SAN DIEGO, CA—Nobel laureate Dr. Frances Arnold delivered a wide-ranging plenary lecture on directed evolution at the American Chemical Society national meeting Tuesday that also, at multiple points and without explanation, demolished former U.S. soccer player and Fox Sports commentator Alexi Lalas.

Arnold opened the talk with a standard overview of protein fitness landscapes before noting, approximately four minutes in, that “some organisms simply do not improve no matter how much selective pressure you apply. Alexi Lalas, for example.”

The remark, which drew nervous laughter from the audience, was the first of what sources counted as seven distinct references to Lalas over the course of the 45-minute lecture.

During a discussion of non-functional protein variants, Arnold paused to observe that "not every sequence that persists in a population is there because it's useful," adding, "Anyone who has watched Fox Sports knows this." She did not elaborate and advanced to the next slide.

Arnold's remarks grew sharper during the Q&A. When a graduate student asked about the limits of iterative screening, Arnold said the process works "as long as you start with something that has measurable function," then looked into the middle distance and added, "Which rules out Alexi Lalas's entire career."

A visibly uncomfortable session chair attempted to redirect the discussion to enzyme thermostability. Arnold said, "Sure," and then described a protein that "talks constantly without contributing to catalysis."

Lalas, reached for comment, said he did not know who Frances Arnold was, which sources confirmed was another example of him saying the worst thing possible.

Arnold's postdocs confirmed that the lab's lowest-throughput screening robot is named Alexi.

This is satire. Frances Arnold would never name one of her robots Alexi.

LONDON—Springer Nature CEO Willem Klaassen-Hooft opened a 2016 Châteauneuf-du-Pape he had been saving for the right occasion Tuesday evening after reading that an open science advocate had used AI to score 57,455 preprints without author consent and published a ranked list called “The 1%.”

“I bought this bottle the year we went public,” said Klaassen-Hooft, pouring a glass. “I always said I’d open it when the threat of preprints to traditional publishing had subsided. I assumed that would take a scandal, or legislation. I did not anticipate that they would do it to themselves in a single afternoon and brand it with the logo of income inequality.”

Sources close to Klaassen-Hooft confirmed that he read the full QED announcement twice, pausing the second time at the sentence suggesting scientists share their scores with tenure committees and university PR departments.

“That’s our pitch,” he said. “That is word-for-word what we tell authors about impact factor. How validating.”

Klaassen-Hooft reportedly called Elsevier CEO Deniz Çelikbaş to discuss the news. Sources describe the call as “brief and joyful.” Çelikbaş reportedly said “They named it The 1%?” and laughed for approximately 45 seconds.

“I forwarded the announcement to my COO. He replied 'Is this from The Onion.' I said no. He said 'Is this from that science satire Substack.' I said no. He said 'Then what is this.' I said 'This is real. The 1%. The single phrase in modern political life most associated with entrenched privilege.’”

He wiped a tear from his eye. “You can’t make this up.”

At press time, Klaassen-Hooft was composing a handwritten thank-you note to QED’s founder that he described as sincere but his chief of staff described as inadvisable.

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—In a breakthrough moment for professional disappointment, open science advocate Oded Rechavi demonstrated Tuesday a novel platform capable of ruining the mornings of 56,880 scientists simultaneously, a throughput traditional publishing could never achieve.

“Previously, ruining a scientist’s day required a dedicated editor, three reviewers, and six to eighteen months,” said a spokesperson for the study. “We’ve reduced that to six seconds per scientist with no human involvement. The method is scalable, reproducible, and requires no consent from participants.”

The platform, called QED, delivered AI-generated below-average scores to tens of thousands of researchers who had posted preprints. The rollout achieved a disappointment rate of approximately 56,880 simultaneous events across multiple time zones, a figure proponents of the site described as “just the beginning.”

“I woke up, opened my phone, and learned that a machine I’d never heard of had read my paper and decided it was below average,” said a cell biologist at the University of Edinburgh. “It was 7:14 in the morning.”

The machine had not read her paper. It had converted it into tokens, multiplied them through several billion weights trained on PubMed and whatever the hell else was on the internet the day they scraped it, and output a percentile.

