Sarah Cobey

Here’s something you should know about minks: They have lungs and airways remarkably similar on a cellular level to those of people. They’ve spread flus and infected humans before with COVID-19. Right now, bird flu is spreading on a Utah farm filled with thousands of them… 🧵

“The lack of action… can also, in turn, increase gendered service burdens, as women take on more work to try to improve their workplace climates.” Most senior women faculty I know regularly help colleagues at other institutions, too. It adds up.

It is hard to overstate what a big loss this is. Helen Branswell was a fantastic infectious disease reporter. And she made the rest of us better. www.statnews.com/2026/10/13/h...

The NIH proposal to conceal reviewer scores from program officers, investigators, and advisory councils is ill-conceived, introduces disproportionate weight to small percentile differences, diminishes the role of scientific peer review, and should be withdrawn in its entirety. a 🧵

I do find it stunning, for all of the NYT's criticism of postmodern constructivism and "woke" ideology, that most of their editorialising signals a deep nihilism towards empirical reality, where science is just annother perspective, and voter polls decide what's moral or political reality.

Instead of a decline in the disruptiveness of scientific and technological knowledge, the data mainly show an increasing metadata quality over time: relatively fewer papers with zero references due to database errors. 7/8

Science is a global pursuit. This undermines our leadership in science. And it harms young scientists trying to start their careers here.

I know it’s hard to decide which battle to fight some days. Pick this one.

🧪Totally disingenuous. The question is not whether the speakers you chose are popular or unpopular. The question is whether or not they are qualified. And an administrator cutting science for political purposes and suppressing scientific studies is not "advocating for scientific reforms".

“It was Barry who discovered that lymphocytes-not macrophages, as some hypothesized-that carry immune memory. showed that lymphocytes signal to macrophages through a chemical they termed MIF-which, together w/ interferon, were the 1st cytokines discovered” www.statnews.com/2026/03/30/b...

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.

Dr. Bhattacharya recently came to U. Chicago for an "off the record" event. My strong impression was that he is truly unfamiliar with how most biomedical research works.

We found that while close contact contributed to elevated risk (rate ratio 1.16 per doubling daily time, 95%-CI 1.01–1.33), time spent in shared classrooms and poor air quality had larger effects (RR 3.17, 95%-CI 1.96–5.17 and RR 1.90 95%-CI 1.23–2.94) respectively).

This is a targeted attack on science media. Bhattacharya has slammed science media for what he calls biased coverage, but how are our readers — the global scientific community — supposed to understand his new agency priorities if we can't even get in the door?

Just spoke to The Hill about how the dismantling of the NIH is impacting science in America. We still face a cliff of unfathomable heights, w easily 1000+ labs poised to close in the next year due to funding ending. A generation of young scientists lost because there is nowhere for them to train.

Yes, we have a problem. The problem starts at the top. The problem is worsened by leadership of @nature.com & other journals & professional organizations who think that power demands a platform without scrutiny.

A bad thing is unfolding at NIH this week: It looks like the Trump administration is trying to replace key civil servant scientific leaders, the Institute Directors, with political hires. These directors control the NIH budget, tens of billions. A bit of a video explainer here: 1/ 🧪

It was surreal to be quizzed on “freedom of inquiry” and other values in my mandated U. Chicago/NIH/NSF research security training tonight given the restrictions to our research over the past eight months. Jeremy describes the experience perfectly below. (His piece is outstanding.)

Job alert ‼️ UChicago Micro is hiring! Open to tenured/tenure track faculty at all levels in any area of microbiology. Come join our amazing and growing department. apply.interfolio.com/174404

Immigrants, particularly on H1Bs, are the lifeblood of American innovation. If you wanted to hurt US competitiveness in the next century, I can think of few more effective ways than a move like this Even when found illegal, the mere intent will have irreparably harmed our future

But it does not *want* to do that. It has the personality and confidence of a 10x coder, and *absolutely lies to your face* to maintain the illusion. It races to establish huge frameworks, call up parallel agents, and build you something that gives an output.

NEW: I just observed two interesting data deletions from the CDC's website. Both having to do with vaccine surveillance in children. There's nothing about these datasets that would have tripped any "gender" flags. You can still download them from our site: www.statnews.com/2025/02/14/t...

Just few days left to apply to one of these postdoc positions in my infectious disease modelling Unit at @pasteur.fr in Paris!

🧪 You can sign a supporting letter in solidarity with the NIH scientists here: www.standupforscience.net/bethesda-dec...

More of this, please: a class action lawsuit by UC Berkeley researchers to restore illegally cut federal grants. www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

How bad will it be? Catastrophic. Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come. But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget. Speak up now before it is too late. (inflation adjusted $-s below)

A not very happy Friday. CERI had 6 NIH grants canceled, which will impact operations, surveillance and response to epidemics. We are working to try to minimize disturbance but not easy with 6 grants terminated at the same moment. A crisis is unfolding in SA www.news24.com/southafrica/...

I was working on a proposal in response to one of these calls. Submission deadline next week. The proposal was 95% done, and I only learned about the cancellation from this post. 🤷‍♂️

Yes, that’s exactly what they are doing. They are trying to hurt Harvard by destroying my research

Things are going from bad to worse at NSF; www.science.org/content/arti...

But it seems disingenuous to bluntly and severely penalise researchers (and with zero advance notice) for focusing on issues that you’ve built your own career on.

This is disastrous for many scientific fields and labs.

Really excited to be a part of this study and see it published today! Efficacy of Baloxavir Treatment in Preventing Transmission of Influenza | New England Journal of Medicine www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Per source, NIH has been instructed to hold off from issuing ALL awards to Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Brown, and Northwestern (including med schools) Agency staff have also been instructed to not speak about this funding freeze to grantees and applicants