Audrey Hendricks
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audreyhendricks.com
Audrey Hendricks
@audreyhendricks.com
710 followers 840 following 90 posts
Associate Professor of #statistics @cuanschutz @cudenver using #rstats, and #genomics. Advocate for #dataliteracy for all. My posts are my own and do not represent the views of the University.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
fieldsmeyer.com
I wrote the speech I *wish* Chuck Schumer would give tonight - as an actual opposition leader. Here it is:

"My fellow Americans: At this hour, an unrestrained force of militarized and violent federal officers is carrying out a project of ethnic cleansing in the streets of American cities."

1/14
schumer.senate.gov Chuck Schumer @schumer.senate.gov · 1d
Senate Democrats will not provide the votes to proceed to the appropriations bill if the DHS funding bill is included.
January 25, 2026 at 2:06 AM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
melodyschreiber.com
Alex Pretti took care of veterans as an ICU nurse. “He was a super nice, super helpful guy – looked after his patients," said @dimitridrekonja.bsky.social, who worked with Pretti both at the hospital and on scientific research. "I’m just stunned.”
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
Man shot in Minneapolis by federal agents identified as VA nurse: ‘He wanted to help people’
Alex Pretti, 37, worked in the ICU at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System and had assisted on scientific research
www.theguardian.com
January 24, 2026 at 9:18 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
jsweetli.bsky.social
Alex Pretti, the man killed by federal agents today in Minneapolis, appears to have been a registered nurse, an athlete, a son and a brother, with ties to Colorado and Wisconsin.

Here is a photo he used for several accounts.
January 24, 2026 at 7:07 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
altcdc.altgov.info
The US officially withdrew from the World Health Organization today. Per Trump we can work "one on one" with other countries

Has he heard of the concept of an international outbreak? I.E. PANDEMIC?

No WHO, no USAID, underfunded CDC global health center. We are less prepared than we have ever been.
January 23, 2026 at 1:45 AM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
elizabethjacobs.bsky.social
RFK Jr. appointee Kirk Milhoan has just clearly stated, out loud, that he wants to experiment on the people of the United States by seeing what happens as vaccination coverage plummets and infectious diseases spread.
Screenshot from STAT article that says "What we're going to have is a real-world experience of when unvaccinated people get measles," he said. "What is the new incidence of hospitalization? What's the incidence of death?"
January 22, 2026 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
maxkozlov.bsky.social
Membership on step #2 (advisory councils) has been dwindling as members serve out their terms without replacements being appointed.

At 12 of the institutes and one of the centres, the last voting member’s term will expire this year, and it typically takes years for new members to be onboarded.
January 22, 2026 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
maxkozlov.bsky.social
🚨 New from me: Grant review at more than half of NIH's institutes could be frozen by the end of the year.

That's because crucial NIH grant-review panels are slated to be empty at those institutes by Jan 2027.

A wonky bureaucratic problem with big implications.

A short 🧵
Exclusive: key NIH review panels due to lose all members by the end of 2026
Thirteen of the agency’s advisory councils, which must review grant applications before funding is awarded, are on track to have no voting members.
www.nature.com
January 22, 2026 at 7:46 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
erictopol.bsky.social
A vaccine to prevent colon cancer.
Proof-of-concept for strong immune response and safety via neoantigens given to people carrying mutations for Lynch syndrome
nature.com/articles/s41...
Nous-209 neoantigen vaccine for cancer prevention in Lynch syndrome carriers: a phase 1b/2 trial - Nature Medicine
In a phase 1b/2 trial, an off-the-shelf vaccine using gorilla adenoviral and modified vaccinia Ankara vectors with over 200 mutated peptides known to be present in persons with mismatch-repair-deficie...
nature.com
January 16, 2026 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
chanda.blacksky.app
If you need inspiration to keep going right now, may I recommend the story of Robert Smalls, who stole a confederate steamboat and piloted his family and almost 20 others to freedom and went on to become one of the first Black people elected to Congress ✊🏽

www.usatoday.com/story/life/b...
'Be Free or Die,' tale of escaped slave who became a Union hero
Cate Lineberry's new book tells the little-known story of Robert Smalls, a ship pilot.
www.usatoday.com
January 10, 2026 at 9:48 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
altcdc.altgov.info
It breaks our hearts to have to say that CDC is no longer a source for evidence-based vaccine recommendations. 💔

But we are so proud of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for stepping up to protect kids. ❤️‍🩹

