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Saige Rutherford, PhD

@beingsaige.bsky.social
3.3K followers 2.8K following 38 posts

Machine learning + psychiatry, from a human rights perspective. American in Deutschland. Kindness & Curiosity. Dog & twin mom. www.beingsaige.com

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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
If every billionaire is a policy failure, a trillionaire is 1000 policy failures in a trenchcoat.
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Kevin Bird @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
New post is live! 40 years of race science arguments about brain size & the racial IQ gap, nobody bothered to write down the math or do anything beyond gawk at correlations. I did, walking through the data & formalizing it with the Lande equation. It fares worse than you could even imagine.
open.substack.com
Race on The Brain: why brain-size differences can’t explain the IQ gap
Tackling a popular hereditarian argument
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
𝗖𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗴𝗹𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀 + 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲-𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗴𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶-𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰𝘀 Brain dynamics must-reads by Deisseroth team. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... #neuroskyence
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Saige Rutherford, PhD @beingsaige.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
@ohbmofficial.bsky.social how should we manage childcare at #OHBM2026? I am assuming it is possible for caregivers to bring young children into the venue without needing a registration?
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Saige Rutherford, PhD @beingsaige.bsky.social · 30/05/2026
@ohbmofficial.bsky.social how should we manage childcare at #OHBM2026? I am assuming it is possible for caregivers to bring young children into the venue without needing a registration?
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 28/05/2026
TIL heat is really killing a lot of people in Europe. hannahritchie.substack.com/p/heat-guns-...
Heat versus gun deaths in the European Union and the United States. Average annual deaths per 100,000 population, as close to the year 2024 as possible. Heat deaths are based on excess death methodology, not the number recorded on death certificates.

