Things I think about some days: Who funded the Vanderbilt and WashU reports? What pot of money did this come from if it was the institutions themselves? How much funding was it?
Lisa Fazio
@lkfazio.bsky.social
Associate prof of psychology Vanderbilt Univ, studies how adults and children learn true and false information, she/her, lkfazio.com
Productivity as an adult is just an endless process of applying new psychological tricks and operant conditioning to yourself until an acceptable number of tasks are completed.
Good summary of what the US state dept has been up to from @mantzarlis.com "To recap: The US government didn't like a panel that discussed its potential interference in foreign information environments. So it interfered in a foreign information environment." indicator.media/p/briefing-u...
Briefing: US interferes in the name of non-interference
Plus: a Telegram search tool, and tracing traffic in satellite imagery.
indicator.media
fave new demonstration of survey items being really not that bad at tracking carefully-measured cognitive things: in 900,000 participants, a 5-item "how good are you at music" self-report (the colours) very directly tracks a 20min adaptive test of music perception ability (the x-axis)
"'What makes [Roth] notable is not so much what he’s doing,' Cantwell said, 'but what everyone else isn’t doing. Maybe his board has a high tolerance for risk? Maybe what he proves is that other places misunderstand risk.'” www.chronicle.com/article/the-...
The President Who Won’t Shut Up
Michael Roth is trying to defend higher education. Why isn’t anyone joining him?
chronicle.com
another year where all the science nobels went to men, as was the case in 2024 much of this piece, about the structural barriers women face in doing innovative research and receiving credit for it, holds up (I think) www.statnews.com/2024/10/11/n...
Men won all the science Nobels this year. There's an even bigger problem
The Nobel's gender gap reflects larger barriers faced by women in science
statnews.com
For over a decade, the National Science Foundation’s SBE has funded my work, leading to discoveries that have improved how we do science, including mechanisms for efficient grant proposal contests that are now used worldwide.
Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social · 3d agoBut no part was hit as hard as SBE, which went from an average of 800 new grants to just 91, a precipitous, 90% decline. SBE spent just 95 million on new grants, far less than its average of 247 million.
In response to our questions, an NSF spokesperson said that SBE has not been shut down. But with zero SBE-specific funding opportunities, no review panels, and dwindling numbers of staff, it's hard to see the directorate continuing for much longer.
NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:
‘Complete devastation’: How NSF gutted its social sciences research
Agency body that funds sociology, linguistics, and archaeology studies in U.S. gave 90% fewer new grants this year
science.org
Congratulations to this year's winner of the Physics Nobel Prize!
⭐ anyone have a new popular science, child development book rec? i'm looking for "book club" ideas for a senior seminar in developmental psychology next term. 📚 would love some fresh ideas!
Cute Chimpmunks in Green Hoodie
ALT: Cute Chimpmunks in Green Hoodie
static.klipy.com
Many of us have been offered lots of money to say/write things that are morally (and empirically) bankrupt. My count to date is $100k that I don’t have because I turned down book propositions and speaking gigs. And that’s just the EXPLICIT financial incentives. Never mind the IMPLICIT ones.
Noah Berlatsky@nberlat.bsky.social · 2mo agoI've said this before, but I think every left writer realizes that they could instantly make a lot more money by publicly repudiating their principles. 1
This was a great talk from @brsoucek.bsky.social. Glad the student paper could attend and report. Helped clarify the issues with the current push towards institutional neutrality. AAUP hosts Brian Soucek for lecture on institutional NON-neutrality - Vanderbilt Hustler share.google/TmMgQ6p8oAzc...
AAUP hosts Brian Soucek for lecture on institutional NON-neutrality
University of California, Davis law professor Brian Soucek discussed Vanderbilt’s Declaration of First Principles, institutional neutrality and shared governance.
share.google
A short adapted excerpt from WHY WE ASK WHY was published in The Atlantic this morning! So excited to share this in advance of the book's publication on Oct 6! 😊 📕 www.theatlantic.com/science/2026...
