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

Of the 4000 researchers at NIH, only 20% are tenured. They’re going to fire all the rest as their contracts come up for renewal, absolutely decimating research at the NIH. This is catastrophic, not just for Americans, but for the whole world. www.science.org/content/arti...

submitted 2 days ago • 249 comments

Every American should feel shame and embarrassment over the way we are treating our allies. Trump is nothing more than a petulant child in Putin’s pocket; trying to extort an ally under an existential threat from the Kremlin is despicable and beneath the American people. www.cnn.com/2025/02/28/p...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

An entirely routine and end of the line signature being withheld by NIH Grants Management officials because of personal fear of retaliation.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

This right here is why RFK Jr is such a threat to public health. He and his anti-vaccine grifters have successfully brought back childhood deaths from a disease we eliminated in the US back in the year 2000. This should be a wake up call. www.npr.org/sections/sho...

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

Good morning. The dance, whatever that means to you, is worth fighting for. “During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, protested in the afternoon and danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.

submitted 6 days ago • 63 comments

The National Institutes of Health had to stop considering new grant applications, delaying funding for research into diseases ranging from heart disease and cancer to Alzheimer's and allergies.

submitted 8 days ago • 175 comments

Our third episode is now live! We talked with Dr. Curtis Henry about his scientific journey, his research on cells in the immune system (T-cells), and the importance of diversity! We hope you enjoy this episode!

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

The Trump administration told US government scientists working on a vital global climate report to stop their work, according to a scientist involved in the report.

submitted 9 days ago • 54 comments

Welp, I guess this is why I still haven’t gotten onto my T-32 grant. Who needs medical research on cardiovascular research anyways…. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

America will lose the 21st century because of these anti-science moves by the admin. www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/21/1...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Trump is playing the same stunt with Ukraine as he did with the Taliban. Remember, the Doha agreement was our surrender to the Taliban without having the Afghani government at the table.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

submitted 11 days ago • 416 comments

I had two grant proposals up for review in the NIH Bacterial Virulence (BV) study section. It was canceled without notice this morning. Without those grants, my lab must close within a year. And so the purge of scientific research in the US continues 🤬 #MicroSky 🦠🧫🧪🧬🔬

submitted 11 days ago • 57 comments

Your lab scissors are actually a parafilmase - a highly specialized enzyme that catalyzes the precise cutting of parafilm through a metal-dependent mechanism

submitted 14 days ago • 2 comments

Goodnight friends. We end today with this quote for ourselves and for our new secretary of HHS.

submitted 16 days ago • 10 comments

US Biotech is #1. And depends critically on academic research both for trained PhDs to wrestle cures from Nature and for curiosity-driven eurekas (eg CRISPR or statins). Private industry will not be able to substitute for an enfeebled NIH. We will have fewer cures and we will lose our primacy.

submitted 17 days ago • 4 comments

A good read on what we may be in store for. www.foreignaffairs.com/united-state...

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

submitted 19 days ago • 391 comments

BREAKING The Trump administration is maintaining a funding freeze at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in defiance of two federal court orders. The ongoing freeze was confirmed by an NIH official and internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information.

submitted 19 days ago • 256 comments

This is a room where we turn very modest salaries and budgets (and lots of coffee) into new knowledge, life-saving innovations, and technology that feeds business growth. It's literally the loom that spins hay into gold but these numpties are suddenly worried about the cost of hay.

submitted 19 days ago • 240 comments

This is a threat to the medical research community. Take Head. NIH’s parent agency, the US Department of Health and Human Services, has the authority to make these changes, its director of communications, Andrew Nixon, told CNN via email - and believes it could www.cnn.com/2025/02/10/h...

submitted 19 days ago • 1 comment

This is the most relevant article to NIH and research cuts I’ve seen. Imagine if this was today , how many people would be saying “Why are we studying Gila Monsters and their impact on diabetes ? That’s wasted money !” globalnews.ca/news/9793403...

submitted 20 days ago • 1165 comments

Thought it might be good to put some human faces on NIH indirects. We had an IT guy at Stanford who supported school of medicine even though he could have made way more at a tech company. Said both his parents died of cancer. Though not a researcher, this is the way he said he could help the mission

submitted 21 days ago • 2 comments

This and COVID should be/have been huge wake-up calls that political journalists need much stronger science and technology skills if they’re going to make sense of how government operates, communicates, or makes decisions.

