Jason Locasale @LocasaleLab

There was an audience of self-described contrarians largely composed of people in their 70s and perhaps even 80s. Many had legacies tied to universities and appeared to view those institutions through the lens of preserving what they had helped build. Several commented on how young I was. Some assumed I was a college student, although I am in my mid-40s. Apparently, that was not a major distinction to them. One participant whom the group widely regarded as a one of their heterodox leaders claimed that social media had distorted perceptions of scientific institutions by amplifying misinformed voices. There was no mention whether these dissenting voices had always existed but previously lacked the authority from MIT and Harvard that traditionally amplified people.

Jason Locasale @LocasaleLab

2 days ago

I attended a meeting of people associated with groups like heterodox academy, FIRE and other organizations who describe themselves as contrarian thinkers committed to open inquiry and university reform. My impression was that they largely consider universities healthy

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@CdreMattDecker Great point 😂

I attended a meeting of people associated with groups like heterodox academy, FIRE and other organizations who describe themselves as contrarian thinkers committed to open inquiry and university reform. My impression was that they largely consider universities healthy institutions requiring modest changes. A revised mission statement, a tweak in a policy, or a university president who echoes a talking point they like is treated as if that is all that is needed. There was little willingness to consider that the problems may be much deeper. The people presenting themselves as reformers seem unwilling to consider how fundamentally broken these institutions have become. Interestingly, some of the people who spoke most often about civil discourse raised their voices and became flustered in reference to discussion suggesting that universities might require much larger structural changes. The commitment to open inquiry seemed to apply only within boundaries they had defined. Their heterodoxy had developed its own orthodoxy. These groups may criticize universities, but they remain deeply invested in their legitimacy. They propose limited or trivial changes while leaving the same leadership structures, incentives, bureaucracies, and concentrations of power intact.

NIH grants are awarded to institutions, not individual investigators. That structure disappears from Science’s public framing. A dispute over funding awarded to institutions becomes a story about the personal speech rights of individual researchers. The institutions’ control over the grants, their exercise of authority over researchers, and their own speech policies and practices receive no examination. Instead, Science presents a newly filed complaint containing unproven allegations across its headline, subheadline, and social media promotion. The opposing views are completely absent. The government likely has established arguments supporting its authority to define federal programs, impose conditions on public funds, and decline to subsidize activities that conflict with other legal obligations. Science foregrounded the individual-rights theory, turning a dispute over institutional funding into an activist narrative.

News from Science @NewsfromScience

2 days ago

Researchers have filed a new lawsuit alleging that the U.S. National Institutes of Health is illegally censoring research grants. scim.ag/46uyen6

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@enggirlfriend 🎯

This is exactly how Science and AAAS’s distorted narrative spreads. A scientist reads that NSF has supposedly abandoned science and immediately declares reform “sickening,” “heartbreaking,” and another attack on scientists and the world. Her evidence that NSF previously operated with zero politics is that it funded her own research. That does not prove NSF was apolitical. It proves the system worked well for her. NSF has pursued government priorities and required researchers to satisfy "broader impacts" criteria for decades. Many accomplished scientists, including me, were repeatedly shut out while favored investigators and institutions accumulated grant after grant. I was even told I wasn't diverse enough in one application. Those excluded from the system did not experience some pristine meritocracy free of politics. The actual NSF announcement provides more than $1.5 billion for foundational research, including long-term awards for ambitious work and rapid grants for promising ideas. Calling needed reforms an attack on science while romanticizing a system that funded your own career is an incumbent defending a system and mistaking personal success for proof that the system was any good in the first place.

