Kudos to @science.org for this self-analysis of the peer review process. These kind of data are never shared and don't have to be. Wildly refreshing to see it out in the open. Editorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Editorial and peer review dynamics at elite general science journals

Analyses of deidentified data reveal complex interactions that quantify success at elite general science journals.

science.org

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...

Gladstone et al (2026): "biographies of female scientists disproportionately emphasized effort even after adjusting for the obstacles they faced, consistent with stereotypes attributing women’s success to hard work over talent." 🧪 #psychscisky

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences@pnas.org · 6d ago

One of the most-viewed PNAS articles in the last week is ”Children’s books about scientists convey demotivating messages.” Explore the article here: https://ow.ly/oTon50ZuLj3 For more trending articles, visit https://ow.ly/TsjY50ZuLj2.

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...

How many languages have existed over the Holocene—and what does that reveal about the design space of languages and cultures? Now out in @science.org www.science.org/eprint/QDZNY....

The rise and fall of language diversity through the Holocene

Characterizing the factors that have shaped linguistic diversity is fundamental for understanding human history, culture, and cognition. In this study, we combined statistical and social computational...

science.org

Cool new paper about correcting the biases in cultural data using methods from ecology. royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

Correcting collection bias in comparative studies of diversity

Abstract. Comparative analyses of diversity in human populations often rely on historical, archival and observational data, which are systematically shaped

royalsocietypublishing.org

Wow, looking forward to this! And such a cool cover 🔥

Ricard Solé@ricardsole.bsky.social · last mo.

The first copy of my new @princetonupress.bsky.social book has just arrived at the office. It explores death in all its forms, from cells to minds, machines, languages and information. A complexity/evolutionary perspective, from Frankenstein to neuroscience. Soon out: www.amazon.com/Endless-Endi...

our new paper with @plechac.bsky.social puts thousands of poems across languages in one shared space of poetic form! we use sequence alignment on rhyme schemes to investigate 'fixed forms' and all things between: not only 'sonnets', but 'sonnet-like' things. doi.org/10.1371/jour...

How do people build new ideas from existing knowledge? By tracking Wikipedia searches, we found that novel ideas emerged when people balanced exploration with exploitation—alternating between distant topics and deep dives into related information.

Freshly out in @pnasnexus.org: "On the transmission of texts: Written cultures as complex systems" The first major publication of project @lostma.bsky.social , where we lay down our methodology for studying the transmission, evolution or disparition of texts. /1 #science 🧪

On the transmission of texts: Written cultures as complex systems

Abstract. Knowledge of past cultures relies heavily on surviving written material. Over the centuries, texts were copied, altered, and often lost, leaving

academic.oup.com

CES postdoc and PhD alert! 🚨

Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦@sobchuk.bsky.social · last mo.

📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!

Natural history on canvas: Brueghel knew about bird-eating noctule bats Just published in @pnas.org, OA for all eyes Led by the one-and-only @romero-vidal.bsky.social, with the amazing @elena-tena.bsky.social and Sonia Sánchez-Navarro @ebdonana.bsky.social LINK: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!

I am definitely applying! But, seriously, you should.

Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦@sobchuk.bsky.social · last mo.

📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!

Look and share widely! A new center starting up with great ideas and cool vibes! Highly recommended for digital humanities, cultural evolution and related folks interested in literature, history, and the arts. #culturalevolution #digitalhumanities #jobs

Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦@sobchuk.bsky.social · last mo.

📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!

📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!

All talks are now available including mine: www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZmF... Luckily the video became online on the same day as the paper I talked about at the end of my talk "confidentially" 😅

Du Paléolithique moyen au Paléolithique supérieur... (4) - Jean-Jacques Hublin (2025-2026)

YouTube video by Sciences de la vie - Collège de France

youtube.com

Collège de France@college-de-france.fr · last mo.

#Science #Paléoanthropologie 💀 « Sapiens remplace Néandertal » 🖥️ Les vidéos du colloque organisé par le  Pr Jean-Jacques Hublin, titulaire de la chaire Paléoanthropologie, sont disponibles. 👉 https://tinyurl.com/4pkf3nty

New interactive blog! "Why Adjusted Regression Coefficients Are Less Descriptive Than They Look" rpsychologist.com/descriptive-...

Some of the first work related to my ERC is now available as a preprint 👉 arxiv.org/pdf/2606.20623 We model the learning of real-world melodies as resource-constrained inference over generative programs, with new implications for Rate-distortion theory: learning changes what is cheap to encode! 🧵👇

Hanqi Zhou@hanqizhou.bsky.social · last mo.

Most models of learning ask what you can represent. We think the real bottleneck is what you can afford to find, since searching for a good representation is itself expensive. New preprint w/ @davidnagy.bsky.social, Peter Dayan & @thecharleywu.bsky.social 🧵👇

Hello! Pleased to share the UK (& commonwealth) hardback cover for The Thinking Animal. We went back and forth a bit with this one, and I wasn't sure at first, but it has really grown on me. What do you think?

LLMs are used widely in the behavioral sciences. But we have no good standards for how to do so. We introduce a consensus-based reporting checklist to improve transparency, reproducibility and ethical accountability of LLM-based research in the behavioural sciences. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A reporting checklist for large language models in behavioural science - Nature Human Behaviour

Large language models offer new opportunities for behavioural science, but their rapid evolution poses challenges for research rigour. We introduce a consensus-based reporting checklist to improve tra...

nature.com

Here's a proper mathematical model of the interaction between conformity and migration www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... mostly coming to the same conclusions as the simulations I did here journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Interaction of migration and frequency dependence in cultural populations

Migration has shaped cultural and genetic diversity. Population genetics shows that low migration rates between populations can homogenise them. Howev…

sciencedirect.com

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

Amazon and eBay give star ratings for seller trustworthiness — but should we trust eBay? Institutions that publicize reputations, from e-commerce to religious authorities, benefit from user participation. Hiro Okabe studied how such institutions will behave. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Reptiles with longer Wikipedia pages tend to be bigger. The relationship is a power law with exponent = 0.85. I guess humans really like writing about big lizards? The longest article is the Komodo Dragon.

New paper published with @andreskarjus.bsky.social as shared 1st author: We show experimentally that professional artists' skill set can transfer to making images with generative AI; tested with artists, laypeople, and GPT-4o copying an image or creatively diverging from it, only by prompting.

Expertise Elevates AI Usage: Experimental Evidence Comparing Laypeople and Professional Artists

Generative AI’s novel capacities raise questions about the future role of human expertise: does it level the playing field between professional artists and laypeople, or does expertise enhance AI u...

tandfonline.com

🚨New paper alert!🚨 In our new paper with @oliviermorin.bsky.social, Rowan Hall, and Marie Halo published in the Journal of Language Evolution, we explored the relationship between word length and ambiguity on a large-cross linguistic dataset. 1/6

Had a chance to present our new work on literary evolution at @ces2026.bsky.social conference. What you see on that slide is a dynamic network of influences between genres of fiction

Alex Mesoudi@alexmesoudi.com · 3mo ago

Supercool work by @sobchuk.bsky.social mapping dynamic networks of books / literature

More @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social conference talks! @babeheim.bsky.social on norm psychology, and in particular escalator standing norms in Japan

I just received my copy of the latest book by my @sfiscience.bsky.social colleague Douglas Erwin. A fascinating exploration of how innovation and novelty emerge in evolution. Looking forward to reading it. @multicellgenome.bsky.social @sfelena.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social @brigan.bsky.social