AI Could Worsen a Common Cognitive Trap
Almost everyone knows less than they think.
theatlantic.com
It's Oct 3. The midterms are a month away, but early voting has already begun in some states. Mail-in ballots will start circulating soon. Some of the usual suspects are already pushing the same "rigged election" rumors we've all heard before. This year, you can play along at home. bingo.cip.uw.edu
"Rigged Election" Bingo
Spot the tropes before they spread. Recognize the common story elements behind election rumors — can you get BINGO?
bingo.cip.uw.edu
Devistating. And against Congress's directive. SBE was included in the 26 budget and the NSF section states that "no directorate shall receive more than a 5 percent reduction relative to the fiscal year 2024 enacted level."
Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴@wamsleylab.bsky.social · 7d agoThe fiscal year is over. The dying Social, Behavioral, and Economic division of NSF ended up awarding 90 total grants this year, as opposed to ~700-800 in recent past years. Source: grantwitness.org/nsf/analyses...
Universities have been going for the “insiders strategy” of trying to lobby quietly without making public waves. Counterfactuals are hard, but I would say the strategy has been a complete failure.
Mark Copelovitch@mcopelov.bsky.social · last wk.~Approximately no one in the general public knows because the leaders of the R1 research universities - whose budgets, programs, & personnel are entirely or significantly dependent on federal funding - have been totally absent from the public square in explaining & collectively protesting this.
~Approximately no one in the general public knows because the leaders of the R1 research universities - whose budgets, programs, & personnel are entirely or significantly dependent on federal funding - have been totally absent from the public square in explaining & collectively protesting this.
David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · last wk.I don’t think everyone realizes how bad things are for US science: For the fiscal year that just ended, the Trump regime withheld $1.4 billion from the National Science Foundation’s research budget, which is about 1/5 of its primary research budget.
If you are part of an academic society or a professor of any kind, public statements that you do not condone Drexel cutting off the academy of natural sciences from the public of Philadelphia is very important right now. We need your voices. Urgently.
So she says: these calls to reduce polarization or to be “more civil” are in reality asking to like… stop being so LOUD and MAD about how you don’t want certain groups’ rights taken away!! ?? Do y’all see how cuckoo that is IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT? Yes you do because Lily just PUT IT THERE FOR US.
And because it is a tiny minority, they must use authoritarian tactics- because the numbers are not on their side! They have to shoot their shot: violate democratic norms, ignore Congress, break laws. And guess what… That produces conflict because people get fucking angry.
Do yourself a favor. Read these 7 pages by @lilymasonphd.bsky.social right now. It is the most concise explanation of the current situation in U.S. politics I've seen and it captures why calls to reduce "polarization" can ultimately worsen the problem 🧵 www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/pol...
Polarization Is Not the Problem | Journal of Democracy
Americans have never been angrier with one another. But polarization is not the disease—it is the response to a revanchist movement seeking to roll back sixty years of social progress.
journalofdemocracy.org
🧵@lilymasonphd.bsky.social on polarization and democracy. Yell this from the rooftops!!! "U.S. democracy needs leaders who are willing to defend those rights and voters who are willing to hold accountable the leaders who will not defend them. It does not need everyone simply to calm down."
Dominique Baker@bakerdphd.bsky.social · last wk.I read the ending and I wanted to koolaid man through a wall!!
My new JOD piece arguing against the “cure polarization” approach to saving democracy.
Journal of Democracy@jodemocracy.bsky.social · last wk.Americans have never been angrier with one another. But polarization is not the disease—it is the response to a revanchist movement seeking to roll back sixty years of social progress. 🆕 by @lilymasonphd.bsky.social muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/a...
Replacing assistant with gemini is like taking away someone's screwdriver and replacing it with a swiss army knife... with no screwdriver. You weren't using it for screws, right? You wanted to open bottles and cut stuff this whole time, right?
In the vein of AI making everything better 🙄 today google discontinued their google assistant that we used to verbally add things to a grocery list. Instead you now have to use Gemini which cannot complete the same task. Anyone have a good android list app that allows you to add things by speaking?
“Cutting this much from the university budget will mean that some of the core functions of the university will be lost. It’s not possible to just do more with less — to work smarter, to trim around the edges. We’re going to have to do less with less.” Gift link: www.startribune.com/umn-cuts-sta...
Perry: What we lose if the U cuts $225 million
"Austerity doesn’t work. Instead, it creates a death spiral, where reduction in services leads to reductions in revenue, which lead to reductions in services, which leads to reduction in revenue, whic...
startribune.com