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Decimating the NSF would be an act of violence against USA competitiveness in science, technology and innovation. Have any of these people seen Shanghai lately? arstechnica.com/science/2025...

submitted 23 days ago • 7 comments

DOGE operative Marko Elez got the ability to alter US Treasury payment system code on Feb 1, WIRED's sources say. For days, Trump officials fed members of Congress and the press a different story. Elez is out now for posts reading "I was racist before it was cool" and "normalize Indian hate."

submitted 23 days ago • 132 comments

We are so far down the bifurcation of information spheres that MAGA can just name things the govt funds and their base automatically assumes it is malicious, fraudulent, and evil. This is unsustainable. Idk the solution, but we have to clean up our information environment.

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC. There's a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn't it. I've been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That's not changing anytime soon.

submitted 23 days ago • 6588 comments

"Imagine a DAPI-like stain, but for the extracellular matrix." That's basically how this work was pitched to me by Kayvon and Antonio a year or so ago. Now the final product really delivers. Read about their versatile label for ECM in living tissues here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

submitted 24 days ago • 9 comments

"One thing is certain: The changes we make ourselves will be healthier than the ones our adversaries demand." New work for @undark.org: undark.org/2025/02/06/o...

submitted 24 days ago • 6 comments

'Scientists with retracted publications had younger publication age, higher self-citation rates, and larger publication volume than those without any retracted publications' journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

submitted 24 days ago • 2 comments

NIH and NSF funding for basic research is the insurance for our civilization. This administration is literally trashing the future of the US.

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

Science solidarity. This alleged cut would end NSF. NIH would be next. University presidents: where is your courage to speak out?

submitted 25 days ago • 4 comments

submitted 25 days ago • 134 comments

Don't know why I have to point this out, but because this is social media: observing that gutting the US intelligence community helps the adversaries of the United States is not the same thing as enthusiastically endorsing every CIA black op and every NSA overreach of the past 75 years.

submitted 25 days ago • 15 comments

This is unnecessary, destructive, and further establishes this admin as reckless, careless, and contemptuous of scientific research. www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

President Trump says the US "will take over" the Gaza Strip, after earlier saying he doesn't think there is a permanent future for Palestinians in Gaza.

submitted 25 days ago • 281 comments

This is insane.

submitted 26 days ago • 0 comments

Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration are trying to repeal the Biden administration’s rules that require all of the country’s lead pipes to be replaced and aim to reduce the amount of lead in water. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

submitted 27 days ago • 47 comments

submitted 27 days ago • 0 comments

If Russia were designing a strategy to weaken America, America’s strongest allies (Mexico, Canada, UK, France and NATO), it would look remarkably like Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

submitted 28 days ago • 5 comments

Several Graduate T32s (G-RISE, IMSD, Bridges to the Doctorate) and the MARC T34 (for undergraduates) training grants now have expiration dates of today, 1/30/2025.

submitted 30 days ago • 18 comments

I am one of these NSF postdocs. NSF has frozen everyone’s access to their salaries and research stipends (that were already awarded) with no information about when they might be expected to be unfrozen. It still appears like we are expected to continue doing our work though.

submitted 30 days ago • 40 comments

Dear Universities, You know all of the unrestricted funds in your endowments that you just keep reinvesting with no end goal. Use them. Now.

submitted 30 days ago • 0 comments

Once again, a fundamental reason why so many academics despise Trump, Vance, Musk & company is that we’ve all had our share of The Guy Who Didn’t Do The Reading But Demands to Be Heard

submitted 30 days ago • 118 comments

Federally funded scientists continually trying to figure out whether we can or cannot continue our research based on new messaging from the government and our institutions

submitted 31 days ago • 6 comments