This week on Wonkhe: The next four years of research funding will be organised in a very different way. Michael Salmon and James Coe explore how

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it

Physicist Leo Szilard, in a short science fiction story from 1948, describing how to retard science by making the funding application longer and harder than the proposed research - now called the ‘Szilard point’

Gorgeously put-together paper, complete with TVA reference *chef's kiss*

Jason is all of us.

Fascinating finding and very creative approach: Agua et al. (2025). Modeling Hierarchical Brain Dynamics Outperforms Hormonal Biomarkers in Predicting Menstrual Cycle Phases www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Vicarious body maps bridge vision and touch in the human brain. Fantastic work by @nickhedger.bsky.social and colleagues 👏

beside myself 😬

Fun read; my 2p: 1. The definition of consciousness is unsatisfactory. IMHO Nagel's notion is a dead end; the critical definition is that of 'having an experience'. 2. The definition of computational functionalism does not do justice to the value of functionalism, neglecting its causal implications.

This interview by @nigelwarburton.bsky.social with @keithfrankish.com on phil mind book suggestions is going round again. Strong recommend, both for the list itself and for Keith's clarity of thinking and description. What has been published since that could challenge these amazing books for a spot?

I will be teaching these two posts in my scientific writing class.

Well put. Useful 🧵

Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century:

This is inspired!

Psychiatry / Computational Psychiatry / Nutritional Psychiatry

legend

Fund #science for its own sake and the applications will follow. The flip side of this coin is that the pursuit of quick "impact" risks allocating scarce resources to unworthy bandwagons. So, fund (and manage, administer, review, nurture, support, study, do) #science for its own sake.

This is a problem.

Please RT 2 new positions in the lab as postdoc & PhD! Interested in stress, pain, or reward? This project has it all! We are a friendly but ambitious group. Oslo is a capital city on the fjord & bordered by forest, great urban & outdoors opportunities: 💃 ⛷️ 🚣 🎭 🎶 www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

You see this, post a concert pic that you took.

A Journal Club by Rodrigues and Sobrinho on our recent paper "Evidence for control of cerebral neurovascular function by circulating platelets in healthy older adults" in @jphysiol.bsky.social physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Academia.edu is changing its Terms and Conditions, and they're so outrageous (AI training; signing over ownership to them etc) I closed my account today. A thread with some practical tips if you want to delete your account (5 steps):

"renew, restore, rebuild" www.thesun.co.uk/news/3678572...

what fresh hell is this

Yes! www.ft.com/content/3a91...

It is disconcerting that governments and organisations are unthinkingly pushing "growth" strategies centred around AI. Who is meant to grow, and in what way? The AI bandwagon is fuelled by a dangerous lack of understanding that looks like 'magical thinking', as @melaniemitchell.bsky.social explains.

Join the Charlie Waller Trust on their UK Walk for Wellbeing, taking on the South Downs Challenge on the 11th of October. A great way to help them continue their crucial work, empowering young people to achieve and sustain better mental health. charliewaller.org/get-involved...

This is dense but comprehensive and interesting. h/t @wiringthebrain.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/151a...

Superb team effort by Greece to beat Lithuania and make it to the semifinals. Wonderfully mature performance by omnipresent Kostas Antetokounmpo 🏀👋

All model organisms should have a theme tune 🦐

My day is ruined after the BFF reveals he has yet to visit a website to register for the opportunity to receive a text that may unlock a slim chance to maybe buy @radiohead.bsky.social tickets it's been two hours I don't want to have to divorce him he's really nice why does everything happen to me

Write less, review more. 💯 Academic energy is totally misplaced. Writing a paper should be only the end of a long, difficult journey of experimentation, failure, and peer input in all kinds of different formats, including through our own peer review of the work of others.

If you can look past the possibility that Tim is contributing to these conversations in the loo, this is a brilliant analogy for explaining that things like function and cause only exist because they help us make sense of the world, not because they map onto natural kinds.

This one nearly killed me. Spain fought valiantly. My MVP: Tyler Ntorsey 🏀🇬🇷 #eurobasket2025

New Open dataset alert: 🧠 Introducing "Spacetop" – a massive multimodal fMRI dataset that bridges naturalistic and experimental neuroscience! N = 101 x 6 hours each = 606 functional iso-hours combining movies, pain, faces, theory-of-mind and other cognitive tasks! 🧵below

current mood...

Nature laughs at your pet construct. "What we may actually be measuring is what the animals are choosing to do at that point in time." What a story, by (who else) @whippletom.bsky.social

The perfect summer evening for @theblackkeys.bsky.social at legendary Alexandra Palace 🎸

With Glastonbury far enough behind us, perhaps we can now muster the feedback of music fans, artists, DJs, festival goers, and everyone who loves live and electronic music. Shape the future of live and electronic music in the UK committees.parliament.uk/work/9161/fa...

#fMRS Symposium II 31 Aug - 2 Sep Bangor, UK Wrap up the summer in gorgeous North Wales, with the nicest scientific community. Submit NOW! Any topic re functional MRS (neuro, physio, methods) pgmm03.uk/functional-m... Followed by: 9th GABA/Advanced Edited MRS Symposium pgmm03.uk/edited-spect...

"You actually can do this, you know. You can just try to highlight the beauty of things you like and not try to vampirically extract value at every step." 💯

A light pierces the darkness, as the @leverhulme.ac.uk marks its centenary by reaffirming trust in UK academic research through investment in innovative interdisciplinary inquiry. www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/100mill...

The name of my university, Reading*, causes all kinds of confusion with international colleagues. And in our own docs: are we discussing reading week or Reading week? Good to see psychology colleagues leaning into it, with their excellently-named "Reading Emotion" conference. *pronounced "Redding"

Job alert! We are recruiting at the Centre for the Politics of Feelings (www.politics-of-feelings.com) for a post-doc interested in emotions & politics. Focus on health & politics is highly desirable. Info: Deadline 11th July. Please share! www.jobs.london.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

Thank you to all you participated in this year's edition of Reading Emotions #ReadEmo25. @wiebkegandhi.bsky.social and @richharrison.bsky.social will be chairing #ReadEmo26 on pain! Watch this space, and see you next year! sites.google.com/site/reading...

Closing remarks by our co-chair @bhisma.bsky.social (with Tan Wingenbach), wrapping up a successful #ReadEmo25! The interdisciplinary mix and extensive opportunities for interaction have been rewarding as ever!

Our last session at #ReadEmo25 is a first for the series, with Leanne Proops talking about facial expressions in non-human animals, presenting her work with horses! 🐎

Next up this afternoon at #ReafEmo25, Shota Uono is discussing emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorder.