jackie howells
@jackiehowells1
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Curious human~PhD candidate at Brown. ecologist at heart~ immunology~ systems biology (ecology)~ mentorship & inclusive access~aesthetics | views are my own
Providence, RI
Joined November 2011
I forgot to share a panel I was honestly honorer to be a part of on our most recent reflections on brain diseases and the coolest research (IMO) looking forward thanks to @simplyneurosci for hosting!
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RT @mbeisen: Sure is telling to see scientists up in arms about a few week delay in grant reviews but utterly silent about the cancelling o…
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RT @ATinyGreenCell: Thanks again for all your support! After taxes this helped cover 1/10th the boiler repair bill, which is a HUGE dent an…
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I think many folks should read this. I’ve been told by many chairs deans Professors chairs of X super important thing and everyone is terrified of being creative or different to the degree of recursivism. While I wholly am unsure of how the NIH differs from large sector funding agencies in many respects I do think this serves as an example of what happens when folks throw basic ethics/literal legality out the door and behind closed doors. I was recently thinking about the phrase “the cat is out the bag” and “cats cradle, see the cat? see the cradle?” And I just wanted to say we never learned what that phrase means but it’s highly applicable to academia. I am a “cat” that was in a “bag” Tell me, why would a person ever have cat in the bag? Tell me, why would there be implicit concern about a cat being out of a bag held by a person from the cats perspective? Tell me, why would there be implicit concern about the cat being out of the bag from the witnesses of the person who had the cat in the bag? Tell me again, why would there be implicit concern about the cat being out of the bag from the perspective of the person who’s held a cat in the bag in front of others? Do you see the cat? Do you see the cradle?
Looks like NIH grant review panels have been suspended temporarily. Because it takes time to coordinate and schedule a multi-layered grant panel review from experts across the country, what seems like a short delay in review of funding applications could be the difference between survival and shuttering for many valuable research efforts. I started my academic research lab a year before the erratic first Trump presidency and vividly remember the uncertainty of those times. The folks starting their labs now during second term are facing similar challenges. The situation is even more precarious for more established labs that don’t have stable university startup funds remaining and require external funding to continue to pay students, postdocs, & research staff to stay open. This situation highlights that diversification of funding sources for science is good, including for the basic science that sparks so much innovation. This could mean broadening research efforts in other sectors (private for-profit or non-profit R&D). The NIH may be the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world but over-dependence on a single sector so sensitive to political winds is bad. We need nuance and creativity in how to generate value that ensures science-driven progress. Many of us in the private sector are thinking about how to grow the pie and sustain research efforts. Our scientific ecosystem needs to be much more resilient. If you’re an academic researcher worried about your fate, there is a pretty big world out there and a lot of ways to contribute your scientific expertise to advance solutions for humanity. You can invent them too. And if you’re a private entity, you can start to decrease dependence on publicly funded academic research for upstream discovery by expanding impactful basic science activities strategically and sharing more of the outputs openly. Hope this message of agency resonates with those searching for solutions and a place for their energy.
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RT @TylerAlterman: When I came to this perspective a few years ago I dropped my dumb skepticism around the tarot and started seeing it as a…
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I’m learning thanks hermit
having no premeditated goals in life is usually interpreted as lack of ambition. but insisting on its opposite, the objective-driven life, may as well be a symptom of neurosis. do flowers set “life goals”? do cats see themselves somewhere in five years?
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For years I couldn’t see the board but had no clue I had -5.5 vision, when I finally was assessed my parents struggled to pay for glasses, I still managed somehow but the shame many children endure and continue to endure through adulthood for basic issues like this—this is what makes me hope to do away with traditional homework made for traditional lives that are so non-probable the modern age that they lack relevancy. I don’t need perfect vision to understand that.
my hot take today is that homework is classist. everybody doesnt have a conducive home environment to study in, some of us had to work after school, everybody didnt have a tutor they could pass stuff off on. homework only exists to prep the worker for a life of unpaid overtime
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RT @nate_postlethwt: Stop telling people in survival mode they need to just “let go.” They’ll let go when they have something they can han…
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RT @prmshra: Hot take. If you come into undergrad wanting to be a biologist, intro Biology can feel like a letdown. you aren’t really s…
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@ATinyGreenCell This is amazing! I actually have begun to interview scientists too for autobiography styled newsletters, and it’s been a blast. Excited to see other methods of interview styles. What made you want to start a podcast?
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I love it we are finally starting to understand how it works.
If you start a tweet about your new publication with the journal name before the topic, I’m absolutely drawing conclusions about your values
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I miss norm Macdonald wish I understood him more earlier the man was made to gamble with life every day and he spoke truth to power in the only way one can without being punished: with laughter.
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@magsnichols Sending you and all others coping with great loss I am so grateful that you shared this bc it’s making me less alone and I hope it helps open up eyes for so many, including myself. Take care too I sincerely hope you and your family have as much love and support as possible,❤️
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This is the same as my father i am so sorry, he’s alive just dead from alcoholism, I read my diary from being a kid and asking: why didn’t anyone step in and care? Not just about me but about him? About my mom? Or is it just until we are all so impossibly unable to grieve in comfort that anything will change, looks like the cat is out the bag for folks who typically never had to face these portions of life, it will impact all inevitably and we have to pick to live with that or not
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Woah
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I can’t even lie I’ve been lonely af.
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