked if it were as explicit as “pay me $300K and I’ll publish your paper.” Editors are generally not stupid enough to spell out an arrangement like that. Those working for publicly traded publishing companies like this guy know they would risk their jobs and criminal prosecution. Where it gets murky is paid conference travel that looks like a luxury vacation, cozying up to editors, buying them meals and drinks, and socializing with them. Networks form, and getting into those networks can be key to getting grants and papers published. Editors have friends in those circles too. They notice who you know and who you are associated with. At some journals, you build good relationships with the editors. At others, you never manage to crack the system. Over time, you learn what particular editors like, which subjects excite them, and how they want a story presented. You start shaping your work and its presentation around those preferences. There is a game to play, and you learn how to play it. The influence rarely if ever needs to take the form of an explicit transaction. It becomes embedded in relationships, access, and reciprocal favors, until anticipating what pleases the gatekeepers starts shaping the science itself.17h ago7.5K71840201.38%
This is why we need new institutions. The $210 Million Harvard spent on lawyers is more than enough to fund all the science worth saving there. Conducting research shouldn’t require financing the enormous apparatus Harvard has built around it.frozen6d ago7.2K23220100103.79%
It is utterly insane that a rape allegation can be routed through the institution with the strongest incentives to contain it. Universities are not sovereign nations. That is the obscenity this case exposes. Would we let a corporation operate its own police department and investigate a murder that threatened its brand? Yet universities—many richer and more powerful than the counties surrounding them—are allowed to operate armed police forces that answer to university administration rather than directly to the public. Then everyone acts surprised when "justice” resembles crisis management. What we have are institutions investigating itself, protecting itself, and calling the result due process.frozen20d ago7.0K881120161.79%
I've noticed the Trump administration is full of women, black americans, hispanics, lgbt americans, and people from all kinds of backgrounds. The difference is that their race, gender, or sexual orientation doesn't define who they are professionally. It is not treated as a credential or the reason they deserve the position. These are people from different backgrounds participating fully without making identity the organizing principle of their professional lives.frozen22d ago7.0K1271091102.26%
This is a great point. Cancelled now describes everything from a disinvited lecture or temporarily reduced social-media reach to the complete destruction of someone’s career—rendering years of education and experience practically meaningless. Paradoxically, those who suffered the least serious consequences usually speak the loudest and receive the most attention, wearing cancellation as a badge of honor. Meanwhile, people who were truly devastated may be too traumatized to discuss it publicly, or they quietly develop ways to cope and move forward. The relatively minor but highly visible cases obscure the people whose livelihoods, reputations, and lives were genuinely shattered.frozen27d ago6.1K4525130.91%
Universities say they’re so concerned about wealth inequality. Apparently the solution is to pay the president over 1 million a year, give an army of administrators high six-figure salaries, and leave teenagers with the debt.frozen13d ago6.1K32853174146.80%
This is the corporate hack protecting the machine he spent his career learning to operate. This guy spent 25+ years climbing the ladder to get the university president job. Now he puts on his puppy-dog face and tries to explain away the fact that he is selling 400K certificates and access to drug-fueled sex parties. Of course he has no regard for the people involved. He is there to protect the money, the administrative class, and the revenue streams that elevated him.frozen17d ago5.8K5454041.16%
This article is spot on. You cannot repair a decaying university by adding a classics course. Many conservative activists act as though adding civics and great books courses while removing a few critical-theory courses will change the institution. Universities are sprawling bureaucracies built to absorb money, expand administrative power, protect internal networks, and avoid accountability. They can capture almost any new center, rename contested programs, and wait for stakeholders to lose interest. Small adjustments to the course schedule leave the underlying institution intact. The politics and other hot-button controversies are downstream consequences of that structure.frozen28d ago5.7K691153181.87%
Lab vacancies remain high despite a booming biotech market. The deeper issue is that biotech has outsourced its foundational research to the NIH-driven academic system. Companies are left doing routine work, and outsourcing and automation reduce how much experimental capacity they need for it. Specialized experiments essential to creative, exploratory science still need labs. Much of the work at a biotech company based on academic research doesn’t require its own lab. Outsourcing manufacturing overseas doesn’t explain empty scientific research labs. Biomanufacturing facilities are in different locations, such as the research triangle, and serve different purposes. Abundant, cheap lab space is an opportunity to restructure biomedical research. Small, lean, efficient research institutes could share equipment and talent and concentrate their resources on scientific questions that require specialized work. They could do this much more cheaply and efficiently than traditional decaying academic institutions like Harvard and without supporting an enormous administrative apparatus.frozen6d ago5.5K3735170.96%
