The destruction of the enterprise of US academic science has been one of the most confounding aspects of a hugely confounding year. My @statnews.com colleagues are writing about the consequences for individuals & the country.
You want to read this series.
www.statnews.com/american-sci...
This research from @arvind.bsky.social's lab is right down my alley, in terms of exploring the medium of data visualization, and what happens between the lines:
"Visualization Vibes: The Socio-Indexical Function of Visualization Design"
vis.csail.mit.edu/pubs/quantif...
The #ieeevis 2025 OPCs, working under the direction of the VIS Steering Committee, has just released 52 anonymized peer reviews for 16 accepted papers to be published at VIS 2025. We hope each year will add to this repository. OSF link here: osf.io/s9j5b/ (download the spreadsheet directly)
Charts and diagrams use visual structure to convey meaning. For example, spacing and alignment groups data, spatial proximity links labels to elements. But this visual structure is typically invisible to screen readers.
Introducing Benthic, new research at #ASSETS2025
vis.mit.edu/pubs/benthic/
Speaking as a tenured faculty member of a small, regional public university: Columbia, Brown, Penn, and Harvard are fucking over me, my colleagues and co-workers, and my school.
Sadly, I think we've been teaching digital/media literacy all wrong. Instead of focusing on teaching people how to be skeptical and spot manipulation, we should focus on teaching people how these systems work so they can effectively use them to share their messages and promote their values.
Woo hoo!!! Welcome to MIT, I’m so excited to have you as a colleague, Zana!!
Thrilled to share that I’ve successfully defended my PhD dissertation and I will be joining MIT as an Assistant Professor starting Fall 2026, with a shared appointment between Sloan and EECS!
I will be recruiting 1-2 PhD students this upcoming cycle. Consider applying to MIT EECS!
Someone today described this moment as a horrific traffic accident, w/ everyone standing back, watching, not knowing what to do, and waiting for someone else to rush in and start helping. But we can't all keep standing back. Time is ticking. We need to act, to try, to keep trying.
"the freedom to speak becomes meaningless when disconnected from the possibility of being heard".
This is a heartbreaking piece from @alondra.bsky.social on the regression of scientific progress and why she's resigning from the NSF and Library of Congress.
time.com/7285045/resi...
For those having a hard time following all the changes to NSF by the Trump administration, here's a wrapup of the past week's momentous events--and what they mean for the agency. www.science.org/content/arti...
And here's more on Alondra Nelson's bombshell announcement today: www.science.org/content/arti...
Things are going from bad to worse at NSF; www.science.org/content/arti...
Some of these innovations were directly funded. Others build upon basic research funding by the US government. If you haven’t seen Engelbart’s 1969 “mother of all demos” (where he introduces the mouse, word processor, collab editing, video conf, etc.), watch it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8Z...
I teach “Foundations of Human-Computer Interaction” and we spend a significant portion of that class exploring how US gov funding (ARPA, DARPA and NSF) helps lay the foundations of the internet, most of the personal computing paradigm, search engines, virtual worlds, wearable tech, AI, etc.
Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.
The mods of r/ChangeMyView shared the sub was the subject of a study to test the persuasiveness of LLMs & that they didn't consent. There’s a lot that went wrong, so here’s a 🧵 unpacking it, along with some ideas for how to do research with online communities ethically. tinyurl.com/59tpt988
13. And anyone who has been part of this grand humanist tradition is someone who will not lie down and cower before these sad bullies.
I don't know what happens to science in the US over the next four years, but I have no doubt as to where the arc of history bends.
We aren't going anywhere.
fin
12. Like art, music, philosophy, and literature, science is literally part of humanity's heritage.
My colleagues and I have had the amazing opportunity to be part of something vastly larger than ourselves, with meaning that transcends any state, regime, or generation.
They can't take that away.
11. Attacks like Vought describes may make cowards and grifters of his ilk want to stay home, but they make us all the more determined to show up and fight.
Science is bigger than Vought, bigger than Rufo, bigger than Musk, bigger than Trump, bigger than the United States of America.
10. This is the reality of being an academic in the United States today.
But Vought and Rufo are missing something.
We aren't cowards.
And we know we are not the enemies of the American people either, much as these ideologues might like to claim that.
5. But right now my job doesn't feel like the best job in the world. Targeted attacks on university funding have put every US institution into a severe crisis. As of now, there is no way we will be able to continue doing the biomedical research, the conversation science, etc. that we always have.
Long letter from NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, available here: https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/Letter-to-the-Community.pdf
🧪 The NSF director is lying to you.
Let’s fact check 7 claims from yesterday’s letter to the community, while pointing out 3 critical omissions. 🧵
We are experiencing an assault on science unparalleled by anything I’ve seen in my life. It’s not one issue or another anymore, the entire institution is under attack by the most powerful individuals in the country.
This Friday, where will you be?
standupforscience2025.org
Once again, the New York Times gives the dataviz community an opportunity to reflect on its purpose.
Can everything be quantified and turned into a chart?
Most important: what are the consequences of a chart?
If words matter, charts matter too.
I really beg datavis researchers to start engaging with this.
The role of the chart here is to provide a cover of objectivity.
It’s reifying the entire fucking opinion section into a 2d space to lens it some Cartesian legitimacy or something equally dark. So, so gross.
1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%.
I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters.
grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
Josh Johnson on MAGA turning on Elon is just as good as you'd expect.
"He has more money than anyone... and he's still missing everything about what a joyous life is.... he cannot buy being in a room and knowing everyone wants him in that room."
www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8NP...
It seems that I am giving the commencement at MIT in May 😳
news.mit.edu/2024/hank-gr...
Such a great set of readings and a really terrific website!!
