More and more American patriots follow the example of their government.

#uspolitics #uspol

Ja, manche Tierversuche sind auf jeden Fall unnötig - viele andere sind jedoch noch unverzichtbar.

Hier gibt es 200 gute Gründe dafür:

https://www.tierversuche-verstehen.de/zitate/

#wissenschaft #biologie #medizin

Die Wissenschaft ist verwundbar. Wir sollten besser jetzt handeln als hinterher jammern. Niemand kann sagen, wir hätten es nicht kommen sehen können:

"Deutschlands Hochschulen im Stresstest: Wenn Populismus auf Wissenschaftsfinanzierung trifft"

https://www.jmwiarda.de/blog/2025/11/18/deutschlands-hochschulen-im-stresstest-wenn-populismus-auf

Getting ready for #SfN25. Our poster is available already before the meeting:

https://bjoern.brembs.net/2025/11/motor-learning-mechanisms-at-sfn25/

Due to political developments, I'm the only one from our lab who wants to go and if circumstances don't improve, it may well be our last attendance for the foreseeable future.

#neuroscience

The PNAS paper from Monday got a lot of attention

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2420092122

One particularly attention-grabbing point was the growth of paper mill papers, i.e., the red line.
The area under the black curve is the entire scholarly literature. Judging from reproducibility projects, I have added the # of articles that are likely to be irreproducible (yellow).
Sure, paper mills can some day be a problem. But compared to irreproducibility, it's a really minor problem:

https://bjoern.brembs.net/2024/02/how-reliable-is-the-scholarly-literature/

If you assume a 50% reproducibility rate (results from reproducibility projects vary from 12-61%), the line of irreproducible articles would be just below the "all articles" line in the logarithmic plot.
Just as a comparison to the red "paper mill products" line...

https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2420092122

https://retractionwatch.com/2025/08/04/fighting-coordinated-publication-fraud-is-like-emptying-an-overflowing-bathtub-with-a-spoon-study-coauthor-says/#comment-2344111

#academicchatter

Kannte ich noch nicht. Von 2004. Sollte man sich an die Bürotür hängen - oder in den Hörsaal:

https://www.fu-berlin.de/presse/informationen/fup/2004/fup_04_204/index.html

Of course #Trump likely would've found some other reason for this executive order.
But he didn't have to because we, the scientific community, handed him this reason on a silver platter. Some smart move.
Let's not delude ourselves: This one is 100% on us. Keep on with business as usual, and plenty more will be coming where that one came from.

"The professors are the enemy - and they are so smart, they gladly provide us with all the opportunities we need to fight them."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/restoring-gold-standard-science/