University budget models create a financial incentive to expand programs, create unnecessary courses, and try to enroll as many students as possible. When tuition money is kicked back to departments based on enrollment and student credit hours, they compete for students and the associated money. That competition produces redundant, overlapping courses spread across different departments in areas like English, biochemistry, or public health, alongside less serious courses built around topics such as Taylor Swift lyrics or biology and society, designed to appeal to teenagers. Competition for enrollment creates friction among faculty whose money is tied to these programs. It encourages unnecessary expansion through new programs, particularly at the master’s level, where offerings and admissions receive less scrutiny. A program can remain valuable to a department even when its courses duplicate existing ones or it enrolls students who lack the necessary preparation or interest. The incentive to keep expanding remains even when the educational justification is absent.frozen9d ago5.2K5653171.39%
The performative grandstanding by these purported journalists about their supposed cancellation at the MAHA summit fits the narratives they already had in place. Get admitted and claim firsthand authority for the negative story you were already prepared to tell. Get denied and turn the denial into the story. Either way, the conclusion appears to precede the evidence. Being denied a press credential to an event hosted by a private organization is not an attack on the press. The event was publicly livestreamed. They could watch it live and report on every word. Instead, they wanted to make themselves and their narratives against RFK Jr. and others the story. The event was crowded to the point of being uncomfortable. Photos of empty seats at selected moments do not establish that organizers invented a capacity issue. With the vice president and multiple cabinet members attending, substantial security details and likely the secret service presence created serious logistical challenges. Managing access involves more than counting chairs. I don’t know how individual press decisions were made. But the reporters insinuating misconduct haven’t presented evidence that their exclusion was due to anything other than logistical constraints. They are treating the insinuation itself as the story.frozen23d ago5.1K3426100.84%
Universities have become too large and too unaccountable. We don’t need to break them up, but we do need to stop propping them up. Their funding can and should go to new and better institutions in healthcare, research, education, and social development—areas where universities have repeatedly failed to deliver. People who think their communities depend on these universities should imagine what $5 billion invested in alternatives could do for the same area. Every dollar absorbed by a university is a dollar unavailable for something else. That opportunity cost deserves scrutiny, instead of treating the university’s continued expansion as an unquestionable public good.frozen14d ago4.7K78811102.10%
I’m a hard scientist at heart. The kinds of studies done in business schools, economics, and public policy departments aren’t really my thing. But I’ll do them when nobody else is doing them and there’s a clear public benefit. It would be straightforward to estimate how much money flows into scientific societies with basic knowledge of database APIs, perhaps $200 in AI tokens, and some thoughtful care to check the output of LLMs. If AAAS brings in over $100 million annually, AACR over $100 million, ACS close to $1 billion, and AHA over $100 million, I wouldn’t be surprised if the total across scientific societies is over $5 billion. Someone should do this as an academic study. I’ll do it if nobody else wants to. As you should know, many of these societies make substantial money selling publications, with much of that revenue ultimately coming from taxpayers. They also promote political causes and shape the news and views scientists consume. Scientists’ careers depend on cozying up to these organizations, which makes their financial interests and political influence worth examining.frozen13d ago4.4K42230101.28%
There are strict ethics and campaign finance laws restricting political spending. One way to skirt those restrictions is to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars through scientific societies—sums that can exceed the cost of a presidential campaign. Meanwhile, these institutions promote politics, defend the institutional status quo, and attack anyone they view as a threat.frozen14d ago4.4K2222040.68%
This is the type of article Science should be publishing and commenting on. It is an actually newsworthy piece of science. But it is highly technical and will not attract many readers. Even a Nobel Prize winner may have only a couple thousand followers on social media. Rather than going for politics and clickbait, Science should be writing articles that highlight scientific advances, including ones most people know little about. This might reduce readership and revenue by pandering less to a political base. But it is a step toward truth. AAAS and Science exist to promote science, even when it does not grab headlines or induce rage.frozen15d ago4.2K4474071.46%
The take-home message is that universities cannot be trusted to police themselves—and should stop being treated as tax-exempt sovereign nations. It is good to see people on the left questioning whether universities should be trusted. But questioning Cornell’s handling of this case and declaring the accused guilty are separate things. Concern about institutional misconduct does not establish what happened. People who falsely present someone’s guilt should face lawsuits. The questions about what Cornell police shared with the DA deserve clear answers. Cornell and the prosecutor have given conflicting accounts. That alone warrants scrutiny, whatever the investigation ultimately establishes. Universities have interests in how these cases are presented. We should not assume their public statements put the truth ahead of those interests. No amount of money they spend on messaging and PR earns them that trust. Universities should not receive public benefits while expecting the public to blindly accept their account of their conduct.frozen19d ago4.2K6855152.00%
