Derek Lowe
@dereklowe.bsky.social
16K followers 720 following 1.8K posts
Medicinal chemist / chemical biologist, author of “In the Pipeline” at http://science.org/blogs/pipeline. [email protected] and on Signal at Dblowe.18 All opinions are mine; I don’t speak for my employer in any way.
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Reposted by Derek Lowe
sherylnyt.bsky.social
BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:
Reposted by Derek Lowe
virginiagewin.bsky.social
Journalist here

I’m interested in talking to a federal agency scientist who was fired, then rehired. I can keep you anonymous. I’m on Signal ginnyg.04

Reposts are appreciated!
dereklowe.bsky.social
I have resisted every attempt to take away my fume hood! I’m actually headed back there this coming week, first time in a couple of months.
Reposted by Derek Lowe
chemjobber.bsky.social
One of the approximately 23 million bad things about the Trump era is the continual eroding of granting of good faith to government intentions. I am always suspicious of government, but I am REALLY suspicious of this Administrsation.
Reposted by Derek Lowe
mattschabathphd.bsky.social
🧪🧪 Nature: More than 30% of this century’s science Nobel prizewinners immigrated: see their journeys -- The most common destination for eventual Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine since 2000 is the United States

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
More than 30% of this century’s science Nobel prizewinners immigrated: see their journeys
The most common destination for eventual Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine since 2000 is the United States, Nature has found.
www.nature.com
Reposted by Derek Lowe
science.org
Two major publishers have begun to automatically reject the vast majority of papers based on public health data sets, following revelations that unscrupulous actors use these data sets to churn out nonsense scientific papers. https://scim.ag/4mX3DnR
Journals and publishers crack down on research from open health data sets
PLOS, Frontiers, and others announce policies trying to stem the tide of suspect research
scim.ag
dereklowe.bsky.social
Having all those metal atoms helps!
Reposted by Derek Lowe
brandyzadrozny.bsky.social
Good morning! If you work at HHS and want to talk to a reporter anonymously, you can reach out to me on Signal.
Signal QR code brandyzadrozny53
dereklowe.bsky.social
Some of them pretty darn well! But as usual, you can't judge a crystalline book by its cover. But there were some very nice structures, both in-house and from the synchrotron.
dereklowe.bsky.social
It just makes you want to scream and throw things.
atrupar.com
RFK Jr on Tylenol and autism: "It is not proof. We're doing the studies to make the proof."
Reposted by Derek Lowe
edballister.bsky.social
1/3rd of world has immune memory against TB: definitely. Question is: do these people harbor living Mtb that will reactivate decades later and cause disease? Argument is no, and instead all the disease we see is driven by (relatively) recent exposures to people with active disease
Reposted by Derek Lowe
edballister.bsky.social
Absolutely agree on challenge and need for TB drugs. But the “1/3 of world has latent TB” isn’t so clear - Behr, Ramakrishnan et al have made some very interesting arguments that it’s a huge misconception:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38671272/
Rethinking the burden of latent tuberculosis to reprioritize research - PubMed
Rethinking the burden of latent tuberculosis to reprioritize research
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Reposted by Derek Lowe
richardsever.bsky.social
AI in biology: "I read about some new computational method...get excited because it’s exactly what I need...I try the method...Most of the time things don’t work...I have seen this play out so many times my default assumption is nothing is going to work" blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...
We still can’t predict much of anything in biology
Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.
blog.genesmindsmachines.com
Reposted by Derek Lowe
drmikebooth.bsky.social
This is a new one for me #chemsky 🧪

My name has appeared on a published paper that I've had nothing to do with (even using an incorrect version of my email address)!

Has this happened to others? If so, what did you do?
Website image of a paper with my name on - that's not mine!
dereklowe.bsky.social
Catching up on some blog topics: how do you get things past the weird defenses of tuberculosis bacteria, anyway?
Tuberculosis Defenses
www.science.org
Reposted by Derek Lowe
ryanmarino.bsky.social
The MMR vaccine is one of the most stunningly effective medical therapeutics in existence. It’s also safer than most of your everyday activities. This is simply an attempt to stop people from vaccinating.
Reposted by Derek Lowe
carlzimmer.com
Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE
nyti.ms
Reposted by Derek Lowe
kenwhite.bsky.social
The White House Antifa Roundtable is one of the best displays I’ve seen of this-is-how-bad-it’s-gotten — just a sewer of open fascism, dementia, morons and freaks, and incoherent rage.
Reposted by Derek Lowe
alexjstirk.bsky.social
They can be really pretty! Here's one that's a metal-organic rotaxane framework!
dereklowe.bsky.social
This year's Nobel - commentary and background, with a few more bonus MOF pictures of my own:
The 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Metal-Organic Frameworks
www.science.org
dereklowe.bsky.social
Absolutely true. And I’m glad he’s saying it.
en.afp.com
"It is going to be disastrous if this continues"

Nobel Prize physics laureate John Clarke says Trump cuts will 'cripple' US scientific research

u.afp.com/SmAy
Reposted by Derek Lowe
dereklowe.bsky.social
Oh, the “vomiting ferret” model is absolutely a real thing - I’ve encountered it in my own drug discovery career.

They’re one of the smallest animals that show this response- weirdly, rodents can’t do it at all.
dereklowe.bsky.social
Here’s one of those copper MOF crystals mounted on an x-ray diffraction loop sample holder: