Darren Martin
darrenmartin.bsky.social
Darren Martin
@darrenmartin.bsky.social
Are they saying that the high IQs of all the Einsteins and Newtons, the out-of-the-box-thinking "disruptor" people and all other nerds with autism spectrum diagnoses, are attributable to their moms taking Tylenol while pregnant? Should I buy shares in whatever company makes Tylenol? I'm so confused.
September 23, 2025 at 9:51 AM
I've occasionally travelled to the USA for the past ~20 years (maybe 15 times total if you include transits via US cities). On every trip, at every level of interaction with travel officials, I have felt unusually unwelcome. Is that an uncommon experience?
March 17, 2025 at 7:18 PM
OK so the ASM is admitting (1) to being worried about losing money provided by the US federal gvt (their perceived overlords) if they do the right thing, and (2) that they also don't want the bother of dealing with the hypothetical legal consequences of doing the right thing? So bad.
February 3, 2025 at 11:56 PM
Reposted by Darren Martin
How about no.
We ain't scrubbing nothing.
February 2, 2025 at 1:15 AM
Condolences to all impacted by this. Research scientists everywhere should reflect on how fragile this funding stream has always been, adapt our future research strategies to account for that reality, and wean ourselves off of our dependency on the NIH and other similarly fickle agencies/systems...
Today the Trump admin abruptly and indefinitely terminated many of the activities of the National Institutes of Health, the $50B/year collection of agencies that power the US biotech and health ecosystems. Even if these orders were lifted tomorrow, the disruption would be enormous.

Why care? 🧵
Why should the public care about the freeze on the NIH? Aside from the need for scientific pursuits to make our society better…
-For every dollar we invest in NIH research, there is a $2.5 return.
-Research dollars help fund universities that employ non-academics. (1/)
January 23, 2025 at 9:30 PM
Fantastic thread where Ryan explores the potential selective advantages of some not-so-silent synonymous substitutions that have convergently appeared in multiple different SARS-CoV-2 lineages. Includes cool ideas on how some of these mutations might contribute to immune evasion.
In SARS-2 evolution, amino acid (AA) mutations get the lion’s share of attention—& rightfully so, as noncoding & synonymous nucleotide muts—which cause no AA change‚ are mostly inconsequential. But there are many exceptions, including a possible new one I find intriguing. 1/32
December 6, 2024 at 1:49 PM