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Travis J. Wiltshire

@tjwiltshire.bsky.social

Assosciate Professor of Cognitive Science at Tilburg University. PI in Collective Cognition and Complex Systems Lab. Musician in When Waves Collapse.

15 Posts100 Follower 240 Folgt

Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · last mo.

Applications are open for SFI's 2027 Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships. SFI is looking for recent Ph.D. graduates with strong quantitative and computational skills who want to pursue independent, transdisciplinary research. Deadline: September 30, 2026 Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship

Travis J. Wiltshire @tjwiltshire.bsky.social · last mo.

🧵Excited to be included in the issue of Topics in Cognitive Science (topiCS) “The Dynamical Hypothesis Three Decades Later: Advances, Critiques, and Prospects for a Dynamical Cognitive Science” edited by Luis Favela and Vincent Raja onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/17568765...

Topic: Fellows of the Cognitive Science Society; Editor: Andrea Bender — Topic: The Dynamical Hypothesis Three Decades Later: Advances, Critiques, and Prospects for a Dynamical Cognitive Science; Editors: Luis H. Favela and Vicente Raja: Topics in Cognitive Science: Vol 18, No 3

Click on the title to browse this issue

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Sarah Andersen @sarahseeandersen.bsky.social · last mo.

The image is of a four panel comic. The title above the comic reads, "The organs are a team."
The first panel shows a drawing of a stomach. The stomach says, "I digest food so it can become energy."
The second panel shows a drawing of a heart. The heart says, "I use energy to pump blood."
The third panel shows a drawing of a liver. The liver says, "I take that blood and filter it."
The fourth panel shows a drawing of a brain. The brain says, "I will actively sabotage all of you."

Aeon Magazine @aeon.co · last mo.

For the biologist Michael Levin, intelligence is the capacity to pursue goals, and it exists on a continuum that ranges from cells to humans. In this short documentary, Levin provides fascinating examples what this can look like

Why we should think of intelligence in terms of goals, not brains | Aeon Videos

Inside the lab of a biologist who is seeking to understand intelligence by focusing on problem-solving, not neurons

buff.ly

Dr Madeleine Pownall @maddipow.bsky.social · last mo.

New paper! Values such as openness, transparency, collaboration, clarity about conflict of interests have been promoted by women for *decades*, and now we have reframed this around the branding of 'open science' that we start to take them seriously. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Women as the First Open Scientists: Five Stories of the Neglected Contributions of Women in (Social) Science Reform History - Madeleine Pownall, 2026

Recent years have seen growing emphasis on “Open Science,” a movement to enhance research transparency, robustness, and accountability. Prompted by concerns ove...

journals.sagepub.com

Travis J. Wiltshire @tjwiltshire.bsky.social · 2mo ago

🚨🚀 Excited to kick off our summer school today on Multiscale Social Dynamics in Individuals and Groups at MindLabs, Tilburg University with @wimpouw.bsky.social @jamestrujillo.bsky.social @babajideowoyele.bsky.social and others! Full details here envisionbox.org/summerschool...

Alice Roberts @profaliceroberts.bsky.social · 2mo ago

An important paper about protecting science from political interference. Europe needs to defend its science against the kind of attacks unfurling in the US. By Martin McKee, Christina Pagel & Tiago Correia in the European Journal of Public Health: academic.oup.com/eurpub/artic...

Europe must learn from America’s assault on science

In June 2026, several prominent diabetes researchers, including Steven Kahn, editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care, were removed by police from the annual meeti

academic.oup.com

Travis J. Wiltshire @tjwiltshire.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Great 🧵👇

Jay Van Bavel, PhD@jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 3mo ago

A survey of 2600 Ph.D. students, postdocs, and other researchers in 65 countries found that top three complaints were that supervisors: 1) used dismissive communication 2) provided little feedback 3) ignored team members’ well-being The main thing they wanted was empathy

Riccardo Fusaroli @fusaroli.eurosky.social · 4mo ago

Crickets and fireflies astoundingly coordinate their sounds & displays, wrens swiftly alternate their songs; pilot whales join in choruses and alternate songs depending on the contexts. How do all these species so impressively coordinate their communicative signals? We tried to find out for you :-)

Riccardo Fusaroli@fusaroli.eurosky.social · 4mo ago

"A Systematic Review of Formal Models of Communicative Coordination Across Species" — led by @chrismmcox.bsky.social w @andrearavignani.bsky.social , S.Sørensen, @annapzamm.bsky.social , @frantsjensen.bsky.social , G.Bryant, @acristia.bsky.social, and me - osf.io/preprints/ps... A thread 1/

a panel of figures representing the three model families.

Travis J. Wiltshire @tjwiltshire.bsky.social · 4mo ago

👀

Ada Palmer@adapalmer.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Googly eyes might stop seagulls from stealing your lunch. UK researchers stuck googly eyes onto takeout food containers in seagull-infested places and found that they were far less likely to be approached or pecked compared to un-googly-eyed control containers. buff.ly/G5i7JE5 #ShareGoodNewsToo

Stephan Lewandowsky @lewan.uk · 5mo ago

UCS just released a very nice and concise guide for how to stay safe in the public eye -- for scholars and researchers, but also for anyone else concerned about safety during autocratization: www.ucs.org/sites/de...

