one big number
57.9
That's the average percentage of NIH grants that women have had terminated over the past year, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Men, on the other hand, lost an average 48.2% of grants. As STAT's Anil Oza writes, gender disparities in who the NIH funds predate the Trump administration. Still, the data suggests that last year's grant terminations added further damage to an already-leaky pipeline that tends to bleed women, younger researchers and people of color. Read more.
online
When influencers tout prescription drugs
When a friend recently told me she started taking Nurtec for migraines, I immediately recognized the name — "the Lady Gaga drug!" Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly partnering with celebrities and social media influencers to sell medications. But a systematic review of 12 academic articles, published yesterday in JAMA Network Open, identified a few concerning themes when influencers promote prescription drugs.
Influencer drug promotion was consistently associated with misinformation (based on both the poster's and their audience's limited expertise), parasocial relationships that make it hard to distinguish between personal testimony and paid promotion, and weak oversight of online promotion overall.
The findings demonstrate an urgent need for better regulatory guidance and standardized disclosure requirements, the study authors write. For a rundown of the top influencers shaping health information more broadly "for better or worse," might I suggest re-reading Alexa Lee's comprehensive story from earlier this year.
first opinion
How Covid amnesia and attacks on science collide
The narrative around every pandemic follows a similar pattern with a few basic stages, according to a new First Opinion essay by two public health and policy experts. Broadly, those steps are:
- Ignorance and denial
- Panic
- Weariness and pushback
- Anger and the search for scapegoats
- Amnesia
The Covid pandemic started on script. But around the fourth and fifth stages, we began to see an unprecedented turn on science. The effects could be massive. "Experts are unanimous in their prediction that more pandemics are coming," the two authors write. Read more for their analysis of how the societal and governmental reactions to the Covid pandemic may leave us less prepared for the next deadly pathogen.
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