There is no better learning experience than being forsaken by the vast majority of people you knew professionally. After spending so many years within that circle, you finally see what it is really about. You learn what matters and what is disposable. Much of what once consumed your attention turns out to be irrelevant. Perhaps a few relationships inside prove worthwhile. Sometimes none do. But lights emerge where you had never seen them before, and you remember who stood by you. You learn not to care so much about the minutiae of a world whose people were so quick to throw you in the trash. Their approval loses its importance. Whatever rat race they are still running no longer seems worth so much of your time. What once seemed indispensable turns out to be something you can live without, because you have lived through its absence. You also begin to see perspectives from outside that circle that you excluded or ruled out while working within it. You appreciate views you would not have given the time of day before. You see more clearly what is actually important to your life. There is a great deal to learn when a world you devoted yourself to decides it can do without you—including how much of that world everyone else can do without.2d ago4.0K991140153.22%
Hot sauce and mayonnaise under the same roof apparently require urgent scrutiny. Elizabeth Warren is going to save us from spicy mayo. Meanwhile, universities can buy up the town, absorb its hospitals and businesses, expand their real estate empires, and keep raising prices. Somehow, the solution is always to give these institutions more taxpayer money so they can become even larger. If the condiment companies want her support, they should buy a hospital, start charging tuition, and collect NIH overhead.frozen8d ago3.6K7545212.39%
Every institution wants a visionary until the visionary wants to change something.frozen25d ago3.6K127146194.33%
NIH stagnation becomes biology’s stagnation. This is largely true because NIH sets the course that nonprofits and industry follow. It continues to fund university expansion, bureaucratic centers and programs, and narrow research directions controlled by the same people for decades, while neglecting many of the most important questions in biology, including how environmental influences affect organisms. AI and lab automation will not solve this bureaucratic stall or the problem of asking the wrong questions and leaving important ones unasked.frozen16d ago3.6K3933021.31%
Cornell’s response reeks of administrators protecting their jobs and a university protecting its image. The allegations concern events in 2024. The lawsuit brought negative publicity in 2026. This looks like an administration more concerned about public embarrassment than the truth of what happened. Banning parties gives administrators something to announce and diverts attention from their own handling of the allegations. They get to look decisive while students face the consequences. Fraternities do a lot of good. They provide friendship, community, service, and social development. Cornell is restricting group who had nothing to do with this mess so administrators can claim they’ve taken action.frozen7d ago3.6K72812182.81%
This is a university hack performing contrition while trying to protect his position and the institution’s reputation. He runs Cornell. He owes the public an account of what his administration knew, what it did, and who made the decisions. The investigation was conducted by the university’s own police department. Announcing that the institution lacks answers only raises further questions about his administration’s oversight. The language is carefully constructed to sound like an admission without actually admitting anything. Acknowledging unspecified shortcomings, promising improvement, and welcoming a future review leaves every question of individual responsibility unanswered. It reads like damage control cleared by lawyers. The university has every incentive to contain reputational damage. Its president’s assurances do nothing to resolve that conflict. Universities will not change without outside accountability and an overhaul of the administrations running them. That means removing leaders responsible for institutional failures and bringing in new people who are accountable to independent oversight. Leaving the same people in charge to investigate their own decisions and announce their own reforms preserves the system that needs to change.frozen19d ago3.5K48914032.10%
People accused of murder or rape are presumed innocent, afforded due process, and must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in court. University misconduct investigations happen behind closed doors, with administrators and others who have every incentive to protect themselves. We don’t know the full story here. We do know that everyone else involved has an incentive to dump responsibility on the weakest link. Forty-eight authors signed off on the paper. So did an editorial team and reviewers. I don’t even know whether whatever the student admitted to materially affected the study or the experiment in question. We’re given no context. Proportionality matters. Treating every finding as equally serious is like putting jaywalking, speeding, rape, and murder on the same footing. Anyone who has run a large lab knows allegations can be made at any time. The process that follows is opaque, and we’re supposed to trust its conclusions without seeing how they were reached. Materiality, reproducibility, and proportionality can all get buried while the institution works out how to protect itself.frozen7d ago3.5K3443161.38%
