Brooke Wolford, PhD

Moved to Claude today!

Title reads: "The destruction that Kennedy has wrought in 1 yr might take generations to repair, and there is little hope for US health and science while he remains at the helm" The cover of the current issue (February 28, 2026, Vol. 407 No. 10531) of The Lancet. Published in the U.K., The Lancet is "one of the world’s oldest (founded 1823), most prestigious, and highest-impact independent general medical journals" in the world.

"HS under Kennedy has made a habit of throwing good money after bad science."

That "good money" is our tax payer $$, thrown at unethical studies. He pushes ideology over evidence.

The cover of the most recent issue of The Lancet says it all.
🧪 www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

#ImpeachRFKJr

This week's cover @thelancet.com

The Epstein files document what many women researchers have long experienced but rarely seen laid bare so starkly: exclusion operating behind closed doors, shaping who gets funded, invited, mentored, and taken seriously. How many of these networks, norms, and gatekeepers remain in place?

Graphic cover slide titled “Day in the Life: Brooke Wolford, Statistical Geneticist.” Subheading notes she is a faculty member at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. Clean, professional layout introducing the series.

Brooke describes starting her day with coffee in bed and checking emails during her 40-minute commute to campus in Trondheim. She mentions living in Norway and beginning work around 8:30 a.m.

Brooke shares that faculty in Norway are required to complete pedagogical training. She attends a session focused on improving teaching practices and supporting student learning.

A day in the life of Brooke Wolford, a statistical geneticist at NTNU (Norway). It's proof that science is both technical and deeply human at the same time. 🧬☕️🐕

👀 Just when I think it can't get worse...

FDA’s rejection of Moderna threatens to stifle broader vaccine industry Experts say the FDA "moved the goalposts" on Moderna, creating "a destructive precedent that will undermine the future of vaccine development" in the U.S.

FDA's decision not to accept Moderna's flu vaccine filing has sent shock waves through pharma. "When there’s uncertainty about the path to approval & the reliability of the process, that really has pretty serious consequences,” one player told @jasonmast.bsky.social. www.statnews.com/2026/02/12/f...

I would ask people to call or message their senators about this and specifically that Vinay Prasad needs to be out at FDA. Even the Wall Street Journal has said as much. There is push back. Companies won’t fund clinical trials if they can’t trust the FDA.

Read @bakerdphd.bsky.social’s piece on the need for institutions and their associations to stand up to this kind of behaviour, and then re-read the UNC story.

Very excited to be a certified Carpentries Instructor thanks to Carpentry@UiO! @carpentries.carpentries.org

Wish it was easier to calculate PGS in trusted research environments (TRE) like DNAnexus or the All of Us workbench? Us to! We've been hard at work on a new version of pgsc_calc to make it more scalable in those TREs! Introducing pgsc_calc v3.0.0-alpha.1: pgsc-calc.readthedocs.io/en/v3-alpha.1/

NIH Unified Funding Strategy Objective peer review, and HHS- and NIH- specific priorities, and a standardized, transparent process for incorporating NIAID-specific priorities will guide funding selections.

New NIH funding strategy has been formalized.

I really do hope scientists understand what this means for the future of science (funding) - it's not subtle.

www.niaid.nih.gov/about/unifie...

I'm at the Willard Hotel where I've been denied entry and kicked out of the Reclaiming Science event with NIH director Bhattacharya & other top agency leaders.

@jocelynkaiser.bsky.social and I registered for the event months ago yet were told capacity was full, even as they let in dozens of others.

No paywall link here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1mWi~7tNuc...

The difference in T2D prevalence increased between the top and bottom deciles of scores associated with fat distribution and insulin resistance (lipodystrophy 1 and 2) in women, and scores associated with obesity and insulin resistance (obesity and hyper insulin) in men (Figure 4).

My fave analysis: To explore pathophysiological pathways, we investigated diabetes prevalence stratified by partitioned polygenic scores from genetic clusters (Smith et al, 2024) believed to reflect different pathophysiological mechanisms.

