Stephanie Lee

San Francisco

Senior Reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education

Senior writer @Chronicle, writing about scholarship, scholars, and society / [email protected] / on Signal: stephaniemlee.07 / former @BuzzFeedNews

Articles

The Quiet Way the NIH Is Stalling Some Research Before It Starts

3 weeks ago | chronicle.com | Stephanie Lee

The National Institutes of Health has made headlines for terminating grants and delaying its peer-review process. But there’s another, less visible way the agency is disrupting the work of scientists nationwide: It’s quietly removing some grant applications from review for the indefinite future. Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.
Faced With Frozen NIH Funding, These Universities Are Trying to Fill the Gap

4 weeks ago | chronicle.com | Stephanie Lee

Going into February, Andrew P. Capaldi was confident that the National Institutes of Health would fund his lab at the University of Arizona for the 15th year in a row. Instead, the agency unexpectedly shut down its review process and threw thousands of grant applications, including his, into limbo. The cancer biologist said he’s had to stop doing his most expensive, crucial experiments, cut his lab manager’s hours, and stop paying his undergraduate students.
NIH Funding Is at a Standstill. This Professor Is Tracking the Delays.

1 month ago | chronicle.com | Stephanie Lee

On February 19, Annika F. Barber started counting. Barber, an assistant professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, had been gearing up for a meeting in which she and other experts would review grant applications to the National Institutes of Health. These convenings of study sections, as they’re known, are the first step in deciding who gets NIH funding.
A Scandal in Alzheimer’s Research Shows How Science Can Go Astray

2 months ago | chronicle.com | Stephanie Lee

Billions of dollars have been spent on researching Alzheimer’s disease, which afflicts more than six million Americans and is the fifth-leading cause of death among the nation’s elderly. Yet there is no cure, and the few treatments available show only modest evidence of slowing cognitive decline. Fraudulent science may have steered the field in the wrong direction for decades, according to Doctored: Fraud, Arrogance, and Tragedy in the Quest to Cure Alzheimer’s, which was published Tuesday.
Here’s How Science Funding Could Change Under Trump

Jan 23, 2025 | chronicle.com | Stephanie Lee

President Trump once again oversees billions of dollars of funding for research into pandemics, HIV, cancer, and other fundamental areas of health and science. And once again, his administration seems determined to shake up how that money is doled out. Federal science agencies, from the Department of Energy to the National Science Foundation, fund research across the country.
Teens Are Doing AI Research Now. Is That a Good Thing?

Jan 14, 2025 | chronicle.com | Stephanie Lee

At the world’s largest artificial-intelligence conference, known as NeurIPS, Weichen Huang almost blended in. Last month in Vancouver, he was one of numerous researchers explaining their machine-learning projects to crowds of professors and engineers. But Huang wasn’t a professor, an engineer, or even a graduate student. In fact, he’s still applying to college. The 18-year-old was among the winners of NeurIPS’s first research competition for high schoolers.
This Study Was Hailed as a Win for Science Reform. Now It’s Being Retracted.

Sep 24, 2024 | chronicle.com | Stephanie Lee

At first, it looked like a paradigm of science done right. A group of behavioral scientists had repeated the same experiments over and over in separate labs, following the same rigorous methods, and found that 86 percent of their attempts had the results they expected. In a field where the seemingly constant collapse of influential discoveries over the past decade has triggered a reproducibility crisis, this finding was welcome news.
Malaysia Day 2024: Embrace unity and remember our forefathers' struggles, says PM Anwar

Sep 16, 2024 | asianews.network | Stephanie Lee |Durie Rainer Fong

September 17, 2024 KOTA KINABALU – Malaysians must remember the struggles and sacrifices founding leaders that led to the formation of the country 61 years ago, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (pic) said. He said in history, the formation of Malaysia was blocked by neighbouring countries.
This Device Is ‘Proven’ to Protect Athletes’ Brains. The Science Is Under Fire.

Sep 16, 2024 | chronicle.com | Stephanie Lee

For athletes who collide on the field, a neck accessory called the Q-Collar has a reassuring pitch: It’s the only medical device “proven to help protect the brain,” a claim authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. But some of the studies offering evidence for its efficacy are now coming under scrutiny.
She Sued the Sleuths Who Found Fraud in Her Data. A Judge Just Ruled Against Her.

Sep 11, 2024 | chronicle.com | Stephanie Lee

A federal judge in Massachusetts has dismissed Francesca Gino’s claims against the trio of scholars who uncovered evidence of fraud in her research, ending a high-profile dispute that had unnerved the scientific community. But the judge, on Wednesday, also said that Gino can continue litigation against Harvard University, which she alleges breached her employment contract. The decision is the latest development in a saga that has brought national attention to the subject of scientific misconduct.