Genevieve Kanter, PhD

TLDR for my commentary on conflicts of interest in advisory committees, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. 1. Government defines COIs narrowly 2. AC members can have a boatload of industry ties but not be identified as having a COI 3. Public trust has declined because public equates having any industry tie with a COI even though official definitions are narrower 4. We can't fix public trust through COI policies alone -- there has to be transparency and integrity throughout the health care ecosystem Link (paywall): nejm.org/doi/full/10.10… Full text: …terpillar-coyote-chxz.squarespace.com/s/Kanter-Confl…

In a new Perspective, Genevieve P. Kanter, PhD (@ProfGenKanter), argues that even by the most radical interpretation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ proposals for reducing conflicts of interest on its advisory committees are unlikely to restore public trust. Learn more: nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

What a story! A janitor at a Yale University teaching hospital earned a college degree while working full time, then went to med school and is now returning to the same hospital as a resident in anesthesiology! washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2026… Mentors matter so much!

GAO Report just released: FDA Advisory Committees:More Transparency Needed on Policies for Making Conflict of Interest Determinations gao.gov/products/gao-2…

I am heartened by the large number of academics who have supported my academic integrity from across California and the United States. Leading scholars issued this statement below. 1/5

After a brief hiatus, new post with @soumitrashukla9: "How Will AI-driven Automation Actually Affect Jobs? The economics of AI exposure and job displacement" There has been a lot of discussion in the media, X, substack, etc about AI driven displacement. We felt like it'd be worth working out the actual economics of when AI automation will actually lead to displacement, versus the exact opposite (more hiring, higher wages). A short summary🧵: AI "exposure" measures are not meant to predict displacement or job automation. Exposure can lead a job loss, or it can lead to more hiring and higher wages. It all depends on how 1) automated tasks interact with non-automated tasks (to what extent they're complements), 2) how consumer demand in that sector responds to prices (elasticity of consumer demand), and 3) the dimensionality of the job (the number of tasks a job has). One conclusion: we should be less worried about consultants and more worried about truckers and warehouse workers than we currently are. Link: substack.com/home/post/p-19…

BREAKING: MIT just mass released their Al library for free. (Links included) I went through these and honestly... this is better than most paid courses I've seen. Here's the full list of books: Foundations 1. Foundations of Machine Learning Core algorithms explained. Theory meets practice. 2. Understanding Deep Learning Neural networks demystified. Visual explanations included. 3. Machine Learning Systems Production-ready architecture. System design principles. Advanced Techniques 4. Algorithms for ML Computational thinking simplified. Decision-making frameworks. 5. Deep Learning The definitive textbook. Covers everything deeply. Reinforcement Learning 6. RL Basics (Sutton & Barto) The classic. Agent training fundamentals. 7. Distributional RL Beyond expected rewards. Advanced theory. 8. Multi-Agent Systems Agents working together. Coordination and competition. 9. Long Game Al Strategic agent design. Future-focused thinking. Ethics & Probability 10. Fairness in ML Bias detection. Responsible Al practices. 11. Probabilistic ML (Part 1 & 2) Links: lnkd.in/gkuXuexa Most people pay thousands for bootcamps that teach half of this. Bookmark it. Start anywhere. Just start. Repost for others Follow for more insights on Al Agents. MIT's books on Al Foundations 1. Foundations of Machine Learning - lnkd.in/gytjT5HC 2. Understanding Deep Learning - lnkd.in/dgcB68Qt 3. Machine Learning Systems - lnkd.in/dkiGZisg Advanced Techniques 4. Algorithms for ML - algorithmsbook.com 5. Deep Learning - lnkd.in/g2efT6DK Reinforcement Learning 6. RL Basics (Sutton & Barto) - lnkd.in/guxqxcZZ 7. Distributional RL - lnkd.in/d4eNP-pe 8. Multi-Agent Systems - marl-book.com 9. Long Game Al - lnkd.in/g-WtzvwX Ethics & Probability 10. Fairness in ML - fairmlbook.org 11. Probabilistic ML (Part 1) - lnkd.in/g-isbdjj 12. Probabilistic ML (Part 2) - lnkd.in/gJE9fy4w

