I wrote about a reason not to use generative AI in your writing that I haven't seen anyone talking about. Once I realized this, banning GenAI in our lab's writing became a no-brainer. Feel free to share, I think this is probably useful especially for trainees: www.carlsonlab.bio/thoughts/the...

The only reason you’ll ever need not to write with AI — The Carlson Lab

Over the last year, our lab has been developing a policy on AI use. To do this, we did three main things: We read a lot of academic publications and tech news. We set up an #ai channel on our la...

carlsonlab.bio

The American Museum of Natural History (New York) @amnh.org is conducting a search for an open-rank Curator of Biological Anthropology, with a focus on human origins. careers.amnh.org/postings/4876

Don makes an important point here about the dismantling of the administrative state. The institutional damage is to: 1.) destruction of *expertise,* honed by credentialing, research, experience, and *tenure* in job

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 2d ago

The idea that deep institutional damage can be easily rolled back seems like a very odd take for a conservative. The damage to the civil service system is huge, and legislation is needed to reassure future hires they won’t be fired on a whim.

HOW did none of you alert me to the Man on the Inside Season 2 academia tie-in? We watched the finale this week & hoo boy, it hits close to home A callous dean just vying for the next job? ✅ A university in dire financial straits where some are fantasizing about cutting humanities and sciences? ✅

Mark has kindly invited me to do this interview. How I got into metascience, how my path diverged from the mainstream and more if you're interested. I enjoyed thinking about his questions. Hope you enjoy reading!

Mark Rubin@markrubin.bsky.social · last wk.

Q&A with @devezer.bsky.social about metascience, open science, and her work in this area.

y'know, I complain about life in the UK a fair bit. But this is one of the good things: generally functional government websites

By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C)@doctorow.pluralistic.net · 3d ago

For several glorious years, Britons delighted to the daily marvel of having their routine interactions with their government transformed from clunky, broken web-pages to slick, superbly thought through online processes. 13/

If you’re old enough not to need someone to cut your food up for you, you’re old enough to encounter things that confuse you and which you don’t immediately understand, and figure them out. This expectation that everything will be pre-sliced and perfectly digestible is just childish!

Advice I now give to my students: don't write using AI at all, at any stage (outlines, drafts, edits, anything). It's nearly unavoidable in searches. But in writing: draw a line. Be explicit: 'this is AI-free writing.' In some fields it will be good, soon, to have a reputation of this kind.

Cars should not come with ads or subscriptions, actually.

University nurseries are often among the first things management consider closing, and it's awful for families and employees ☹️

Maggie Chapman (she/her)@maggiechapman.bsky.social · 7d ago

While many students are excited to start university, families in Dundee are facing the loss of the university nursery. My thoughts are with the staff losing their jobs and everyone affected. Universities are communities, and cuts like these hurt us all. Read more: www.thecourier.co.uk...

The chart keeps rising: airline profits on one axis, human suffering on the other. @jensorensen.bsky.social illustrates the truth about modern-day air travel: for the executives flying private, everything is working exactly as intended. inthesetimes.com/article/airl...

Going clothes shopping today for the first time in a long time was an unwelcome reminder of how much the fashion industry hates women's hips. Do you think those slash pockets are flattering? 🙄

Read this for all your debunking needs! The triune brain stuff has been irritating me the most lately, because it seems to have gained traction with some big figures outside of psychology.

Prof Nichola Raihani@nicholaraihani.bsky.social · last wk.

🚨New post🚨 Three brain myths that need to die nicholaraihani.substack.com/p/three-brai...

I know disciplinary boundaries often get a bad rep and we have decades of treating the label of “interdisciplinary“ as designating work that is—presumably—superior, or more ambitious, complex, and insight-promising. 1/

Y’all, midwesterners have the best Interjection for almost any situation (akin to how allora in Italian is an interjection that can mean almost anything): Ope! Surprised? Ope! Made a mistake? Ope! Calling to someone at a party from across the room? Ope! Accidentally offended? Ope! It’s great.

