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Ed Sperr

@edsperr.bsky.social

300 followers 460 following 920 posts

Librarian/Developer
Currently serving as a Systems and Discovery Librarian

searchworkbench.info
https://esperr.github.io/visualizingpubmed/
https://esperr.github.io/collection-view/

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Reposted by Ed Sperr

ryan cooper

@ryanlcooper.com

here at the Paper of Record, when an open white supremacist leaks someone's college application in an attempt to imply he got unfair race-based special treatment, even though he was rejected, we know what to do: publish it immediately prospect.org/2025/07/09/2...

Much more interesting than the story was its source: Jordan Lasker, who got the Columbia data from a hacker. The Times initially identified him only as “Crémieux,” his Twitter handle, describing him as “an academic and an opponent of affirmative action” and even linking to his (incredibly racist) Substack. But not only had Lasker’s name already been published by The Guardian in an article about a “natalism” conference full of racists (sensing a theme here), one of his few published articles—another piece of “scientific” racism—was also so atrocious it got his co-author, Bryan Pesta, then a tenured professor at Cleveland State University, fired.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported the story back in 2022. Pesta published the article, “Global Ancestry and Cognitive Ability,” he co-wrote with Lasker in the first issue of a new journal of which he was the editor in chief. The entire issue was nothing but racist pseudoscience, but worse, it turned out that Pesta had gotten the data for his article by lying to the National Institutes of Health about what he intended to do. That got him canned, and deservedly so. There’s a reason why race “science” is on the fringes of academia: It’s complete nonsense, the province of freaks, liars, and failures.

None of this was in the Times article. Either the authors and editors knew about it and chose to whitewash a racist troll, or they did no investigation whatsoever of their only source—perhaps because they were worried about being scooped by Chris Rufo. Their only concession was a stealth edit adding that Lasker “writes often about I.Q. and race.” Oh really? What, pray tell, does he write exactly?

November 13, 2025 at 7:54 PM

Ed Sperr

@edsperr.bsky.social

Now I'm just bummed to know that there are throngs of people out there that are just dying for others to join their costume parties, but they don't want to invite *me* for some reason...sigh...

November 13, 2025 at 7:54 PM

Ed Sperr

@edsperr.bsky.social

"These scientists have an agenda!

This random Man yelling at the camera in his car on the other hand..."

November 12, 2025 at 5:39 PM

Ed Sperr

@edsperr.bsky.social

There are 14 positions on the Careers page (hr.nih.gov/careers/open...). All are senior administrators (presumably to back-fill folks that have recently been sh*tcanned for being insufficiently supportive of the Director)

hr.nih.gov

November 12, 2025 at 5:37 PM

Ed Sperr

@edsperr.bsky.social

Maybe there's something about this (presumably) being a Senior Executive Service position? help.usajobs.gov/working-in-g...

USAJOBS Help Center - Senior Executives

USAJOBS Help Center

help.usajobs.gov

November 12, 2025 at 5:33 PM

Ed Sperr

@edsperr.bsky.social

NIH *is* on this Reddit list of non-USAjobs-using agencies (www.reddit.com/r/usajobs/co...), but I'm pretty sure I've applied to NLM positions on USAJobs in the past.