Chris Sims, In Memoriam Long 3 part 🧵 I was asked to write a short paragraph for Princeton collecting memories of Chris Sims. But when I started writing, I just could not stop. I might as well share it with my friends and colleagues rather than having it sit unread in the cloud. It has taken me a few days to process the news of Chris Sims’s death. He has been such a large presence in my life, as in the lives of so many of his former students. Chris arrived at Princeton once I had already started graduate school, at a time when I had the tremendous luck of working as a research assistant to Michael Woodford. I remember vividly what his arrival felt like to us — the students. It was as though a new force had arrived with the gravitational pull of the sun. His office was right next to the common room at what was then the economics department at Princeton. His door was always open, or ajar. And the pull! Like everybody else, I felt it. It was a unique experience finding myself within the gravitational fields of two of the greats, Mike and Chris, running between them like a little puppy, hanging on to every word. I can remember the moment like yesterday, in early fall in Princeton, watching Chris arrive at the economics department, and thinking: “I want to be like that!” I saw Chris as my ultimate role model. I don’t mean that I thought I would ever scale his intellectual heights. I mean it in a different but quite specific way. When Chris arrived at Princeton he was already famous — one of the most senior and eminent macroeconomists of our time — as he remained until his passing. Every morning he came to the department riding his bike, always in relaxed jeans, carrying a backpack that looked like he had borrowed it from a grad student — a grad student who had not allocated a big part of his budget to one. What I hoped for was certainly not the backpack or the bike. What Chris embodied to me was something rare: the pure intellectual — not the fame, not the status, but that fire. The ongoing excitement like that of a first-year graduate student about ideas, maintained perfectly intact throughout the most distinguished career in the field. That excitement burned hot all his life and showed no sign of cooling off. There was also something else — something harder to name but impossible to miss. Chris moved through his professional life with a kind of ease that seemed to belong to a different category of person entirely. Many academics treat the profession as a game: working around the clock, managing their visibility, strategizing which journal to target and writing accordingly. If a student asks for an appointment, it may be scheduled two months later. I recall emailing Chris if he could talk as a grad student. Immediate answer: Sure just pop by now. If Chris had office hours, I was never aware of them. He was just there, door half open. He would arrive at the office late in the morning, unhurried. I once realized, happening to share a train with him to DC, that he typically wrote his conference discussions on the way to the conference itself — and would usually give the best discussion of the day. That was not carelessness or indifference. It was just the effortlessness of someone for whom crisp thinking was as natural as breathing. He had time for everyone because he could do in five minutes what would take most of us a day — or perhaps a career. If you asked him a question, he would typically give you an answer; but on the rare occasion when one did not immediately pop into his mind, he was just genuinely, openly excited about figuring out the answer, and it made no difference to him who was asking. 1/3

“The claim that the Trump administration is making that Americans are getting the best deal is clearly false,” says Harvard Medical School professor Ameet Sarpatwari. Gift link to story by Rebecca Robbins on TrumpRx prices in NYTimes: nytimes.com/2026/03/18/wor…

A health technology company "built a business on scooping digital medical records of individual patients... and distributing the information to law firms." 😮 Washington Post gift link below: wapo.st/4dteuEX

A court decision halting RFK Jr.’s changes to the childhood immunization schedule hands an indirect, if temporary, win to vax industry that’s maintained its products are safe and effective. Reax to ruling from PhRMA, BIO, GeoVax, Sanofi and more: news.bloomberglaw.com/health-law-and…

Takeshi Amemiya, a giant in econometrics, passed away. Rest in peace. economics.stanford.edu/news/takeshi-a…

"Judge Brian E. Murphy issued a preliminary ruling finding that Kennedy’s reconstitution of a key vaccine advisory panel ... were likely illegal. Specifically, he ruled, those policy changes violated the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs how federal agencies ought to consider and implement policy changes." A win for federal advisory committees. As the kids say, FACAround and find out?

Christopher Sims, RIP. A giant of macroeconomics has left us. Here is his homepage: princeton.edu/~sims/

R.I.P. Christopher Sims (21 Oct. 1942 - 14 March 2026) - a giant in macroeconomics and one of the finest human beings I have ever met -

Link to free PDF: static1.squarespace.com/static/60efc12…

We showed a 72% drop in FDA advisory committees this past year from their 20-year average. Is this a problem? A lot of folks, including former FDA leaders and CEOs of companies that prepped for canceled meetings think so. Link to @LizzyLaw_ 's @statnews article below (paywall) & free link to PDF in replies.

5 lessons from Vinay Prasad’s turbulent tenure at the FDA Prasad brought his convictions to the agency — and reaped chaos. My thoughts on an eventful week for one of the most outspoken people in medicine. statnews.com/2026/03/08/vin…

NEW FDA vaccines chief Vinay Prasad will leave the agency at the end of April Gift link below