🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science. More keywords

When considering the value of publicly funded grants and foreign aid, it's worth zooming out to engage in a broader conversation: what is the common good and why should we invest in it? The common good is a term from philosophy that refers to the Benefits that we garner from living in a society rather than as isolated individuals. We collectively contribute to, and share in, these benefits. I can't afford to build a backyard the size of Central Park, but I enjoy taking walks there when I visit NYC. I also like living

A driving assumption behind the admin's proposed restrictions on grants & aid seems to be that any use of "DEI" signals a political agenda that is antithetical to conducting good research. Let's unpack that. Why would DEI language be used in a grant? Generally, when researchers use terms like "diversity" and "equity" in a grant proposal, they are focusing on one of two things:

1. Ensuring that the population being studied is representative
2. Ensuring that the research workforce is representative

Why might those goals align

It's time to explain a little more about what 'diversity' and DEI initiatives mean in the context of NIH and NSF grants. One of NIH's funding mechanisms is called a 'diversity supplement.' What this means is that if an investigator already has a funded NIH grant (see my earlier thread about how rigorous and selective the process is to obtain one), they can support a trainee (e.g., a graduate student) with a small amount of additional funding if the student is from a group that NIH considers to be historically underrepresented in biomedical science.

A personal story about how the potential grant funding freeze might affect science. Right now, I'm in my fourth year of a 5-year NIH grant and my last year of funding is supposed to start February 1st. I'm supporting a postdoc, two graduate students, and two lab managers on this grant, and am collecting time sensitive longitudinal data from families and kids. I recruited this sample when the parents were pregnant and am now assessing the kids' brain and behavior development when they turn 7.

I need people to understand how difficult it is to get an NIH grant. You spend months writing a proposal, following strict guidelines that include a detailed multiyear budget, bios of everyone on your team, plans for participant safety & ethical conduct. Then you send it off -1/n And if you didn't make any mistakes, it goes on to peer review. Three outside researchers with deep expertise in your research area write critiques covering multiple facets of your research (whether your topic is important, your methods are sound, your team is qualified)

Sharing one hopeful thought and one depressing thought for my fellow lefties.
Hopeful thought: In a closely divided country, the pendulum swings back and forth in terms of the ruling party. Trump will be too old to run in 4 years even if he could challenge the constitution; 1/ Vance has no charisma; and there is tons of talent on the Democrat side. It's possible that we could end up with a MORE progressive government in 4 years than if Harris had won.
Periods of right-wing dominance tend to wake up the left. During Trump's first term we had the 2/

This blew up way more than I expected! It's been fun to see people's enthusiasm, but there's also been criticism of the fact that we did this on a weekend. I want to address this head-on, because frankly I agree: we should NOT normalize toxic overwork in academia! Some context:

https://twitter.com/darbysaxbe/status/1613255540595097600

The whole lab voted on when to schedule this (I originally pitched a Friday!). Students preferred Sunday so they would not have to schedule around classes & clinical work. We picked the last day of our 3.5 week winter break so we'd feel well-rested after some time off.

This weekend, my lab tried a new experiment: we wrote a paper in one day! Inspired by @JnfrLTackett, we blocked out a whole Sunday, & in <8 hours, we cranked out a surprisingly decent full-length draft. Plus, we had fun, ate a lot of snacks, & fit in a Starbucks run. Here's how! Planning ahead is key. We spent a lab meeting last semester deciding what findings we wanted to cover in the PiaD, & selecting the first author (aka point person for the day): @lizzieaviv, because she'd already worked with some of the constructs we wanted to include in the paper.