How a diabetes conference sparked a controversy

The expulsion of five diabetes experts from the American Diabetes Association meeting in New Orleans earlier this week caused quite a stir. Many in the diabetes research community expressed shock and disbelief that their colleagues were threatened with arrest for passing out paper copies of an editorial. After a few days of doubling down in the face of significant backlash, the ADA did formally apologize on Wednesday. But is their mea culpa too little, too late? In this week’s STATus Report, I chat with STAT cardiovascular disease reporter Elizabeth Cooney. She was in New Orleans for the diabetes meeting, and we discussed what exactly happened, what the reaction was like on the ground, what it says about the climate of biomedical research in the second Trump administration, and more.