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baswerdlow.bsky.social
Assistant Professor at Lake Forest College Department of Psychology | Clinical Affective Science | he/him 🏳️‍🌈
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This framing is beneath contempt. The Christian right and MAGA launched an unprecedented assault on the civil rights of a tiny minority and successfully weaponized the pseudoliberal establishment - led by the NYT - to provide it with a medical controversy pretext that doesn’t actually exist.

Hey #psych crew! We want to launch a rapid response around the end of the LGBTQ+ 988 resource. Any one in the suicide/LGBTQ+ space interested in helping?

It is past time to abandon the term “dark” as a descriptor of antagonistic traits. A new viewpoint by @davidchester.bsky.social @drlynam.bsky.social @jdmiller.bsky.social psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

I don’t have an inside joke or sardonic quip or anything of the sort. All I’ve got is a gift link. Please read the story and watch the video. Thugs ostensibly working for the federal government are arresting elected officials for insisting on due process.

Fun fact - when my dad's car got stolen, we filed a police report and got a call about two weeks later that it had been picked up by a tow truck. The cops didn't find the car - it had just been illegally parked and left. After paying to get it out, we realized that it was full of stuff.

Today, my NIH colleagues and I did something scary but really important. We spoke up about egregious harms we are seeing happen to research participants and public health through thoughtless and politicized policies at NIH. 🧵1/3 apnews.com/article/nih-...

"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!

This morning, courageous NIH workers shared a document they are calling the “Bethesda Declaration” with Dr. Bhattacharya, urging him to reverse some of the actions that are badly misaligned with progress toward the NIH mission. 1/3

The brilliant @rastokke.bsky.social showing how shoddy evidence can spread like wildfire and how this has serious consequences #rEDTO25

Opinion piece by @cdelawalla.bsky.social, Nobel laureates Victor Ambrose, Carol Greider et al. The EO called "Restoring Gold Science" has a plan for enshittification of science; political loyalists have power over experts & punish those who don't fall in line.🧪 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The competition for this year's scummiest college administration is really heating up. "In a statement, the University of Michigan said it had not received any complaints about the investigators. It did not deny the surveillance."

I urge everyone to read Unbreaking’s new page on everything the govt is doing to destroy & diminish medical research funding. It’s the best thing I’ve read on this topic: @lizneeley.bsky.social & co have such done an incredible job. unbreaking.org/issues/medic...

(oh god here we go again...) 🚨IF YOU ARE PREGNANT OR A NEW MOM IN THE ATLANTA AREA AND WANT TO MEET ME AT THE CDC ENTRANCE ON FRIDAY MAY 30TH AT 3PM YELL IN MY DIRECTION🚨 #standupforscience #summerfightforscience #cdc #vaccines #covidvaccine

Major update to #SCIMaP visualization of impacts of cuts to federally supported health research. Map now includes information on future economic losses (impact of proposed reduction of NIH IDC to 15%) and current economic losses (impact of terminated NIH grants). scienceimpacts.org

Normalise writing a nice quick note to scholars literally every time you read and like their work. Our world is small and getting smaller. We need encouragement.

This is especially important: “We call upon our fellow institutions of higher education in the United States to declare their willingness to facilitate the immediate co-enrollment of Harvard’s international students, including formal acceptance of transfer for immigration purposes.”

If I see another institution-flagellating higher ed leader say that the current existential threats to the enterprise are own fault, I am going to go on a Bluesky rant. Oh wait, here is. ⚠️

Just published in JoPACS! pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40323898/ What is urgency and how should we best assess it in the moment? A thread 🧵 1/n

Thanks to everybody who chimed in! I arrived at the conclusion that (1) there's a lot of interesting stuff about interactions and (2) the figure I was looking for does not exist. So, I made it myself! Here's a simple illustration of how to control for confounding in interactions:>

In the book "Bright Sided," Barbara Ehrenreich argues that the "positive thinking" & "healthy living" philosophy inevitably leads to victim blaming of those w/ poor health when those approaches turn out not to be enough. We've turned over health policy to that philosophy, with the predicted outcome.

Come join us! I have startup funds to hire a postdoc for Fall 2025 at Rutgers to study intergroup relations. The job ad is at jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/249... & evaluations begin in 1 wk (5/16) w rolling evaluation. See 🧵below for a write-up on what I'm looking for in a postdoc. Please share widely!

Dorks, it’s time to throw sand in the gears. They want us to stop teaching, we will teach in the streets. They want us to stop our research, we will use archival data. They want to send us back to the dark ages, we will be a light. We will not lay down and take this.

Our new paper describing how we can move the field forward on co-occurring #ocd & #eatingdisorders is now out Give it a read! www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... @uofleatlab.bsky.social

Fleshed out this awesome slide to share with my lab too - keen for any feedback on things I might have gotten wrong

New Viewpoint in the Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science on the use of the term “normal” in the DSM over time. It’s increasing, and it’s an unclear term. I found the discussion of this fascinating. Check it out. psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

Which FDA-approved vaccines had randomized, placebo-controlled trials? ALL OF THEM. Polio? Measles, mumps, rubella? Haemophilus influenzae B? Diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis? Meningococcus? Varicella? Pneumococcus? Rotavirus? RSV? Hepatitis B? Influenza? HPV? COVID-19? Shingles? YEP. A thread🧵 1/

My opinion piece in today’s @nytimes.com . I discuss how clinical neglect of medication-related harms has made RFK Jr’s stance on antidepressants appealing to so many and moving the public conversation in a productive direction requires us to remedy this neglect. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/o...

New paper, "Elegant theories and the problems of social psychology," in which I argue that social psych suffers from large inference gaps, or the distance between theoretical model and statistical tests, with some suggestions for how to improve things doi.org/10.1080/1046...

Dear Tenured Facility, Over the past 100 days my career trajectory has turned into a question mark. At best, the TT job market just got even crazier, at worst there won’t be research career options in the US when I finish my PhD. It took me a while to find my path and I love being a scientist. 1/x

OMG ANOTHER WALK BACK!!!! PRESSURE WORKS, PT 3 www.advocate.com/news/trans-t...

My PhD student's NSF grant was terminated today. Her dissertation investigates why air pollution monitoring, metrics, and regulations don't properly capture the harms experienced by marginalized communities--esp in the most polluted Detroit neighborhoods. She and I are happy to talk with press etc.

Latest podcast is out: Get in everyone, we are going to Resistance Summer School! Thank you to everyone who indicated they would like to take my course on Race, Media and International Affairs 101. Please fill out this quick interest form to begin to sign up! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I want to teach an honors course called “Every Regulation is Written in Blood” and just teach the young everything that had to be put in place to make the safe, clean American life they take for granted

Sometimes it is important to say things very clearly and directly, so I wrote this. talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things...

NBC News reviewed over 100 pages of documents submitted by the federal government in its effort to deport Mahmoud Khalil. In some instances, the government appears to be relying on unverified tabloid articles. In others, the government claims are clearly erroneous. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...