Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.

Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says

LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic student fees freeze, international student limits and rise in employers’ national insurance

ft.com

Came across the Jason Arday affair at the end of a bad week for #sociology Still reading the details but let say that I have great regard for Martyn Hammersley’s work and especially his efforts to raise standards in qualitative research. retractionwatch.com/2026/07/27/c...

Exclusive: News outlet killed story on plagiarism allegations after Cambridge prof hired law firm

Jason Arday In September 2025, Times Higher Education had a bombshell story in the works: A star sociology professor at the University of Cambridge had allegedly plagiarized parts of his Ph.D. thes…

retractionwatch.com

This post and the accompanying paper are worth reading. There is definitely an interesting lineage of open science that leads from philanthro-capital to present-day "gold standard science", but it's also worth pointing out this is only one lineage in a pretty complicated genealogy of open research.

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...

The sec of state who has seen at least 15000 academics lose their jobs just said this. Out loud. Mercy me. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

‘It hurts to lose a job you love’: Starmer loyalist Bridget Phillipson fights on despite cabinet demotion

Exclusive: The former education secretary on her new role as Labour chair and continuing as the minister for women and equalities

theguardian.com

This article estimated global APC spend in 2023 to be around $2.5 billion, which was THREE TIMES the amount just four years earlier in 2019, at around $910 million.

Estimating global article processing charges paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023

This study presents estimates of the global expenditure on article processing charges (APCs) paid to six publishers for open access between 2019 and 2023. APCs are fees charged for publishing in some ...

arxiv.org

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale

AI Companies Are Buying Antique Books, Ingesting Their Contents to Train Models, and Then Destroying Them at Incredible Scale, Even If Almost No Copies Remain

AI companies are quietly obtaining rare books, ingesting their contents, and then destroying them -- even if they're exceedingly rare.

futurism.com

From yesterday and today: it certainly appears ICE in Chicago are wearing the Meta AI Ray-Ban glasses.

“There is no honour for the humanities in regaining their standing through the attention of #AI companies, if they engage only on the technology industry’s terms. In that case, they will have become important in exactly the wrong way.“ #AIEthics #PhilTech

Janine Gibson@janinegibson.ft.com · 2w ago

Good morning and welcome to your FT Weekend highlights via giftlink. First this week theologian and philosopher Carmody Grey explains why she declined to help Anthropic with Claude's moral schooling as.ft.com/r/15d7fd75-a...

Astonishing. RFK Jr. adds 8 members to a 6 member FDA advisory panel. 6 of them were sellers of peptides, and the 7th a compounding pharmacist. In an 8-6 vote with all 8 votes coming from these new panel members, the panel approved 4 peptides against the objections of FDA scientists.

FDA Panel Supports Lifting Restrictions on Four Peptides (Gift Article)

In an all-day hearing, the agency’s scientists argued against allowing broad access to unproven drugs that the agency had banned three years ago.

nytimes.com

Ideologically, generative AI is a 19th century technology: the flawed dream that once you have assembled a supposedly total archive of culture via technical media, you can use it to statistically derive new meaning from patterns of the past

"Wyoming will become the first state in the US where you cannot receive a B.A. in Philosophy."

University of Wyoming to Drop Philosophy Major - Daily Nous

As for Fall 2027, incoming students at the University of Wyoming will no longer be allowed to major in philosophy. The news was shared by philosophy professor Bradley Rettler in posts on social media. He says that students will be able to major in "philosophy and religion" but not "philosophy" nor "religious studies". Rettler points

dailynous.com

Do read the whole thing, think about your personal and professional values, and how they can serve as strong grounds for resistance and refusal. leidendeclaration.ai

Leiden Declaration on Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics

This declaration calls for action to address the challenges posed by the use of artificial intelligence within mathematics research.

leidendeclaration.ai

Because I'm updating them today, I'd like to remind #AncientBluesky that we have *FREELY ACCESSIBLE* Ancient Greek resources at the Open University! 🏺 First, we have a 16 hour free OpenLearn course, which takes you from learning the alphabet to reading simple sentences: www.open.edu/openlearn/hi...

Getting started on ancient Greek

This free course, Getting started on ancient Greek, offers a taster of the ancient Greek world through the study of one of its most distinctive and enduring features: its language.The course ...

open.edu

An insightful post on my latest on #openscience, with many thanks to @markrubin.bsky.social for his ever-incisive comments and great service to our community!

