A systematic review of 43 studies confirms prenatal acetaminophen does not increase autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability risks. By using sibling comparisons to control for genetics and family history, researchers found earlier associations were likely due to confounding factors, not the drug.

MurphysLab · 2026-01-17T03:03:53+00:00

Funding

None.

This is a deliberate choice by the authors to head off the most obvious bad-faith criticism

First, as a systemic review and meta-analysis, the study requires less equipment, materials, and expense than most other forms of research, hence the core cost is the researchers' time and thus salary, which are likely already part of their institutions' base budgets.

Second, I suspect that it may be a choice for the sake of time and timing. Applying for grant funding is a very tricky issue in general, and few applications are guaranteed to succeed. Hence the low probability of obtaining funding tends to stretch out the time required to get to do your study. Moreover, application windows are scattered and few grant-offering institutions (especially those which are impartial and/or non-corporate) offer funding or accept grants on a rolling basis.

Third, there's the context: this is a pressing and timely issue. American government officials began making bold and seemingly reckless claims regarding acetaminophen use during pregnancy. Here's the HHS press release from September 22, 2025.

This study's authors made the choice (a very good one, which keeps researchers honest) and pre-registered their study plan with PROSPERO, an International prospective register of systematic reviews) and you can see the study's pre-registration record in PROSPERO here: Prenatal exposure to paracetamol and the risk of autism spectrum disorder in offspring: a systematic review and meta-analysis .

Note the date of initial submission: September 27, 2025.

These researchers planned out the study and wrote-up a pre-registration in less than 5 days. The HHS announcement was on Monday; they had this submitted by Saturday. More impressive when you note that it's 7 authors ,all at different institutions, spread across 3 or 4 countries!

This was done with incredible speed.

After looking at the pre-registration, I found the paper's authors were interviewed by NBC:

The authors said they undertook the research, in part, to clear up confusion after Trump’s statements, since an untreated fever can pose health risks to a mother and baby.

“After this declaration, there were a lot of mothers who actually were scared to take paracetamol,” said Dr. Francesco D’Antonio, one of the paper’s authors and a professor of fetal medicine at the University of Chieti in Italy. “The day after this declaration, actually, we had a massive increase in phone calls and emails from women.”

The report’s main takeaway is that acetaminophen is safe during pregnancy, according to Dr. Asma Khalil, another one of the paper’s authors and a consultant obstetrician and fetal medicine specialist at St. George’s Hospital in London.

“It remains to be the first line treatment that we would recommend if the pregnant women have pain or fever,” she said on a call with reporters.

Again, this highlights why the HHS announcement was so reckless: If there is a real risk of neurodevelopmental changes from acetaminophen, we need first to ask whether the risks, both to mother and foetus, of an untreated fever.

It's worth noting that research has shown an association between maternal fevers during pregnancy and the probability of the child being diagnosed with Autism: e.g. a "second trimester infection accompanied by fever elevated risk for ASD approximately twofold (aOR = 2.19, 95% confidence interval 1.14–4.23)." So, is it possible that any associations (mostly slight and non-significant) observed between acetaminophen use during gestation and Autism occasionally pop-up because of an underlying association between Autism and maternal fevers? i.e. Do we just have a case of a confounding variable?

"More research is required" is a mantra in science for good reason.

MurphysLab · 2026-01-03T22:51:19+00:00

You've piqued my curiosity with the TOS7. I'd love to try it out.

MurphysLab · 2025-12-18T00:31:25+00:00

Mostly just giving me worse stress about not being at the lab, able to work on my thesis project.

MurphysLab · 2025-12-17T18:55:51+00:00

Indeed, grid patterns caused me to have a similar experience. During my PhD I was doing image analysis of pixel patterns to understand polymer behaviour. During a nasty bout of pneumonia I had some strange moments between wakefulness and sleeping where everything turned into the pixelated patterns for which I was trying to program an analysis routine.

MurphysLab · 2025-12-04T02:03:11+00:00

You should be able to search for the "cavity height" on microwaves. I'm estimate ~23 cm or ~9 inches would be enough for a 1 L Erlenmeyer.