Nickel-and-diming people over conflicts of interest is an age-old way to attack someone inside a highly bureaucratic system. Disguise personal hostility as an ethics concern, comb through every relationship, and look for a technicality to try to take them out. The insinuation that RFK Jr. went to DC for the money is absurd. He is in his seventies and has spent decades challenging powerful interests with enormous financial resources. If maximizing his personal wealth were the goals, cozying up to the people who control that money would have been a far easier route than fighting them. When you challenge the status quo, you give people invested in it a reason to attack you. Conflicts of interest are an easy place to go because almost anyone who has achieved any modicum of success has something that can be framed as compromising. In these hit jobs, whether an actual conflict affected a decision becomes irrelevant. The objective is to attack someone’s character and insinuate corruption without having to establish it. The insinuation becomes the punishment. Once the accusation circulates, the target has to spend their time defending their character while the people making it congratulate themselves for protecting institutional integrity. It is office politics at its ugliest, pretending to be public service.frozen28d ago3.5K5672052.01%
This case raises a broader problem with how universities secure themselves. Large universities operate their own police departments. Whatever legal authority those departments have, institutionally they ultimately exist inside the university and answer to university administration. That creates an obvious conflict when the university itself has interests in what an investigation finds. The same problem applies to so-called independent investigations. Investigators are hired, given their mandate, and paid by someone. An investigation does not become independent simply because outside counsel conducts it. At minimum, all parties involved should have a meaningful role in agreeing on who conducts the investigation and its scope.frozen21d ago3.4K4435011.54%
There is a persistent misconception that every major medical breakthrough comes from NIH. Followership is often reframed as leadership. The graphs below show academia arriving well after industry proved the therapies worked. Consider GLP-1 drugs. I regularly attended obesity conferences throughout the 2010s. GLP-1 was nowhere near the center of the academic conversation. It was a small blip in the NIH obesity portfolio. By 2020, less than 5% of the NIH obesity grants had GLP-1 in them. Instead, the obesity/CVD fields were dominated by blowhards peddling stories about branched-chain amino acids, ER stress, and whatever drug target fit their latest grant. Most or all of these theories produced nothing remotely helpful for people. Meanwhile, industry was doing the work academia now likes to describe as bench-to-bedside translation. Novo Nordisk scientists developed liraglutide and semaglutide. The company designed, funded, and oversaw the pivotal clinical programs that established what these drugs actually did in people. The clinical timeline is illuminating. The first GLP-1 drug reached patients in 2005. Liraglutide received an obesity indication in 2014. Semaglutide produced 14.9% mean weight loss in STEP 1 in 2021. SELECT later showed a 20% relative reduction in major cardiovascular events in overweight people. NIH’s role in producing these breakthroughs was small or inconsequential. Once industry made the clinical success impossible to ignore, academia flooded into the field. NIH-funded project records mentioning GLP-1 increased to 326 in provisional 2026 data.frozen1mo ago3.4K4754281.95%
Vote for the side that supports science. But look at what one party calls supporting science. Foundational science becomes DEI programming. Identity politics, victimhood, and virtue signaling become the main criteria for scientific merit. Taxpayer-funded scientific societies and journals become campaign surrogates. Academic medical centers become bottomless rent-seeking bureaucracies. Due process and academic freedom disappear from campuses. Meanwhile, Fauci and thousands of others like him are treated as beyond criticism. Serious failures during COVID are dismissed, even as similar failures continue throughout the biomedical system.frozen25d ago3.3K5736032.07%
I like Jay, but I think he is wrong to invite Andersen to speak on campus. Andersen and Fauci’s views were not treated as positions open to debate across academia. They were treated as the answers. Those who disagreed were silenced or dismissed as crazies on social media. NIH intramural is firmly within that mainstream and largely interchangeable with academia in its culture. There is nothing contrarian, fringe, or eye-opening about the views of Andersen and Fauci for that audience. These are the views people including NIH researchers were spoon-fed into accepting. My concern is that few if anyone on campus will be both willing and equipped to challenge those prevailing views. Inviting someone to speak does not automatically create a debate, especially when the people who would challenge him have already been pushed out of the conversation. Unless serious critics are included and given a real opportunity to question his claims, my guess is that Andersen will simply be preaching to the choir.frozen16d ago3.2K5355011.98%
An advocacy group claims NIH returns $2.50 on a $1 investment. But even a wasteful program pays salaries and buys supplies. My latest article breaks down the math and shows how that number changes when you question the assumptions. https://t.co/jVapyPus7Y https://t.co/GK9YUCcVlcfrozen27d ago3.1K3034181.47%
A billionaire’s disruptive imagination often expires at the university donation desk.frozen10d ago3.0K3033331.40%
I thought Mike Tyson had one of the most interesting comments at the MAHA event. He was asked to give an example of a time the medical status quo failed him. He said something along the lines of actually needing authority in his life. On his own, he would make terrible decisions. Following the advice of people who knew better had benefited him more than taking matters into his own hands. That is quite a statement to make at a MAHA conference, but it proves a very important point. Questioning the status quo does not mean the expert is always wrong. To reject their advice, you need a good reason to think you know better about that particular issue. Sometimes you do. But often you don’t. In science, Nature and Science still publish a lot of good work, including work by people such as Ebright and Bhattacharya who challenged the COVID orthodoxy. These journals’ authority is not universal and should be questioned. But in many cases, they still give you better guidance on science than you would get from the guy off the street. You can recognize how broken our institutions are without assuming that everyone outside them knows better.frozen23d ago3.0K4517051.95%
It is encouraging to see alternative models of higher education begin to emerge. Higher education is a trillion-dollar industry waiting to be disrupted. This is one small beginning. Hopefully hundreds more alternatives will spring up, compete, and show that universities are not the only way to prepare talented young people for the future.frozen29d ago2.9K3343021.46%
Putting the virtue signaling in the Rosalind name aside, it’s disappointing that this offer is reserved for academic labs. One of AI’s biggest opportunities is to give scientists outside academia access to expertise and resources that previously required institutional backing. That includes scientists who weren’t accepted by the academic system, don’t fit its culture, or aren’t willing to follow its groupthink. Academic affiliation shouldn’t determine whose scientific ability or ideas deserve support. Instead, this offer gives another advantage to people already backed by universities and their resources. Scientists working independently could benefit enormously from the same support. The branding echoes universities’ talking points without addressing the failings of academic culture. The eligibility rewards acceptance by that culture. It looks like a commitment to preserving the academic status quo when AI could help scientists work outside it.frozen6d ago2.8K2733011.22%
Politicians who falsely pronounce guilt to score political points should be sued This is political opportunism performed on the wreckage of other people’s lives. This senator is speaking as though guilt has already been established, assigning the roles of perpetrator and survivor without identifying a shred of evidence. He even uses his children as moral scenery to score cheap political points. If he wants to teach his sons right from wrong, he should teach them that using political power to destroy people before due process is a profound abuse of authority. The accused have lost jobs, reputations, privacy, and any realistic chance of being judged fairly. Their names have been spread across the country while powerful politicians treat their guilt as settled. They may carry that damage forever, even if completely exonerated. They should sue this senator and every other politician who presents unproven guilt as fact for political advantage.frozen20d ago2.8K6192012.61%
Universities lose their monopoly the moment talent finds another path to opportunity.frozen29d ago2.7K89108054.09%
The doomsayers claim AI will make professions like radiology obsolete. But there has never been a better time to study radiology. We still have so much to learn about how radiation interacts with the human body and how those interactions vary across disease states. I studied some of these questions in relation to metabolism and found them fascinating. Fully understanding these interactions is a scientific challenge on the scale of understanding aging and human disease themselves. Automating image interpretation does not solve those questions. The opportunity is to automate mundane tasks and free people to pursue the difficult questions that make the field worth studying in the first place. That work could eventually allow us to answer radiation-related questions about health, disease, and treatment that we cannot say anything about today.frozen28d ago2.7K2843011.32%
Scott is 100% correct. I’d like to see more lawyers challenge the gap between what universities advertise and what they actually protect. Institutions that benefit from promises of academic freedom should be held accountable for treating those promises as disposable. Universities sell an image of themselves as sanctuaries for free inquiry. Academic freedom is central to that sales pitch. In practice, they behave like large corporations, ready to confront anyone whose speech conflicts with the administration’s interests. When challenged, they retreat to the position that academic freedom is merely a policy they can disregard, rather than an enforceable obligation to the people who relied on it. That distinction is convenient for institutions that use academic freedom to attract faculty, students, and donors. A promise used to recruit people and raise money should carry consequences when it is broken.frozen25d ago2.7K4670032.09%
Fun meeting!frozen24d ago2.4K2400011.04%
When politicians and advocacy groups cannot defend the status quo on its merits, they place the most emotionally useful victim they can find in front of the budget. A sick child, dying cancer patient, or struggling student becomes a human shield for every failed program, bloated bureaucracy, and protected interest behind them. NIH defenders routinely do this to validate a nearly $50 billion agency and demand that its budget be doubled, tripled, or, why not, increased to trillions. An anecdotal case, however, establishes neither durable success nor that NIH was uniquely necessary. It answers nothing about a grant system that rewards incremental conformity-driven projects, forces scientists to spend enormous amounts of time on grants, funnels overhead into administrative empires, concentrates funding within the same legacy institutions and old boys’ clubs, and pours money into large bureaucratic center grants that are largely rent-seeking. One patient cannot substitute for an audit of an agency. One anecdotal and possibly even unrelated story cannot account for the other $50 billion.frozen28d ago2.3K2140151.36%
Using Science as your brand is much easier than practicing the skepticism, honesty, and accountability it demands.frozen5d ago2.1K5130042.70%
STAT has turned defending the biomedical status quo into a business model. It convenes conferences to trot out the same failed establishment figures, packages their talking points as news, and publishes hit pieces against people trying to change the system. Now it brings back Califf to disparage DOGE. Apparently talking straight means giving establishment hacks another microphone to explain why disturbing their preferred arrangements is a national catastrophe. I’d be more interested in hearing these people account for their own failed leadership.frozen8d ago2.0K2922001.61%
Great day of MAHA events. The day concluded with a reception where RFK jr gave some poignant remarks. He described a movement that brings together people who have been cancelled, ostracized, blacklisted, and gaslit by our medical and scientific institutions. He spoke about giving them a voice and building a movement that will endure well beyond him. It was inspiring to hear that sense of purpose, especially his recognition of people who have been shut out and dismissed.frozen24d ago2.0K4332122.55%
I’d bet scientific societies collectively take in far more federal money than college football programs. Football at least provides entertainment and builds community, with private money coming from TV deals and ticket sales. I’d prefer private, market-based semi-professional leagues, but that’s another discussion. These societies gatekeep and contribute to stagnation. They’re a big reason younger talent struggles, narrow theories dominate, and whole areas of science get neglected. They lobby and use their authority to push their politics. Scientists depend on them for their careers, so they’re rarely challenged. Meanwhile, they take in billions annually in money ultimately coming from taxpayers.frozen13d ago2.0K3241021.96%
NIH’s $2.50 Return Doesn’t Add Up An advocacy group's talking point turns spending into a claim of economic gain without establishing how much value was added or how much would have happened anyway. Every $1 spent on NIH supposedly generates $2.50 for the economy. That claim confuses money changing hands with wealth being created. The number comes from the advocacy group United for Medical Research. Its FY2024 analysis reports $94.58 billion in economic activity associated with $36.94 billion in NIH research awards. Divide one by the other and you get $2.56 per dollar, advertised as a return on investment. A wasteful program also pays salaries, makes purchases, and sends money through businesses. Those transactions do not establish that the spending was productive or that society came out ahead. An economic-model calculation can count activity even when the underlying work accomplishes little. That is the central weakness of the $2.50 talking point. It offers a number about spending as evidence that the spending is worthwhile. To examine it, we can construct a simple model that separates the reported activity from the value added and asks how much would have happened anyway. Start with the denominator. The headline ratio uses $36.94 billion in research awards, rather than the entire NIH budget. Using the earlier model’s approximate $47 billion budget denominator gives: $95 billion ÷ $47 billion = $2.02 in reported activity per budget dollar. This comparison has a specific limit. It puts the covered research-award activity over the broader agency budget. A complete agency-wide calculation would also need the activity associated with NIH’s other expenditures. The $47 billion figure remains a working budget assumption pending reconciliation with the precise FY2024 budget definition. The distinction matters because a claim about selected research awards should not quietly become a claim about every dollar NIH spends. Next, separate gross output from value added. Gross output counts transactions across stages of production. GDP measures value added, subtracting intermediate purchases. Adding up transactions along a supply chain does not tell us how much value that chain created. Our model treats the reported activity as gross output and applies an illustrative value-added share of 58%. That factor approximates an economywide GDP-to-gross-output ratio. It is an assumption, not an NIH-specific estimate, and its application requires confirmation that the underlying activity figure measures gross output. With that assumption: $95 billion × 0.58 = $55.1 billion in estimated value added. Relative to the assumed $47 billion budget: $55.1 billion ÷ $47 billion = $1.17 per dollar. Under this construction, the ratio is already down to approximately $1.20 before accounting for alternative uses of the resources. Now address what would have happened anyway. The money does not originate inside NIH. Neither do the people, equipment, buildings, or supplies. Those resources have potential uses elsewhere. Counting activity around NIH-funded institutions does not establish the increase in activity across the whole economy. A scientist might work elsewhere. A supplier might serve another customer. Public funds might finance another program or remain available for private spending. The relevant comparison is between the economy with NIH spending and the economy under an explicit alternative. Treating everything associated with NIH funding as an addition to national output skips that comparison. We capture this issue with an “additional share”—the fraction of estimated value added that would not have occurred otherwise. If the additional share is 100%, all of the estimated activity is assumed to depend on NIH spending. If it is 75%, one-quarter would have happened elsewhere. If it is 50%, half would have happened elsewhere. These are scenarios. The model does not establish which share is correct. It shows how much the result depends on an assumption that the headline leaves unresolved. The calculation is straightforward: R = (O ÷ B) × v × a where: O is reported output, rounded to $95 billion. B is the assumed NIH budget, $47 billion. v is the assumed value-added share, 0.58. a is the assumed additional share. R is additional value added from the covered activity per budget dollar. Substituting the inputs: R = (95 ÷ 47) × 0.58 × a = 1.172 × a. The scenarios give: 100% additional activity → $1.17 per dollar. 75% additional activity → $0.88 per dollar. 50% additional activity → $0.59 per dollar. 25% additional activity → $0.29 per dollar. Under these assumptions, the ratio falls below $1 when more than approximately 14.7% of the activity would have happened elsewhere. That is a consequence of the model’s inputs, not evidence that displacement actually equals that amount. These figures should not become a replacement slogan. They depend on the budget denominator, the conversion factor, and the assumed additional share. They also describe value added rather than government revenue, so $1 is not a fiscal break-even point. But the exercise exposes the weakness of presenting $2.50 as an established net return. The headline does not settle how much value was added, how much activity was displaced, or whether the resources could have produced more elsewhere. Scientific discoveries and health improvements require their own evidence. Their value cannot be established by counting payroll and purchases. This model does not estimate those longer-term benefits or provide a complete comparison with alternative spending. NIH should be judged by what its funding achieves. A program can spend billions, generate transactions throughout the economy, and still waste resources. Following the money as it changes hands does not prove that spending it was a good investment. Disclosure: This analysis and draft were developed with AI assistance. I reviewed and edited the final version.frozen28d ago1.9K921230.89%
Delicious MAHA lunch https://t.co/KskvcHiVGvfrozen23d ago1.9K1503111.06%
Reading great books is a pleasure. Paying a university to certify you enjoyed them is a business model.frozen10d ago1.9K6731033.95%
NDAs have a legitimate role in industry to protect company secrets, including intellectual property. Their widespread use in academia is a different matter. Universities should not be able to use NDAs and confidentiality directives to hide anything that makes them look bad, suppress speech, or potentially conceal fraud. Protecting the image of a publicly funded institution is not a legitimate reason to keep the public from knowing the truth. Ending this abuse should be a major piece of university reform.frozen16d ago1.8K2344101.75%
One of the key take-home messages of the Cornell situation is that we need better opportunities for young people to develop socially. Beyond gatekeeping the certificate, universities provide a social environment for young people. That is a major part of what families are paying for. This should be a reckoning and a golden opportunity to build new structures where young people can form friendships, build relationships, and develop socially without relying on drugs, alcohol, and sex parties.frozen16d ago1.8K2514011.72%
Great plan, provided cancer agrees to wait for the paperwork. They’re going to need the FDA to start smoking too.frozen9d ago1.8K1602011.08%
Yes, we need new institutions that are open to fresh ideas and new ways of working.frozen24d ago1.6K1510011.08%
Politicians have spent years asserting that the solution to every problem is to pour endless amounts of money from every direction into these universities. Now they are pretending to be outsiders who bear no responsibility for the institutions they made enormous, powerful, and unaccountable. They are now feigning outrage and calling for sham investigations and law changes. They are even trying to reach back to the metoo politics of the 2010s, even though this case does not have the facts to support it. This case exposes how wrong their position was and how shortsighted it was to keep pouring more money and power into universities. Their political calculus is way off in this case, and it will hurt them.frozen18d ago1.5K2120001.55%
If journalists want access on the basis of professional standing, then adherence to their profession’s principles should mean something. Journalists often demand access without accountability, then cry foul when excluded In fields like law and medicine, there are clear obligations to clients and patients. They are owed competence, confidentiality, and protection of their interests. Breaches can lead to sanctions, loss of a license, or even criminal liability. Journalism also has clear principles such as accuracy, fairness, impartiality, independence, and protection of sources. But we do not have comparable accountability in journalism. Journalists can chase a narrative with little concern for facts, while the people they write about bear the consequences. I do not call myself a journalist. I have opinions and ideas, and I put them out there. I try to be rigorous, support my statements with evidence, and avoid conclusions that are unsupported. But I have positions, and I am open about them. I am not presenting myself as an impartial reporter. We should exclude journalists when they have a record of violating principles. Journalists cannot expect people to keep granting them access after they have misrepresented facts or broken commitments to sources. I would like to see better independent accreditation tied to known ethical standards and a credible process for addressing violations.frozen19d ago1.4K3166133.26%
Nonprofit hospitals, many of which are academic medical centers, are feasting on nearly $150 billion in margin from drug subsidies, then crying poor when it is time to support science. University medical centers get their status from their purported missions of research and teaching. The estimated margin from just one drug subsidy program they benefit from is roughly three times the entire NIH budget. Yet those profits are nowhere to be found when science needs funding. Lavish atriums, executive suites, executive salaries, and slush funds for administrators are everywhere. So are pictures of sick children whenever these institutions want to beg for more money. They will insist that drug subsidies have nothing to do with biomedical research. That is a myth. Money is fungible, and there are infinite ways to move it around inside an academic medical center. Some even say privately that they do not need NIH money. They pursue it for what they view as prestige, which is utterly obscene.frozen17d ago1.4K3454173.66%
