Progressive Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed has won the Michigan senatorial primary election. El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former health officer for Detroit, ran on promises to address his state’s dire public health crisis.

Abdul El-Sayed Is an Epidemiologist Running for Senate. His State Is a Public Health Disaster

Michigan has been at the epicenter of the wildfire smoke and explosive diarrhea outbreaks. The progressive Democrat talks to WIRED about how he would tackle the forces behind them if he’s elected.

wired.com

Argos is excited for his morning walk!

An obscure Texas firm secretly connected to Donald Trump Jr. said it received at least $100 million from Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. At the same time, the Ambani family secured major policy wins from the Trump administration. (Published June)

An Indian Billionaire Was Targeted by Trump. Then He Poured Money Into a Startup Secretly Backed by Donald Trump Jr.

An obscure Texas firm secretly connected to the president’s son said it received at least $100 million from Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries. At the same time, the Ambani family secured major polic...

propublica.org

“The tragic implication of Plümper and Neumayer’s analysis is not that individual scientists are unusually dishonest, but that a system designed to incentivise truth-seeking has been incrementally transformed into one that often rewards its distortion” blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofb...

Is publication, not truth, now the driving pursuit of science? - LSE Review of Books

The Credibility Crisis in Science by Thomas Plümper and Eric Neumayer explores how researcher incentives and publication bias distort scientific knowledge

blogs.lse.ac.uk

My organization (@busaracenter.bsky.social) has launched its own ethics review board! busara-iserc.busara.global To my knowledge this will be the first ethics review board specialized in behavioral science on the African continent 1/

I have found a great new #stats teaching hack to find new open datasets for teaching. I've been going to the Collabra: Psychology journal website, and typing in an analysis type (e.g., logistic regression) into the search bar. Both quick and high-quality data! online.ucpress.edu/collabra

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Anti-LGBTQ+ laws are on the rise across west Africa, campaigners warn

Activists in the region say politicians regard LGBTQ+ people as ‘the easiest scapegoats to maintain their power’

theguardian.com

so much I wanted to quote here about why we as scientists seem to find ourselves in this current political situation: “When and why powerful and wealthy outsiders chose to pluck scholars and ideas from obscurity should be of key concern to those of us interested in the independence of science.”

Jeff Lockhart@jwlockhart.bsky.social · 5d ago

I wrote about science funding, science reform, and anti-science agendas. scatter.wordpress.com/2026/07/31/s...

What is an extremely nerdy/obscure/specific thing you hate with a white-hot wrath?

Publishers: Would you like to write a textbook? Me: Maybe. Will I get paid a lot? P: Not at all. M: Oh so it will be affordable for students? P: Also no. M: But at least I can easily make edits after release? P: Definitely not. ….

Jennifer N. Victor@jenvictor.bsky.social · 6d ago

Today, in middle-aged academics' rage, I learned that a paperback version of the course textbook I've used for 20+ years costs $265!! The electronic version, which requires students to read it through the publisher's proprietary software interface, is $98. RIP books! 😩

Gladstone et al (2026): "biographies of female scientists disproportionately emphasized effort even after adjusting for the obstacles they faced, consistent with stereotypes attributing women’s success to hard work over talent." 🧪 #psychscisky

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences@pnas.org · 6d ago

One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is ”Children’s books about scientists convey demotivating messages.” Explore the article here: https://ow.ly/oTon50ZuLj3 For more trending articles, visit https://ow.ly/TsjY50ZuLj2.

Most avocados are easy to peel--no spoon needed. Also cutting them in fourths makes it easy to pop the seed out without slamming a knife at your hand.

Thoughtful piece: “as a field, we seem to have given up on our representation issue. We know about it, we say we care about it, but the decisions we make (from what demographic data to collect to what papers to publish) suggests to me that we've become apathetic about it all”

The Psychologist@psychmag.bsky.social · last wk.

Representation in Psychology – just another impossible problem? Megan E. Birney (University of Birmingham) considers a WEIRD, but worryingly pervasive, research issue. Plus a response from the British Psychological Society's Academic Publications Team. www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

A really interesting thread. I usually find myself leaning closer towards an "abolish journals" stance, but I found this perspective very interesting...

Tom Hostler@tomhostler.bsky.social · last wk.

My unpopular science reform opinion is that journal name/reputation SHOULD be a good heuristic for trust/quality, and that’s what we should be trying to achieve.

I’m one of 155 physicians & scientists who signed this open letter calling on elected officials to end the vilification & harassment of scientists like Peter Hotez & Anthony Fauci We urge them to “stop these witch-hunts” www.medpagetoday.com/washington-w...