US, heat: 1.94
European Union, guns: 1.24
US, guns: 13.27
European union, heat: 12.57
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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
“Our most urgent challenges, whether the governance of artificial intelligence, the erosion of democratic norms, or the challenge of building shared meaning across fractured communities, are not engineering problems with determinable solutions.”
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Mitchell Volk @mvolk.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Well holy crap. Erin Brockovich (yes, the same one the led the Hinkley, CA toxic groundwater lawsuit in ‘93) launched a website tracking AI data centers across the US and the ecological impacts to the environment and drinking water. MN is riddled with them. www.brockovichdatacenter.com
Erin Brockovich leading the charge on tracking AI data centers across the US
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Chad Loder @chadloder.dev · 24/05/2026
Eugenicists
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Russ Poldrack @russpoldrack.org · 28/10/2025
Ten Simple Rules for AI-Assisted Coding in Science arxiv.org/abs/2510.22254 - our latest, led by @ericwbridgeford.bsky.social
arxiv.org
Ten Simple Rules for AI-Assisted Coding in Science
While AI coding tools have demonstrated potential to accelerate software development, their use in scientific computing raises critical questions about code quality and scientific validity. In this pa...
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Ferric Fang, MD @fangferric.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Two Harvard economists forecast the impact of the administration’s proposed NIH budget cuts- stunning losses in new therapies, life expectancy, and economic output with a “social cost 16 times greater than the savings the administration is attempting to achieve." jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...
jamanetwork.com
Cutting the NIH—The $8 Trillion Health Care Catastrophe
This JAMA Forum discusses the recent budget cuts to National Institutes of Health (NIH), the effects of these cuts on scientific research and health of individuals in the US, and the prospects for cha...
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Rick Betzel @richardfbetzel.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Excited to share the latest preprint from the lab: Rethinking scale in network neuroscience: Contributions and opportunities at the nanoscale We argue that there’s a natural compatibility of network neuroscience tools with synapse-resolved connectomes. arxiv.org/abs/2508.16760
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Hell-a Bambust 🏳️‍⚧️ (alleged transsexual)(spooky) @ela-bambust.bsky.social · 25/08/2025
I made a robot that screams meme
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 31/01/2025
In light of this deeply illegal activity at NSF and the ongoing attack on American science, I'm posting the slides from my 2017 talk at the American Physical Society about the Nazi take over of German physics/why German is no longer science's lingua franca 🧪 🧵 1/26 drive.google.com/file/d/1_MCm...
nazi germany & physics
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, PhD
Department of  Physics,University of Washington, Seattle
APS April Meeting, January 2017
Dismantling the (Nazi) German Nuclear Reactor (Pile) at Haigerloch, 50 km SW of Stuttgart, in April 1945
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 29/07/2025
Boiling here at home in Cyprus but I put the finishing touches a couple of days ago on this preprint: What Does 'Human-Centred AI' Mean? doi.org/10.48550/arX... Wherein I analyse HCAI & demonstrate through 3 triplets my new tripartite definition of AI (Table 1) that properly centres the human. 1/n
title and abstract from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19960table 1 from https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.19960
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 30/07/2025
A common gotcha is "but Olivia, proofs don't capture reality" which I find honestly so beautiful because that's THE point. A formal system, a proof, maths, code, 💯 CANNOT solve reality, the frame problem, human cognition — so their gut tells them exactly the answer. Lean into it! That's exactly it.
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Emma Harvey @emmharv.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
After having such a great time at #CHI2025 and #FAccT2025, I wanted to share some of my favorite recent papers here! I'll aim to post new ones throughout the summer and will tag all the authors I can find on Bsky. Please feel welcome to chime in with thoughts / paper recs / etc.!! 🧵⬇️:
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Kobi Hackenburg @kobihackenburg.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Today (w/ @ox.ac.uk @stanford @MIT @LSE) we’re sharing the results of the largest AI persuasion experiments to date: 76k participants, 19  LLMs, 707 political issues. We examine “levers” of AI persuasion: model scale, post-training, prompting, personalization, & more!  🧵:
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Thomas Yeo @bttyeo.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
1/11 Excited to share our @Naturestudy led by @leonooi.bsky.social @csabaorban.bsky.social @shaoshiz.bsky.social AI performance is known to scale with logarithm of sample size (Kaplan 2020), but in many domains, sample size can be # participants or # measurements... doi.org/10.1038/s415...