Rechavi emphasized that "we are not here to shame anyone," referring to papers that received low scores. He then noted that scientists who received high scores could "download the report and share it, for example with your tenure, promotion, or hiring committee, or with your university PR department," actions he did not suggest for the 99% of pre-printers whose scores would be less useful for a tenure case.

“Finally the top 1% have a way to be recognized,” said a QED spokesperson, describing the benefit to 575 people while addressing zero concerns of the other 56,880.

The spokesperson went on to describe the platform’s next phase, which seeks to score preprints in real time, reducing the interval between sharing one’s work and feeling terrible about it to under one minute.

AUSTIN, TX—In the latest incident linked to the 'trad grad' movement, a growing online community of graduate students who reject modern workplace improvements as 'an insult to the scientific tradition,'" fifth-year chemistry student and Trad Grad content creator Derek Volker was removed from an undergraduate teaching lab Tuesday after refusing to wear safety goggles, telling an EHS officer "my eyes, my choice."

Volker, who has 11,400 followers on the platform X and sells merchandise reading “DEFERENCE” and “IMPACT > COMFORT,” was supervising a general chemistry section and reportedly placed his goggles on the bench during a dilute acid titration, telling students they were “welcome to protect themselves if that’s the kind of scientist they want to be.”

Three undergraduates immediately put their goggles on. Two took theirs off in solidarity. One asked Volker if this would be on the exam.

“I’m not anti-goggle,” said Volker, who argued in a recent Grindset essay that PPE creates a false sense of security that weakens the scientist’s natural relationship with risk. “I’m pro-choice. About goggles.”

EHS Director Carol Whitmore, who was called to the lab after the course instructor reported the incident, said she had never encountered a student who ideologically opposes safety eyewear and that the university’s PPE policy “is not a matter of personal philosophy.”

Volker’s PI, who asked not to be named, said he was “aware of the situation” and described it as “a phase, hopefully.”

TUCSON, AZ—A doctoral thesis defense in the University of Arizona Department of Molecular Biology ended in a 0-0 draw Tuesday after neither the graduate student nor committee could land a decisive blow in regulation time. The defense has now entered extra questions.

"I left it all on the podium," said fifth-year graduate student Carlos Mendoza, visibly exhausted a forty-five minute presentation followed by an hour of back-and-forth with his committee. "I thought I had them when I responded to the western blot question. I really did. But they defended it well."

Committee chair Dr. Katherine Walsh confirmed that neither side had managed to score a major point, with Mendoza successfully fielding questions on methodology and the committee raising inconclusive questions about significance.

"It's still anyone's defense," said Walsh, who noted that Mendoza had come close with a soliloquy about clinical relevance that went just wide. "He's taken strong shots but we've held firm. We've tested him on the statistics, the controls, the interpretation. Nothing's gone in."

The defense now enters a mandatory 30-minute extra question period, after which, if no clear pass or fail is established, the outcome will be decided by shootout. Under shootout rules, each committee member will ask one direct question and Mendoza must answer within 30 seconds without using the phrase "that's a great question."

Mendoza said he was prepared for a shootout if it came to that, having practiced rapid-fire responses in the weeks leading up to his defense.

“I’ve trained for this,” he said. “But you never really know how you’ll perform during extra questions until you’re in it.”

As of press time, Mendoza had received a yellow card for excessive celebration after correctly explaining the Benjamini-Hochberg correction.

NEW YORK, NY—A group of approximately 25 scientists on the social media platform Bluesky engaged in a vigorous debate Tuesday over whether an article published by a satirical publication was satire, ultimately reaching consensus of “maybe” after one user suggested scrolling down.

“OK—is this satire???” wrote a Bluesky user, adding three question marks to a question whose answer was visible upon scrolling.

The publication, In Preparation, identifies itself as satire in the following locations: its homepage, its About page, its other homepage, its landing page, and the content of the articles themselves, which include stories about EHS drone strikes, graduate students being sentenced to hard labor for wearing sandals, and mentoring advocate Jen Heemstra knocking food out of trainees’ hands.

One user attempted to resolve the matter by screenshotting the disclaimer and posting it in the thread. “It is clearly marked as satire,” the user wrote, appending the screenshot. The next three replies continued to debate whether it was satire.

At press time, the writing staff of In Preparation was reviewing options for making the satire label larger, bolder, or possibly adding it to the methods section of your favorite manuscript, which no one reads either.