Turning a sick child into a human shield for a spending demand is political hackery at its most cynical. The published evidence involved one patient, short follow-up, and very early results. It also represents less than 0.1% of what NIH does. It does not prove that NIH was uniquely necessary or that the work could not have been funded and performed elsewhere. NIH stifles innovation by forcing scientists to spend enormous amounts of time writing and rewriting grants, rewards safe and predictable projects, and funnels money into bureaucratic programs and the same legacy institutions and boy's clubs. Too much funding supports paperwork, overhead, large bureacratic center grants, and other administrative structures instead of giving the best scientists the freedom to pursue their best ideas. A rough estimate is that less than 25% of what NIH funds is worthwhile. This is how NIH avoids accountability. Present one emotionally powerful case as a definitive NIH triumph, then use it to demand another $50 billion while brushing aside the vast majority of what the agency actually funds.frozen29d ago1.4K710110.74%
A conflict of interest tells us where to look harder. The evidence tells us what to believe.frozen17d ago1.3K1311001.17%
Universities brag about expanding their DC influence. These may be smart tactical decisions to make them more money by getting more special interests into Washington to protect their money and power. But this has nothing to do with the academic mission. They sell it as students learning and growing, faculty sharing research, and leaders coming together. What they are describing is an influence operation. This is every reason to question their funding. Taxpayers are paying universities to lobby for more taxpayer money.frozen17d ago1.3K2111032.03%
Bureaucrats love long acronyms for their departments. They build jargon around those acronyms because it creates the impression that they are doing something mysterious and important. Understanding the terminology becomes a qualification in itself, even when the underlying work could be explained in a few ordinary sentences. They hire consultants to develop the acronyms, slogans, and language used to describe their importance. Then everyone has to learn the terminology to participate in the discussion. This becomes a game of manufacturing importance while wasting resources. People are paid to make ordinary work sound complicated, and knowing how to talk about the bureaucracy gets mistaken for knowing how to accomplish anything.frozen19d ago1.1K3240053.86%
He’s right to sue the NFL for discrimination. Based on his job performance, Flores is far more qualified for a head coaching job than most of the people hired ahead of him. He has already shown himself to be one of the most innovative minds in football. This illustrates how search firms can blacklist talented people while making the damaging claims harder to trace and challenge. Gossip and innuendo get packaged as professional assessments, with vague personality labels substituting for a serious evaluation of someone’s work. Those claims acquire the credibility of the search firm while the original whisperers remain obscured and insulated from accountability. I hope he wins. I’m glad his case is bringing these practices into public view and exposing the shady business of these questionable search firms.9d ago1.1K701010.85%
This is a problem AI could solve fairly straightforwardly by going through papers and showing which citations are unnecessary, which are actually needed, and which are uniquely needed to build on the information in the work in question. AI could help determine the novelty of a study, the depth of its new insight, and the scholarly work that went into it. This could be a major initiative. With current AI models, it should not be too difficult to get underway.frozen17d ago977901011.13%
MAHA has been taking criticism for engaging with corporate sponsors and interacting with large mainstream companies. It reminds me of what happens when an independent musician signs a record deal and becomes more mainstream. The original fans accuse them of selling out. What often happens instead is that they keep the main intentions of their work but take some of the edge off so that it can reach a much larger audience. There is a similar phenomenon in academic science. You make a discovery and report it straightforwardly, and nobody is interested. You package it differently, add several additional experiments that may not be particularly necessary, broaden the story, and suddenly it is acceptable for Nature. The underlying discovery has not changed. It has been packaged so that a larger audience and the mainstream institutions will accept it. The question in both cases is whether the fundamental thing that created the importance of the work in the first place is still there. In the case of MAHA, there has been a lot of criticism for engaging with big food companies, insurance companies, Walmart, and other organizations that many people sympathetic to its goals view with suspicion. Nevertheless, there was still a very clear mission at the summit. RFK Jr. spelled much of it out, and the themes throughout the meeting were recognizable: living a healthier life, better food, sleep, exercise, physical performance, disease prevention, earlier disease detection, and greater personalization of health and medicine. If RFK Jr. and others now have enough influence that these large companies want to engage with them, so be it. You can give these companies a seat at the table when they are willing to move in a better direction. They are not going to become perfect companies ever. But some improvement is still better than none. Take Walmart for example. A Walmart executive had a speaking slot at the summit. I happened to be grocery shopping at Walmart today. There was plenty of total junk being prominently advertised in there (see below), but there is also a very good fresh produce section, something that is much more substantial than what many people historically associated with Walmart. When MAHA can push a company of that size further toward the latter, that is a good thing.21d ago715901001.40%
I’ll be in D.C. next week. If you would like to catch up, let me know!26d ago469400000.85%