Stop 'Harassment' of Fauci, Scientists Urge Politicians

Open letter signed by 155 physicians, scientists ahead of Congressional testimony

medpagetoday.com

Well here's a crisis we can almost all do something about, so that's a silver lining

Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · last wk.

"On Monday, the Red Cross declared a national blood crisis for the second time ever in its history."

Kenya High Court Rules Trans and Gender Diverse People Have Constitutional Right to Legal Gender Recognition — GATE | Global Action for Trans Equality share.google/QFYHQuqHI7Bt...

Kenya High Court Rules Trans and Gender Diverse People Have Constitutional Right to Legal Gender Recognition — GATE | Global Action for Trans Equality

Trans and gender diverse Kenyans can now correct their gender markers on official documents after more than a decade of systematic refusals.

share.google

In a controlled experimental setting, researchers found that truthful messages were more persuasive and more likely to be shared than false ones. Read the open access article in JPSP: Attitudes and Social Cognition https://bit.ly/43CvXol

When health data is analyzed at the population level without disaggregating by gender, the realities of women, girls and non-binary people are lost—and so is the opportunity to serve them. Read more to see what closing the gender data gap looks like in practice. ↪️ https://vitalstrat.org/4xB0XCP

Interested in advancing psychological science? Join the SIPS Executive Board! We especially encourage: ✨Students and postdocs ✨Scholars who work as faculty (or equivalent career stage) ✨Scholars located outside the USA and Canada. buff.ly/nFEGTts !

SIPS Executive Committee Nominations 2026

We are currently soliciting nominations for the Executive Committee of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science. Any member may be nominated, and self-nominations are welcome. SIPS…

buff.ly

I know this isn't news to anyone who has worked in or around universities, but the amount of mission-critical work that depends on volunteer labor is WILD. Like, when you think about the "job to be done" for universities and then look at what's on vs off contract...?

Exactly! And every single time I have seen a sex/gender distinction enforced in data collection, it always turns out that the "sex" box is the one that people use for data analysis, and the value in that box is the one that gets printed on public documents. It is just an abysmally stupid idea

New open access article about open access publishing from @mollymking.bsky.social and me: "Sharing Knowledge Openly: Author Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Feminist Science" journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Sharing Knowledge Openly: Author Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Feminist Science - Molly M. King, Jeffrey W. Lockhart, 2026

Open science is an increasingly important movement in contemporary social science. Many funders have begun to mandate open practices, newer journals like Socius...

journals.sagepub.com

“In our most detailed model, judge-level effects explained 61% of the total variance, whereas combined paper and journal-level effects accounted for only 7%.”

Alejandro Montenegro@aemonten.bsky.social · 2w ago

"Here we show, in a large post-publication peer review database, that research assessment is driven more by differences between evaluators than by difference in the evaluated research. " arxiv.org/abs/2607.09783

"Here we show, in a large post-publication peer review database, that research assessment is driven more by differences between evaluators than by difference in the evaluated research. " arxiv.org/abs/2607.09783

Judges matter more than papers in post-publication research assessment

Research assessment relies on expert evaluations, yet human judgement is noisy, and it is unclear whether differences in assessment arise primarily from differences in genuine research quality or from...

arxiv.org

The risks are real. But banning children from the internet could create new problems without solving the ones that really matter. www.wired.com/story/bannin...

Banning Social Media for Kids Is a Bad Idea

The risks are real. But banning children from the internet could create new problems without solving the ones that really matter.

wired.com

In Nepal, HIV outreach workers left jobless by U.S. foreign aid cuts turn to sex work to survive, walking the streets alongside the very people they once fought so hard to help.

Sex work or starve: Aid workers in Nepal left jobless by USAID cuts turn to sex work to survive

After the United States slashed its foreign aid funding last year, more than 280,000 aid workers worldwide lost their jobs.

bit.ly

Is there a news org that sends updates only for breaking, important news? I don't need to be interrupted for sports updates, news about celebrities, etc.

NEW: Is there a 'crisis' of public trust in science? It can feel that way — with attacks on research in the US and growing rejection of vaccines. I investigated for @nature.com - and found some surprises. My feature article is out today and a short🧵here www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Have people stopped trusting science? The data tell a surprising story

Some say there’s a global crisis of trust — but research reveals where the real problems lie.

nature.com

Because of societal rejection, trans kids face higher rates of physical & mental health problems These rates fall when they’re allowed to play sports Trans kids want to be on sports teams to have fun, get exercise, & hang out with their friends—just like any other kid Let kids play sports FFS!

Gillian Branstetter@gbbranstetter.bsky.social · last mo.

Very thankful for this letter to Becky Pepper-Jackson (the 16 year-old trans girl SCOTUS ruled against yesterday) from James Dale, a gay man whose expulsion from the Boy Scouts was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2000.