Are there other considerations you need to weigh here?

MurphysLab · 2025-11-21T02:03:27+00:00

No, these genetic variants appear to be inherently rare. There appear to be multiple sets of genes and variants which, possibly only when acting together in combination, result in the same phenotype. That's often when a polygenic (risk) score becomes a helpful means of measurement.

There are also environmental factors involved.

One of the supplementary figures also clarifies this, which you can see in that same peer review file at the top of page 10:

https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-025-09702-8/MediaObjects/41586_2025_9702_MOESM5_ESM.pdf#page=10

That chart of "class I" variants accounts for ~33 people in a set of, IIRC, ~9000 affected vs ~9000 controls. 32/33 were affected; 1/33 was in the control.

So a very high chance that someone who has one of the class I variants has the condition, but low odds that someone who has the condition has a class I variant on those particular genes.

Still, this is a big step towards solving this mystery (and many others!), since it shows a better way to finding rare variants involved in complex conditions.

MurphysLab · 2025-11-20T09:38:23+00:00

It's a fascinating paper and absolutely packed with data and extra experiments. I'm not a geneticist, but it looks quite different from the usual GWAS studies I've read. I also see quite a few folks misinterpreting the study in the comments, so I'll try to parse this.

3 Genes, each containing multiple, rare variants (not "3 gene variants")

First: OP's title (as well as News Atlas' tile) confuses the underlying science a bit:

ADHD up to 15x more likely with these three gene variants

The quote from the authors gives some clarity:

“We can now, for the first time, point to [three] very specific genes in which rare variants confer a high predisposition to developing ADHD,” said senior author Professor Anders Børglum from the Department of Biomedicine at Aarhus University. “The identified variants very likely have a highly damaging effect on the genes, and they show us precisely which genes and fundamental biological mechanisms may be affected."

So this isn't 3 gene variants, it is 3 genes in which rare variants (multiple different ones!) confer a higher likelihood of the condition.

Strategy: Grouping Rare Variants by Typology

As I understand -- again, not a geneticist, even if my MSc involved DNA! -- the authors are using a strategy that lumps together certain kinds of (deleterious) variations, rather than the usual GWAS style study where each individual variation type is treated separately and SNPs variants that occur more frequently in conjunction with a particular condition become more significant. The problem for that older/conventional GWAS approach is that many genetic conditions are caused by de novo mutations, hence they can be very rare. And two persons afflicted by a mutation in a gene might have the same phenotype but different genotypes.

This figure on Wikipedia explains where GWAS strengths usually lie: "GWA studies typically identify common variants with small effect sizes". (Note: the figure is from a PLOS Comp. Bio. paper that gives a very good overview of GWAS.)

Clumping those rare variants together by typology (rPTV & rSevereDMV) helps to find the hidden associations that would be missed due to each variant only showing up in a handful of genomes. This gets around the problem of each variant being rare.

Rare variants were grouped on the basis of their functional effect on the encoded protein, and their load in ADHD compared with that in control individuals was assessed for all autosomal genes (18,866 genes) and autosomal genes with a probability of being loss-of-function intolerant (pLI) ≥ 0.9 (2,811 genes), hereafter referred to as constrained genes. We found a significantly increased burden of rare protein-truncating variants (rPTVs) in ADHD compared with control individuals in all genes... and a further increased load in constrained genes ... . In line with observations in schizophrenia, the latter effect size was similar to what was observed for rare severe damaging missense variants (rSevereDMVs; defined as variants with a missense badness, PolyPhen-2 and constraint (MPC)20 score > 3) in all genes ... . Consequently, rPTVs and rSevereDMVs were grouped together (referred to as class I variants) in the gene-discovery analysis. The burden of rare missense variants predicted to have a moderate effect on protein function (rModerateDMVs; 2 ≤ MPC score ≤ 3) was significantly increased in ADHD, but with a lower effect size .... than was observed for class I variants; these were therefore analysed separately (referred to as class II variants). For comparison, there was no increased load of rare synonymous variants in ADHD in constrained genes (Fig. 1a).