BETHESDA, MD—The National Institutes of Health announced Monday that active R01 holders may apply for emergency administrative supplements of up to $250,000 to redirect a portion of their research toward algal removal from decorative surfaces, provided they can “ichthyologically or otherwise” justify the pivot and deliver results by July 3rd.

The notice, NOT-OD-26-147, encourages investigators across all NIH institutes to consider whether their current research “could be extended, adapted, or enhanced” to address what the notice describes as “an acute and nationally visible biofilm challenge.”

“We want to emphasize that this is investigator-initiated,” said NIH spokesperson Dana Chow. “No one is being told to study algae. We are simply making $40 million available to anyone who decides on their own that they want to, within the next eleven days."

The announcement has generated confusion across the research community. Dr. Yun Park, a mycologist at University of Wisconsin, said his program officer called him Tuesday to ask if his expertise in fungal biology was transferable to algal biology.

“I said no,” said Park. “She said to think about it.”

The supplement application requires a two-page specific aims document, a statement of relevance to “the national decorative surface mission,” and a letter from the PI explaining how the proposed work connects to their parent R01. Sample language provided in the notice includes “While our laboratory has traditionally focused on [insert current research area], recent developments have made clear that algae removal from painted federal surfaces represents an equally pressing scientific challenge.”

At press time 7 applications were funded. None of the funded investigators study algae. One is a particle physicist who described his proposal as "responsive to the FOA."

POMONA, CA—In a development that sources describe as both an incredible honor and the beginning of a long decline, colleagues confirmed Friday that associate professor Dr. Richard Tanaka's life has officially peaked following his service as chair of the 2026 Gordon Research Conference on Protein Dynamics.

"For most scientists, chairing a GRC is one milestone among many," explained Dr. Judith Frydman, a conference attendee who has known Tanaka for over a decade. "They go on to win awards. They train students who surpass them. They watch their children grow up. Richard will not experience any of this. This is it for him. This is the top of the mountain."

Frydman then gestured toward a photograph of Tanaka standing at the podium of Sheraton Fairplex, arranging name placards for the poster session.

"Look at that face," Frydman said quietly. "That's a man who has tasted glory and will spend the rest of his life chasing a high he will never recapture."

The Gordon Research Conferences, a prestigious series of scientific meetings known for their intimate settings and rigorous no-photography policies, have been a cornerstone of academic discourse since 1931. Being selected as chair represents the culmination of years of scientific achievement, community involvement, and a demonstrated willingness to answer emails promptly.

For Tanaka, 44, the appointment marks the definitive apex of a trajectory that will now, according to sources, “flatten out and then just kind of trail off.”

“We see this a lot with GRC chairs,” explained Dr. Susan Park, a psychologist specializing in academic career transitions. “There’s an initial high, followed by a period of denial, followed by decades of telling anyone who will listen about that one time they were in charge of something.”

Park recommended that Tanaka consider taking up a hobby, reconnecting with old friends, or perhaps volunteering to organize a symposium at a regional meeting “just to take the edge off.”

As of press time, Tanaka had been observed updating his CV to move "Chair, Gordon Research Conference on Protein Folding Dynamics, 2026" from the second page to the first, where it will remain, bolded, for the rest of his career.

LOS ANGELES, CA—Marvel Studios announced Tuesday that its next Phase Seven film will feature a supervillain whose origin story consists of starting a PhD in molecular biology in September 2020 and graduating in 2025.

The character, Dr. Elena Voss, is a structural biologist who begins her PhD over Zoom, meets her PI for the first time through a plexiglass divider, and spends five years experiencing sequential catastrophes that progressively erode her faith in every institution she has ever trusted. She does not gain her powers from radiation or a serum. She gains them from the experience of doing everything right and having nothing work.

"We wanted a villain the audience would be uncomfortable rooting against," said director Chloé Zhao, who spent six months interviewing recent PhD graduates for research. "Every other Marvel villain wants to destroy the world because of some abstract ideology. Elena wants to destroy America because it put a funding freeze on her postdoc start date. The realism makes her scary."

The film's second act depicts Voss's descent in granular detail. She is scooped during the supply chain crisis. Her PI's R01 is triaged. She applies to forty-seven positions and receives two automated rejections and one interview at a PUI that has already selected an internal candidate. In the pivotal scene, she opens her email to find that the NIH has stopped disbursing funds to her university, stares at her laptop for approximately ninety seconds, and then calmly walks into a cryo-EM facility and begins doing things with the electron beam that the manufacturer's manual explicitly prohibits.

