iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is a slippery quantitative argument. (We already do lose our memories of earlier versions of us, for example.) I don’t think it’s all a limit cycle either.

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Philipp Markolin @philippmarkolin.eurosky.social · 17/08/2026

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.

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vincentholst.bsky.social @vincentholst.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

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

The decline in disruption (including zero reference papers, left panel) mirrors the relative decrease of zero reference papers which were wrongly counted as being maximally disruptive (right panel).

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Jenna Norton @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

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

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

I have been having immense problems building any Claude skills involving paper management at all for this reason. It’s frustrating! Hoping the enterprise subscription I get access to next month is more permissive.

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

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

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

At least one talk at the Epidemics conference in December formally compared estimated fatality and hospitalization rates (per infection or close). SC2 < flu. Surprised no formal studies on this were mentioned. I can imagine “honeymoon effects” wrt frailty that might cause transient underestimation.

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

A palliative is to stare at the steady stream of tourists and locals make gestures at it from the DuSable Bridge.

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 18/04/2026

I’ve noticed a disturbing lack of ventilation in many hotel and motel rooms (even with the HVAC on) and unrelenting indifference from management. I have wished simple ventilation stats were available for hotel rooms, or that they didn’t pass their inspection in the first place.

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Nigel Goldenfeld @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

🧪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".

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Amesh Adalja @ameshaa.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

“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...

statnews.com

Remembering public health pioneer Barry Bloom: a scientist, a mentor, a mensch

Marc Lipsitch and Yonatan Grad pay tribute to their former colleague and mentor Barry R. Bloom.

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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

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.

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

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

I completed an Open Science poll recently that asked what fraction of my papers were replication studies and struggled to remember a project that didn’t involve replication of others’ published work in some stage.

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

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.

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James Munday @jdmunday.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

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).

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

I get it, I just meant the purifiers that try to be ultra portable and don’t plug in aren’t solving any problem. N95 when moving or something small that plugs in that gives highest CFM at the filtration level you need.

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

(Some of the suggestions have been for purifiers to be worn around the neck, which isn’t as good as a N95.)

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

That’s true! I was thinking of more diverse exposures en route. Then whatever gives the best CFM at MERV-13 or whatever you need to filter out.

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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

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?

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

👯‍♂️👯‍♀️👯👯‍♂️

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Dr. Becca @docbecca.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

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.

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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

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.

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Isn’t it opening the wrong way?

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 13/11/2025

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/ 🧪

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

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.)

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Erin Green @erinrgreen.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

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

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Michael Baym @baym.lol · 20/09/2025

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

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

This doesn’t affect your main point, but I think the imprinting/“original antigenic sin” hypothesis, in which differences in mortality arise from differences in early influenza exposures by birth cohort, has much more support.

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Will Ratcliff @wcratcliff.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

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.

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J. Emory Parker 🏳️‍🌈 @jaspar.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

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...

Removed datasets: "Percent Positivity of Viral Detections Among Enrolled Children in the New Vaccine Surveillance Network (NVSN), Acute Respiratory Illnesses (ARI), 2017–Present" and "Pathogen Detections Among Enrolled Children in the New Vaccine Surveillance Network (NVSN), Acute Respiratory Illnesses (ARI), 12 Month Rolling Period"

Chart showing the deletion of data from the CDC's website over time, it starts with 1,488 items last year and currently stands at 1,398 items.

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Simon Cauchemez @scauchemez.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

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

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Coauthors are Bjarke Nielsen, Emily Howerton, and Bryan Grenfell. This work was mostly funded by the Life Sciences Research Foundation and NIH. Daniel is no longer on social media but is happy to answer any questions. [8/8]

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Overall, quantifying pathogen resilience offers a new perspective on understanding how pathogens respond to both large and small perturbations. These insights have important implications for pathogen persistence, prediction, and model validation. [7/8]

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

We've focused on resilience in the context of large perturbations. We also showed that resilience determines how sensitive a system is to smaller stochastic perturbations, with less resilient systems exhibiting greater deviations from deterministic trajectories under demographic stochasticity. [6/8]

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

What determines how resilient a pathogen is? It depends on the per-capita rate of replenishment of the susceptible population. Faster replenishment = more resilient dynamics, where the rate of replenishment depends on the duration of immunity and basic reproduction number (R0). [5/8]

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

We estimated that common respiratory pathogens are much more resilient than vaccine-preventable infections, such as measles. Our predictions about pathogen return also closely match the observed deviations (or lack thereof) from the pre-COVID dynamics of respiratory pathogens. [4/8]

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

We analyzed relevant time series data from Hong Kong, Canada, Korea, and the US. By quantifying the resilience of common respiratory pathogens, we could predict when each pathogen would eventually return to its pre-pandemic dynamics. [3/8]

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

COVID-19 interventions disrupted the circulation of many pathogens. To understand if and when they might return to pre-pandemic patterns, we developed a framework for quantifying the rate of return to pre-pandemic patterns—a measure of pathogen resilience in a given host population. [2/8]

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Sarah Cobey @cobey.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Sang Woo (Daniel) Park and I are excited to share a new preprint, "Susceptible host dynamics explain pathogen resilience to perturbations" [1/8] www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Nigel Goldenfeld @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

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

standupforscience.net

Bethesda Declaration — STAND UP FOR SCIENCE

Support NIH Staff Now!

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Sam Wang @samwang.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

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

nbcnews.com

UC Berkeley researchers team up for first-of-its-kind lawsuit over Trump funding cuts

University of California staff members hope to use a class action lawsuit to restore their research funding.

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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

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)

NSF, NASA and NIH budgets per year, inflation adjusted from 2000-2025 along with the proposed cuts. NSF includes research component only. Massive cuts across all sectors, well below support spanning 25 years.

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Tulio de Oliveira @tuliodna.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

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/...

news24.com

SA universities face funding crisis as US federal agencies freeze research grants | News24

An investigation into the impact of the US aid freeze on research funding to South African universities has found that 44 programmes worth R2.5 billion were affected.

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Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 21/05/2025

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. 🤷‍♂️

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