Saloni

17 Aug

It's finally here! I gave a TED talk in April in Vancouver, and it was released online today. You can watch it here: ted.com/talks/saloni... I've also adapted it into an article, which was published last week: worksinprogress.co/issue/future...

Average econ IV paper be like: we reduced a thing by 8% and look at all the amazing consequences that had a decade later if you squint

Average vaccine paper be like: we reduced a thing by 99% and therefore just recommended it universally and now we can't study its long run effects in a randomized setting anymore oops

This is a joke. Economists following me, don't @ me

Saloni reposted

Hard Drugs now has a Bluesky account! Follow us here @harddrugspod.bsky.social to hear about new episodes and behind-the-scenes goofs.

Hard Drugs now has a Bluesky account! Follow us here @harddrugspod.bsky.social to hear about new episodes and behind-the-scenes goofs.

I finally got it!

I feel incredibly relieved, but still that most people have no idea how difficult regular immigration routes are in the UK. I've lived here for more than 12 years already and still don't have citizenship because most of that was as a student (which didn't count) or interrupted (so the clock reset).

Funnily enough, I applied for the Royal Society to endorse me for the visa for my science background, but they passed it onto the British Academy who endorsed it under humanities instead. No explanation given.

@chrisajulian.bsky.social

Every time I hear friends share happily that their babies/toddlers slept a lot the previous night, I feel even prouder for having been a really sleepy kid. Totally nailed it

Saloni reposted

Christopher Julian

I reanalyzed the CDC data behind the LGB “free fall” headline. It rests on a change in bisexual identification among one grade, in one wave, of one survey. Gay or lesbian identification did not change significantly. Calling it a "free fall" is sensational and just gives bad actors talking points.

The Washington Post@washingtonpost.com

Young teenagers are less likely to identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual than a few years ago, according to a new analysis. “It really does look like a free fall,” Jean Twenge, a professor of psychology, said. “But what’s causing it is unclear.”

washingtonpost.comNumber of teens who identify themselves as gay or bisexual is in ‘free fall’Conservatives have trumpeted the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but researchers say the reasons for the decline are unclear.

Saloni reposted

Ian Hussey

@ianhussey.mmmdata.io

The more parsimoneous explanation is that infants express a preference for the Type G British/Irish electrical plug socket, which is objectively the best type of plug socket. This is evidence for innate rationality in newly born infants.

Dr Nick@nmwilkinson.eurosky.social

New paper! Accepted at Perspectives on Psychological Science. A textbook finding in infant psychology is that newborns - within ~1 hour of birth - visually track a simplified 'three blob' facelike stimulus further than its inverted control (see picture). This suggested inborn knowledge of faces!

Saloni reposted

Stephanie M. Lee

@stephaniemlee.bsky.social

this is devastating -- @helenbranswell.bsky.social was an absolute legend.

STAT@statnews.com

We are going to miss you very much, Helen. https://www.statnews.com/2026/10/13/helen-branswell-stat-reporter-obituary/

statnews.comHelen Branswell, whose reporting on infectious diseases and public health drew acclaim, dies at 69Helen Branswell, STAT's infectious disease reporter who earned the respect of experts and public health officials with her accessible, prescient dispatches, has died at age 69.

It's interesting when you ask people to imagine what their life would be like if they were transported historically to the past. Some people seem to assume they'd be in the relatively well-off 1-2% and it would go fine for them. Meanwhile I just assume I'd be a secluded female peasant.

Good to know which historical figures are furthest from me politically

Historical regions furthest from me makes sense too

open.spotify.comCan we switch off diseases?Hard Drugs · Episode

Can we switch off diseases? siRNA drugs are, in my view and @jacobtref.bsky.social’s too, one of the most exciting developments in medicine. So we decided to do an episode!

But we think it’s just a matter of time before they can be used to target other organs too. Will siRNA treat diseases of other organs? And what’s the catch? Listen to our latest episode of HARD DRUGS to find out!

youtube.comCan we switch off diseases?YouTube video by Works in Progress

YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGnA... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/1HqF... Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c... Transcript: harddrugs.worksinprogress.co/episodes/can... Or listen wherever you get your podcasts :)

open.spotify.comCan we switch off diseases?Hard Drugs · Episode

Can we switch off diseases? siRNA drugs are, in my view and @jacobtref.bsky.social’s too, one of the most exciting developments in medicine. So we decided to do an episode!

• Long-lasting: some drugs last for months, even half a year, with a single injection • Off-the-shelf: they typically don’t involve complicated surgeries or procedures, because of the way they’re delivered in the body

Today, siRNA drugs are largely used to treat liver diseases, partly because that’s the easiest starting point. And they are extremely effective at it. One example is for cholesterol: siRNA drugs reduce PCSK9 levels by around 70%, reducing cholesterol levels by 50-60%, beyond the effect of statins.

open.spotify.comCan we switch off diseases?Hard Drugs · Episode

Can we switch off diseases? siRNA drugs are, in my view and @jacobtref.bsky.social’s too, one of the most exciting developments in medicine. So we decided to do an episode!

- Cardiovascular diseases, silencing proteins like PCSK9 that raise cholesterol - Cancers, by silencing proteins that help tumour cells grow, survive, metabolize, metastasize, or resist treatment - and more!

What’s even better is that siRNA drugs are: • Potentially tunable, meaning you could reduce the production of a protein, rather than silencing it entirely • Programmable, meaning you can quickly switch out which gene it targets by changing its sequence

open.spotify.comCan we switch off diseases?Hard Drugs · Episode

Can we switch off diseases? siRNA drugs are, in my view and @jacobtref.bsky.social’s too, one of the most exciting developments in medicine. So we decided to do an episode!

siRNA drugs can ‘silence’ harmful genes in the body. And there are lots of cases where you might want to silence genes: - Infectious diseases, where you can silence pathogen proteins or human proteins that pathogens depend on - Rare genetic diseases, to silence the production of mutated proteins

Filling in an application, and it asks if I've been to the German Democratic Republic since 2021 🧐 The USSR is also an option

Perhaps they have a LOT more questions for someone who selects those options.

London City Airport is my favourite one in London in part because the descent has views like this

I don't mean to brag, but this is one of the best videos I have ever taken, feat. @dingdingpeng.the100.ci

This room is in Mendelssohn Haus - it's an interactive room where you can conduct pieces he composed.

Omg thanks to @dingdingpeng.the100.ci I'm now the proud sponsor of a Gila monster at the zoo 🦎 One of the most important lizards in medical history! There it is, sleeping on the right.

The one I'm holding is not real in case you were wondering

Saloni reposted

clinicaltrialsabundance.blogThe clinical trial bottlenecks gameWhere’s the bottleneck in curing diseases? I designed a game to find out.

New post and game by me! Some people claim that AI will cure all diseases in 10 years. Others are more skeptical, arguing that experimentation and clinical trials are the bottleneck. Who's right? I designed a game to find out.

clinicaltrialsabundance.blogThe clinical trial bottlenecks gameWhere’s the bottleneck in curing diseases? I designed a game to find out.

No matter how effective a new drug is, it won't make it to the finish line without funding and clinical trial infrastructure to test it in the first place.

Here's a link to the game: game.clinicaltrialsabundance.blog I promise it's fun, and some of my friends have gotten really competitive about it! There are leaderboards, and there's a bonus game you can unlock if you solve the challenge.

clinicaltrialsabundance.blogThe clinical trial bottlenecks gameWhere’s the bottleneck in curing diseases? I designed a game to find out.

In this game, your job is to speed up a phase three trial, by changing its design: You can recruit more participants, recruit them faster, increase drug efficacy, use surrogate endpoints and more. But as you'll notice, each faces diminishing returns...

In the end, you'll also learn that the same timeline can be sped up in multiple ways, but some levers matter much more than others. They also interact, and have diminishing returns. After a certain level, further improvements don't make much difference.

Saloni reposted

Happy Friday! Iʼve created a game for you to play! Will AI cure all diseases in 10 years? Inspired by bottlenecks discourse, I created a game to help build your intuitions. Play it here: game.clinicaltrialsabundance.blog Naturally, it’s bottle-themed with bubbles and there are leaderboards too.

Very fun to see how many people have played already. Each line here represents a successful completion, and there were many different ways to solve the game!

Saloni@scientificdiscovery.dev

clinicaltrialsabundance.blogThe clinical trial bottlenecks gameWhere’s the bottleneck in curing diseases? I designed a game to find out.

It comes with a companion blogpost where I describe the motivation behind it, some of my takeaways, and what it tells us about AI and medicine. You can read it here:

If you complete the challenge, you'll unlock a bonus game where you can steer a raft down bottleneck river ⛵️

. @dingdingpeng.the100.ci's baby is so chubby, I had to find out how our face sizes compared, side by side. Unfortunately I still can't tell. It's debatable

Her cheeks are comically chubby

I have just eaten my first Spaghettieis. It felt very unnatural to eat it with a spoon.