nateurneuro.bsky.social
Neuroscientist. All (bad) opinions are my own.
79 posts
155 followers
132 following
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There's a weird niche market online for people who want to feel smart without doing much thinking, and a nice authoritative tone coupled with a very basic ggplot of a correlation devoid of context does wonders.
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Yeah, to be clear, I don’t think it’s unfair to say “this isn’t compelling in the face of known issues” but rather to then extend that to the negative claim is improper/there is some nuance to trying to do this *across* all weak but somewhat converging evidence.
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This is still just reliant on an unstated definition of what should constitute evidence in terms of a binary yes/no. Sure, something’s can be discarded but there’s more that is just weak-strong. Like it’s fine if that standard is different between people, but that’s a diff conversation.
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You can make a good case that the evidence for trans generational epigenetic inheritance is mixed. That neither means it is a ubiquitous mechanism or complete noise.
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I think a negative claim is different from a null claim. I also don’t think you can dismiss a collection of evidence pointing towards an effect, however small, by saying it “might” be noise. This is really just affirming an assumption with extra steps.
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Jfc I’m so sorry
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We’ll need some system, and I hope academic institutions can find a way to band together and bandaid with practical solutions, but in the face of total funding upheaval I think we’ll need states to come together and find a commonwealth sort of mechanism.
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holding congressional reps feet to the fire is also not unhelpful; politics happens very slow and then very fast, and we are unfortunately reliant on putting constant pressure on to try and course correct later sooner and later on down the line.
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I just don’t see this provides a solution to the national problem. Taxing as the GOP will or voluntarily redistributing endowments as suggested doesn’t give a long term solution, whether we think of it as bridge funding or not - it fiscally doesn’t work long term.
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Not to shill for my employer, but divesting endowments are actually tricky and a significant portion of endowment distributions are earmarked for certain activities as a condition of the funds.
I'll hope that, if the worst comes, we see some major interstate/interuniversity collabs tho...
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The level of unseriousness these people operate on is just...so annoying lol.
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If the NIH budget is slashed and sent “to the states,” I’d prefer to see federal taxes from our states slashed and diverted to said states to form those types of funded powerhouses. Pipe dream but still a dream outside this nightmare.
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Why should any scientist - or American citizen - put any amount of trust into Bhattacharya to uphold the NIH mission, maintain our global biomedical research dominance, or keep Americans healthy?
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I mean, yes, they very obviously *want* to do this. This feels teed up to lose in court though.
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"Scientists could come together and share equipment"
Absolute brilliance. No one has ever considered this before.
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Right, but it still resulted in time and money for each individual arbitration demand. I just don't see how Admin lawyers, reasonably, 30K+ individual lawsuits being a massive timesuck.
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Didn’t Uber try this and then they were flooded with individual lawsuits? If the DOJ wants to do literally nothing else but deal with NIH lawsuits for four years….
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#BlackHistoryMonth
From Dr. Nathaniel Harnett (@nateurneuro.bsky.social in @npp-journal.bsky.social (April 2020)
"Neurobiological consequences of racial disparities and environmental risks: a critical gap in understanding psychiatric disorders"
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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I think ARC was different from DSPAN? ARC excluded NINDS/NIMH etc, it looks like?
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#BlackHistoryMonth
From June,2022 in @npp-journal.bsky.social
"It's about racism, not race: a call to purge oppressive practices from neuropsychiatry and scientific discovery"
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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The simplest reason that Trump should not cut NIH overhead rates is that it is illegal.
The reason it is illegal is that Congress passed a law to stop Trump from changing the rates the last time he tried to do so.
The law is clear; the only real ambiguity is whether Trump still follows the law.
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My DP2 wont be funded and I'm pretty sure Im at the border of having my grant administratively withdrawn as well.
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I can tell you the current indirects for non-NIH grants in the MassGenBrigham system is not simply 15%. And if a private grant doesnt cover that, then we have to cover it from “somewhere.”
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“If I ignore my constituents, then there is no problem.”
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lol. Lmao.
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The utilities, maintenance, shipping of supplies, general staff who make sure I’m doing my research ethically/legally, etc. As much as we scientists love to whine about them, they’re actually necessary in maintaining the environment needed to do high caliber science.
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Once again, the 69% indirect rate is not inclusive of all the costs to do research. If I get a grant for 1mil over five years, Harvard gets $690k over five years. This goes to all of the things to maintain the institute needed that I can’t include in direct costs.
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This is my last reply because we’ve know entered shifted goalpost territory that I’m not interested in. You’ve gotten good replies, yet we’ve now gone from “Well Harvard makes 3 billion!” To “Oh. But there was a 45 million surplus.” That’s a 2.95 billion dollar different position isn’t it?
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Yes, I glanced at the CV lol.
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“They clearly aren’t spending anywhere near the money they are making”
Harvard medical school operated at at a $27 milion dollar loss last year. There are a lot of other Harvard schools and a lot of operating costs/scholarships/etc. They really can spend a lot of money believe it or not.
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A) All space used for the execution of a grant is included in the facilities/overhead, and is subject to indirect and thus lab space.
B) For more reasons than either the character limit or my desire to spend on deliberate, obtuse dumbassery beyond this post.
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“I don’t use any lab space”
A) your office counts as space and b) you are not the only researcher in the country.