Bing Zhang

A neuroscientist, fly geneticist, & professor trying to solve the mysteries of the brain in health and disease. Cornell Alum Go BigRed Views & RT are mine.

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Not a bad idea to also try R21. And NSF Career Award.

[Silvi Rouskin @silvirouskin]

Writing yet another grant and feeling it. Since asst prof job in late 2021 have senior-author papers in Science, Nat Commun (×2), Sci Adv and NAR, plus 2 more in review/revision. Still no R01. Still no prospect for promotion :_( Yet, I got invited to speak at over 10 conferences this year so thank you those who appreciate our science!

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

You are doing amazing well in publishing and soon the reviewers will reward you with a deserving R01. Best wishes

[Silvi Rouskin @silvirouskin]

Writing yet another grant and feeling it. Since asst prof job in late 2021 have senior-author papers in Science, Nat Commun (×2), Sci Adv and NAR, plus 2 more in review/revision. Still no R01. Still no prospect for promotion :_( Yet, I got invited to speak at over 10 conferences this year so thank you those who appreciate our science!

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

She did not have the machine that she claimed. That is fraud. That said, her idea was not bad one: detecting cancer from a drop of blood. Did other companies achieve that goal later on?

[John Tamny @johntamny]

The Elizabeth Holmes "fraud" narrative was long contradicted by what was true: Holmes's backers included the most prominent names in investing, business, economics, and politics. Fraudsters of course sell when people are duped, but when the world's greatest investors were lined up trying to buy Holmes's Theranos shares, she refused. From there, one would have to believe that some of the world's savviest investors didn't discover Holmes's alleged fraud, rather it was an unknown reporter who somehow scooped the world's best investors. Not very likely. The contradictions are many, and they gloss over the fact that as a female Stanford dropout, Holmes was constantly in the spotlight in the way that a male Stanford dropout would not have been. There are many of them, not many of Holmes's type. That is not a feminist comment, but it is a comment that for being a magnet for media, Holmes missed the crucial chance to develop her product anonymously, and on a better timeline. Said another way, had she not been so successful in pursuit of the impossible while raising money to back her vision over 15 years, she would not be in prison today. Holmes isn't a fraud nor did she fail, she was merely the only startup founder to build her company in a fishbowl. The latter arguably has her wrongly imprisoned today. https://t.co/KyRArRtDh0

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Fake news。stop spreading false information.

[Felix Huang @tyiiopple]

突发！！！
美国媒体CNN 报道：
金正恩 金将军已经死亡！！！！
终于挂了吗？#金正恩

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Wow lots of materials for our ethics class. 1. David -Knouse (another lab head) started dating before MIT changed policy on workplace dating. 2. A woman in power who fired David even dated and married her own graduate student. Juicy! Should she have fired herself first?

[Jason Locasale @LocasaleLab]

David’s life’s work was a disposable prop for MIT to market its virtue to a woke audience.

Some are even arguing that David deserved to lose his career because he was romantically involved with a woman in the workplace. That is an absurd and hypocritical justification for what MIT did to him.

Reducing the destruction of his career to a workplace relationship policy violation is grotesque hypocrisy. A romantic relationship at work is an ordinary part of academic life for administrators and an excuse for destroying a laboratory when it involves someone they don’t like.

His relationship with Knouse even began before Whitehead updated its relationship policies in August 2018.

If a workplace relationship warrants professional destruction, MIT and all universities, for that matter, have a great deal of firing to do. Erin O’Shea, who was instrumental in firing David from HHMI, dated and married someone who earned his PhD in her own laboratory. Ruth Lehmann, who forced David out of Whitehead, has a long-time partner who was a fellow scientist at NYU, where she worked. MIT’s president, Sally Kornbluth, is married to an MIT biology professor. These administrators know perfectly well that scientists form romantic relationships within their professional communities.

Scientists spend enormous portions of their lives in their laboratories and around other scientists. They develop relationships within that world because they devote themselves to their craft and have little social life outside it. Universities know this, and so do their administrators.

The court also rejected Knouse’s claim that she experienced quid pro quo sexual harassment from David. The court found that David did not condition professional benefits or consequences based on sex. She directed her own lab and she went on to obtain a tenure-track position at MIT. Invoking a poorly defined “power imbalance” does not erase the court’s rejection of her claim.

https://t.co/DQWDZ8saem

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

US needs a major overhaul; double NSF and NIH funding!!!

[nature @Nature]

China has selected its first group of young researchers to receive funding for up to 15 years, in one of the longest research grants on offer to scientists globally

https://t.co/6RnYWeNs6e

[Jan Konvalinka @konvalinka_jan]

We are very proud of having @DMSabatini at IOCB. His labs in Prague and Boston (the latter supported by @BillAckman) made some great contributions since 2023 (13 papers in Nature, Science, Cell etc) and the big stories are still to be told...https://t.co/eYpZjHAyE2

[Melissa Chen @MsMelChen]

The case of Professor David Sabatini stands as one of the most egregious examples of woke institutional excess, and its fallout extended far beyond the destruction of a single career.

At the Whitehead Institute at MIT, he ran a roughly 40-person lab conducting important work in molecular biology and cell signaling. That research was abruptly terminated, costing numerous students and trainees their ongoing projects and career momentum and resulting in an untold loss of medically significant knowledge - knowledge that had been funded by the public’s taxpayer dollars.

All of that was abruptly canceled when a false accusation of sexual impropriety was taken up by MIT's DEI-infected bureaucracy and a director who was on a feminist crusade to purge a leading scientist for what appears to be the crime of being a white male.

The court found that the relationship was consensual and the accusations that destroyed his career came only after he ended it and moved on romantically - buyer's remorse, in other words.

After five years of litigation, discovery and trial, a Boston jury has just awarded Professor David Sabatini $6 million in his defamation case against Kristin Knouse, finding that she defamed him and interfered with his career. The jury also rejected her counterclaims of coercion, harassment, and a hostile work environment.

But all of this is just the first step. Many people who were involved need to be held accountable. The institutions must make this right.

MIT, Whitehead, and HHMI still have questions to answer about their own handling. Investigations must look into the director of Whitehead who perpetrated this witch hunt. @NIH and @NSF should now act on the jury’s findings. Restore @DMSabatini's eligibility for federal grants. The institutional investigations that led to his removal and the later debarment effort were based on claims that a jury has now rejected as defamatory. There is no more reason to treat him as radioactive.

And last but not least, bless you, @BillAckman. When almost no one in science, academia, or media would touch this case, you acted and supported him, funding his new lab so that his important work on mTOR could continue. Thank you and Dafna at NYU for standing up publicly for due process when it was so costly. I knew many of his students and colleagues who could not speak out in support of him out of fear of retribution and professional ruin. Prof. Sabatini has said that you saved his life. It is not a hyperbolic statement.

Also, for every one of him, there are other men whose lives have been ruined this way. For things to change, high costs on the accuser must be imposed.

cc @DrJBhattacharya @regardthefrost

[Silvi Rouskin @silvirouskin]

@DMSabatini was always kind, professional, and supportive towards me and my lab. He asked great questions in my faculty meetings that I still remember and we still work on :) He retweeted our work when we needed it the most , and told me about the @PershingSqFdn and other funding sources. I just want to say thank you for that support.

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Go read the court documents. They started dating when she was the head of her own lab. Not when she was a graduate student. So this is a case of adult consensual romantic relationship that ended up being a mess. The jury has spoke. Let’s respect the court decision.

[Bombyx Mori @puhchichi]

@NiOrthen @Goodflies He was on her dissertation committee. In what world do you sleep with someone who was on your dissertation committee? Ive wasted my time enough because you all will never get it. Go your merry way

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Indeed, and consensual too. That is why he won the civil court case.

[showmethescience @friiedaaaaaa]

@Goodflies In Sabatini’s case it was faculty to faculty, not a faculty to student relationship. Important difference that should always be acknowledged.

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

In Sooners style massacre of the Longhorns last week

[Southeastern Conference @SEC]

AUBURN SHOCKS NO. 1 GEORGIA 🤯

@AuburnFootball x 📺 ESPN

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Rules may be stupid in your opinion but following the rule is the condition you accept the job in the university. You can always quit if you disagree with the rules. Make sense?

[Ni Orthen @NiOrthen]

@Goodflies But one gets onself "in trouble" only because of the stupid rules..

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Congratulations. Your time was different then. In theory, this is adult to adult and never illegal. But it can get messy when things don’t work out. For this reason most universities have strict rules. I believe faculty and faculty is ok but certainly not faculty and students.

[Georg R. Zoidl @zoidllab]

@Goodflies I met my wife at university. 36 years later we are still married. She was my first TA. I removed myself from decisions about her promotions or financial benefits. So, I don’t support strict rules but advocate for case by case evaluations.

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

You kept saying stupid. It may seem stupid until you get yourself in trouble!

[Ni Orthen @NiOrthen]

@scekker @Goodflies The " power dynamics" argument is so profoundly stupid and if you follow it literally, 70% of relationships in the world wouldn't exist. When two adults date and one of them can destroy the other's life when rejected , then who has the power ? Such a stupid and American thing..

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Which state is better for health?

[Janis Hesse @HesseJanis]

Very excited to share the most important discovery of my career yet: your brain switches between a conscious and an unconscious mode ~15 times every second. Consciousness may depend not on where in the brain activity occurs but when.
Find out more below.
https://t.co/23dyMGnaLX

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

This would be an excellent case study for our ethics class: dating at work place and the responsibility of whistleblowers.

[Stephen C. Ekker, Ph.D. @scekker]

@Goodflies And yet, that view is not obvious to many

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Totally agree with you. Not a good idea when power dynamics is involved.

[Stephen C. Ekker, Ph.D. @scekker]

@Goodflies It is surprisingly not uniform. We did a full assessment a few years back when it came up while I was Dean. Many consider adults to be adults. I have strong opinions that power dynamics are far stronger than 'let the adults make their own decisions crowd' advocate for.

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Each university has strict rules about dating. At my university it is absolutely NO for dating when power is involved. And I support this strict policy even thought it’s adult to adult engagement.

[Bombyx Mori @puhchichi]

@Goodflies The only victim here are his students. His peers in fact should have advised him against sleeping with a junior but no. All those iq points but you want to be denser than a block of lead when it comes to optics, and prohibited relationships lol

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

Of course, we must follow the ethics rules. In the case of romantic relationships each work place has strict rules. In first day law firm orientation a friend was told that if you wanted to date a fellow lawyer, you could, but quit your job first.

[Bing Zhang @Goodflies]

The victim is more than Dr Sabatini: his family, his friends, his students, his peers, MIT, all universities (yes, all), and of course, science.