There are tens of thousands of cities in China,
And tens of thousands of food markets,
But Covid started close to the lab with the world's biggest collection of sarbecoviruses,
And the most active program of manipulating them
That alone is reason for investigating the lab.
Science becomes fragile the moment it fears questions.
Chuck Norris could derive an ought from an is.
🚨Join us TOMORROW at 2:30pm ET for the inaugural talk in our NIH Scientific Freedom Lecture Series, titled “Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19” featuring a conversation with Matt Ridley, D.Phil.
Watch online via the NIH videocast page: http://bit.ly/3PsHAu5
The “NIH is no longer functioning” narrative was always dramatically overstated.
A delayed apportionment coming after a prolonged government shutdown was framed as institutional collapse rather than what it likely was: a lag in funding flow tied to broader delays in federal operations.
That context was largely ignored.
Instead, a handful of social influencers amplified by outlets like Science and Nature pushed a doomsday storyline that was far more dramatic than the underlying reality.
I'm sad to hear that Prof. Takeshi Amemiya of @Stanford has passed. He was a brilliant econometrician and gifted teacher. As a student, I took several classes with him.
My favorite memory: Whenever a student would ask him a hard question, he would stop short and stare straight up at the ceiling in awkward silence. Suddenly, when the answer came to him, a look of glee would appear on his face. "Ahh!" he'd say and meticulously write out a fully worked-out proof on the chalkboard.
He had such a clean way of thinking about probability, statistics, and econometrics. I will always be grateful for everything he taught me.
I wish all comfort to his family and to all who knew and loved him.
Pleased to share the program of our upcoming conference “Care, Control, and Biopolitics: Reckoning with the Covid Governance”, which will take place at the University of Graz on 28–30 April 2026. The meeting will bring together scholars from different disciplines to reflect on how the Covid era reshaped governance, public debate, and the relationship between care and control in contemporary societies.
I am particularly delighted that @toby00green will deliver the keynote lecture. As is well known here on Twitter, Toby has been instrumental in opening serious historical and intellectual debate about the wider significance of the pandemic, not least through his pioneering work on Covid as a world-historical crisis.
Toby is also convening a major conference at the British Academy in London this July, which continues and expands this emerging conversation from another perspective – so I am pleased to share that program, too! 😊
https://murielblaive.substack.com/p/program-of-graz-conference-28-30
Don't miss @mattwridley give the inaugural lecture in @nih's Scientific Freedom lecture series. He will be speaking on March 20th about the origins of covid. Registration to watch is free at the link!
https://videocast.nih.gov/watch/244438a5-0e6b-11f1-9f14-124f0a52e769
P-hacking is bad because you're giving a positive signal to something that is almost certainly false. You're actively polluting the scientific literature with mirages.
A null result isn't a failed experiment. An experiment is never a failure if it is designed and executed well. Publishing null results actively helps the scientific community by narrowing the pool of plausible alternatives to test. It makes discovering what's actually true easier.
It doesn't take much censorship to create a culture of self-censorship. And self-censorship is the most dangerous form of censorship because it looks exactly like freedom.
People have asked about today’s Reuters article.
Coverage of the IACC highlights the difficulty of conveying nuance in complex scientific and policy discussions.
The reporter received thoughtful, detailed responses about autism research priorities and the committee’s role, yet the article largely reduces the discussion to controversy and insinuation.
Families deserve better than click-driven narratives.
In the interest of transparency, I’m sharing the written responses I provided. I welcome your observations comparing them with the tenor of the article.
Apologies in advance for the length. 🧵
https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/kennedys-new-us-autism-panel-examine-potential-causes-2026-03-05/
Great conversation with @DrJBhattacharya @CDCgov @NIH @HHSGov: https://koacolorado.iheart.com/featured/ross-kaminsky/content/2026-03-05-dr-jay-bhattacharya-acting-director-of-the-cdc-and-the-nih/
(PODCAST) After Hours with NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Head of NIH and Acting CDC Director, tells about reform of a broken system, and how he’s launching a vaccine injury effort.