Mark Rubin@markrubin.bsky.social · 2w ago

(Re)Conceptualizing Open Science's "Openness" A discussion of @sabinaleonelli.bsky.social's recent work #PhilSci #MetaSci #OpenSci

Real peer review has never been tried worksinprogress.co/issue/real-p... #science #sciencesky #philosophySky #PeerReview

Real peer review has never been tried - Works in Progress Magazine

Outdated forms of peer review create bottlenecks that slow science. But in a world where research can now circulate rapidly on the Internet, we need to develop new ways to do science in public.

worksinprogress.co

«Rigorous human checking of AI-generated research papers is creating bottlenecks as publishers strive to maintain the integrity of the scientific record. The challenge is requiring even more human effort, making the whole endeavor slower and more expensive.» www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #AI

AI in scientific publishing: Slower, worse, and more expensive

There’s a saying in the management world, popularized by NASA administrator Daniel Goldin in the 1990s, that the goal of technological improvements is to make products faster, better, and cheaper. Alt...

science.org

Embracing the Luddites' strategic playfulness remains a powerful tactic for bringing people together to learn about and challenge those deploying obnoxious machines and their dehumanizing automation - whether in 1812 or 2026.

n+1@nplusonemag.com · 2w ago

"I left feeling a pooling, connective happiness. I went home and realized that I hadn’t looked at my phone for six hours." Sarah Thankam Mathews hangs out with the Luddites, NYC's tech-critical cultural youth front: www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

The disparity between the board, which is made up of crony capitalists eager to suck up to power in order to grift, and the university which consists of students and professors invested in the mission of the university, could not be clearer.

AAUP@aaup.org · 2w ago

“A settlement with this administration does not get them off your back." “It’s strange to students, faculty, and alums: Why are you so eager to settle?” 🤔 @yaleaaup.bsky.social

Regular reminder that research assessment reform is, above all, a labour issue.

Christopher Barrie@cbarrie.bsky.social · 7mo ago

I've learned that Edinburgh University is planning to cut 20% of academics in some departments To decide who gets the chop, they generated an academic contribution metric that is a raw count of *any type* of output, including book reviews. The management of UK Universities continues to amaze

Public Domain Art is the lifeblood of small tabletop rpgs, but it can be a nightmare trying to find the right art and license. This week, I’ve re-uploaded my old list from 2020 (with updates) of public domain websites. That's 500,000+ public domain paintings, photos, maps, and film. Link below 🔗👇

“Doing Open Social Science: A Guide For Researchers”  comprehensively explains open research for all social scientists (at every career stage), suggesting practical advice to make research more transparent, trustworthy and reusable. Free from @LSEPress at press.lse.ac.uk/books/m/10.3...

Research measuring the effects of AI in education has a major quality control problem that should disqualify most of it from being considered in policy discussions or applied in teaching practice. Quick new post from me codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2026/06/26/t...

The problem with evidence production on AI in education

Photo by Camille Villanueva on Unsplash The research field of artificial intelligence in education (AIED) has a long history of investigating the effects of AI on learning and other educational out…

codeactsineducation.wordpress.com

Alcalay, R., & Vandekerckhove, J. (2026). “Epistemic Disadvantage in Open Science Practices.” Social Epistemology, 1–17. doi.org/10.1080/0269...

“Epistemic Disadvantage in Open Science Practices”

Open science advocates aim to address epistemic injustice and global power asymmetries in research infrastructures yet underestimate structural vulnerabilities and risks embedded in data sharing pr...

doi.org

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

🆔 Under a newly signed Memorandum of Understanding, ORCID and the CSTR Identification Platform, based in Beijing, China, will collaborate to promote the interoperability of ORCID identifiers and CSTR identification system. #ResearchSky

Press Release — ORCID and the Common Science and Technology Resource (CSTR) Identification Platform Form Strategic Partnership

ORCID and CSTR are coordinating efforts to adopt ORCID and other Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) through the research data lifecycle and enhance the visibility of research systems in China and globally.

info.orcid.org

TIL about Lucy Osler's very useful term "distributed delusions". I was looking for a way to avoid talk of "AI psychosis" (which weaponizes mental health stigma to do victim-blaming while the LLM comes off scot-free), and this seems a useful reframing doi.org/10.1007/s133...

What can we learn from data about the current trends in university staffing in the humanities, social sciences and arts subjects? 🧵 Read on for key insights or see the full analysis: www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/policy-and-r...

This phase of the British Academy's SHAPE Observatory project focuses on academic staff, analysing trends since 2012/13 to explore how staffing levels vary by subject, region and employment characteristics. The data lag: the 2025-26 redundancies you've been reading about are not yet captured. 1/3

Loss of academic staff and "cold spots" for humanities and social science degrees threaten strategically important skills for UK, says British Academy

A new data map released today shows a sharp and widespread decline in opportunities for university staff in the humanities, social sciences and arts subjects in 2024-25. The data shows a precarious la...

thebritishacademy.ac.uk

In America today, the wealthiest 1% is now worth more than the entire American middle class. That never happened before.

A new translational research unit at the Weizmann Institute of Science complements the work of the tech transfer office and bridges the translation gap with strategic, operational and resource frameworks that go beyond traditional commercialization infrastructure go.nature.com/4cJwcn4 rdcu.be/fh6eL

It’s time to rethink academic innovation: why technology transfer offices can’t do it alone - Nature Biotechnology

A new translational research unit at the Weizmann Institute of Science complements the work of the technology transfer office and bridges the translation gap with strategic, operational and resource f...

go.nature.com