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Saige Rutherford, PhD @beingsaige.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
Excited to be at the Computational Psychiatry Conference #CPC2025 in Tübingen! I’ll be presenting a poster called Computational Psychiatry meets Algorithmic Fairness. You can read it (along with some of my other philosophical ideas) here: www.beingsaige.com/single-post/...
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Saige Rutherford, PhD @beingsaige.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
I defended my PhD! You can watch it on YouTube here: youtu.be/OCfqTtPy1KM?...
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
If you want to make America healthy again, start with Universal health & UBI Masks in healthcare Clean air & water Affordable housing & food Guaranteed education Paid time off Affordable child care When we accept that caring for one another is essential for health & happiness, we all benefit
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Roland Meyer @bildoperationen.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
There may be even more stupid use cases for #genAI, but this one is definitely a top contender
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Thomas Wolfers @thomaswolfers.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Congratulations @Saige to a wonderful PhD Defense!
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
cogscikid.bsky.social @cogscikid.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
To help computational cognitive scientist engage with more naturalistic experiments, I've made NiceWebRL. NiceWebRL is a Python library for designing human subject experiments that leverage machine reinforcement learning environments. github.com/KempnerInsti...
github.com
GitHub - KempnerInstitute/nicewebrl: NiceWebRL is a Python library for quickly making human subject experiments that leverage machine reinforcement learning environments.
NiceWebRL is a Python library for quickly making human subject experiments that leverage machine reinforcement learning environments. - KempnerInstitute/nicewebrl
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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 11/06/2025
What does 18,000+ brave signatories look like standing together in massive solidarity with the #NIH heroes of the historic Bethesda Declaration??... Find out by adding YOUR NAME to our #NIHLove letter here! - actionnetwork.org/forms/add-na... #StandUpForScience #BethesdaDeclaration #StopTrump
actionnetwork.org
ADD YOUR NAME: Sign the Open Letter in Support of NIH Staff
Join the courageous and committed National Institutes of Health (NIH) public servants by adding your name now.
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD @arghavansallesmd.medsky.social · 06/06/2025
Holy smokes! Our article is on the cover of The Lancet!!!!!!!!!! Nbd 💅
The cover of The Lancet with this quote from our commentary: "If we in academic medicine give in to the campaigns against diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, the consequences will include resegregation and fewer opportunities for marginalised groups."
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Ursula von der Leyen @vonderleyen.ec.europa.eu · 04/06/2025
Science builds our future. In Europe it has the freedom and support it needs. To find the next cure and develop the next ground-breaking technology. Our mission is clear: We want the brightest minds and boldest innovators to "Choose Europe!" ↓ europa.eu/!fyy9RX
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Paul Masset @paulmasset.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Our work with Pablo Tano, @hyunggoo-kim.bsky.social Athar Malik, Alexandre Pouget and @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social exploring how dopamine neurons could enable multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain is out in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Multi-timescale reinforcement learning in the brain - Nature
Individual dopaminergic neurons encode future rewards over distinct temporal horizons.
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Dr Ellie Murray, ScD @epiellie.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Curious about the MAHA Report on children’s health but don’t have the time or energy or inclination to read all 75 pages? You’re in luck! I’m reading it for you. Link in replies. open.substack.com/pub/epiellie...
open.substack.com
The MAHA Report: I Read it so You Don't Have to.
Part I: In the Beginning
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European Research Council (ERC) @erc.europa.eu · 02/06/2025
Planning to apply for #research #funding from the ERC? From the next application rounds, expect changes to the: • proposal structure • evaluation process • extra funding you can request • eligibility for Starting & Consolidator #Grants (from 2027) More 👇 europa.eu/!RPHWvv
europa.eu
Changes to the 2026 and 2027 Work Programmes
With the launch of the competitions for grants under ERC Work Programme 2026 in July of this year, several changes to the submission of applications and the evaluation of proposals will apply. The mai...
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Aditya Mukerjee 🦦 🏳️‍🌈 @chimeracoder.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
UnitedHealth secretly pressured nurses to change patients' records to include DNRs (Do Not Resuscitate) without their consent, so those patients would die instead of being saved with medical interventions that could cost UnitedHealth money. This is murder. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Cost-cutting tactics

