Hello friends,
I saw a passing mention of Brandolini's law earlier this week,¹ and I can’t stop thinking about this idea that refuting bullshit takes an order of magnitude more effort than producing it does. When I pair that with the vast asymmetry between what it takes to build something, compared to breaking it or burning it down, I start to marvel at the fact that any of us are still on our feet trying. Cheers to everybody who’s giving it their exhausted all.

This was Year 2, Week 44. Let’s get into it.

What’s happening in science & higher ed

• A new report from the #DefendResearch team maps federal censorship of public health research. The topline findings are consistent with what I’ve been covering in these newsletters for years: erasing records and ending data collection; interfering with funding streams and decision-making; and silencing expert speech. The report is titled “From anecdote to evidence: Mapping the impact of US government action on public health research” and the full text and underlying data are openly available to download. In addition to the useful data analysis, I think the recommendations on how to actually address the harms are an important contribution.
• This isn’t making national news, but I am concerned about the Auburn University Board of Trustees' policy giving themselves absolute power over the university curriculum. Earlier this spring, Alabama borrowed legislative inspiration from Florida and Texas and passed legislation² to dissolve faculty senates, weaken tenure, and consolidate power over universities. Although the law doesn’t even bind their institution, the Auburn Trustees then set a new policy declaring that, ”No external standard, recommendation, norm, action, or process shall limit the Board’s authority over institutional curriculum and course policy matters.”³ New history and civics course requirements provide an illustration of how curriculum authority is abused: after ignoring their initial recommendation on the requirement, Auburn leadership overruled their history professors on the specifics of course content as well. And look, that the topics are civics and history is not happenstance either. Alabama just awarded Auburn a new \$22 million Institute for Civic Leadership. We know that conservative legislatures are imposing well-funded, unaccountable civics centers on universities across the country in the name of “viewpoint diversity.” The stakes are high and getting messier by the moment. It is deeply sad to think about a future in higher education where courses that would be rejected by legitimate faculty are foisted onto students whose tuition money is directed into the coffers of those who want to “take a torch” to universities as we know them.
• Yesterday, the Federal Labor Relations Authority upheld the validity of the NIH early-career researchers’ union. This is a happy update⁴ and part of a much bigger story about the administration trying to curtail the bargaining power of federal employees. The crux of the issue is ostensibly a question over whether the research fellows qualify as employees. Really, it’s about whether the agency can challenge the legitimacy of a collective bargaining unit after they negotiated an agreement with them. You can read the full details in the decision and order (PDF) and if this entry is sparking your interest, you might find something useful in this essay “on bullshit metrics and the necessity of unions”; even better, perhaps get yourself a copy of Labor Law for the Rank and Filer.⁵
• The headlines you shouldn’t miss but are well covered elsewhere:
  • Controversial US-backed vaccine trial in African newborns halted. Again. This time there was a search and seizure operation by local judicial police targeting the offices of the disgraced Danish researchers who received a strange \$1.6 million grant from the CDC to run the unethical trial.
  • RFK Jr. unilaterally makes unproven peptides available, overruling FDA scientists. There’s more evidence for safety concerns than for benefits of six peptides loved, and often sold by, MAHA influencers. This week, Secretary Kennedy unilaterally set a new rule, that “does not change the regulatory status of the peptide; instead, it states the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will no longer take enforcement action against compounding pharmacies for making the peptides, essentially giving them a green light to freely produce and sell them.”
  • CDC scientists sought urgent alert on measles in pregnancy. It wasn’t approved. Most US doctors have little to no experience recognizing or treating measles during pregnancy. The disease can occur without the classic rash and increases the risks of giving birth prematurely or miscarrying. Babies born with congenital measles can suffer severe complications, including brain inflammation and death. But this kind of urgent information that should have gone out through the rapid Health Alert Network “was not approved, according to two people familiar with the matter, who did not know why.”
• And on my reading list for this weekend:
  • Holding Science to a Gold Standard Will Hold It Back. Dr. Berna Devezer on why NSF’s new Office of Metascience is a bad idea.
  • Quasi-Judicial: A History and Tradition. Folks whose expertise I trust are excited about this Columbia Law Review piece repudiating the unitary executive theory.

And what’s next

Tomorrow’s Halloween! I love this corny, whimsical holiday.⁶ I’m lucky to live somewhere where we get a ton of foot traffic. There is something beautiful in allowing ourselves to be goofy and share a few moments of joy with our neighbors, maybe even powerful.⁷
I hope you enjoy it,
Liz

As ever, thanks for reading & thinking with me!

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