Childhood vaccine schedule from AAP 👇

downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP-...
January 9, 2026 at 3:00 AM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
carlzimmer.com
Here's my latest contribution to the @nytimes "Lost Science" series. Brenna Henn's sweeping study of African genetics has been frozen. Gift link: nyti.ms/3Ypmm1A
Portrait of Brenna Henn next to an open freezer of samples.
January 5, 2026 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
sciencenlucia.bsky.social
It's Friday. This means it is time for a new post on #Autism : The Evidence. If you missed last week, I discussed what is TRULY behind the rise in prevalence. Today I am going to talk about what it is not: #VACCINES . They are SAFE and EFFECTIVE, but where did this idea come from?
November 22, 2025 at 4:35 AM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
geneticssociety.bsky.social
Submit your proposal for Featured Symposia or Interactive Workshops before the holiday rush! Present your research on topics that excite you and engage the #humangenetics & #genomics community. Get ahead of the January 20 deadline—submit today: https://bit.ly/3MgrxxW #ASHG
December 5, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
kakape.bsky.social
This time last year, I was on the South Lawn of the White House helping to lay out the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
This year the White House did nothing and the State Department instructed empoyees and grant recipients to “refrain from publicly promoting World Aids Day through any communication channels”
kakape.bsky.social Kai Kupferschmidt @kakape.bsky.social · Dec 1
This morning I had the honor of helping lay out some panels of the #AIDS Memorial Quilt on the South Lawn of the White House. Seeing all these individual lives that were lost and knowing they are just a miniscule part of that great tapestry of loss is haunting.
In the foreground a panel of the AIDS Memorial Quilt with the words Goodbye legible. In the background the White House with a huge red Aids Ribbon.
December 1, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
paolocrosetto.bsky.social
Since AI slop is again all over Scientific Reports, a thread on the economics of grey-zone publishing.

Why does slop keep getting published? What does it mean for science? How can we stop this?

Background readings:
Understand the strain: tinyurl.com/2b6wxx5r
Stop the drain: tinyurl.com/3jfscscy
An obviously AI-generated figure with AI slop and fake text all over it, recently published in Scientific Reports.
November 30, 2025 at 11:10 AM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
jeremymberg.bsky.social
I have posted about this before, but...

Researchers at Pitt School of Public Health (with NIH funding) developed Project Tycho where they digitized reportable disease data from across the country going back to ~1900.

graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d...

1/6
Battling Infectious Diseases in the 20th Century: The Impact of Vaccines
The number of infected people, measured over 70-some years and across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, generally declined after vaccines were introduced.
graphics.wsj.com
November 22, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
nbcnews.com
Pfizer’s mRNA flu vaccine outperformed the standard flu shot in a Phase 3 clinical trial, according to results published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Pfizer's mRNA flu shot outperforms standard flu vaccine in late-stage trial
The Phase 3 trial found Pfizer’s mRNA shot cut flu-like illness by 34.5% compared with a standard flu shot.
nbcnews.to
November 20, 2025 at 11:00 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
lisaloe.bsky.social
Hey Megyn Kelly,

14-year-old Eloise would like a word:

“If my voice makes you uncomfortable, good…
because the minute adults start defending predators by defending the age of a child, you’re not protecting the truth, you’re protecting the predator.”

Sound up! 🔥🔊

1/2
November 15, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
jeremymberg.bsky.social
My quote of the day

Support the strong, give courage to the timid, remind the indifferent, and warn the opposed.

Whitney Young
November 15, 2025 at 11:59 AM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
ddayen.bsky.social
According to a source, Jenna Norton, who led a letter criticizing Trump's decimation of the NIH (see below), has been placed on administrative leave. She's the first at NIH to be put on leave, joining EPA officials who criticized Trump policies.
www.pbs.org/newshour/nat...
NIH scientists publish letter criticizing Trump's deep cuts in public health research
The letter addresses the termination of 2,100 research grants valued at more than $12 billion and some of the human costs that have resulted, such as cutting off medication regimens to participants in...
www.pbs.org
November 13, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
rebeccasolnit.bsky.social
A year ago today, we had a really terrible election night, and because I know how people fall into despair I sat down at 11pm and wondered what I could tell you. I told you:
November 5, 2025 at 6:26 PM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
david-grimm.bsky.social
Getting--or got--a PhD? Got boogie in your soul? Then don't be shy. Enter this year's contest--and dance, dance, dance! @science.org
Science’s ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ contest is open again—with an all new, AI twist
For the first time, there’s a special prize for a research-themed dance generated by an artificial intelligence program
www.science.org
November 5, 2025 at 1:45 PM
audreyhendricks.com
Yes Colorado!!
November 5, 2025 at 4:29 AM
Reposted by Audrey Hendricks
corybooker.com
In New Jersey and across the country, millions of Americans have critical elections today. Find your polling place or learn more at iwillvote.com
I Will Vote
Be a voter. Find everything you need to vote in your state’s next election.
iwillvote.com
November 4, 2025 at 6:11 PM