The secret bonuses were just one of many maneuvers UnitedHealth devised to track and cut expenses in its nursing home initiative.

Internal emails show, for example, that UnitedHealth supervisors gave their teams “budgets” showing how many hospital admissions they had “left” to use up on nursing home patients.

The company also monitored nursing homes that had smaller numbers of patients with “do not resuscitate” – or DNR – and “do not intubate” orders in their files. Without such orders, patients are in line for certain life-saving treatments that might lead to costly hospital stays.

Two current and three former UnitedHealth nurse practitioners told the Guardian that UnitedHealth managers pressed nurse practitioners to persuade Medicare Advantage members to change their “code status” to DNR even when patients had clearly expressed a desire that all available treatments be used to keep them alive.
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BostonJoan 🏳️‍🌈 🦫 @bostonjoan.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Musk's chainsaw to programs that support impoverished folks has a body count. Many thanks to my BU colleague @brookeenichols.bsky.social for developing the Impact Counter, an incredible tool that illustrates the invisible violence of policy. This is real science. 103 deaths per HOUR= 2472/day
impactcounter.com
Impact Dashboard - Impact Counter | Impact Counter
Visualize the human impact of funding changes for aid and support organizations.
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Reposted by Saige Rutherford, PhD
Lucina Uddin @lucinauddin.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
When I first started working with resting state fMRI as a postdoc, there was a lot of skepticism about what we could learn from it. 20 years later, it's hard to imagine where the field of neuroscience would be without it. Here's a summary 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
The history and future of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging - Nature
This Review provides an overview of the history of resting-state functional MRI research, which has helped to reveal the spatiotemporal organization of the brain, and discusses how it can contribute f...
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Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
We’re among 100+ organizations calling on House leaders to reject a proposal that would stop states from regulating AI. This still-in-development technology should not be allowed to make unfettered life-or-death decisions about our lives, safety, and freedoms. edition.cnn.com/2025/05/19/t...
edition.cnn.com
House Republicans want to stop states from regulating AI. More than 100 organizations are pushing back | CNN Business
More than 100 organizations are raising alarms about a provision in the House’s sweeping tax and spending cuts package that would hamstring the regulation of artificial intelligence systems.
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 13/05/2025
I've felt for a while that a mainstream method, reverse engineering, in cognitive science & AI is incompatible w computationalism‼️ So I wrote "Modern Alchemy: Neurocognitive Reverse Engineering" w the wonderful Natalia S. & @irisvanrooij.bsky.social to elaborate: philsci-archive.pitt.edu/25289/ 1/n
Abstract and title page of PDFTable 1Table 2
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 05/05/2025
Our “America’s Mental Barrier” series, which examines how insurance companies interfere with access to necessary mental health care across the United States, was also named a finalist in the explanatory reporting category: www.propublica.org/series/ameri... Via @pulitzerprizes.bsky.social
The Pulitzer Prizes Explanatory Reporting finalists: Alexia Campbell, April Simpson and Pratheek Rebala of the Center for Public Integrity; Nadia Hamdan of Reveal; and Roy Hurst, contributor, Mother Jones. Azam Ahmed, Christina Goldbaum of The New York Times and Matthieu Aikins, contributing writer. Annie Waldman, Duaa Eldeib, Max Blau and Maya Miller of ProPublica.
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Brittany Charlton @britshmit.bsky.social · 27/04/2025
⛔ NIH ended ALL of my grants mid-project, given LGBTQ health focus 🏳️‍🌈 ⚖️ So what am I doing? Suing RFK, Jr. As one team member shared in this story👇: "The threats to our work don’t just make me fear for my career — they make me fear for my safety.“ #SaveDemocracy #SupportScience #PublicHealth
masslive.com
Harvard Medical researcher sues NIH for cutting grant to study LGBTQ mental health
"This is not just an attack on the LGBTQ community — it is a blow to the integrity of science and the health of every American," a Harvard Medical School associate professor studying the mental…
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Saige Rutherford, PhD @beingsaige.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
My Ph.D. thesis is now online (www.publicatie-online.nl/files/9017/4...), the books are printed, and my defense is scheduled for June 17th. What a surreal feeling! #PhDone
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TRIPOD Statement @tripodstatement.bsky.social · 25/04/2025
Complete and transparent reporting aids critical and assessing risk of bias in #predictiveAI. TRIPOD+AI and PROBAST+AI are key tools to improve #AI research in healthcare TRIPOD+AI -> tinyurl.com/39pz3rfd PROBAST+AI -> tinyurl.com/yt8vrvrf #Digitalhealth #healthcareAI #machinelearning
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Saige Rutherford, PhD @beingsaige.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Charlie-Mop is ready for the long weekend. 🐣🐇🐑
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Saige Rutherford, PhD @beingsaige.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
We are going to Bodensee this weekend to see the tulips!!!🌷 🇩🇪
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Shobita Parthasarathy @shobitap.org · 03/04/2025
Do you train students--including scientists and engineers--how to think about the ethical, social, political, and policy dimensions of their work? Check out @stpp-um.bsky.social's new report, which includes recommendations on how these programs can be cultivated. And come to our webinar on April 10!
myumi.ch
Broadening Horizons: How STEM-in-Society Programs Train Socially Responsible Scientists, Engineers, and Policy Leaders
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Data Against Fascism @dataagainstfascism.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
This is the home of the USA Disappeared Tracker Dashboard. DM to let us know of a person to add to the tracker or to volunteer to help!
A screencap of the Tableau Dashboard "USA Disappeared Tracker" which monitors persons "disappeared" in the USA by ICE.
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 30/03/2025
Y'all see why I can't stand these horrific men going off about the so-called "existential risks of AI" while simultaneously telling us everyone should be replaced by "AI"? One of the best grifts of the 21st century. www.wsj.com/video/elon-m...
wsj.com
Elon Musk Pushes to Regulate AI's 'Existential Threat'
Elon Musk warned a gathering of U.S. governors about several worst-case scenarios for AI, saying that the technology "is the biggest risk that we face as a civilization." The Wall Street Journal'...
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ESMRMB @esmrmb.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
📣 New abstract concepts for #ESMRMB2025! 📣 Two new abstract concepts will be accepted in a later deadline in August for #ESMRMB2025: 👉 Registered reports 👉 Project abstracts These are new formats that encourage transparency, rigor, and collaboration. Stay tuned for more information!
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Dr Slaughter-Acey @drslaughter99.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
🧵Yesterday, I received notice that my #NIH grant, on the social environment, lifecourse, epigenetics & #birthoutcomes in Black families, was terminated. This grant represented a critical effort to address the ⬆️ rates of maternal & infant mortality in the US, particularly among Black mothers & babies
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Dr Ellie Murray, ScD @epiellie.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Yesterday I wrote about how Trump's "flagged" word list might block all of epidemiology, and some people complained discussing this was a distraction from bigger issues. But I think they're wrong. I think inclusiveness is fundamental to epidemiology, and without it we are dramatically limited.
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European Commission @ec.europa.eu · 21/03/2025
There is no space for racism in the EU. No one should be denied a job, home, or opportunity because of their race or ethnic background. On International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and every day, the EU stands united against racism, for a #UnionOfEquality.
An image shows two firefighters with shovels on top of a torn-down building. One is overlayed in yellow, the other in blue. The words "United in diversity" are at the top left corner, and the European Commission logo is in the bottom right corner.
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