Code profiling russpoldrack.substack.com/p/code-profi... - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series

Code profiling

Better Code, Better Science: Chapter 10, Part 3

russpoldrack.substack.com

Great to hear @emilyjacobs.bsky.social talking about her lab's amazing work on precision neuroimaging of women's brains radiolab.org/podcast/this...

This is Your Brain on Hormones - Transcript

We don’t have hormones, hormones have us.

radiolab.org

I love the fact that the solution to our incessant wifi router problems was simply to turn off the "Smart Connect" function.

Special Issue Call for Submissions to Psych Science: “Advancing Psychological Science using Large Language Models” www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

The consensus in our lab is that Claude 5.0 is significantly dumber than Claude 4.8. Just this morning I had it review my blog post and it came back with several criticisms that were incorrect, which it admitted as soon as I pushed it on them. I'm moving back to 4.8 for now.

Are LLMs bullshit machines? russpoldrack.substack.com/p/are-llms-b... - This is a test post for a possible section for Better Code, Better Science - I'd love to hear your feedback!

Are LLMs bullshit machines?

This is a possible section from the open-source living textbook Better Code, Better Science, which is being released in sections on Substack. The entire book can be accessed here and the Github reposi...

russpoldrack.substack.com

Twelve quick tips for AI-assisted coding in science journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol... - our latest by @ericwbridgeford.bsky.social with @thisisadax.bsky.social , Zijiao Chen, Zhicheng Lin, @hritz.bsky.social and @joachim.cidlab.com

Twelve quick tips for AI-assisted coding in science

While AI coding tools have demonstrated potential to accelerate software development, their use in scientific computing raises critical questions about code quality and scientific validity. In this pa...

journals.plos.org

Next time you get excited about how your coding agent solved a really hard problem for you, splash a bit of this cold water on your face - the source (metr.org/blog/2026-05...) should be essential reading for anyone using coding agents.

In this new preprint, @jocelynricard.bsky.social argues for a more intentional and principled approach to the measurement of neighborhood-level effects on brain development. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Area-level context and functional brain organization across the lifespan

The neighborhoods children grow up in are associated with cognitive and mental health outcomes across the lifespan. Yet how neighborhood-level factors are quantified, and how they relate to large-scal...

biorxiv.org

Performance optimization (and why you shouldn't optimize prematurely) russpoldrack.substack.com/p/optimizing... - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series, featuring this great quote from my Stanford colleague Donald Knuth

I've posted a preprint of a philosophical paper I've written on the relationships between understanding, prediction, and compression, based on a talk I gave at SPAN 2025. Now in press at Synthese. philarchive.org/archive/POLUPA

Representing data in Python russpoldrack.substack.com/p/representi... - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series

Representing data in Python

Better Code, Better Science: Chapter 3, bonus section

russpoldrack.substack.com

Managing Complexity: The Primary Concern of Software Engineering russpoldrack.substack.com/p/managing-c... - A recently added section to the software engineering chapter of Better Code, Better Science

Managing Complexity: The Primary Concern of Software Engineering

Better Code, Better Science: Chapter 3, bonus section

russpoldrack.substack.com

Analytic variability and multiverse analysis - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series russpoldrack.substack.com/p/analytic-v...

Analytic variability and multiverse analysis

Better Code, Better Science: Chapter 9, Part 7

russpoldrack.substack.com

This week I am posting some recently written bonus sections of Better Code, Better Science in honor of the Neurohackademy where I will be talking today and tomorrow. Today's post: Programming paradigms in Python russpoldrack.substack.com/p/programmin...

Programming paradigms in Python

Better Code, Better Science: Chapter 2, bonus section

russpoldrack.substack.com

Better Code, Better Science is back after a bit of travel. We also have a new web site (bettercode-book.org). Next week I will post a number of bonus articles based on sections added since the original posts - stay tuned! russpoldrack.substack.com/p/statistica...

Statistical calibration using randomization

Better Code, Better Science: Chapter 9, Part 6

russpoldrack.substack.com

This is an incredibly insightful article by my Stanford colleague John Ousterhout about all the ways that performance measurement can go wrong in software development. I think it could be particularly useful reading for people chasing benchmarks in AI right now. cacm.acm.org/research/alw...

