Two papers by Max Planck, the legendary Nobel laureate in physics, were retracted by Springer Nature in 2011, likely due to an algorithm flagging the papers for self-plagiarism and copyright infringement. Read on for how stupid it all is. 🧪

Why have papers by one of history’s most famous physicists been retracted?

Springer Nature has removed two studies by Max Planck. A bot may be to blame

science.org

Suomen sijoitus akateemisen vapauden indeksissä on pudonnut rajusti. Tilanne ei ole vielä katastrofaalinen, mutta muutoksen nopeus on todella huolestuttava. Meidän pitäisi olla naapurimaittemme Viron (2.) ja Ruotsin (5.) joukossa, ei Israelin tai Sri Lankan takana. www.helsinki.fi/fi/uutiset/t...

For what it is worth, I expanded my critical remarks on the #BoghossianReport to a brief note: philpapers.org/rec/RAAACN #Philosophy #PhilSky

one anecdote: I was searching for a link to one of my old papers on Google, and the automated Gemini summary attributed all of my lab's work to my husband

Mel Andrews@bayesianboy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.

1. How common is LLM use in scientific publishing, and how does it vary across field, publisher, journal prestige, author demographics etc.? @kylesiler.bsky.social has new paper in PNAS that addresses this question on a massive scale: 7.3 million papers from Elsevier, PLOS, MDPI, and Frontiers.

The diffusion of large language models in published academic articles | PNAS

Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly changing academic research, raising questions of who is adopting these tools and under what conditions. Th...

pnas.org

jokaisella internetiin jotain sisältöä tuottavalla taholla on sama ongelma: kuinka saada jutut niille jota asia saattaisi kiinnostaa. ennen somea erilaiset viranomaiset muistaakseni lähinnä luotti siihen että ihmiset eksyy niiden verkkosivuille. ei kauhean tehokas ratkaisu. eli on hyvä [...]

Samuli Reijula@samulireijula.net · 3mo ago

Kiitos Vera, asia on oikeasti tärkeä. Kyse demokratian digitaalisesta infrastruktuurista. Siihen pitää tehdä julkisia investointeja. Jostain syystä somejättien ilmainen lounas vaan edelleen kiinnostaa myös julkistahoja 🤷‍♂️ suomenkuvalehti.fi/mielipide/ju...

Hallitus lanseerasi kehysriihessä ennennäkemättömän kuvion. 20M€ tutkijoiden itse hankkimasta EU-rahasta lasketaan lain mukaiseksi t&k-lisärahoitukseksi ja valtion omia panostuksia vähennetään saman verran. Järjestelmätasolla tällainen ajattelu luo käsittämättömän anti-insentiivin.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I applied in 2025. In step 1, the reviews found just one fault in my proposal: they doubted the feasibility of the (methodologically ambitious) project. -> B. In 2026 they stopped assessing feasibility in step 1. Now they decided that I can't apply in 2027 because of that B in 2025.

Applying for an ERC grant in the 2027 competitions: what you need to know

The ERC plans to launch the grant competitions under its 2027 Work Programme between July 2026 and June 2027, with the calls for proposals introducing several changes to the eligibility rules for appl...

erc.europa.eu

Celebrating the one-year anniversary of this submission. (For the first nine months, it was "with editor".)

I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸 We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto. The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

“I will NOT sacrifice the Oxford comma. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They assimilate the em dash and we fall back. They capture ‘not just X but y’ and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!”

We had a three-year project on pseudoscience in working life. Two papers introducting one of the project's key results – the notion of social pseudotechnology – are now out. I'm so proud of this team. Links in comments.

If you work on values in science, and have noticed that the literature is a bit too focused on values in science in Anglophone democracies – and that it therefore stays silent on issues that we should be talking about – please consider submitting an abstract to our workshop! (24–25 August, Helsinki)

CFP – Pre-conference workshop: Values in science in the rest of the world

24–25 August 2026, Helsinki – just before ENPOSS 2026 Keynote speakers: David Ludwig (Wageningen University) Karoliina Pulkkinen (University of Helsinki) The idea that social, political and ethical ...

blogs.helsinki.fi

And here - in one simple diagram - is why most of the “free speech” debating is insincere posturing. It’s not free speech the right supports. It’s control over the means of communication.

Janne M. Korhonen@jmkorhonen.fi · 5mo ago

A study of social media content 18-24-year olds see in #Finland, #France and #Romania shows that algorithms overwhelmingly feed them right-wing political content - whether or not the users are interested. Three country average for right wing content was 58% - in Finland, 67%! yle.fi/a/74-20214134

In our Perspectives on Science Seminar on March 2, Inkeri Koskinen & Santtu Kauppila (TINT / Helsinki) will give a talk titled “Towards a Satisfactory Social Epistemology of AI-based Science: Forward-looking trust in collective pursuit”. More here: tint-helsinki.fi/2026/02/24/2... #philski #philsky

We are organising a pre-conference workshop on Values in science in the rest of the world in Helsinki in August, just before ENPOSS 2026. Please consider submitting an abstract!

I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point. I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it

Our Perspectives on Science Seminar schedule for Spring 2026 is here. All are warmly welcome! #philsci #philsky

If you read one thing today, it should be this Iran report says 16,500 dead in ‘genocide under digital darkness’ www.thetimes.com/article/01ba...

Iran report says 16,500 dead in ‘genocide under digital darkness’

Witnesses tell of the brutality inflicted on those taking part in anti-regime protests

thetimes.com

a bunch of MEPs: trump's threats on Greenland are unacceptable. we must consider using the anti-coercion instrument me: that sounds reassuringly bureaucratic and not too anxiety-inducing. i should look that up wikipedia: "also known as the Trade Bazooka"

Yet another AI slop paper in a journal of a gigantic "academic" publisher that makes outrageous profit. It seems that e.g. Springer has no interest in even trying to control this.

Lameen Souag@lameensouag.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Hey, did you know that Greek lost the phoneme /h/ because of secularism? You see, /h/ intrinsically symbolises the Creator. And hydrogen. This journal is published by @springernature.com , and is hosted by @nature.com. How did this incoherent nonsense make it into print?

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

"I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato." surreal times dailynous.com/2026/01/06/t...

Texas A&M Bans Plato - Daily Nous

Drop the race and gender material from your course and the Plato readings, or teach a different course. You have a day to decide. That's a paraphrase of what Martin Peterson, professor of philosophy a...

dailynous.com

Olen nähnyt et:n kasvun epäpätevien opettajien heittopussista ammattitaidolla opetetuksi hienoksi oppiaineeksi, jolla on kunnon ops ja materiaalit. Huoli sen kohtalosta on iso, jos yhteinen katsomusaine käsitetään uskontojen esittelyksi. Toivottavasti yhteinen aine rakennetaan et:n pohjalta.

I finally got some time to flesh out my rant about these headlines... TL;DR: age differences ≠ aging jenndowd.substack.com/p/does-adole... #demography #episky #medsky #neurosky

Does adolescence really last until age 32?

Those “turning points” in brain aging aren’t quite what you think

jenndowd.substack.com

I deeply regret that this explainer thread about Finnish radical right racists insulting pretty much all Asians, and the “moderate” right parties being spineless servants of their financiers as usual, remains relevant. I can only say that the majority of Finns are appalled and ashamed too.

Janne M. Korhonen@jmkorhonen.fi · 8mo ago

So it unfortunately seems it's time for another #Finland Explainer thread about the most right-wing government in our history. Sigh. This time, the government that chases record unemployment, record indebtedness, and record fall in the young people's willingness to defend Finland, insults Asians.

Dismantling NCAR. Denying the science is not enough - they will destroy it. The Trump administration has gone full Lysenko. If the US is ever won back, this will be spoken of in the same way in the history books.

Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf@rahmstorf.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The Trump regime wants to dismantle a world leading climate research center. Why? Because the US has become a petrostate where the government has been captured by fossil fuel interests. They’re calling climate science “green new scam research”, in full denial of reality. 🤯

An academic disliked an Oxford Very Short Introduction (145 pages) in his field so much that he wrote a 200 page book review attacking it. www.pierre-legrand.com/ewExternalFi...

The number of global deaths of children under-5 is projected to increase this year (from 4.6m to 4.8m) for the first time this century. (FT) The price of aid cuts.