Kimberly Prather, Ph.D. @kprather88

4 days ago

This is beyond sickening…another gut punch to science, scientists and the world for that matter. The beauty and strength of NSF is they have always funded the best science…fundamental thru applied. Zero politics. They funded 90% of my research over my 30+ year career…this is

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Science invents another death-of-science narrative From its opening sentence, the article is written to frighten scientists and direct anger at the administration. The NSF funding announcement cited in the article bears little resemblance to the political attack Science published. NSF announced a new $1.5 billion initiative for foundational research. It described long-term awards for ambitious research, rapid grants for testing promising ideas, and a continued commitment to foundational research and scientific discovery. Even Science acknowledges that the memo supports grants lasting five years or longer for exceptional researchers pursuing transformative questions. It also describes a proposal allowing reviewers to rescue controversial ideas from groupthink. Those facts undermine the article’s opening narrative. Science appears determined to preserve its science funding doomsday story. It extracts a reference to administration priorities, gives it the most politically ominous interpretation possible, and presents that interpretation as fact. Scientists then read Science instead of the NSF announcement and repeat the same distorted narrative. nsf.gov/news/foundatio…

News from Science @NewsfromScience

4 days ago

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued a 10-page memo signaling a retreat from its traditional role of giving grants to individual researchers to pursue their best ideas and to train the next generation of scientists. Instead, the memo makes clear, NSF will devote the

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I watched this Senate hearing for the confirmation of senior HHS officials. I was struck by how inconsequential the politicians’ questioning was relative to the responsibilities of these positions. These officials will preside over a two-trillion-dollar organization involving the health of hundreds of millions of people, yet the senators seemed focused almost entirely on measles and trying to blame RFK Jr. The measles related deaths that are occurring in PA and seem to be associated with Amish communities amount to roughly 0.0003% of nationwide mortality from cancer and heart disease much of which is preventable. Yet the questioning keeps returning to measles as if it defines the entire state of public health. This is the narrative politicians and the media keep creating. There are enormous questions about chronic disease, healthcare costs, research priorities, and how effectively HHS spends its money that deserve serious attention. The politicians conducting this interrogation had an opportunity to examine those responsibilities in depth. My impression was that they were more interested in using measles to generate fear, attack Kennedy, and produce headlines. c-span.org/program/senate…

As a kid, I would read cereal boxes and wonder what the compounds on the label actually were and what they did inside my body. Wanting to understand what I was eating led me into chemistry, then biochemistry, then a career studying metabolism.

You can lose trust in an institution and still believe deeply in what it was established to do.

Numerous people have privately told me Kevin’s social media account is off the rails and that they don’t understand what I see in him. I usually ask if they’ve ever talked to him. He’s a very smart, insightful guy. Some of his takes are weird. Others are brilliant. He has also said he sees social media as an art form, and I think that helps explain what he’s doing. I don’t know whether he’s right about Anthropic and its motives, but he does a lot of careful analysis and presents a strong case. There’s also humor in using Anthropic’s own AI machinery to produce the case against Anthropic. To my eye, his ability to use AI puts him among the top 1% of users. There’s real skill in doing this well. His posts seem to be influencing important conversations in the tech industry. If you find value in that work, please consider supporting him. He brings a lot to the table. It’s striking that his posts can reach millions of people, including some very wealthy readers, while he receives only a couple hundred dollars for the work.

Kevin Bass @kevinnbass

5 days ago

I have conducted an audit of Anthropic's finances. What I have found is so shocking that I am calling for a Congressional investigation. Anthropic is not just seeking regulatory capture. It has built a regulatory capture machine that cannot be turned off. Structural financial

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What I love about professional sports is the clear attribution of merit and accountability. A player can openly admit that he played badly, hurt the team, and should not have been out there. He is respected for his honesty and he will have another chance. Can you imagine a scientist saying the same thing? I overlooked something. I was wrong. My result could not be reproduced. People should not rely on this finding. We do not have that kind of personal accountability in science. In sports, there is constant attention to performance and judgment of the outcome. In science, we reward people for publishing, but very few people keep watching to see whether the work actually holds up. If we want more honesty from scientists, we need an ecosystem in which people pay attention to outcomes in the same way that fans and sports media pay attention to athletes. Being wrong is inevitable. Admitting it should be expected but we don't see this in science. We do not have a scientific system as robust as professional sports, but we should strive to build one.