R to @DrJBhattacharya: Scientific journals like Lancet and Nature, which endorsed Joe Biden for president, are not trustworthy sources to comment on reforms in public health. They traded science for politics, and have not altered course since.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10202798/
The power of a little peanut butter!
The author unintentionally undermines her thesis with each revealed detail of what is being defunded. Americans do support USG funding of science. Some might question whether this qualifies and whether funds could be more productively spent in other domains. @LocasaleLab https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/opinion/doge-hiv-funding.html?unlocked_article_code=1.OVA.gkiL.d0YIoqD7CLoc&smid=tw-share
The reproducibility crisis is not mysterious. It is a predictable consequence of the incentive structure that governs academic institutions.
In corporate environments, criticism that could reflect negatively on the organization is strongly discouraged. Public communication is almost uniformly positive. Internal dissent is carefully managed. The logic is straightforward: employees are expected to protect the organization’s reputation, because reputation influences brand, market position, investor confidence, and ultimately revenue. Criticism public or private can carry significant cost for career advancement.
Universities were historically organized around different principles - open dissent, protected speech, and adversarial critique as engines of truth-seeking. But as academic institutions have become increasingly corporatized, they have adopted many of the same norms that govern companies.
The shift is visible in professional academic culture. On linkedin and science twitter, public academic discourse resembles corporate discourse - it is dominated by mutual affirmation, humble self-promotion, and reflexive praise. “Great work!” becomes the response, independent of actual quality. Open criticism is no longer treated as a scholarly obligation but is often viewed as uncollegial and risky. Anyone interested in protecting their career quickly learns to minimize or eliminate criticism altogether. In tightly networked fields, even a single adversarial interaction can carry outsized consequences.
When criticism generates friction, and friction carries professional risk, rational actors adapt. Scientists learn that visible positivity or silence is safer than challenging flawed work.
This dynamic extends well beyond social media. Letters of recommendation become uniformly glowing. Peer review grows cautious and conformity-driven. Grant panels avoid adversarial debate. Institutional evaluations maintain positive framing over scrutiny.
At the same time, academic status has become tightly coupled to journal name and , funding volume, citation metrics, and, identity politics. Under such conditions, the value of a study is derived from the journal it appears and who authored it, rather than from its underlying quality.
In this environment, all findings are not appropriately stress-tested. They are accommodated, amplified, or politely ignored.
The reproducibility crisis is not merely a failure of statistical methods. It is the product of a cultural transformation in which academia adopted corporate logic while retaining the rhetoric of open inquiry. As that gap widens, public trust in scientific institutions erodes accordingly.
One of my fondest childhood memories was watching the US beat the Soviets in the 1980 Miracle on Ice with my dad and brother on a tiny black-and-white TV. This amazing win today by USA hockey brought back some good memories. Go USA! 🇺🇸
Between 1974 and 2014, only 0.1% of publications in the top 50 economics journals were replication studies.
That's 40 years. Thousands of papers. Almost none replicated.
We've built careers on findings no one has verified.
When economists finally replicate studies, 40-67% fail depending on the study.
Federal Reserve (2015): Only 49% of 67 papers from top journals successfully replicated — even with the original authors' help.
Most papers? Never checked at all.
Here's the worst part: Papers that don't replicate get cited MORE than papers that do.
And after a failed replication is published, only 12% of subsequent citations mention it.
The profession rewards interesting findings, not true ones.
Remember Reinhart-Rogoff (2010)? "Debt above 90% GDP kills growth."
Herndon, Ash & Pollin found a spreadsheet error. Results didn't hold. But by then, it had shaped austerity policy across Europe and the US.
How many other canonical papers have Excel errors?
We replicate recent papers, but canonical findings from the 1970s-90s? Nobody touches them. Too famous. Too foundational.
