When I get asked to write commentaries, it's not usually a good sign - it's because an infectious disease I study historically is relevant again.

Conference registration and abstract submission are now open for our 2025 Conference in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland! Learn more at www.australasianhumanbiology.com/conferences....

"The government has made it clear on several occasions that we want publicly funded research to focus on solving real world problems that can be commercialised". What a grim sentence.
www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

Data on the cuts to the Marsden Fund reported by RNZ this morning

🚨 JOB APPLICATION 🚨

The University of Western Australia is looking for a Lecturer in Biological Anthropology

Deadline for applying: August 29th

More information on the link below 👇

external.jobs.uwa.edu.au/en/job/52090...

🚨 JOB APPLICATION 🚨

The University of Western Australia is looking for an Associate Professor in Biological Anthropology

Deadline for applying: August 22nd

More information on the link below 👇

external.jobs.uwa.edu.au/en/job/52090...

And it's not just in the US - I imagine Wenner Gren would be getting more applications from international researchers as our funding is cut too (New Zealand recently made major science cuts, and eliminated the humanities + social sciences panels from our national research grants body).

Wenner Gren is closing Sapiens because, among other things, they anticipate being able to fund fewer than 10% of their applications... at the same time as other funding sources from the federal government are being destroyed. This funding environment is an existential crisis for anthropology 🏺🧪

Awful.

A common scanning method used to create ‘virtual copies’ of precious fossils could be erasing some of the crucial information held within.

Pleased with this generous review of my book by Heather Battles @anthroetc.bsky.social in Medical History: "Barr’s historical work can thus contribute to wider inter-and trans-disciplinary conversations about the design and implementation of public health responses" www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The grass-in-ear trend is now a grass-in-butt trend. 🤣

www.livescience.com/animals/land...

"They found that the southern resident orcas — a distinct population of killer whales — were detaching strands of bull kelp from the seafloor to roll between their bodies in a behavior the scientists dubbed “allokelping.”"

edition.cnn.com/2025/06/23/s...

The NZ Census is no more: www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...

"At Macquarie, ancient history and archaeology, creative arts, politics and international relations and the school of sociology would all lose up to, or more than, half of their FTE staff."

Canada is struggling too. This is what happens as a result. A premature infant in Canada just died of measles. If community vaccination had been above 95% this baby who was not yet vaccine eligible could have been protected.
bit.ly/4mOcNEb

The most wealthy country in the world is nearing a 30-year high of measles cases.This is a failure on multiple levels. Most importantly, we are failing to protect children from preventable diseases and disability.
abcnews.go.com/Health/us-me...

NIH stops development of HIV vaccine, terminates grants to consortia, including at Duke University.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Calling medical journals "corrupt," Kennedy says gov't scientists may be barred from publishing in Lancet, NEJM, etc going forward. #NIH may establish its own journals, he said.
Meanwhile #CDC 's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal is on the budget chopping block. www.statnews.com/2025/05/27/r...

The Ministry of Health is now posting on Bluesky. Follow us to be alerted to our consultations, news and announcements. We welcome your respectful and relevant comments and reserve the right to take action against posts that violate our community guidelines:

I just voted! Vote for NZ's Fungus of the Year 2025: interactives.landcareresearch.co.nz/foty/

Polio outbreak confirmed in Papua New Guinea, World Health Organisation says: www.rnz.co.nz/internationa...

Ditto New Zealand.

Our government has been cutting funding.