grumpyoldscientist.bsky.social

And people ask me why I am grumpy.

Either that, or exorcise them. “ The power of Christ compels you! “

I have been think this for some time now. Any idea of American exceptionalism is long gone.

And there it is, clear as day in @bmj.com: The WHO "warned that limited access to vaccines under existing national programmes did not justify withholding established preventive care in research" It is unethical to exploit poverty & scarcity to advance your research www.bmj.com/content/395/...

I have no intention of watching this; this woman is a psychopathic liar. But in it the author, who worked at Theranos, described the “technology “ within the actual Edison device . An 8 channel pipette and standard immunoassays. www.statnews.com/2026/10/19/e...

Katie Zacharia was practicing law the right way. by Ezra Klein

Well, if you want a shirt for a team that looks flashy but has absolutely nothing under the hood.

I would like to say this is unprecedented , but, no. 10 years ago they found a box of forgotten viral samples in a cold room at FDA. Including smallpox, and Marburg. What a kerfuffle that caused. Didn’t cause harm, just a lot of finger pointing . www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Why you can lie with graphs as easily as with statistics.

A fuckup that requires the NYTs to report more accurately. Now we can work on the relationship between fuckup degree and accuracy. Is it one to one? Probably more like 5 to one, at least. We can develop an algorithm.

The whole article is enlightening , though hardly surprising . But this figure tells the tale. You can hire folks, but if you can’t onboard them, they unhire themselves . And if you fire admin staff, you can’t hire expeditiously . www.statnews.com/2026/09/17/f...

what makes this funny is reading between lines of Anthropic threat report tells you how embedded Silicon valley AI tech lords have become with US national security state The official enemies of the US are up to no good with our awesome tools! The official friends of the US....lets not get into that

On the other hand….while we’ve experienced the biological weapons-grade cooties manufactured by small humans, #altCDC’s policy is to keep them around - and not just for entertainment value.

This week on the blog: why the United States Navy is a load-bearing component of the global economy, why there is no available replacement for it and thus why it is pretty bad that the American voter has decided in a fit of abject folly to vote to abandon that role. acoup.blog/2026/08/28/c...

This has been the problem all along. Dems brought water guns to a heavy artillery fight.

Bessent becomes repo man? He is going to “ address the markets” tomorrow. Can’t wait… www.theguardian.com/business/202...?

Keep calm and forgo caffeine?

We broke our army during Iraq with excessive deployments. Are we going to break our navy this time? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

I, however, am sure Ross Douthat is one of the bad guys. And have been, for a long time.

If FL doesn’t have enough reasons to avoid it. There were armadillos in Manatee county 50 yrs ago when I lived there. It will be interesting to see what has changed to cause transmission to occur now. cbs12.com/news/local/f...

This story is brutal. But it will be Yale’s story soon enough. It will all come out eventually: the sordid tale of how a once-great university was sacrificed for political expediency. There will be names named and it won’t be pretty. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/u...

Lest all the other good news of the world distract you, here is a reminder we are sitting on a ticking time bomb. While having a war that is …about… oil.

Granted this is a relatively minor blip on the destruction of US education , but since New College was Rufo’s first hit job, I thought you should see what is in store for everyone else. State of FL doesn’t need no stinking (rebellious ) alumni or their money , apparently wslr.org/new-college-...

Releasing this kind of information two days before a voting AC is a new approach, I think. Kind of puts a damper on the whole procedure. www.statnews.com/2026/07/27/f...

The use of extremely online memetic aesthetics to support far-right political goals is like something out of Walter Benjamin’s nightmares.

Whew, the editors of @science.org are getting real.

Well, I suppose I should listen to this, but it sounds painful. No actual molecular entity, and no clear jurisdiction. Another “ spin straw into gold or guess my name” scenario for the FDA. Let the AEs begin… open.substack.com/pub/maggiefo...

The NAS has been trying the “ don’t make waves, play nice approach “ but it looks like short of negating it’s actual role, the time for that approach is over.

Congrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...

PSA: Last night wasn’t Trump telling you how the 2020 election was stolen, it was Trump showing you he very much plans to steal the 2026 election

Can things get more disturbing? www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

Well, I am reassured that someone in Congress realized that Makary and Prasad were not obeying FDA rules for good guidance. Rule making is not done by journal editorials. And the new commish seems to understand that too. www.raps.org/resource/dia...

With the first two OTP ACs in the Trump administration ( yeah, you read that right) coming up, we can only hope so. www.statnews.com/2026/07/15/f...

If you are interested in how much can be predicted by genotype alone, here is an interesting new wrinkle. They are going to have to figure out how to put time in the algorithm.

Gee, what a surprise.

WTF!? Since you can’t access the buildings or most of the parking lots without a gov PIV card that requires a background check, how does this make sense?

Pretty much. Really bad timing.

Well, good for her, but in relation to the amount of money the Trump family has absconded with since the beginning of this administration, it is chump change. A rounding error.

FDA regulation of tobacco was always an intricate tap dance. How does the safe and effective agency regulate something that is not safe, and has no legitimate health related action? I watched an agency executive dance through “ deeming” rules, and left puzzled and disturbed. This is more of same.

This.

Former Fed here: this article is accurate. Congress has been starving and strangling the Fed workforce through my entire career. Both parties: “ reinventing government “ was a Democratic hit job. To get talented young people to join the Feds after DOGE, you will need to sweeten the deal.

The Platner mess. In a larger context.

Reading material in the restaurant of my hotel in Montreal- bound copies, no less. This was how I improved my French when I was a teenager. Not that I have much useful French ability anymore. This week will be a trial to both me and my interlocutors.

This. Plus man of people, went to GW, then worked for Blackwater. The whole thing seemed full of holes, too good to be true. And apparently, it was. Democrats need to stop looking for political messiahs.

Scale is everything.

Record heat, high humidity, “ largest fireworks display ever”.

Life in DC on July 4th. Credit to Reuters. Somehow white nationalists taking public transportation is sort of amusing. But the picture isn’t. Happy 250th.

The absolute dumbest thing about Scott Atlas’s opinion is that nearly all industry scientists are trained on NIH funds, trainee salaries are a huge part of the NIH budget. Industry doesn’t want NIH cut, their costs would be immense if they had to run biomedical schools on top of drug development.

This is a real tour de force. Enjoy it while we still have a science infrastructure. ir.unither.com/~/media/File...