Arjun Krishnan @compbiologist.bsky.social · 5mo ago

What is the PhD actually for, especially now that AI can do increasingly more of what we train scientists to do? compbiologist.substack.com/p/what-is-th... A response to @pracheeac.bsky.social's thought-provoking essay "Free the PhD".

What is the PhD actually for?

A response to Prachee’s “Free the PhD”, and a critique of my own work

compbiologist.substack.com

wimpouw @wimpouw.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Summerschool 13-17 July Multiscale Social Dynamics at MindLabs NL - Sign ups are open!

We're pleased to announce the Summerschool 'Multiscale Social Dynamics in Individuals and Groups' (MDIG2026) at MindLabs, Tilburg, NL - 13-17 July 2026.
You can register here for a 5-day in-person summer school at Tilburg University, Research Center for Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, from July 13th-17th (monday to friday), with the theme Multiscale Social Dynamics in Individuals and Groups (MDIG2026). This summer school supported by EnvisionBox.org will feature hands-on tutorials on analysis pipelines from computer science and complexity science, including methods for motion tracking, kinematic and acoustic analysis, empirical mode decomposition, windowed multiscale synchrony analysis, and related approaches. Rather than focusing on a single modality, we will cover several aspects of multimodal communication, including visual, prosodic, and movement-based signals, and examine how these interact across multiple temporal and spatial scales. One dedicated day will focus on methods for data management, masking and anonymizing audiovisual data to ensure privacy protection and GDPR compliance. In addition, participants will work in groups on applied projects throughout the week, culminating in presentations of project progress at the end of the summer school. The goal of the summer school is twofold: first, to familiarize participants with state-of-the-art tools, open solutions, and datasets for multiscale social signal analysis, and second, to critically examine their limitations. By the end of the week, participants will have gained practical skills, new analytical tools, and a deeper understanding of how these methods can be improved to advance research in multimodal behavioral dynamics.
Location
The Netherlands, MindLabs Tilburg University
Fee
125 euros person that includes a 5-day summer school featuring lectures and hands on tutorials and working groups with lunches, coffee breaks, and one social dinner provided (budget permitting).

Travel grant
…

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 10mo ago

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below.

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time.

1. The four-fold drain

1.2 Time
The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce,
with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure
1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material
has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs,
grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for
profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time.
The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million
unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of
peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting
widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the
authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many
review demands.
Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of
scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in
‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow
progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to
volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier,
local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with
limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging
with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks
intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below:

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised
scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers
first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour
resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

Travis J. Wiltshire @tjwiltshire.bsky.social · 10mo ago

🎉 New Paper 🎉 Congrats to Jingwen Yang on her first published paper as part of the #tools4teams project. We conducted a systematic review showing the existing effects of biofeedback on various team states, processes, and performance.

Travis J. Wiltshire @tjwiltshire.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨new preprint🚨 Paper on bursty communication dynamics in multidisciplinary health care teams with M. Janssens, S. C. P. van der Bruggen, and L. Beetroot that will be presented next Thursday (July 17) at the 2025 Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research Conference in Rotterdam.

PsyArXivBot@psyarxivbot.bsky.social · last yr.

Exploring the Underlying Communicative Temporal Structure of Multidisciplinary Healthcare Team Meetings: https://osf.io/3rsx7

@arekbialek.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨 New preprint + open pipeline 🚨 CVML-based behavioral observations: osf.io/preprints/ps... Co-led with @wimpouw.bsky.social, alongside @jamestrujillo.bsky.social, @babajideowoyele.bsky.social, @tjwiltshire.bsky.social, F. Hasselman, N. Siekiera, J. Raczaszek-Leonardi. 👀 Take a look & use it!

Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · last yr.

Papers are one-way conversations. Getting additional info from authors can be hard, so clear reporting from the outset is critical. In our new preprint, we (@annalschubert.bsky.social, Meike Steinhilber & @heeminkang.bsky.social) propose a set of psych reporting guidelines osf.io/preprints/ps...

Further resources on the interpretation of null results.

A dataset was generated showing simulated data points in two groups A and B. Group A follows a normal
distribution with a mean of 10 and a standard deviation of 1, while Group B exhibits a bimodal distribution, characterized by
peaks at 9 and 11 with a standard deviation of 0.5. As shown in the figure (A), barplots often fail to capture the true distribution
of the data. Although boxplots in (B) provide more insights into the data distribution compared to barplots, violin plots in (C)
and raincloud plots in (D) provide a more accurate representation of the actual data distribution. Reproducible code to generate
this figure is available at https://osf.io/mk5qa/.

Table 4. Overview of effect sizes for popular statistical models, with descriptions and software tools for estimation

PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · last yr.

Biofeedback in Team Settings: A Systematic Review of Applications and Outcomes: https://osf.io/awmb4

Travis J. Wiltshire @tjwiltshire.bsky.social · 2y ago

First post here on Bluesky. In a recent paper, we show that higher team synchronization of player position in the virtual environment (in certain movement dimensions) , negatively predicts performance in a professional e-sports competition (Dota 2) across consecutive years.