Scott Atlas worked in my field. His most notable study is an fMRI experiment looking at the neural correlates of erections that was so poorly designed I used to teach it in my class on the dangers of sloppy design. His opinions are about as worthless as his science.

Jeremy Berg@jeremymberg.bsky.social · last mo.

Scott Atlas, the champion of herd immunity as an Fox News commenter and the Trump Advisor during COVID, weighs in with a DEEPLY MININFORMED op-ed in the WaPo. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202... 1/7

Our lab guide now includes an explicit AI usage policy: www.poldracklab.org/labguide/res...

Jennifer Eberhardt, @spruill.bsky.social, and Julia Proshan attended the APS 2026 convention!🌟 Eberhardt received the James S. Jackson Lifetime Achievement Award, and Proshan presented on the relationship between historical redlining and current disparities in police officers' treatment of drivers.

“agents should not directly touch the text of the paper. Paper text should be written by a human.” This is my lab’s explicit policy as well. As always, @mcxfrank.bsky.social nails it.

Mike Frank@mcxfrank.bsky.social · last mo.

Some thoughts on how to collaborate on reproducible paper writing with AI agents, without them introducing hallucinated references or other issues into your paper. babieslearninglanguage.blogspot.com/2026/06/help...

Issue 49 of #rdmweekly! 📬 ➡️ Better Code, Better Science @russpoldrack.org ➡️ Improving acknowledgments sections to better credit research contributors @alexh.bsky.social ➡️ Data Reuse is the Sincerest Form of Flattery @scholarlykitchen.bsky.social and more! rdmweekly.substack.com/p/rdm-weekly...

RDM Weekly - Issue 049

A weekly roundup of Research Data Management resources.

rdmweekly.substack.com

Congrats to our own @markiewicz.bsky.social for winning the OHBM Open Science Award!

How can we acquire new knowledge and skills on a daily basis while remaining the same person? I'm excited to share our new preprint led by @hyejinjadelee.bsky.social & Ally Dworetsky tackling this question, just in time for #OHBM2026: doi.org/10.64898/202... 🧵👇 #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky

Functional brain organization is stable within individuals across years

Brain regions exhibit dynamic yet highly coordinated activity patterns that form large-scale functional networks measurable through resting-state correlations. While their association with fluctuating...

doi.org

The Stanford Report did a nice writeup of the work that our center has been doing alongside Steve Goodman's SPORR. I think it's a great example of how people can work in tandem on similar topics within an institution and jointly get credit, rather than competing.

Heidi Baumgartner@hbaum.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Nice write-up of Stanford's CORES and SPORR groups. Very lucky to be part of a great community of folks (including @russpoldrack.org, Steve Goodman, & @mcxfrank.bsky.social, all mentioned here) working to improve how we science

wow, Fable is basically useless for anything related to neuroscience. e.g., in response to the prompt "What is the neural basis of cognitive control?" it falls back to Opus with the attached message. I appreciate guardrails but this makes the model useless for science.

It was fun to participate in this! huggingface.co/papers/2606....

Paper page - Agents' Last Exam

Join the discussion on this paper page

huggingface.co

Simulation-based inference russpoldrack.substack.com/p/simulation... - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series

Simulation-based inference

Better Code, Better Science: Chapter 9, Part 5

russpoldrack.substack.com

Estimating parameters using optimization russpoldrack.substack.com/p/estimating... - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series

Estimating parameters using optimization

Better Code, Better Science: Chapter 9, Part 4

russpoldrack.substack.com

"Nobody needs convincing that a science of the Meaning of Life is the wrong project. I will argue that a science of phenomenal consciousness is wrong for exactly the same reason: neither is amenable to the third-person perspective science requires." by @profdata.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2606.00226

Consciousness, AI, and the Limits of Scientific Explanation

Science is constitutively third-personal: its findings are in principle reproducible by any observer, independent of perspective, and answerable to measurement. This is the source of its power and als...

arxiv.org