Rahia Mashoodh

@rmash.bsky.social

UCL Research Fellow in epigenetics, inheritance, and behaviour. Lover of R, tinkering and food. Sometimes I hurt myself bicycling. 🪲🇨🇦🚲

"Hence our dismal conclusion: rather than finding that LLMs free us to do a better job of what we were doing before they came along, they shift scientific incentives (and the playing field of academic competition) in ways that compel us to do more and more, faster and faster, less and less well."

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 2w ago

1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.

I looked at this but left it out of the post, because the gender inference tool could only classify 44% of first authors and 31% of last authors. But given this caveat, this is the distribution: First authors: 71% male, 29% female Last authors: 83% male, 17% female

And that's why I think this is an example of endemic problems in our field. So much of the field thinks of stats as an afterthought. A technicality. The thing you use to tell your story. But if you use faulty heuristics to evaluate the quality of your model, your story could be complete bullshit.

Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in Leuven, 18-19 December is fast approaching! Please come and join us & submit your abstract before the 31st of October! Will be great fun & excellent lineup of speakers, with plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social!

Tom Wenseleers@twenseleers.bsky.social · 10mo ago

🚨 Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in beautiful Leuven, 18-19 December has been extended to 31st October 2025 🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social

Mine are mostly cons (if we're talking generic LLMs like ChatGPT and not bespoke ML models developed&trained in-house) 1. I don't trust them. I can't trust them bec they do not/cannot have a sense of truth or care for the integrity of the work. They bullshit randomly and don't know the difference.

To be, or not to be, part-time in academia? This is a tricky question that has faced many of us and in @elife.bsky.social we discuss the benefits and challenges of being part-time. With @emiliapsantos.bsky.social and a fantastic, interdisciplinary team! elifesciences.org/articles/106...

Point of View: To be, or not to be, part-time in academia

Part-time working can be beneficial for individual academics, and also for academia as a whole.

elifesciences.org