The older the paper, the less scrutiny it gets. Yet these are the studies we cite most.
Maybe we should replicate backwards.
Start with the most-cited papers from 1975-2000. See what holds up.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/is-economics-research-replicable-sixty-published-papers-from-thirteen-journals-say-quotusually-notquot.htm
Hardin's "Tragedy of the Commons" (1968) argued shared resources are doomed. Privatize or regulate: no other option.
A political scientist studied a Swiss village that has managed communal pastures since 1483. She proved him wrong and won the Nobel.
"It is hard to see how an incentive structure that pushes scholars to fake or fudge an interest in social justice helps produce a more just academy. If anything, this seems likely to further entrench higher education’s tendency to confuse performative preening with real societal improvement." @Tyler_A_Harper
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/mellon-foundation-humanities-research-funding/685733/
If you want to pack a punch🥊, start with what’s on your plate.
Eat Real food🥩🥦.
Be like Mike Tyson.
@HHSGov @SecKennedy @MikeTyson
Read the new Dietary guidelines here ➡️ https://realfood.gov/
Just so everyone is aware of the media bias covering anything by the current administration right now. If a universal vaccine project gets a greenlight, that's a problem because it bypassed protocol.
If someone raises questions about a novel vaccine platform and the comparator arm, that also results in hyperventilation.
Great reporting everyone. Keep at it.
Appreciate this author's willingness to keep an open mind and engage with this historic reform effort. We need more of this in the US medical-scientific community.
"What I heard at the event was more complex and constructive than much public discourse would suggest. There was a clear appetite for action, for questioning the status quo and for improving systems without dismissing what’s working. There was acknowledgment of the incredible lifesaving research that has happened at NIH in years prior and the outstanding dedication of NIH employees." @NIH @NIHDirector_Jay #MAHA
I joined a MAHA roundtable. What I heard surprised me. https://wapo.st/4aLxNHL
I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
This is not a story. It’s a manufactured insinuation.
The NIH routinely screens thousands of compounds for preliminary anticancer activity. It's a non news story.
Seeing whether a compound kills cancer cells in a petri dish is the bottom rung of the evidence ladder. Almost all compounds that look interesting at this stage go nowhere—and everyone in oncology knows this.
STAT News is presenting this as alarming for one reason only: to insinuate political motives that are never actually stated and not supported by the facts. The article relies on implication, tone, and guilt-by-association rather than substance.
There is nothing unscientific—or controversial—about asking whether ivermectin has anticancer properties. Maybe it does.
Treating routine preclinical research as scandal isn’t journalism. It’s a narrative to smuggle in a political attack that the research itself does not justify.
It's smart to be skeptical of scientific papers vetted and gate kept by editors with undeclared conflicts of interest, with advice from anonymous, unpublished peer reviews, with reviewers hand picked by the editors.
Independent replication is the better way.
As a rule, the corporate media apply a highly selective and maximally uncharitable exegesis of Kennedy's extemporaneous comments, and ignore what he is obviously referring to.
Fauci had a long hallway outside of his office and in the hallway were many many offices all filled with people doing PR for Fauci.
Now they are empty because the new director is an actual scientist.
"The science did not fail us." I appreciate your essay but have to disagree. Medical science and biomedical leaders during covid did fail us. The fallout is an epistemic crisis in which more "science" is going to be questioned, and centralized authority is going to be challenged. We are going to have to embrace the journey. More people are also going to challenge the centrality of "science" in our lives. Science and medicine do not have all the answers to the problems of life. They have only a few.
In academic research, when scholar A publishes a finding and scholar B publishes a contradictory finding, they have to figure out why they disagree. Is there a flaw in one methodology? Are they measuring different things? Is there a logical inconsistency somewhere? The search for coherence drives the process.
This search for logical consistency and coherence has been the most powerful engine of intellectual progress for thousands of years. Socrates started it. Every serious thinker since then has continued it. The willingness to find and resolve contradictions is what separates real thinking from mere opinion.
