Candice Johnson

Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302

The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.

What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.

Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.

As a kid I fell behind on my vaccinations because it was hard for my single mom to take time off work to take us to the doctor. We got vaccinated when the school sent a letter saying they'd kick us out. That's public health: not judging people, but making it harder for them to make the wrong choice.

Grant Witness is hiring! We're seeking a full-time data scientist to join our team building data resources to support journalism, litigation, and activism protecting science, public health, and the rule of law. grant-witness.us/apply.html #rstats

AHRQ has been hit even harder than NIH. They have no grant making staff at all.

Current NIH leadership want you to think they are using rigorous, consistent & scientific processes to screen studies to align them with agency priorities.

But the process that they have put down on paper is a sham.

It’s important to know NIH is not following its own guidance. Here’s why:

🧵1/

Ok pals. Looking to move all my teaching materials open and online, and am developing new modules that I want to start off this way. Content = reading, quizzes, videos, and code tutorials. Opinions on the best platform? Good examples of best practice I can steal from? Many thanks.

What a remarkable statement. Both true and chilling.

"It is clear that the sum of US policy choices amount to mortality worse than a COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing, year after year" @gavinyamey.bsky.social

Data Visualization A Practical Introduction

Here’s a full draft of the upcoming second edition of my “Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction”: socviz.co

Changes in paracetamol and leucovorin use after a White House briefing Changes in federal prescribing recommendations follow deliberate and transparent processes involving US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientists, which normally include input from stakeholders an...

What happened after the weird Sept 2025 White House press conference on autism?

📉 Tylenol use in the ED dropped >10% among pregnant patients
📈 leucovorin rx jumped 93% among kids 5-17 immediately afterwards

new @thelancet.com today with @jeremyfaust.bsky.social

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Scientific datasets are riddled with copy-paste errors Initial results from scanning through Excel files belonging to 600 published scientific papers.

If you want to take your mind off awful politics and look at awful science stuff instead, this is a good read: www.sciencedetective.org/scientific-d...

Laoganma looking at you as if you mildly disappointed her

MFW I see authors resubmit their paper at a different journal without any edits after they have received extensive constructive feedback during peer review.

Woman using microscope

Americans continue to have confidence in scientists working at CDC, NIH and FDA — but less so their agency leaders, a new national poll finds www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/stark-divide...

NIH reneges on recognizing union for early career researchers The biomedical research agency says trainees in its labs are not “employees”

NIH sent notice this week that it will no longer recognize a union of early career researchers on the basis that trainees aren't "employees." My latest for @science.org.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Appreciate the answer. And good luck!

Could be. Headings, tables, figures, tables of contents, occasional equation. Nothing too fancy. Your typical professor-writing-a-paper functions.

Ok I am genuinely curious about this. I see posts like this all the time yet have used Word nearly every day for 20+ years and have never encountered any problems. Everything works as it should. Are we using different software versions? Why such a different user experience?

As NIH moves to parent NOFOs another resource for finding out what topics are of interest. grants.nih.gov/funding/find...

Keep your eyes peeled for quacks in study sections. Case in point Richard Frye in the newish SEP that reviews autism grants I do know it is one person among many legit scientists, but I am concerned this is the start of a bad trend...

Update: On the last day possible, NIH/HHS have extended the terms of all 6 members of the minority-health institute council.

Their terms will now expire on 8/27/26 and can't be extended any further.

Without new voting members, the institute won't be able to fund applications at the 2/12/27 council

This is not just cursed, its monstrous. The digital resurrection of a historian who died in January of this year, all so Grammarly can get some more clicks and engagement from students and/or scholars and/or others.

It feels so wrong on so many levels, these ghosts enslaved to AI forever

Heads up US demographers. Our main NIH study sections (SSPA/SSPB) are being disbanded. I don’t know what this means. public.csr.nih.gov/StudySection...

Now hiring: #Postdoc in Rural Maternal & Perinatal Health (#NIH U01) at USC @uscarnoldschool.bsky.social

Seeking a scholar committed to #RuralHealth #MaternalHealth equity and high-impact #research dissemination.

Apply: uscjobs.sc.edu/postings/201...

@academyhealth.bsky.social @apha.org

Are there people at the University of Maryland - say in government, policy, or sociology programs - that have studied NIH or the US science funding agencies?

feel free to DM

1. Are you an emerging aging research scholar? Consider the Butler-Williams Scholars program. The summer session is now accepting applications! The deadline is 2026/03/31, and the program will be 2026/08/03-2026/08/06. Qualified applicants must hold a doctorate (e.g., Ph.D., M.D., D.O., Dr.P.H.).

At a recent talk, I was asked about including the generic unobserved confounder U in a DAG. I said I thought it was useless. You should include actual named unobserved confounders. And if you can't think of any, you should be forced to say, explicitly, "we could not think of any other confounders"

All true but it's frustrating that we might have been spared a lot of this but for the Lancet publishing Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent study in 1998

MICHIGAN STATE CAPITOL, EAST LAWN 1:00pm - 3:00pm STAND UP FOR SCIENCE NATIONAL DAY OF ACTION MARCH 7TH

LANSING! Join your local March 7th rally to take back our science! Learn more at standupforscience.net/march7

#March7
#rally
#standupforscience
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#science

The NIH Restructuring Congress Rejected Is Happening Anyway (I used Gemini Nano Banana 2 to create this fictional image.)

This piece by Elizabeth Ginexi is a must read. Trump, Vought, RFK and Bhattacharya are destroying the NIH simply ignoring the law and the US Congress. It’s illegal and immoral. The NIH Restructuring Congress Rejected Is Happening Anyway open.substack.com/pub/elizabet...

Once again our first thoughts should be of human cost of conflict in Middle East, price paid and risks incurred by innocents.

Finally had some inspiration to play with the 'colorpalettes' package in @statacorp.bsky.social.

Tried out one of the Wes Anderson palettes (originally made for R, I believe) and now I feel like I've been missing out for the past several years... 😕