November 30, 2024

📺 The Great British Baking Show had more serious and professional bakers this year than the last, but also more panic attacks, insecurity, large swings in quality and overall lack of composure that kind of reminded me of the NBA. Entertaining nevertheless.

Some weekend links, old and new:

November 28, 2024

Whether it’s on micro.blog, mastodon, bluesky, threads or in your favorite RSS client, thank you for reading!

November 25, 2024

Yes, yes, reform the NIH. But while we’re in the finger-pointing mode, why not mention the waste in money and time stemming from the way biotech finance works? Beauty contests, herding around fads, billions of dollars wasted on courting KOLs for treatment that will never be approved. It’s all there…

So, here is a last-minute Hail Marry request that I hope someone will respond to. I run an introductory course on clinical trials at UMBC (BTEC668). Today at 6pm EST we have a patient/caregiver panel where I talk to a few people on why they did or didn’t participate in trials. We may have a last-minute cancelation from a panelist, so if a patient or caregiver has 90 minutes to spare this evening it would be much appreciated! Do email or DM if interested.

November 24, 2024

NIH reform is in the air

The same week Alexey Guzey proposed abolishing the NIH, two more essays popped up:

A few things came to mind:

The last NIH proposal I submitted was about ~150 pages which might indeed seem daunting. But only ~12 pages of that was dedicated to science and will be the focus of study section reviewers (and I can also assure you that I wish I had more than 12 pages to work with). The remainder was some combination of budgets, resumes for all of the personnel involved, descriptions of the data and resources, and contractual language between the NIH and my institution. Nearly all of it was handled by experienced grants administrators in my department who can put these documents together in a matter of hours.

November 23, 2024

Abolish the NIH is an unnecessarily divisive title but the core idea is interesting: sunset extramural NIH funding over 10–15 years through natural expiration of grants and, in parallel, set up alternative mechanisms which otherwise would have no room to breathe. Worth considering.

November 22, 2024

Judging from the number of new follows BlueSky is becoming a new hub for MDs. So, it was time for a new profile pic. And because I cross-post from micro.blog to BS (which is how I will henceforth call it, just because) this… ugh… skeet will make for an interesting loop.

📺 Slow Horses, Season 4 has reached a plateau, in that it is “only” as brilliant as the previous season. Which is to say, it continues to be the best live-action show of the decade. Has there been a better TV character than Jackson Lamb as played by Gary Oldman?

November 18, 2024

Gravity Falls (2012–2016) is the king of our household, but if there were ever a contender to replace Dipper and Mable it could only be Over the Garden Wall (2014). Well, November 3–7 were the 10-year anniversary of it coming out on Cartoon Network, and there is a stop motion short voiced by the original cast to commemorate. It’s been a busy few weeks so I only saw it now, but it made my day (and will quite possibly be the highlight of my week). (ᔥwaxy.org)