Every now and then someone takes a run at me along the lines of "I don't understand why you, a scifi writer, don't appreciate 'AI'," and I'm all, motherfucker, it's *because* I'm a science fiction writer I have the positions I have, how many times do we have to fucking yell "torment nexus," my dude

There is a separate circle in Hell for people who email editors with request for updates/info on their papers and include the title/tracking number/any other identifiers as a *screenshot* #OverlyHonestEditor #AcademicSky

A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Informa of perpetrating a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging exorbitant article processing charges.

Federal lawsuit accuses four major publishers of extorting article processing charges

iStock A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses four major publishers of perpetrating a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging exorbitant article processing charges…

retractionwatch.com

Relatedly: If you're a college professor, and you assume that all of your students can type quickly, efficiently, and accurately on a keyboard, you're almost certainly wrong.

Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · last wk.

I wonder if students today would be less likely to lean on AI for writing assignments if schools had made sure they could touch-type (at least 60wpm) before having them submit all their assignments online. 1/🧵

We've got the purrfect panel at Bark! Fest! Join Sarah Brown, PhD, Caroline Clark, and veterinary behaviourists Dr. Meghan Herron and Dr. Carlo Siracusa on Sep 18. Sign up here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi... #TheHiddenLanguageofCats #AProfessionalsGuideToFelineBehaviour #DecodingYourCat #books

If you're thinking "hm Escherich, does that name sound familiar somehow?" it does

c0nc0rdance@c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · last wk.

The headlines are still covering the cyclosporiasis outbreak from lettuce, but let's talk about a different summer, long ago. The headlines in Bavaria would have called it "summer diarrhea" & it was killing babies. Enter our hero, Professor Theodor Escherich of the Julius Hospital, Würzburg.

This point here 👇

Tressie McMillan Cottom@tressiemcphd.bsky.social · last wk.

There’s also something to how women are socialized to be suspicious of flattery — it’s how we transfer responsibility for men’s desire onto women’s bodies; we are taught to defend against that in service to our “innocence” or whatever — whereas men accept flattery as their due. Perfect marks.

Anyway, your problem isn‘t finding the time to take notes. The problem is that taking notes is thinking and thinking has to be done by someone. women have been doing a lot of metacognition that looks like a task when it’s really thinking.

Everyone's comparing Nolan's Odyssey to Homer, but I think there's much more richness The ancient Greeks adapted the Odyssey into ART While these images might appear static to us, I want to walk through how an ancient Greek saw art: AS DYNAMIC STORYTELLING like our films 1/13

Reminder: two weeks are left to apply for the PhD and postdoc positions in my lab. See more info here www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo...

I consider myself an interdisciplinary scientist. A post on LinkedIn challenged the idea that we should mentor our students to be more interdisciplinary. Here are my thoughts on what that means in my new APS Presidential column. www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Is Interdisciplinary Science Worth It?

"You don't want scholars answering to two or more disciplines. You want them to enrich and integrate their own discipline with ideas drawn from others."

psychologicalscience.org

Pigeons have been an important part of human life for millennia, but the origins of their domestication were unclear. Analysis of pigeon bones from Bronze Age Cyprus sheds light on our ancient bond 🏺 A #FestivalOfArchaeology thread on #NatureAndArchaeology 1/14 🧵

"the boss wants this money" the tagline of our times

Anne Applebaum@anneapplebaum.wsocial.eu · 2w ago

“the boss wants this money" from @wsj.com, a deep dive into the extortion operation run out of the White House gift link: www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Why do we think this is? "Employer TPS contribution costs are set to fall [...], but many universities have continued with plans to change employment arrangements regardless." 🤔

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 2w ago

Another one bites the dust. All new Sunderland casual tutors employed from 1 August will be ineligible for TPS, and employed by the University's wholly-owned subsidiary. UCU estimates this will save SU £36,000 this year while it will see savings going forward due to lower TPS costs of £3M p.a.