Our findings suggest an increasing gap in diabetes prevalence between the most and least genetically susceptible. This suggests that people with a high genetic susceptibility to type 2 diabetes could be especially affected by a diabetogenic environment.

The latest article by NTNU PhD candidate Vera Vik Bjarkø, MD led by Bjørn Olav Åsvold is online now! It was fun to contribute to this GxE exploration with a team from the HUNT Center of Molecular and Clinical Epidemiology & Dept of Public Health and Nursing.

How many STEM Ph.D.s were lost from the U.S. federal government last year?

My colleagues @mghersher.bsky.social and @policyhound.bsky.social dug into a recent data release to find the answer. A @science.org exclusive.

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

Gladys West, mathematician whose work paved the way for GPS, dies at 95 A self-described "little farm girl" in the Jim Crow Era, Gladys West's complex and pioneering work for the U.S. Navy helped to improve billions of lives — and keep us from getting lost.

A self-described "little farm girl" in the Jim Crow Era, Gladys West's complex and pioneering work for the U.S. Navy helped to improve billions of lives — and keep us from getting lost. n.pr/3YVSGJK

Biomedical and life science articles by female researchers spend longer under review Women are underrepresented in academia, especially in STEMM fields, at top institutions, and in senior positions. This study analyzes millions of biomedical and life science articles, revealing that f...

Cost of being female lead/corresponding author in biomedical sciences: "[T]he median amount of time spent under review is 7.4%–14.6% longer for female-authored articles than for male-authored articles" even in disciplines where women well-represented. #AcademicSky

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

‘Shattered’: US scientists speak out about how Trump policies disrupted their careers Researchers lay bare the human toll of lay-offs, funding cuts and attacks on science one year after the president’s return to the White House.

“The speed, the scope and the severity of the attacks on science are beyond anything we’ve ever seen,” says @gretchentg.bsky.social.

My @nature.com story on the human toll of the 2nd Trump presidency.

Thx to @dochfroehlich.bsky.social, @briannosek.bsky.social, @katharinehayhoe.com & others.

Call on your house representatives to support a FY2026 budget bill that would preserve funding for NIH at the Senate Appropriations Committee approved level of $48.7B and adopt Senate language prohibiting a cap on indirect costs and limiting multi-year funded grants to levels consistent with FY2024

How do vaccine cutbacks affect public health? Ask Japan As Robert F. Kennedy Jr slashes the US childhood vaccine roster, Japan is racing to make up for lost ground after decades of setbacks.

History is a great teacher.

In this piece our own @heidiledford.bsky.social looks at what we can learn from what happened in Japan when vaccine support was withdrawn and how the government is now working to reverse the effects 🧪
#MedSky

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

FYI the NIH is proposing revisions to the NIH Genome Data Sharing Policy: grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

This needs careful consideration.

Responses are requested by mid-March and it goes without saying that many submissions from the global genomics community are strongly encouraged.

Why do some individuals defy their polygenic score?

In the largest study of its kind (402k UKB individuals; 7 continuous traits + 3 diseases), we asked: If your phenotype deviates from common-variant polygenic score prediction, what's driving that difference?

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

Portrait of Brenna Henn next to an open freezer of samples.

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

TIL Google docs enables markdown formatting! Happy New Year!

Global north researchers running a global south field site rife with medically unethical and statistically abysmal research practices, all to manufacture support for their pet theory and undermine global vaccine access & health security…the research colonialism is genuinely staggering.

CDC awards $1.6 million for hepatitis B vaccine study, likely to controversial Danish researchers

“NIH is in crisis, grants are being terminated, labs are closing….but they found $1.6 million for an unsolicited proposal to study whether we should delay a vaccine we’ve been safely giving for 40 years, in a country where infants are at high risk of infection”

www.cidrap.umn.edu/childhood-va...