Word On The Birds @WordOnTheBirds

5 days ago

“Honestly, I played like s*** yesterday. I was a complete liability. It was my fault. I should not be out there until I feel healthy. A few weeks ago, someone rolled up on me in practice. We got some imaging on it today. Really the best plan going forward is to put me on IR so I

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An institution protects the status quo by turning reform into a process it controls.

@FriedrichHayek preservation*

The best thing AI may do for science is force humans to become intellectually useful again.

I just got off the phone from an interview about Arday and Nature’s take on the controversy. The conversation reminded me to take a look at this piece. I agree with it directionally but the central issue is how little regard Nature had for whether the claims about Arday were actually true. Instead, it seemed far more interested in constructing the narrative its readership wanted to see . That is also how the universities Nature caters to operate. They have very little regard for the actual merits of many of the faculty they hire and promote. What matters is whether someone fits the image the university wants to project. Arday fit Cambridge’s image of what excellence was supposed to look like. That was enough. The same phenomenon exists throughout the sciences, although it is usually much less spectacular. Faculty learn what institutions want. They adopt the language. They support the approved causes. They repeat the right talking points. Many can spend entire careers doing science of very little consequence while performing the role the university wants. They are never exposed in the dramatic way Arday was because there is no single spectacular claim to investigate. They simply satisfy the institutional definition of excellence while producing very little of substance. That is why the Arday story matters beyond Arday. It is an unusually visible example of the broader transformation of universities from institutions organized around truth and merit into institutions organized around image, politics, and self-presentation. Nature’s response was revealing because it reflected exactly the same pathology.

Jerry Coyne @Evolutionistrue

a week ago

My piece on Jason Arday, science, and the journal Nature is now available without a paywall. …ronicleofhighereducation.substack.com/p/jason-arday-…

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The real problem is that the BMJ looks less like a medical journal than a political operation wearing the front of one. This article cites ideological activists and social media trolls as authorities on biomedical science despite their lack of meaningful experience running laboratories or working inside the system they are supposedly explaining. Their actual qualification is political alignment. The paywalled article starts with the desired narrative, finds people who will repeat it, launders their opinions through the front of a medical journal, and presents the result as serious analysis. Institutions that claim scientific authority use that authority to advance political narratives, then dismiss anyone who notices as being political.

The short answer is yes. Private universities are heavily subsidized by taxpayers, directly and indirectly. Federal research grants, federally backed student loans, tax advantages for endowments and philanthropy, tax-exempt real estate, government-funded hospital revenue, and tax-advantaged bond financing all support the system. A disgruntled, unhinged professor who posts violent threats on social media is funded by the taxpayer. While her paycheck may not literally come from a federal salary line or government employment, the institution that pays it exists inside an enormous taxpayer-supported financial structure. There is really no such thing as a private university in America.

KyleOhio @RealKyleOhio

6 days ago

@LocasaleLab Do our taxes fund her salary?

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@Cincinnati_Son Good point

Universities were willing to strip faculty of their laboratories, access to students, and even their employment over the slightest offense in something they said or didn't say. The fact that Anya can confidently say something this unhinged publicly while Carnegie Mellon launches a PR campaign about how concerned it is, yet apparently says or does nothing despite likely clear violations of its own faculty conduct and professionalism policies, tells you a great deal about how universities actually operate. The entitlement comes from knowing the rules are not applied equally. She knows the institution is on her side. Carnegie Mellon appears willing to fight for her even when doing so may cost it money. Perhaps financial pressure will finally change that calculation. I doubt it.

Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist @DeAngelisCorey

6 days ago

Hey @CarnegieMellon, your racist professor is apparently doubling down on Instagram from behind her locked account.

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