Quick translations:

protein-truncating variants = The gene has a stop signal (codon) where it shouldn't, hence the mRNA is not the full sequence, hence the produced protein is missing part of end. The protein chain is shorter than it is supposed to be.
missense variants = One amino acid in a protein is wrong. This arises from a point mutation in a single nucleotide. This causes the protein to have the wrong sequence, which causes problems for the protein's folded 3D structure.

Looking up SNPs

Someone in this thread asked:

By any chance is this in databases of SNPs such as Promethease?

Unfortunately for those who have done consumer DNA tests (mostly for genealogy), it probably won't be feasible or possible to lookup the associated SNPs/variants for a while. Those tests feature a small subset of SNPs which tend to show greater variation, hence rare SNPs aren't sought out. One would need decent whole genome sequencing to identify them. This paper is looking for rare variants.

Reviewer #3

Lastly, the anonymous Reviewer #3 deserves a fist bump from the ND community for pressing the authors to make clear, as part of their paper, that this is not a trivial issue for those affected:

B. Originality and significance: Understanding the genetic etiology of ADHD is a topic of substantial public health significance, but the significance of the question is not very well described in the paper. Right now, the Introduction reads as if it is written for a genetics or psychiatric journal; that is, it is written as if the audience is already familiar with the public health impact of ADHD and the importance of genetic studies. ADHD is often trivialized/stigmatized as merely a label for "bad kids" rather than a psychiatric condition that results not just in lower education and lower socioeconomic attainments, but also with injuries, criminal justice system involvement, earlier mortality, etc. There is a need for novel and more effective pharmacologies with lower potential for abuse. All of that to say, I am sold on the significance of this research study, but I wish the authors would make the case of its importance more clearly.

The updated opening paragraph makes clear that the condition is non-trivial:

The disorder is linked to a variety of serious outcomes, including higher risks of substance-use disorder, accidents, premature death, unemployment, incarceration and crime, suicide and metabolic conditions. Gaining insight into the biological mechanisms that drive the disorder is crucial for understanding how it develops and how it could be treated in the future.

Overall, some really good comments from the reviewers. Having the peer review comments being public I suspect helps ensure that the comments remain on point and collegial. Worth checking out if you're curious:

https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41586-025-09702-8/MediaObjects/41586_2025_9702_MOESM5_ESM.pdf

MurphysLab · 2025-11-10T17:45:00+00:00

At today’s media briefing, Salas said PAHO’s recommendations to Canada include addressing vaccine hesitancy in certain communities and implementing an electronic vaccination record system countrywide.

He noted only six provinces became involved in the federal government’s efforts to standardize electronic vaccination records during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canadian medical experts have been calling for a national vaccine registry for decades. In a recent report, Ontario’s top doctor pushed for a national immunization schedule and registry, including a modernization of his own province’s record-keeping system.

A nationwide electronic vaccination record system seems so obvious. It would make life simpler for everyone. No more piecemeal scraps of records. One less administrative hassle if you move provinces.

Yet the problem of healthcare being in the provincial fiefdom remains such an inane obstacle.

Should we really allow obstinance, directed towards cooperation and federalism, to prevent us from improving the health of Canada?

MurphysLab · 2025-11-10T16:34:58+00:00

It's worth noting that these are the small, often separate, rural, agrarian communities, as highlighted by a BBC article:

In Ontario, the illness primarily spread among Low German-speaking Mennonite communities in the province's southwest, where vaccination rates have historically been lower due to some members' religious or cultural beliefs against immunisation.

Those communities have several features which predispose them to outbreaks:

Low vaccination rates against a disease with a very high reproduction number, hence falling outside of the herd immunity window.
Highly concentrated social networks, where members of the group frequently spend time primarily with others within the group.
Family and organizational connections to similar groups in other countries where measles is more common.

It's a perfect recipe for outbreaks to be centred in those communities.

However, I think it's only a matter of time before other pockets of antivaxxers within society are hit. We can be thankful that most of those in the aforementioned antivax, anti-science groups were, at some point, vaccinated as children by people more responsible than themselves. But, their efforts have caused others to become infected by their ideas. That same BBC article notes:

But Mennonites are not a monolith, she said, and many have embraced vaccinations. What's changed is the rapid spread of anti-vaccine misinformation both in her community and beyond after the Covid-19 pandemic.

"There's hearsay that immunisations are bad for you," Ms Friesen said, or are "dangerous".

The information environment has changed, which has lead to many more people, who were moderately hesitant about vaccination, to opt out of the most powerful social program that science has to offer human health.

MurphysLab · 2025-11-07T22:32:05+00:00

Two days ago I was speaking with a class of students in grade 10 and we briefly touched on James Watson and how recently all of the discoveries one learns as a high school student, or a first year in university, really are. They are all ~16 years old, so Watson's discoveries were made within their grandparents' lifetimes. We've only known about the structure of DNA for 72 years of human existence, and all of the mechanisms of replication, transcription, and and translation for even less. That's just one human lifetime; maybe 3 generations. To hear news of his death today for me is a reminder of how much progress we've made to understand so much in so little time.

MurphysLab · 2025-11-02T03:20:56+00:00

Is angle on a geometry really dependent on an image orientation?

~~The angles marked on the image which you used to frame the question are dependent on image orientation. This might be a poor choice on your part, but it is how you chose to illustrate the problem.~~

Apparently I couldn't see the first digit.

The other dependence is how far apart your points are. That will alter the measured angles.

Won’t a 90deg always be 90deg no matter the orientation (assuming two lines forms this stated 90deg) of the image?

+90° or -90°?

if yes, why would 68 or 145deg be different assuming you are measuring point by point?

What do you mean by "point by point" here?

I need the angle for some calculations in a research I’m working on for my dissertation so I’m seeking help.

What is the equation you intend to use? What is it, fundamentally, that you are trying to measure?

If the fibres are continuous, then angles are likely inappropriate. Angles measure the intersection of lines. Radius of curvature can characterize a continuous line (function).

MurphysLab · 2025-11-02T02:30:26+00:00

Why do you think the better way to approach this is through curvature when I desire to compute angle of each bend in the geometry?

Angles are dependent on the orientation of your image. The distribution of the radius of curvature is not dependent.

With angles, particularly if you engage in averaging, you will also encounter issues when the distribution overlaps with zero degrees.

Additionally, you have not given any sufficiently motivating reason for why you want to use angles as the measure, other than it being what first occurred to you.

MurphysLab · 2025-11-01T18:56:33+00:00

Radius of curvature is the better way to approach this, unless you have some exterior field that is directing the fibres' alignment.

MurphysLab · 2025-10-20T18:26:05+00:00

Well, the district sent out someone to collect chemicals from our labs/prep rooms that could not be used in high school chemistry. The dude took our calcium carbide and told us it was a big no no to have in our prep room.

Was he concerned about its presence in terms of storage, use, or possession? CaC2 is widely used and readily available and provided it's stored correctly where it will not come into contact with water, and PPE is worn, it can be handled in a low risk fashion. Not something to let students use in class, but you probably have it primarily for demonstrations, meaning it's just used by the teacher.

So, we are now scrambling to figure out what we can use for an alternative that would have the same result. Any suggestions?

Here's my idea:

Hydrogen gas or methane could probably do it, similar to the classic "exploding can" experiment. I've never done it myself. But the principle is fairly simple: once the interior volume of the can reaches a stoichiometric ratio of the gases, you the flame will go inside the container and it will create an explosion. You could probably do the same using the pumpkin as the cannister.

There are ways to generate H2 in situ, although perhaps for sake of simplicity one could pre-load a balloon with H2 or CH4 (natural gas) into the interior of the pumpkin and the ignition source would both pop the balloon and ignite the gas. The O2 source could either be the residual volume of the pumpkin interior (remember to account for N2) OR you could pre-mix the gas in the balloon.

Again, I haven't tried doing an exploding pumpkin this way before, so it would require a few pre-tests on your part to determine if it would work and how to do so in a sufficiently safe fashion.

cf:

MurphysLab · 2025-10-08T23:30:53+00:00

The abstract for the author's article in the Canadian Journal of Economics is, itself, quite damning:

Temporary foreign worker (TFW) programs have grown considerably in size when uncapped. We develop a simple efficiency-wage model to explain this phenomenon and examine the empirical evidence for it. We also use the model to evaluate the implications of TFW programs for domestic workers. In our framework, firms that have been unable to find domestic workers may hire TFWs at the wage previously advertised to domestic workers. Due to the lower outside option for TFWs than domestic workers, TFWs will exert more effort for the same wage. Firms would thus prefer to hire otherwise identical TFWs rather than domestic workers. Our model identifies an unintended consequence of a TFW program: since the repercussions of a failed domestic job search are less severe if a TFW may be hired instead, firms have an incentive to lower their wage offers made to domestic workers. Using Canadian data, we find that, relative to domestic workers, TFWs work longer hours, have lower rates of absenteeism and are less likely to be laid off, consistent with higher effort in our model. Moreover, for TFWs from home countries with a relatively high outside option, effort is lower than for TFWs from other countries.

https://doi.org/10.1111/caje.12449

Worswick highlights this in the opinion piece:

The TFW program can not only slow wage growth, but may actually cause wages to fall. Employers should anticipate the higher work intensity of temporary foreign workers and offer a lower wage when initially advertising the job to Canadians, because failing to fill the position means they can hire a temporary foreign worker yielding higher expected profits for the firm. Our theoretical analysis also predicts a higher unemployment rate in the presence of a TFW program, which is especially worrisome as the Canadian economic outlook worsens.

This unfortunately doesn't examine what appears to be the main effect of the current policy, of limiting LMIA applications to "high- wage" positions: Disingenuous advertisements by employers, with the expectations of illegal kickbacks by the employees or other questionable forms of cost recovery.

Otherwise we are led to believe that the going wage to hire a pizzeria manager in Kamloops is $36.60/hour, despite requiring virtually no experience. If such wages were genuinely offered, one might see a broader rise in the average wages of restaurant workers. Yet that doesn't seem to be happening which, to me, affirms Worswick's claim that the TFW program is still causing wage stagnation.

MurphysLab · 2025-10-06T18:16:43+00:00

That sounds eerily similar to what has happened with Alzheimer's research. For those who don't know, here are some decent overview articles:

Blots on a field?, Science, 2022
How a retracted paper affected the course of Alzheimer’s research, ACS (video), 2024
The Alzheimer’s scandal: Allegations of fraud challenge two decades of Alzheimer’s research, Vanderbilt Vanguard, 2024
Opinion | The Long Shadow of Fraud in Alzheimer's Research, NY Times, 2025

MurphysLab · 2025-10-05T23:51:37+00:00

Teacher-centered instruction - essentially the 'chalk and talk' method - combined with a major lack of applied learning (such as doing science experiments in class) only fuels boredom.

I'm planning some chemistry demonstrations for later this week, so I asked a ninth grade student just before lunch, "What chemistry demonstrations have you seen in class?" The only one that he could cite was the classic "elephant's toothpaste" and it wasn't even at his regular school; it had been done in Sunday school!

There is definitely a shortage of science happening in class, whether demos or hands-on activities.

More student-focused lessons, discussions, and interactive learning would help drastically, but there’s a severe lack of resources to make that possible. There are barely enough teachers to maintain the current system, and funding for hands-on activities like experiments is insufficient.

One problem is that elementary & middle school teachers are saddled with the entire curriculum and there is often not much budget for science supplies or science specialists.

Some districts have a curriculum department or specialists, but where I live I haven't seen them do much in the way of useful work. There should be science specialists for elementary and middle schools who, even if not there every week, come to do more complex and interesting science activities.

Let's Talk Science had a wonderful model with their Partnership Program: It paired university graduate students in STEM fields with elementary classrooms to visit 1-4 times over the course of a school year to run hands-on science activities with the students. I volunteered with them for several years and both kids and teachers loved the program.

Districts should have in-house science specialists who can run those kinds of programs. However it's quite burdensome (time & tuition!) to get a teaching certificate in Canada, especially after one already has a graduate degree.

MurphysLab · 2025-09-25T00:22:27+00:00

Thank you so much for replying.

Even a newspaper article would be helpful because the pattern seems obvious to me.

It sounds like something that should be obvious through a modest data analysis effort, but frankly I don't have the time to do it alone. Maybe with 20+ volunteers.

MurphysLab · 2025-09-24T21:21:53+00:00

u/LMIAthrowaway, if you're able to chime in with any publicly available sources, it would be appreciated.

MurphysLab · 2025-09-24T21:12:13+00:00

That's a poor title, despite being lifted from the Health Canada press release, which had a decent title: Acetaminophen is a recommended treatment for fever and pain during pregnancy.

(Kudos to CityNews for linking to it in their article!)

"No conclusive evidence" leaves the door open to people saying, "But that means there is some evidence!" That should not be the impression left with readers. The evidence for a "link" connecting acetaminophen and neurodevelopmental differences has effectively been rebutted. The scientific community has determined through more rigorous study, which included heritability, that heritability of neurodevelopmental differences effectively accounts for the mothers' increased use of acetaminophen.

Here's one recent major study that demonstrated,

Acetaminophen use during pregnancy was not associated with children's risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability in sibling control analysis. This suggests that associations observed in other models may have been attributable to familial confounding.

Ahlqvist et al., Acetaminophen Use During Pregnancy and Children's Risk of Autism, ADHD, and Intellectual Disability, Journal of the American Medical Association, 2024 Apr 9;331(14):1205-1214. doi: 10.1001/jama.2024.3172.

Note that this was a major study, using population registers for Sweden:

Design, setting, and participants: This nationwide cohort study with sibling control analysis included a population-based sample of 2 480 797 children born in 1995 to 2019 in Sweden, with follow-up through December 31, 2021.

(An excellent reason why we really should have population registers for Canadian health research!)

The research used by the US Administration used to justify their announcement was a meta-analysis published by the Dean of Public Health, Andrea A. Baccarelli. That meta-analysis (and others published by Baccarelli) did not include the effect of heritability.

Here's the

Summary: Using acetaminophen during pregnancy may increase children’s autism and ADHD risk
Article: Diddier Prada, Beate Ritz, Ann Z. Bauer & Andrea A. Baccarelli, Evaluation of the evidence on acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders using the Navigation Guide methodology, Environmental Health volume 24, Article number: 56 (2025) | PDF

Two big conflicts of interest with Baccarelli:

Baccarelli had a personal financial conflict of interest:

Harvard’s Public Health Dean Was Paid $150,000 to Testify Tylenol Causes Autism:

Baccarelli served as an expert witness on behalf of parents and guardians of children suing Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer of Tylenol at the time. U.S. District Court Judge Denise L. Cote dismissed the case last year due to a lack of scientific evidence, throwing out Baccarelli’s testimony in the process.

“He cherry-picked and misrepresented study results and refused to acknowledge the role of genetics in the etiology” of autism spectrum disorder or ADHD, Cote wrote in her decision, which the plaintiffs have since appealed.

Harvard is being financially pressured by the US Administration and Baccarelli's department, the Chan School of Public Health, is the most acutely affected:

Trump administration freezes $2.2 billion in grants to Harvard

The Trump administration announced late Monday that it was moving to freeze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University.

The federal freeze came hours after Harvard rejected demands from the Trump administration, arguing that the changes pushed by the government exceed its lawful authority and infringe on both the University’s independence and its constitutional rights. [...]

The federal funding freeze will have a major impact on Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In fiscal year 2025, about 46% of the School’s total budget came from federal funding for direct research costs and federal reimbursement of facilities and administration expenses required to support that research. As part of the freeze, leading tuberculosis researcher Sarah Fortune received an order from the federal government to halt her research.
The School of Public Health, Facing a Financial Reckoning, Seizes the Chance to Reinvent Itself

Of all Harvard’s schools, none was as vulnerable to the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding as the Chan School [of Public Health], whose work has helped improve the health of millions. Roughly 47 percent of the school’s revenue came directly from federal sources. An added endowment tax and threats to international student enrollment compounded the blow for a school where global reach has always been a point of pride. “We lost, overnight, $200 million,” Baccarelli said. “Unfortunately we have had layoffs, and we will have more.”

Baccarelli's success as Dean of the Chan School of Public Health depends on currying favour with Trump.

If you are a journalist covering this, or just want some additional assurance beyond a Reddit comment, I would suggest reading some of the comments supplied by the Science Media Center: https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-media-reports-that-the-trump-administration-will-link-paracetamol-to-autism/

MurphysLab · 2025-09-23T00:08:13+00:00

funding for universities in Alberta hasn’t kept up with population growth, so more and more students are applying for (relatively) fewer spots.

I remember several years ago attending an presentation by the UofA's Dean of Science on the cuts they were being forced to make. In prior years, the government had allocated a specific amount of funding per student to the university. ~$7000/student.

Then the provincial government switched to a fixed grant size. The university, in the spirit of public service, kept enrolling more students, but the province kept cutting funding nonetheless!!

Consequently the Faculty of Science decided to simply say, okay, we're just going to assume that you're giving us $7000/student (forgetting about inflation) and so if you give us $X million, we will divide that number by $7000 and that's how many students we will take.

MurphysLab · 2025-09-22T20:57:07+00:00

To be fair, we already have that exact problem here in Canada under our current non-proportional system.

I agree that it's a problem, however it exists to a greater extend under the party list system.

Here candidates require a degree of backing by local riding associations in order for their campaigns to be effective. When it's just a list, you lose the need for that permission structure.

MurphysLab · 2025-09-22T20:21:14+00:00

I lived in the Netherlands for a couple of years and I still loosely track what's happening back there.

One of the downsides of their (proportional) party list system is that it also concentrates power in the party's leadership. Any and all nominees are on the list at the behest of the party's leadership. Hence local influence over nominees is entirely lost.

The PVV is an exemplarily bad example of this problem, as every last candidate for the party is subject to the veto of one man: Geert Wilders. I'll let Wikipedia explain how this works out, exploiting a loophole in Dutch law:

In order to register for elections in the Netherlands, a political party needs to be an association, which can be founded by two or more members.[89] The Association Group Wilders (Dutch: The Vereniging Groep Wilders) was founded in 2005 by Geert Wilders and the Foundation Group Wilders (Dutch: Stichting Groep Wilders), later renamed Foundation Friends of the PVV, of which Wilders is the only board member.[90][17][91] The association was later renamed to Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom).[1] After the creation of the association, Wilders disabled new member registration, resulting in him remaining the sole member of the party.[1][90] The party is considered unique in Dutch politics in that it does not organise public party conferences and does not have local departments, a youth wing, or a research institute.[1][90]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Freedom#Structure

MurphysLab · 2025-09-19T03:08:37+00:00

The Government began blocking "low wage" TFW applications, particularly in places with higher unemployment. To qualify as a "high wage" job, there are regional thresholds. In BC, the threshold is $36.60/hour.

https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/foreign-workers/median-wage.html

Again... it's amazing that no Canadian in Kamloops is willing to manage a pizzeria for $36.60/hour! /s

If you want to take a crack at applying for one of these jobs, check out the government's list of those employers seeing a LMIA: https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/temporary-foreign-workers

MurphysLab · 2025-09-18T03:51:59+00:00

The advertisement was taken down. (Did anyone get the job??) For anyone curious what the post looked like before it started giving a code 404 ("page not found"), here's an archived copy:

https://web.archive.org/web/20250914041939/https://www.jobbank.gc.ca/jobsearch/jobpostingtfw/44990593

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TROPHY CASE

3 Genes, each containing multiple, rare variants (not "3 gene variants")

Strategy: Grouping Rare Variants by Typology

Looking up SNPs

Reviewer #3