Noam Ross

“DOGE wants terminations to happen ASAP. Thanks" White House OSTP director Kratios should resign or be impeached for lying to Congress, saying that this didn't happen.

I rarely advertise my business. I've been fortunate to receive most of my work through referrals. But I do currently have space for a short-term project! If you need help setting up data collection systems, wrangling a dataset for analysis, or documenting data for sharing, reach out! cghlewis.com

This is taxpayer-funded research data and info that belongs to the public and is not this administration’s to erase.

The current timeline includes some mind-numbingly stupid features... grants.nih.gov/grants/guide... We could be working on creative and empowering approaches to tackling some interesting and important problems, but instead...

"I thought about calling it quits and retiring, but scientists are fiercely stubborn and driven to do good research. So, I started looking for ways to keep this research alive,” says Sharon Hillier. Thx @cjstreed.bsky.social, @relindsey.bsky.social, @michaeldgreen.phd & others! @nature.com

Some of my thoughts about the surge in AI-generated papers, why this feels like a completely new kind of problem, and what this means for how we evaluate science in biology. Out now in PLOS Biology: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

The ACLU, Protect Democracy, and other organizations are representing researchers in a class action lawsuit alleging the NIH is infringing on their freedom of speech by screening grants for certain words and viewpoints when making funding decisions. We hear from one of the plaintiffs. #STATSummit

This is the result of 7+ years of Trump's attacks on @repilhan.bsky.social, Somali-Americans, & the Muslim community. Everyone, regardless of party, must speak out against this fascistic abuse of power. If they can do this to a sitting Congresswoman, they can & will do it to anyone.

Job alert: This is a fun one. At @ucs.org, we are looking for a Science Ambassador Fellow to advance our organization-wide initiative to fight back against the current attacks on science and democracy through mobilization of the science community. Join us! apply.workable.com/union-of-con...

A proposed OMB rule would politicize federal grantmaking by allowing political interference in grant decisions, cancellations, and conditions. Congress should permanently block the rule, our new paper explains: www.cbpp.org/research/gov...

The Trump Administration is again illegally impounding federal funds, withholding roughly $800 million in congressionally approved funds from 11 program accounts. Congress can restore the funds and prevent future “pocket rescissions”: www.cbpp.org/research/gov...

People will say it's "Tech Week" here in NYC. Well, any event run by Andreessen Horowitz is illegitimate, because the NYC tech community has values, and one of its most fundamental is its humanity. They have forfeited theirs.

“The Trump Administration is withholding grants for things it doesn't like. It has not approved a major capital improvement grant for transit. A lot of grants have been withheld or cut because it had bike lanes or because it used the word equity.” @americawalks.bsky.social @thewaroncars.bsky.social

Yale researchers say terminated, delayed and paused grants have made it difficult to plan or finish studies of vector-borne and poverty-related diseases. One described the effect of the uncertainty as “paralyzing.” yaledailynews.com/articles/fed...

PSA: For anyone writing a recommendation for the NSF grad fellowship this year, recs are due on Fri Oct 16, 8pm Eastern, cleverly *before* the actual application deadline. This tidbit isn't on the NSFGRF front page anymore; it's buried inside the program solicitation:

While Congress and the courts have protected much of the agency's funding, an insider warns that the administration's ongoing efforts to control medical research will cause "irreversible" damage. washingtonian.com/2026/10/13/t...

I’m afraid I have terrible news to share 💔 www.statnews.com/2026/10/13/h...

I'm speaking at the NYC Statistical Computing Meetup about @grantwitness.org: how we use modern #rstats stack to produce trustworthy, reproducible, rapid data that powers activism, litigation, and journalism. Join us in-person @ NYU or online. Mon, Oct 19 at 7PM! www.meetup.com/nyhackr/even... 🧪

Mainstream journalism organizations so rarely have trans reporters covering trans issues, or even helping cis reporters understand nuance in complicated pieces. So happy to support @transjournalists.org as they do the work to support and nurture trans journalists! donorbox.org/digging-our-...

Comments the NIH proposal to screw up peer review are due TODAY. If you need a hand figuring out how to submit a comment or what to write, see Josh's post below. 🧪

There are no banned words, as long as you don't use them.

Hey--they finally were explicit on this. Same shit as NIH to not award as many proposals as the past.

New blog post: GAMs in animal science, and finding my footing after moving from ecology into animal and veterinary science. Nearly 5½ years on, and some health and personal life changes in between, this paper feels like the first fruit of that process. fromthebottomoftheheap.net/2026/10/08/g...

After years of championing "free speech," Texas lawmakers have enabled a dramatic rise of censorship in Texas universities, banning concepts, canceling courses and closing departments seen as "woke," and even using AI bots as censors. All in the name of freedom. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

It is truly exhausting to see this kind of organizational cowardice (not to mention the stunning disrespect and abysmal preparation).

@noamross.net on NPR this morning. www.npr.org/2026/10/09/n... "I am always enthusiastic about more investment into science, but you could think of this as someone planting a tree somewhere where THEY just burned down a forest. We've lost so much scientific investment under this administration."

CDC has had to close down country offices overseas due to lack of funding... but the political leaders were able to use funds from global health security for this inappropriate and unethical study instead. Very clear what their priorities are

Thoughts on the intersection of findings that the administration diverted $1.4B in NSF funds away from investigator-initiated research and today's New Golden Age of Science Summit showcasing the White House's preferred political priorities of what constitutes 'science'.

CDC offices "in Angola and South Sudan closed Thursday, with the office in Zimbabwe set to shut its doors at the end of the year. Current and former CDC officials told POLITICO they expect more than a dozen other foreign offices will follow in the next few years."

Arithmetic in the "New Golden Age of Science" at NSF: Reduce $600M in STEM funding between FY25 and FY26 grantwitness.org/nsf/analyses... Propose to reduce NSF GRFP fellowships by $180M in FY27 nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202... Declare "success" w/a $100M "push" for US scientists.

They're also going to announce that all mayonnaise will now be gluten free.

👀

ah damn, RIP Margaret Hamilton. she took safety-critical software engineering seriously, and got people to the moon and back. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...

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

Trump announced $100M to train U.S. citizen scientists only. www.bloomberg.com/news/article... These are not new funds. NSF underspent its education funds by $100M this past year. Of course, it pales in comparison to the $560M lost due to terminated NSF education grants: grantwitness.org/nsf 🧪

I'm speaking at the NYC Statistical Computing Meetup about @grantwitness.org: how we use modern #rstats stack to produce trustworthy, reproducible, rapid data that powers activism, litigation, and journalism. Join us in-person @ NYU or online. Mon, Oct 19 at 7PM! www.meetup.com/nyhackr/even... 🧪

Even within the Behavioral and Cognitive division, the topics that NSF SBE funded were really quite narrow: mostly cognitive and computational neuroscience. 🧪 bsky.app/profile/dang...

Excellent interview with @angierasmussen.bsky.social on CNN about the reported case of plague in Russia It’s good to hear from an actual expert like Dr Rasmussen (there are plenty of “armchair” commentators who don’t really know what they’re talking about!) www.cnn.com/2026/10/04/w...

How did this happen? Officially, proposals went through the same process as before: peer review, program officer recommendation, section head approval. Unofficially, the choice was taken out of SBE's hands, going above the directorate head, Christina Freyman and to NSF leadership.

In addition to spending less money and making fewer new grants, SBE also dramatically narrowed where it made those new grants. Areas such as economics, sociology, and archaeology received few to no grants.

But no part was hit as hard as SBE, which went from an average of 800 new grants to just 91, a precipitous, 90% decline. SBE spent just 95 million on new grants, far less than its average of 247 million.

Agency-wide, NSF made far fewer new grants (~6,200, down from an average of ~11,000) and underspent its buget by 1.4 billion. See previous coverage:

NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:

This morning I've read a few roundups of the "plague" news. But you won't really get much more than what's summarised here: beaconbio.org/en/report/?r...

Very nice project: up-to-date COVID, flu and RSV spread information from US CDC Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics www.cdc.gov/cfa-modeling...