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Derek Lowe

@dereklowe

Medicinal chemist / chemical biologist, author of “In the Pipeline” at http://science.org/blogs/pipeline. derekb.lowe@gmail.com and on Signal at Dblowe.18 All opinions are mine; I don’t speak for my employer in any way.

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Latest posts by Derek Lowe @dereklowe

If you are watching Trump's presser right now, you are seeing beyond reasonable doubt a person not mentally suited for any position of responsibility. Even running a small store.

GOP members of the House and Senate: You are seeing this too.

09.03.2026 22:35 👍 3925 🔁 1052 💬 112 📌 50
Preview
As controversial decisions mount, FDA shuns public advisory meetings The FDA is cutting back on public advisory committee meetings, even as the public and other stakeholders seek more transparency.

Despite recent controversial decisions, the FDA has stopped holding advisory committee meetings — which bring together regulators, companies, patients, and a panel of independent advisors to publicly discuss complex regulatory matters. I dug into why:
www.statnews.com/2026/03/09/f...

09.03.2026 13:57 👍 17 🔁 9 💬 0 📌 2

As someone who recently turned 64, oh yes indeed. Only thing I can say, though, is that I got completely out of US equities not long after came in this time.

09.03.2026 13:28 👍 20 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 1

I’m honestly really sad for all the close-to-retirement people whose lives will be extremely screwed up by the coming correction/crash. They didn’t really have much choice about this and were doing the best/only thing they could to save for retirement.

09.03.2026 11:09 👍 352 🔁 51 💬 19 📌 6

Musk isn't putting a server farm in space and he isn't launching a million rockets. Don't say "it will be v bad for the environment if Musk launches a million rockets", say "this man is a fraud, his pyramid scheme will collapse at about the time his crony [redacted], and all of this shit is pretend"

09.03.2026 09:21 👍 153 🔁 34 💬 3 📌 1

Next post clarifies that it was Cr(VI). Which is not so good. Cr(III) compounds are often pretty inert and can be quite insoluble, but the higher oxidation state is generally reactive and toxic. . .

09.03.2026 03:28 👍 30 🔁 6 💬 2 📌 1

This idiot is really going to crash the world economy. By choice. By his own lurching incompetence.

09.03.2026 03:11 👍 88 🔁 4 💬 3 📌 1

This is tremendously hard and it happens more often than so many people realize. It could do some real good, letting others know that they’re not as alone as they thought. . .

09.03.2026 01:48 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Never been there either. That picture of the food looks like someone ate it for me already.

08.03.2026 22:34 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I oppose my country's war on Iran. I oppose my country's support for Israel's war on so many within and around it. In fact, I am opposed to most of what my country does these days.

This is how I do patriotism.

08.03.2026 21:10 👍 27 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 2

Kowloon in Saugus? Man, does that place ever have a reputation as an ancient tiki dive bar-slash-ancient Massachusetts-style “Chinese” joint. Rumored for years to be heading for demolition.

08.03.2026 00:24 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Chemsmy looking for recs: I wanna get some chem themed art for the conference room at work. Want cute, asthetic, not weird AI bs, not worried about it being cheap. What artists do you have to recommend?

07.03.2026 15:31 👍 14 🔁 5 💬 8 📌 0
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Publisher demands $500 from impersonated author to retract paper Last year, we wrote about a Walsh Medical Media journal that refused to withdraw an author’s paper unless he paid a fee — even though he didn’t write or submit the article. For one reader, some det…

Lol. This is academic publishing taken to its logical end.

07.03.2026 10:36 👍 210 🔁 66 💬 8 📌 7

A handful of Republican senators and representatives could end this now.

They simply won’t do it.

07.03.2026 14:10 👍 80 🔁 15 💬 4 📌 0

Okay Bluesky, supposedly this is where the scientists are now so can someone give me a straight answer on this:

Can I use a PETE (Polyethylene Terephthalate) tray for etching a copper circuit board with ferric chloride without the tray melting?

Because *fuck* if Google is helping on this one ...

07.03.2026 01:25 👍 78 🔁 21 💬 13 📌 2

Oh no, those cats of yours are the very opposite of “cut rate”.