At press time, Marvel had received a cease-and-desist letter from a 2020 PhD cohort who said the film’s depiction was “so accurate as to constitute a violation of privacy.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The American Chemical Society confirmed Tuesday that it has begun sending open access fee invoices to the emergency contacts of corresponding authors who have not responded to the initial invoice, the first follow-up invoice, the second follow-up invoice, or the email marked “URGENT: Payment Required Regarding Your Recent Publication In JACS.”

“We noticed that many corresponding authors were not opening our emails,” said an ACS spokesperson. “Some had marked them as spam. Others had set up filters that automatically routed our invoices to a folder labeled ‘Do Not.’ We felt it was appropriate to reach out through alternative channels.” The alternative channel is the emergency contact the author provided when they created their ACS ID in 2014, which in most cases is a parent, a spouse, or an ex-partner who does not know what an open access fee is and did not want to learn.

Dr. Kevin Park, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois whose mother received a $4,500 invoice for his recent publication in Organic Letters, said the call from his mother lasted approximately forty minutes. “She asked me if I was in debt. I said no. She asked why an organization was contacting her about money. I said it was an open access fee. She asked what that meant. I explained that I had written a paper, and that other scientists had reviewed it for free, and that an editor had handled it for free, and that I now owed $4,500 so that people could read it. There was a very long silence. She asked if this was a scam. I said it was not a scam. She said it sounded like a scam. I did not have a strong rebuttal.”

Park’s mother subsequently called the ACS to dispute the invoice. She was told the fee was standard. She asked who had performed the work described in the paper. She was told her son had. She asked who had reviewed the paper. She was told volunteers had. She asked what the $4,500 was for. She was told it covered “the cost of publication.” She asked what that meant. There was a pause. She was transferred to a different department which did not pick up.

At press time, Park’s mother had paid the invoice and told her son she was “very proud of him” but that he should “find a field where they don’t charge you to do your job.”

LONDON—Editors at Nature, who earn considerably less per month than the cost of a single open access article in their own journal, received a letter from Springer Nature management Tuesday rejecting their salary demands whose language felt “extremely familiar” but that none could identify where they had encountered it before.

"There's something about the phrasing," said one senior editor, reading the letter aloud. "'We appreciate the effort that went into your proposal and recognize the strength of many of its components. However, after careful consideration, we have determined that it does not meet the threshold for action.' I've seen these words before. I know I have. It's going to drive me insane."

A second editor said the letter's closing paragraph — "We encourage you to resubmit in a future cycle with a stronger case" — triggered what she described as "an almost physical sensation of recognition, like hearing a song you know but can't name." She said she had spent twenty minutes trying to place it. "It's on the tip of my tongue. The tone. The warmth that isn't warm. The suggestion that you've been given feedback without any. I know this voice. I just can't remember from where."

The editors have requested that management provide more specific feedback on why the proposal was rejected, what criteria were used, and what changes would strengthen a future submission. Management has not yet responded. "The silence is also familiar," said one editor. "I have definitely experienced this silence before. But this time, for some reason, it seems much worse."

As of press time, a junior editor composing a rejection letter for Nature Chemistry had gotten halfway through the second paragraph, stopped, read what she had written, and began working on a more substantive reply.

AMSTERDAM—Academic publishing giant Elsevier announced Tuesday the launch of Paywally And Friends, a new animated series for children ages three to seven that teaches young viewers the importance of restricting access to information, the moral value of copyright transfer, and why sharing is wrong when what you’re sharing is a publicly funded research article.

The series follows Paywally, an enthusiastic anthropomorphic padlock, and his friends Impacta the Fox (who teaches children about journal prestige), Embargo the Turtle (who explains why some knowledge must wait twelve months before anyone can see it), and a villain called Open Access Harold, a raccoon who steals PDFs and distributes them to people who want to read them.

“We saw a gap in the children’s educational space,” said Elsevier CEO Kumsal Bayazit. “Programs like Sesame Street teach children to share. Daniel Tiger teaches empathy. Nobody was teaching children that information is a commodity and that accessing it without payment undermines the entire knowledge economy.” She said the show fills a “critical need” in early childhood development, which is teaching toddlers that the research their parents’ taxes funded belongs to a Dutch corporation.

In the pilot episode, “Paywally Explains Why Mommy Can’t Read The Paper,” Paywally visits a little girl whose mother, a nurse, is trying to read a study about a medication she prescribes daily. Paywally explains that the study costs $39.95 to access, or $29.95 if her hospital purchases an institutional bundle. The mother asks whether she can read the abstract for free. Paywally says she can. The mother asks whether the abstract contains enough information to inform clinical decisions. Paywally laughs warmly and says “that’s not what abstracts are for.” The girl learns a valuable lesson about the difference between knowing something exists and being allowed to read it.

A second episode, “Don’t Be Like Harold,” depicts Open Access Harold emailing a PDF to a friend. Paywally arrives and explains that Harold has committed copyright infringement. Harold says the author posted it on their own website. Paywally explains that the author signed a copyright transfer agreement and no longer owns the work. Harold looks confused. “But they wrote it,” Harold says. “And reviewed it for free,” says Impacta. “And the editor who accepted it was also not paid,” adds Embargo. There is a long silence. Paywally says “this is how the system works” and the episode ends.

At press time, the series had been posted to YouTube, where it was available for free, an irony that Elsevier’s communications department described as “a strategic loss leader.”

BALTIMORE, MD—Attending a mandatory orientation session at Johns Hopkins University on Tuesday, visiting postdoctoral fellow Dr. Wei Zhang, 29, was told by a representative from the Office of Disability Services that he, too, could request accommodations if needed, a sentence Zhang confirmed he understood individually as English words but not collectively as a concept.

“She said, ‘If you need accommodations, we’re here to help,’” said Zhang, who completed his PhD at Peking University in four years during which he worked seven days a week and once ran a 72-hour time course experiment alone because his advisor was traveling and it did not occur to either of them that this was something someone else could help with. “I said, ‘What kind of accommodations.’ She said, ‘It depends on your needs.’ This part I did not understand.”

The orientation also covered topics including mental health resources, work-life balance, and the university’s policy on maximum weekly working hours. Zhang listened attentively to each section. He did not ask questions. He took notes. He later reviewed his notes and could not determine whether the presentation was mandatory training or a form of humor he was not culturally equipped to identify.

“They said there is a limit on how many hours per week I can work,” Zhang said. “They said it is important to take breaks. They said I should speak to my PI if I feel overwhelmed.” He paused. “At Peking University, if I told my advisor I felt overwhelmed, he would have said, ‘Yes.’

Zhang’s American labmate, a fourth-year graduate student who was recently diagnosed with ADHD and has an accommodation letter granting extended deadlines and a reduced course load, attempted to explain the system over lunch. “I told him that a lot of people don’t get diagnosed until their twenties because the symptoms present differently in adults,” the labmate said. “He listened very carefully. Then he said, ‘In China, the symptoms present as PhD.’ Wei is hilarious.”

As of press time, Zhang had not requested any accommodation.

TEL AVIV—Q.e.d., the AI-powered manuscript review platform that has been adopted by researchers at more than 1,000 institutions worldwide, returned a 14-page report on a submitted chemistry manuscript Wednesday that consisted entirely of the word “No” repeated approximately 4,000 times, followed by a single recommendation to “start over, perhaps in a different field.”

The manuscript, a study of copper-catalyzed cross-coupling reactions submitted by a research group at the University of Leeds, was uploaded to the platform at 9:47 AM GMT. The report was returned in the standard 30 minutes. The first page appeared normal, beginning with the expected claim tree and logical structure analysis. Midway through page two, the report transitioned without explanation to the word “No,” which continued uninterrupted for the remaining twelve pages.

“At first I thought it was a formatting error,” said corresponding author Dr. James Whitfield. “Then I scrolled down. And kept scrolling.”

The report’s metadata indicated that q.e.d. had identified 274 claims in the manuscript, assessed zero of them as adequately supported, and classified the paper’s overall contribution to the field as “negative,” a category that does not exist in the platform’s standard output rubric and which developers said they had not programmed.

“We are investigating,” said q.e.d. creator Oded Rechavi. “The system is designed to provide constructive, specific feedback. This is not that.”

