Candace Winstead
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candacewinstead.bsky.social
Candace Winstead
@candacewinstead.bsky.social
Immunologist, college professor... invested in harm reduction & academic/community engagement via service learning.
Reposted by Candace Winstead
Earlier this year, we documented nearly 50 incidents of immigration officers shattering car windows to make arrests — a tactic experts say was rarely used before Trump took office.

ICE claims its officers use a “minimum amount of force.”

You can judge for yourself.
“We’ll Smash the Fucking Window Out and Drag Him Out”
We’ve documented nearly 50 incidents of immigration officers shattering car windows to make arrests — a tactic experts say was rarely used before Trump took office. ICE claims its officers use a “mini...
projects.propublica.org
December 1, 2025 at 4:00 AM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
Pro tip when applying for a faculty position: make sure you include all required documents, and address the ad's expectations.

When small, out of the way departments get >130 applicants for 1 spot, you have to know the market is tight.

#academicsky
December 1, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
The most precious commodity you have is your attention. You don’t have to waste it on poor-faith debates or arguments with strangers if you don’t think they’ll be productive. You can prioritize the things that matter to you and make your life richer.
November 30, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
"The university’s Committee on Academic Freedom, Responsibility and Tenure voted 8-0 that Texas A&M 'had no justification for dismissing' McCoul and 'failed to follow required procedures at multiple stages,' according to a Sunday statement from the Texas A&M chapter of the AAUP."
Texas A&M committee sides with professor fired amid conservative furor
The interim leader of the public university will review the nonbinding report and make "a decision in the coming days or weeks," a spokesperson said.
www.highereddive.com
November 29, 2025 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
i’ve said this before but lemme say it again. it makes absolutely 0 sense to talk about “misuse” of llms because there is no clear use or purpose for llms to begin with. genAI is a purposeless tech floating around looking for uptake

1/
November 2, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
“When you allow a machine to summarize your reading, to generate the ideas for your essay, and then to write that essay, you’re not learning how to read, think, or write.“
November 30, 2025 at 9:40 AM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
Finally got around to reading Prasad's actual memo about the purported deaths in children from COVID-19 vaccines, and it's kind of amazing in the worst ways possible.

At one point, he says (regarding rare adverse events):
"Causality is easy to assess in a randomized trial..."
November 30, 2025 at 1:14 AM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
What does manipulating VAERS data have in common with allegations of extramarital tail-chasing?

The quality of evidence that 10 kids died from COVID vaccines with VAERS data or that CBER Steve Urkel is trolling for side pieces on the apps is equivalent.
rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/do-unvacci...
November 30, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
New Yorkers BLOCK ICE from leaving their parking garage ahead of a flopped mass raid attempt on Canal Street
November 29, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
Happening now near Canal Street, federal agents had been staging inside a fed owned parking garage, now being confronted by a group of protesters. masked agents are looking on from above.
November 29, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
Thousands of people die every year because their survival would lower profits.

Healthcare, like journalism, needs to be non-profit. Neither our lives nor our democracy should be contingent on profit margins.

hms.harvard.edu/news/deaths-...
Deaths Rose in Emergency Rooms After Hospitals Were Acquired by Private Equity Firms
Staffing, salary cuts offer likely explanation for increase compared to non-private-equity hospitals
hms.harvard.edu
November 29, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
The NYT definitely made a choice not to add “without evidence” to this headline.
F.D.A. Attributes 10 Children’s Deaths to Covid Vaccines
www.nytimes.com
November 29, 2025 at 5:20 AM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
The OpenAI ruling writers should know about 👀 (if your work was scraped for LLM training, this affects you). www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...
OpenAI Loses Key Discovery Battle as It Cedes Ground to Authors in AI Lawsuits
The issue has been a major battleground in discovery. OpenAI could be on the hook for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars if it was aware it was infringing on copyrighted material.
www.hollywoodreporter.com
November 28, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
Depressing late Friday holiday news dump: Northwestern agrees to pay $75 million to the federal government.

The faculty vote against doing this, @heidikitrosser.bsky.social points out, was 595-4.

That's the kind of margin where going the other way reflects a major failure of university governance.
Here’s the text of the Northwestern settlement with the DoJ, which includes a $75 million financial component / payoff (cc @profmarkovic.bsky.social):
November 29, 2025 at 12:51 AM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
November 29, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
The amount of mis/disinformation from this group is simply astounding. I hope that every single medical society speaks up loudly and clearly against this.
While Makary spreads bullshit about the origin of HIV.

(To be clear, this has been thoroughly investigated and fits neither the timing nor the molecular epidemiology of HIV).
November 29, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
THIS THIS THIS. COVID-19 killed kids. The current group of people in charge of vaccine policy are wielding their medical credentials to undermine our ability to protect children from harm.
November 29, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
Under a zero tolerance policy, the first Trump administration separated immigrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

New data suggests separations now happen all over the country, often after little more than a traffic stop.
ICE Sent 600 Immigrant Kids to Detention in Federal Shelters This Year. It’s a New Record.
Under a zero tolerance policy, the first Trump administration separated immigrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. New data suggests separations are happening all over the count...
www.propublica.org
November 29, 2025 at 4:00 AM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
The legal, media, and academic institutions capitulating to an authoritarian ordering payments for favorable treatment are damning themselves to irrelevance. They are destroying their institutions. They will be — and should be — shunned for failing in their most basic purposes for existing.
BREAKING: Northwestern University has agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury $75 million, over the course of three years as part of an agreement with the federal government to restore funding and end investigations into the university

Full statement from NU below:
November 29, 2025 at 1:37 AM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
Authoritarians typically neither like science nor scientists

We are seeing this everywhere

So, fighting for science is also fighting for democracy

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
From doing science to saving science
Science and scientists are under assault. From denial of vaccines to climate change, political leaders are increasingly sacrificing democracy as well as science on the altar of populism and authoritar...
www.thelancet.com
November 28, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃🍂🥧

Have some anti-vax family at your table?

Here is a summary of 14 studies that found no association between vaccines and autism.

h/t @drtomfrieden.bsky.social
November 27, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
The most openly racist, eugenicist monsters are running the U.S. They will use every opportunity to advance their agenda.

And as the wheels come off their regime they will only grow more brutal and obscene. These are dangerous days for us all.
Stephen Miller is now arguing that assimilation is fundamentally impossible and that certain cultures are not compatible with Western civilization
November 28, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
WOLFERS: “When a politician says: we’ll deregulate health insurance and send you a “freedom account” check, ask: freedom to buy what? If insurers don’t offer real policies or can cherry-pick only healthy people, that money is a coupon for a store that’s not open.” #MedicareForAllNOW
November 28, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
this is just the age-old Republican plan of shifting the entire tax burden into the lower classes by increasing the sales tax to 25% they've just obfuscated it by saying 'tariff'
November 28, 2025 at 2:35 PM
Reposted by Candace Winstead
My hot take is that in the era of easily-generated AI nonsense papers journals that want to ensure high quality will need to start hiring full-time professional editors and reviewers instead of relying on volunteer labor from overworked academics.
UPDATE: The publisher intends to retract the paper, but insists it went through two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers: nobreakthroughs.substack.com/p/riding-the... by @jacksonwryan.com. No word on how they will make sure this sort of thing never happens again.
Riding the Autism Bicycle to Retraction Town
Does anyone *really* know their Factor Fexcectorn?
nobreakthroughs.substack.com
November 28, 2025 at 3:23 PM