DBingham

In this Stats + Stories episode, I discuss how vaccine safety is actually studied in the U.S. A key point: clinical trials are necessary but not sufficient—they’re not large enough to detect rare adverse events. That’s why safety evaluation relies on a multi-layered system that includes trials, passive surveillance (like VAERS), active monitoring systems (like VSD/PRISM), and detailed clinical investigation. Each component has strengths and limitations. For example, VAERS can identify signals but cannot establish causation or incidence, while active systems are used to rigorously evaluate those signals. I also explain how misinformation often arises—from misinterpreting VAERS, cherry-picking individual studies, and applying impossible standards (the “Nirvana fallacy”) to dismiss the full body of evidence. Bottom line: vaccine safety isn’t based on any one dataset or study—it comes from integrating evidence across multiple complementary systems.

Congratulations to Gilles Brassard from @UMontreal for winning the Turing Award. @NSERC_CRSNG is proud to have supported his research for many years, having awarded him the NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal in 2010.

Still waiting for the NIH and NSF to start finding grants for this fiscal year — almost no new grants have been funded yet - only continued funding for existing ones.

I’m hiring on my team at OpenAI for Research Engineer / Scientist and Software Engineer roles. I believe one of the most important questions for future AI systems is: how do we train them to help people over time? We work on that through RLHF, post-training, reward modeling, long-horizon evals, and the data infrastructure behind personalized multimodal AI. If you care about human flourishing and serious research, links in comments.

@Tablesalt13 Grew up with quite a few who had families who escaped the regime, great people

Canadian Government Scholarships 2026 in Canada (Fully Funded) for International Students Visit: scholarshipforphd.com/ca-scholarship… Degree: Bachelor’s, Master’s, PhD, Diploma, and Certificate programs Deadline: 31 March 2026

We are hiring research scientists and engineers to accelerate the next era of intelligence. 🔥✨ We are tackling problems that are extremely technically demanding but hugely satisfying at @adaptionlabs Join us.

🚀 We’re hiring a Machine Learning Intern (Remote) at @TensorTonic Most people use ML models. We want someone who can build them from scratch. Looking for someone who: • Understands ML math (LA, Calc, Prob) • Is strong in Python + PyTorch / TF • Knows LLM concepts (LoRA, KV Cache, GRPO) • Can implement models without just calling .fit() You’ll help implement ML algorithms, break down research papers, and build interactive learning modules. If Transformers, ViT, GANs, DDPM, RLHF excite you — apply 👇 forms.gle/7nDVYfXhoNVoit…

CIHR funding rate: 13.6%. Early 2000s: 30%+. Canada’s new $1.7B Impact+ program recruits talent — but without increased Tri-Council base funding, we risk further strain on an already stretched system. We’re calling for $1B over 5 years. Support here: tinyurl.com/33c5av46

We're hiring! apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/19…

We’re looking for some team members. And we want to meet you if you: - Are an underdog with something to prove - Love contrarian viewpoints - Love robots (bonus if you’ve built one or think you know how to build one) - Have a diverse background and real-world experience (we don’t value FAANG or Ivy paths more than others) - Studied psychology, neuroscience, medicine, mechatronics, or dropped out - Know how to code (not only vibe-code) - Believe robots are the species that will conquer space, and want to help make that happen - Have a brain that gravitates toward the hardest problems - Have watched or read Frankenstein Send us a short message explaining: 1. Why you 2. What you’d contribute to the team 3. What your dream job is (so we can build it for you) 📩 info@artificialbrains.ai

Anthropic AI Safety Fellows Program is OPEN > Direct mentorship from Anthropic researchers > On-site workspace (Berkeley 🇺🇸 or London 🇬🇧) > Embedded in the global AI safety research ecosystem > Weekly stipend: – $3,850 USD – £2,310 GBP – $4,300 CAD > ~$15k/month in compute + research budget > No PhD, prior ML experience, or published papers required > Fellows come from physics, math, CS, cybersecurity & other quantitative backgrounds > Benefits included (country-dependent) Apply: alignment.anthropic.com/2025/anthropic…

We’re quietly assembling a small, elite team at @InceptLabsAI to work on long-horizon AI research that actually matters. Roles: AI/ML researchers (strong preference for people already doing frontier-level work). If you’ve built something real (papers, open-source, strong internal research, shipped systems), we’d love to talk. Stealth mode • best-in-class resources • equity that reflects the risk/reward. If this sounds like your next chapter, reach out → DMs open 🚀

I’d like to hire strong data engineers to join our Microsoft Super Intelligence (MSI) team. I am interested in people who are good at processing PDFs and other documents at billion scale, and people good at parsing the web at trillion scale. If you dream of processing all of human knowledge to advance science and engineering, this is for you. Also looking for strong evaluation and post-training engineers. Be part of our first launches this year 🚀 We have all the resources in the world to support you, working in startup mode, while powering a large organisation with billions of users. Hiring in London, Zurich, New York, Boston, Toronto, Seattle and SF. Please send your CV to JoinAITeam@microsoft.com

We are hiring 4 ML researchers/engineers in our new multi-modal intelligence team at @Apple . Our current focus is on human/humanoid-centric multi-modal reasoning and video generation. Please reach out to me with your resume if you are interested.

Come hear about how the "Music of the Universe" and how the Big Bang relates to biology! Happening this Saturday Feb 7 at the Surrey Library, City Centre Branch (Rm 401). Presentations by Mark Van Raamsdonk (UBC) and Peter Unrau (SFU)

Open to work: spotlighting Bharat Sharman, a PhD candidate @McMasterU. If you’re hiring (or know someone who is), take a look—Bharat is on the market and open to job opportunities. 👉 View the full profile: bit.ly/45BZiRk #Hiring #Statistics #DataScience #JobBoard

Google Student Researcher 2026 applications are OPEN btw > Paid student research role (BS / MS / PhD) > 12-24 week full-time commitment (min 4 days/week) > Competitive pay (varies by country & degree level) > Work directly with Google Research, DeepMind & AI teams > In-person roles in Zurich, Israel, US, Canada > Real research work > Strong CS fundamentals required (ML / CV / NLP / systems / data) Apply: deepmind.google/student-resear…

Two updates to share with the community💥🚨 - 2 months ago I joined @Spotify as a Research Scientist in Causal ML and so far it’s been a blast! - My team is hiring for a research scientist intern to work on cutting edge causal ML problems applied to generative music recommenders!

🔊2026 Summer Internship @MSFTResearch Deep Learning Group🔊 We’re looking for a self-motivated intern with strong background on ⛑️building GUI agent environments and/or 🏗️reinforcement learning. 📩Interested? Send your CV + a short intro to qianhuiwu@microsoft.com!