Patrick S. Forscher

@psforscher.bsky.social

Senior Behavioral Scientist at Busara, a non-profit that does behavioral science to advance development. Strong interest in applied meta-research. https://patrickforscher.com/

Prominent researchers in my field spent over 2 decades telling big stories about the relation between brain & mental health with very little robust data. This has led to really crazy stuff like this, impossible if we had not normalized this bizarre storytelling. www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

A scientist says he can scan prisoners’ brains for signs of evil. Did his disputed science put a man on death row?

Kent Kiehl convinced the US legal system he can find violence in prisoners’ brains. His theories have been since used by defense lawyers – with grave consequences for prisoners

theguardian.com

Thoughtful piece: “as a field, we seem to have given up on our representation issue. We know about it, we say we care about it, but the decisions we make (from what demographic data to collect to what papers to publish) suggests to me that we've become apathetic about it all”

The Psychologist@psychmag.bsky.social · last wk.

Representation in Psychology – just another impossible problem? Megan E. Birney (University of Birmingham) considers a WEIRD, but worryingly pervasive, research issue. Plus a response from the British Psychological Society's Academic Publications Team. www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

Since I'm seeing this paper popping up in my feed: This doesn't mean what people seem to think it means. H1 Connect is a post-pub recommendation service. Low paper variance is exactly what you'd expect if peer review is *very good* at translating expert consensus into publication decisions

Alejandro Montenegro@aemonten.bsky.social · 2w ago

"Here we show, in a large post-publication peer review database, that research assessment is driven more by differences between evaluators than by difference in the evaluated research. " arxiv.org/abs/2607.09783

Congratulations to the project “Replication Research (R2),” which received🏆2026 SIPS Mission Award! Replication Research is a diamond open-access journal that publishes reproductions, replications, and conceptual articles concerning the repetition of research. 🔗 replicationresearch.org

Replication Research

A diamond open-access journal publishing replications, reproductions, and meta-scientific research.

replicationresearch.org

China’s largest cherry blossom 🌸garden — Pingba in Guizhou Province. Home to more than half a million stunning cherry trees, it has become one of China 🇨🇳 most breathtaking natural landscapes.🌸

New preprint w/ Leo Tiokhin & @lakens.bsky.social! Registered Reports (RRs) are great for science b/c publication is guaranteed before results are known, reducing publication bias & QRPs. This feature supposedly also makes them great for *scientists*. But is that really true? 1/ tinyurl.com/4sy993rr

Career incentives make Registered Reports unattractive under realistic academic conditions

Registered Reports are a publication format designed to reduce publication bias by guaranteeing publication before results are known. This guarantee is considered attractive in the prevailing ‘publish...

tinyurl.com

Purely anecdotal, but I used to get a cough each winter that would last months - since replacing our gas stove with induction several years ago, my lungs have stayed clear. I'm delighted but not entirely surprised by results of this study. We should not be burning gas in our homes (or anywhere).

Sammy Roth@sammyroth.bsky.social · 2w ago

Insane new research. Scientists gave asthma patients free electric stoves to replace their gas stoves, then checked to see if symptoms improved. Not only did symptoms improve, ditching gas was *better than medicine.* Details in today's newsletter: www.climatecoloredgoggles.com/p/electric-s...

People view AI as “unbiased” in the same way that people have less issue with statistical versus taste-based discrimination. As long as you can ground it in numbers by saying people with x characteristics are more likely to do y. And never ask about the training data.

The Breach@breachmedia.ca · 3w ago

Ontario jails are using an AI tool that claims to predict prisoners’ behaviour. And it’s disproportionately placing Black prisoners in maximum security. An investigation by @desmondcole.bsky.social reveals the province knew the tool would discriminate against Black people—and used it anyway.

New post! "Making Sense of Replications (and Some Nonsense about the Replication Crisis)," in which I suggest a journal club reading list of new papers on replication, and push back on claims that the replication crisis is fake. getsyeducated.substack.com/p/making-sen...

Making Sense of Replications (and Some Nonsense about the Replication Crisis)

It’s hard to overstate just how much the culture around replication in science has changed over the past 15 years.

getsyeducated.substack.com