brandon-barba.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

The most consequential Speaker in state history.

submitted 2 days ago • 805 comments

It is very easy to argue any point if you only ever examine the evidence that supports your position. Confirmation bias is one of the hardest intellectual problems to overcome.

submitted 5 days ago • 7 comments

AAP AAFP ACOG AMA …and others renounce today’s removal of all ACIP Committee members. Listen to the doctors.

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

"We are speaking on behalf of hundreds of NIH staff who are standing up together to say: WE DISSENT. I am so scared about doing this but I am trying to be brave for my kids because it's only gonna get harder to speak up." Thank you to Dr. Jenna Norton and NIH scientists for your courage!

submitted 8 days ago • 14 comments

BREAKING: RFK Jr. fires ACIP, the panel responsible for advising on vaccines. This breaks a promise to Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to advance Kennedy as HHS secretary on the condition that he would, among other things, keep ACIP in place. www.statnews.com/2025/06/09/r...

submitted 8 days ago • 105 comments

Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.

submitted 9 days ago • 898 comments

The opening of Judge Boasberg’s opinion:

submitted 13 days ago • 39 comments

Man comes to the US from Lebanon. Starts out delivering pizzas, becomes a Nobel winning neuroscientist. Trump freezes his funding, he gets an email from China offering to move his lab “any city, any university I want" with guaranteed funding for 20 years. What are we doing?

submitted 14 days ago • 94 comments

Senator Ossoff speaking the truth. We need real action

submitted 15 days ago • 202 comments

I finally had a read of the MAHA report today, and aside from the obvious use of generative AI and false citations, what strikes me is how remarkably unprofessional and amateurish the document is. It's just wild garbage 1/n

submitted 19 days ago • 7 comments

In San Antonio today, plainclothes ICE officers (not masked this time) arrested, handcuffed, and zip-tied a family of five (yes, ALL of them, including the little children) coming out of their immigration court hearing — which ICE had just had dismissed. www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/a...

submitted 19 days ago • 1080 comments

RFK Jr's "MAHA" report came out last week. It misinterpreted data, had broken links to some citations, and cited 7 articles that don't exist. That last one is a hallmark of AI hallucinations. How much of the MAHA report was AI generated? 🤔 www.notus.org/health-scien...

submitted 19 days ago • 77 comments

What a precise way to tear apart the logic of being anti-DEI.

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

Right now, Republicans in Congress are trying to push through a bill that would put millions of Americans at risk of losing their health care. They want to cut federal funding for Medicaid, take away tax credits that help more people afford coverage, and raise costs for working class families.

submitted 26 days ago • 1174 comments

If you were curious like me about why many European countries didn’t have chickenpox vaccination programs (as mentioned by RFK), here’s a good explanation.

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, the billionaire Bill Gates discussed Elon Musk’s “stunning” reductions to USAID. He also spoke about his decision to accelerate the end of his foundation’s giving and his plans for his personal fortune. nyti.ms/3Si2WJ7

submitted 39 days ago • 16 comments

Spot on by Bill Gates. I knew he thought this but am glad he finally said it publicly. He has put up with such shitty misinformation from Musk over vaccines too.

submitted 40 days ago • 80 comments

With NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya dismissing my reporting as "false" and "spreading rumors" hours before releasing a policy that confirmed said "rumors," I feel compelled to respond. Here's an inside look into how this story was reported. It was a weird one. 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

submitted 42 days ago • 27 comments

I think a lot about what Carl Sagan said in one of his final interviews.

submitted 44 days ago • 249 comments

Proof this guy is full of SITH.

submitted 44 days ago • 2856 comments

Please highlight this story. ICE stormed into the wrong house, trashed the place, and made women/girls stand outside in the rain in their underwear. ICE also stole phones, laptops, and cash savings from the family, who moved to OKC two weeks ago. kfor.com/news/local/w...

submitted 49 days ago • 1330 comments

The President said of the U.S. economy: "We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don't have to pay it." And then... I lost it.

submitted 52 days ago • 315 comments

Carl Sagan when asked, "Are you a Socialist?"

submitted 57 days ago • 566 comments

this may be because I am restricting my consumption of news media in a mostly futile effort to preserve sanity but I feel like politicians are really not connecting/messaging that health is instrumentalized as a foundation for freedom, a central tenet under which this entire country is founded

submitted 57 days ago • 6 comments

Women's Health Initiative defunded after 30 years and 5,000 publications www.whi.org/md/news/whi-...

submitted 56 days ago • 8 comments

1. I study how science works as a collective endeavor to make sense of the physical world. I also study how misinformation about science spreads and affects society. There are fewer examples more poignant than a Minnesota bill that would criminalize mRNA vaccines as weapons of mass destruction.

submitted 57 days ago • 36 comments

People spend a lot of time wondering why the left is worse at using independent media to control the national narrative. A useful exercise is to ask why the left is also worse at selling snake oil and pyramid schemes, because I think the reasons are basically exactly the same.

submitted 58 days ago • 1012 comments

1. The DOJ has sent threatening letters to several medical journals, focused around whether these journals are spreading misinformation that harms the American people and suppressing alternative viewpoints. I study how the norms and institutions of science facilitate discovery and self-correction.

submitted 60 days ago • 53 comments

submitted 61 days ago • 75 comments

My story about @kevinh-phd.bsky.social, nutrition and metabolism scientist at N.I.H., who felt compelled to take early retirement after experiencing censorship of his work under the new administration. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/w...

submitted 62 days ago • 19 comments

Such a loss for not just the NIH, but America and its science community.

submitted 62 days ago • 0 comments

A follow-up to my quote of the day this morning: A short Bluetorial about Vannevar Bush and his legacy

submitted 63 days ago • 2 comments

Academics & others need to understand a few things. A 🧵 I) First, fascism is not inevitable. Research on autocratic movements show that only about 3,5% of the population need to resist to stop them. Fascism thrives on the silence of the friends. That why visible resistance matters. 1/

submitted 63 days ago • 20 comments

His name is Andry Hernandez Romero. He is a young professional from Venezuela. He is a makeup artist. He is a gay man. Andry was a target for abuse in his homeland of Venezuela. He was viciously humiliated daily — the victim of discrimination for his sexuality. He was also being persecuted for…

submitted 65 days ago • 295 comments

Basically: I don’t think people understand that 36 hours from now it’s possible that America will have a formalized system for abducting enemies of the regime and stashing them in foreign gulags, indefinitely. www.thebulwark.com/p/bukele-abr...

submitted 65 days ago • 364 comments

Eugenicists are so stupid.

submitted 65 days ago • 1388 comments

They might be exposed to science that hasn't been pre-approved by the administration

submitted 68 days ago • 43 comments

HHS Secretary RFK Jr. is a danger to the public’s health and should resign or be fired, says APHA. In just a few short weeks, his actions on vacccines, fluoride and other public health science have shown how wrong he is for the job. Read & share our statement: apha.org/news-and-med...

submitted 69 days ago • 24 comments