07.03.2026 03:38 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Tomorrow 😈

07.03.2026 00:09 👍 27 🔁 4 💬 3 📌 1

Just decided my new description of Donald Trump's cognitive capabilities is that he has the head of a Halloween jack o'lantern that is still sitting on the front porch at Christmas

06.03.2026 22:49 👍 83 🔁 15 💬 3 📌 0

Good riddance (again) to Vinay Prasad at the FDA. The only problem is that under this administration we can only expect him to be replaced by someone as bad or worse.

06.03.2026 22:42 👍 100 🔁 12 💬 3 📌 0
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Exclusive | FDA’s Controversial Vaccines Chief Will Leave the Agency Dr. Vinay Prasad will depart in April, after a year leading the division that approves vaccines and biotech drugs.

Vinay Prasad is out again at FDA in April.

www.wsj.com/health/healt...

06.03.2026 22:19 👍 97 🔁 24 💬 6 📌 3
Preview
How Stand Up For Science is trying to 'pull every lever' to win over the public Stand Up For Science has become a formal organization and adopted a new strategy that's more confrontational with grassroots tactics

it feels like decades since the first Stand auto for Science protests

ahead of this year’s protests tomorrow, I caught up with @cdelawalla.bsky.social to talk about what @standupforscience.bsky.social sees as its strategy as a fully formed organization

www.statnews.com/2026/03/06/s...

06.03.2026 17:18 👍 27 🔁 8 💬 2 📌 0

I was a Medieval and Renaissance Studies major... my takeaway from that was that for almost the entirety of Western history, the "government" and the "church" were both just gangsters all the way down. This is my first experience with it firsthand and I'll say, I don't care for it a bit.

06.03.2026 18:07 👍 11 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

Yeah, this is idiotic. It’s all too easy to spray venom - there are plenty of things about the whole social media era that don’t speak well for human nature. . .

06.03.2026 18:27 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Current NIH leadership want you to think they are using rigorous, consistent & scientific processes to screen studies to align them with agency priorities.

But the process that they have put down on paper is a sham.

It’s important to know NIH is not following its own guidance. Here’s why:

🧵1/

06.03.2026 14:35 👍 197 🔁 126 💬 4 📌 10
A post on X from the betting platform Polymarket that says “BREAKING: Anthropic CEO says Claude may or may not have gained consciousness, as the model has begun showing symptoms of anxiety.”

A post on X from the betting platform Polymarket that says “BREAKING: Anthropic CEO says Claude may or may not have gained consciousness, as the model has begun showing symptoms of anxiety.”

Literally as I’m arguing with someone about whether AI companies are misleading people into believing their technology possesses God-like super-intelligence I see this monstrosity

06.03.2026 15:04 👍 5369 🔁 847 💬 319 📌 627

We are being governed by gangsters.

06.03.2026 15:15 👍 31 🔁 2 💬 4 📌 1
Post image

Job growth over 14 months of Trump’s second term: 150,000 jobs
The previous 14 months: 1.74 million jobs

Under Biden: 0 months of job losses
Trump’s second term: losses in two of the last three months, three of the last five months, and five of the last nine months.
www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

06.03.2026 14:04 👍 282 🔁 162 💬 13 📌 29
Post image Post image

Author, unhappy after their problematic paper was retracted, writes on @pubpeer.com: “authors are not responsible for manuscript quality […] because the journal, not the authors, has the authority to accept or reject a manuscript”. pubpeer.com/publications...

06.03.2026 13:21 👍 22 🔁 4 💬 7 📌 1

This is the world that RFK Jr dreamed of—now that he runs the US health system he’s able to achieve his dreams each & every day, aided & abetted by Drs Bhattacharya, Makary, Høeg, Kulldorff, Prasad & Oz

We can’t rebuild the devastation until all 7 of these federal health agency leaders are gone

06.03.2026 13:12 👍 185 🔁 70 💬 8 📌 3

We’ll see about that! This is a favorite tactic of the Trump-era DOJ: pretending that the Executive branch has such Godlike authority that none of its decisions can ever be opposed or questioned. Bullshit, is what that is.

05.03.2026 23:26 👍 52 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0