At press time, Whitfield had submitted the manuscript to JACS, where it received two positive reviews from human reviewers who described the work as “solid” and “a meaningful contribution,” and one review that simply read “needs more DFT,” which Whitfield said was “honestly harder to interpret than 4,000 Nos.”

MADISON, WI—Sitting in a one-bedroom apartment on West Dayton Street that he does not pay for, first-year biochemistry graduate student Marcus Hall, 23, confirmed Tuesday that he still cannot get over the fact that the department pays his rent.

“They just pay it,” said Hall, who worked two jobs through undergrad at UW-Eau Claire and whose previous experience with rent was that it was the thing that ruined the last week of every month. “I didn’t ask. The offer said ‘stipend’ and then a number and then ‘plus tuition remission.’ I read it four times because I thought it was a mistake.”

It was not a mistake. The department pays his rent. It also pays him $34,500 a year to learn about proteins. Despite the things he had read online about graduate school, no one has yet asked him to do anything he does not want to do. He has a desk. The desk has a chair. The chair is not good but it is his and no one can take it. There is a break room with free coffee. The coffee is bad. He does not care that the coffee is bad. It is free. Everything is free. The pipette tips are free. The gloves are free. Last week he used an NMR spectrometer that costs more than every car his family has ever owned combined, and the only thing he had to do to use it was sign a sheet.

“My mom keeps watching the news about science funding in the US and asking me what’s wrong,” Hall said. “Nothing is wrong. I just keep calling her and telling her about things that are free. She doesn’t believe me about the NMR machine. She thinks I’m exaggerating. I’m not exaggerating. It costs $800,000. I just walk in and use it.”

Hall’s labmate, a fourth-year who has not felt joy about the stipend since 2022, confirmed that Hall’s enthusiasm is “sweet” and to give it “about eight more months.”

At press time, Hall discovered that the department will also pay for him to fly to a conference in San Diego, and had to sit down.

TEL AVIV—Professor of structural biology Dr. Yael Mizrachi, 53, who has received zero international applications for a postdoctoral position in her laboratory for the third consecutive hiring cycle, told colleagues Tuesday that she is considering offering a relocation stipend to make the position more attractive, before pausing to walk calmly to the building’s reinforced stairwell as an air raid siren sounded across the city.

“I think the problem is the cost of moving,” said Mizrachi, returning to her desk approximately twelve minutes later. “Tel Aviv is expensive. If we offer five thousand dollars for relocation, I think that changes the calculus.” Through the window behind her, a faint contrail was visible where an Iron Dome interceptor had detonated an incoming projectile at an altitude that Mizrachi did not appear to notice.

Mizrachi said she had also updated the job listing to emphasize the lab’s proximity to the beach, the city’s “world-class restaurant scene,” and the department’s generous conference travel policy, which allows postdocs to attend one international meeting per year in a country that will admit them on an Israeli-stamped passport. She acknowledged that the applicant pool had been “unusually thin” since late 2023 but attributed this primarily to competition from well-funded labs in Europe and a strong industry job market. “Everyone’s going to Basel or Cambridge,” she said. “It’s hard to compete when Novartis is offering 90,000 Swiss francs.” She did not mention any other potential considerations.

A departmental administrator noted that domestic applications had also declined, though less dramatically, and suggested the department consider advertising on additional platforms. Mizrachi agreed and asked whether the listing had been posted to the Nature Jobs board. It had. She asked whether it mentioned the lab’s new cryo-EM access. It did. She asked whether it mentioned the subsidized cafeteria. It did not. “Add the cafeteria,” she said. A second siren sounded. She glanced at her phone, determined the alert was for a different district, and returned to editing the listing.

At press time, Mizrachi had received one application, from a domestic master’s student whose cover letter listed his primary qualification as “I am already here.”

PITTSBURGH, PA—Associate professor of cell biology Dr. Kevin Nwosu, 44, who has told multiple colleagues at national conferences that he received a “significant retention package” from Carnegie Mellon after fielding interest from industry, in fact received a two-paragraph email from his department chair thanking him for his continued service and access to 40 square feet of shared cold room space in the basement of the adjacent building, sources confirmed Tuesday.