BREAKING: Congress is considering stripping sovereign immunity of EU censorship officials, prohibiting social media from enforcing censorship orders, and enabling private lawsuits against foreign entities, says @Jim_Jordan echoing remarks made by @UnderSecPD and @DarrellIssa
The NIH announced the opening of the East Palestine Train Derailment Health Research Program Office. The new research office will “assess and address the long-term health outcomes stemming from the 2023 train derailment in the community.”
Commenting on this, Secretary Kennedy said, “NIH’s research hub offers the people of East Palestine a pathway to the clear answers about their health they deserve. Everyone affected by this environmental disaster deserves access to independent, gold-standard science that puts their well-being first.”
NIH Director Dr. Bhattacharya added, “This research program is designed to bring rigorous, independent science directly to the community. By establishing a local presence, we can better engage residents, support enrollment in studies, and ensure the research reflects the real experiences and concerns of the people affected.”
On the same day, Dr. Bhattacharya testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on modernizing research and biosafety.
During his testimony, the NIH Director said, “The United States is still the single best place in the world to have a career in biomedical research… The NIH is absolutely committed to finding ways to give [researchers] the training you need and the support you need to try your ideas out because that’s the only way we’re going to make America healthier.”
The NIH Director also confirmed that research funded by the agency discovered a cure for sickle cell anemia.
The HHS announced the appointment of Diana Diaz-Harrison as the new National Autism Coordinator. According to the HHS, “Diaz-Harrison is a nationally recognized autism and disability advocate with experience across education, healthcare, workforce development, and community-based systems, including founding and leading autism-focused charter schools. In this role, she will help advance collaboration across HHS and federal partners to better support individuals with autism and their families.”
Commenting further on the Great American Recovery initiative, Secretary Kennedy said, “Addiction thrives in isolation. Recovery begins with reconnection—to community, to purpose, and to something greater than ourselves.” Kennedy also thanked President Trump for being the driving force behind what he called a compassionate approach to addiction and recovery.
CMS Administrator Dr. Oz commented on a decision by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons to recommend against sex-rejecting operations for young people. According to Dr. Oz, “When the medical ethics textbooks of the future are written, they’ll look back on sex-rejecting procedures for minors the way we look back on lobotomies. I applaud The American Society of Plastic Surgeons for placing itself on the right side of history by opposing these dangerous, unscientific experiments.”
I'm really glad the House Judiciary committee has stayed on top of this. Foreign governments should not have a veto on American free speech rights.
This is the sad state of science journalism right now.
What happened around the NIH event at the Willard Hotel is a telling example. The event was full. Roughly 400 people had registered. Many were turned away due to logistics.
I was told by multiple sources that one journalist showed up anyway and harassed event staff. One reportedly followed staff around while provoking them and recording the interaction. Another like this person Paul is referencing publicly virtue-signaled, claiming they were excluded, when in reality the event was simply full and he didn't sign up in time.
Journals like Science and Nature continue to manufacture a narrative and insert themselves into the story. Yet, they don't disclose their financial COIs when they have their reporters behaving this way.
This is the sad state of science journalism coming from outlets that are claiming to be the most credible sources for science. Performance takes precedence. The journalist becomes the protagonist.
The result is predictable: erosion of public trust because those tasked with covering it abandon basic standards of journalistic integrity.
🚨The EU Censorship Files, Part II
For more than a year, the Committee has been warning that European censorship laws threaten U.S. free speech online.
Now, we have proof: Big Tech is censoring Americans’ speech in the U.S., including true information, to comply with Europe’s far-reaching Digital Services Act.
"kids can do virtual learning"
If they have a safe, warm home.
If they have a quiet place in that home.
If they have a device.
If they have reliable internet.
If they have an adult or parent to redirect them when they lose focus.
If they can learn via a screen.