“The university really stepped up,” Nwosu told a former postdoc at a poster session at ASCB, maintaining steady eye contact. “When they realized I was serious, they put together something very competitive.” The competitive package, according to documents reviewed by this publication, consists of the cold room space, which was previously used to store expired reagents and a broken ultracentrifuge rotor that no one has claimed since 2019, and an email, which was signed “Best, Linda.”

Nwosu has described the package differently to different audiences. To collaborators at a Gordon Conference in June, he characterized it as “a strong signal that the university values my program.” To a junior colleague who asked for advice on salary negotiation, he said “you have to be willing to walk away” and then described a negotiation that sources say did not occur. To his mother, he said he got a raise, which he did not.

The cold room itself is accessible only through a corridor that runs past the loading dock and requires a key that Nwosu has not yet received. It is shared with two other laboratories, one of which stores approximately 200 liters of buffer that a former postdoc made in 2021 before leaving for McKinsey. Nwosu has not yet visited the space. He has, however, mentioned it in his biosketch as “dedicated research infrastructure secured through competitive retention negotiation.”

At press time, Nwosu had told a search committee at a university he applied to that his current institution had “fought hard to keep him,” a characterization his chair confirmed by saying “Kevin is a valued member of our department” and then immediately changing the subject.

ROCKVILLE, MD—The Biophysical Society confirmed Tuesday that it has spent its entire $14,000 annual advertising budget on a single advertisement on the side of a Washington, D.C., Metrobus that reads “MEMBRANES: MORE THAN YOU THINK,” a message that approximately 40,000 daily bus riders have so far interpreted as either a condom advertisement or a philosophical statement.

“We wanted to meet people where they are,” said Dr. Linda Bhatt, the society’s president, who approved the ad after a nine-month deliberation process involving the executive council, the public affairs committee, and a graduate student who was told the society “wanted to reach a broader audience” and who produced thirty-seven drafts before the committee selected the one that communicated the least. “Membranes are fundamental to everything. Cell signaling. Ion transport. Synaptic transmission. We knew the public would be very interested.”

The ad, which features the text in white Helvetica on a teal background alongside a stock image of a lipid bilayer that no one outside the field has ever recognized as a lipid bilayer, has been riding the S2 line between Silver Spring and Dupont Circle since March. The society has received no inquiries from the public. It has received one inquiry from a bus driver who asked whether the ad was “about roofing.” It has received two complaints from Biophysical Society members who said the lipid bilayer was depicted in an outdated fluid mosaic configuration that does not reflect current understanding of membrane heterogeneity. The communications director said these concerns were “noted.”

At press time, the bus had been rerouted due to construction and was currently parked on a side street in Bethesda, where the ad was visible primarily to employees of the NIH, who already know what membranes are.

CHAPEL HILL, NC—Third-year biochemistry graduate student Emily Nakamura, 26, confirmed Tuesday that she sat down in her PI's office to review a manuscript revision and noticed that Spotify was open on his second monitor with a song called "Back That Azz Up" by Juvenile paused at the 1:47 mark, an observation that left her struggling to know how to proceed.

"He was sharing his screen to walk me through the reviewer comments," said Nakamura. "The Word document was on the big monitor. Spotify was on the smaller one to the left. He hadn't minimized it. It was just there. Paused. I didn't recognize the song. I didn't recognize the artist. But the title was very clear. It said 'Back That Azz Up.' The 'Azz' was spelled with two z's. I noticed this immediately."

Nakamura said she attempted to focus on the reviewer comments, which concerned the normalization of panel C in Figure 4. Dr. Aldrich, 58, a man who wears New Balance sneakers and has a framed photograph of a ribosome on his wall, walked her through each point methodically. He did not acknowledge Spotify. He did not minimize it. It sat there for the duration of the meeting like a window into a dimension of Dr. Aldrich that Nakamura had not known existed and was not equipped to process.

"He was saying 'Reviewer 2 wants us to add a loading control' and I was nodding but I was looking at the Spotify window," she said. "The queue was visible. After 'Back That Azz Up' was 'Still D.R.E.' by Dr. Dre, which I initially thought might be a scientific podcast because of the 'Dr.' After that was 'Get Low' by a group called Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz. I Googled the lyrics after the meeting. I don't want to talk about what I found. I will say that they are not are about biochemistry."

“He had named the playlist—" She cracked a grin and buried her face in her hands briefly. “'Focus.'"