These are the source of a lot of my own daily "Primate Profiles" (I didn't get the name from there I promise!) and are fantastically detailed and wonderful to read. Highly recommend to anyone who wants to know more about primates!

The present direction of travel risks irreversible damage to UK higher education, research and innovation, to scholarship, and to our capacity to shape the future…

As the crisis in UK higher education and research deepens, the British Academy’s President, Susan J Smith (@sjs1869.bsky.social) has urged an immediate and comprehensive review to secure the sector's long-term sustainability. See the full statement: https://bit.ly/4v8jdks

"Higher testosterone levels were associated with increased infection risk but lower parasite load. However, these findings were only evident among adolescents (ages 12–19) and only for Trichuris trichiura (whipworm) but not Ascaris lumbricoides (roundworm) infections"

The University of Exeter have announced a programme of academic staff cuts, including all of www.exeter.ac.uk/research/gro... Sign the open letter of support at docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... @crab-exeter.bsky.social

Google now uses more power than the country of New Zealand as the quality of its core product continues to spiral down toward complete enshitification.

🗣️"what we call “tweaking” – deserves to be treated with the same seriousness as outright fabrication and data manipulation" #ResearchIntegrity #ResearchEthics #SocialScience

Well this is alarming: Suella Bravermann, ex-Home Secretary and Reform’s current Education spokesperson, will be discussing higher education policy with Chris Rufo, a highly effective far-right activist, at a conference at a British university later this month

Social scientists📣The FCDO has 11 Senior Research Fellowship placements for UK academics in a variety of fields incl. gender & equity; conflict; economic development; tech, geopolitics & information manipulation; global health & more. ⏰ Closes on 30 August. ➡️ www.grtd.fcdo.gov.uk/call-for-app...

Time and again I think that THIS is the stat universities should shout, shout & shout again about. New education export data again show HE responsible for nearly three-quarters of a £37bn UK revenue source. Fund our universities! Source: explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statist...

Too many of us repeat the statement that trust in science is falling. Is it really the case? The data don’t support this conclusion in a straight forward way. Science may have an influence & comms problem more than a trust problem, in fact… but it’s complex 👇🏻 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Low-educated groups die at higher rates from nearly every cause, yet the share of deaths from each cause is almost the same as in high-educated groups. So the common idea that they die mostly of "avoidable" diseases doesn't quite hold. Denmark and the US both 🇩🇰🇺🇸 Open Access 👇

On this day in 1858, the scientific world first heard the idea of evolution by natural selection from a joint presentation by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London. It is a case of integrity and collaboration (thread below 👇) #Evolution #EvoKE #OTD 🧪

Unpopular strategic opinion of the day. You can focus on the fact that it took too long and when it happened was about a Russell group university. Or, you can seize on the fact that Exeter's supporters are addressing the wider challenges to the sector and to Humanities and Social Sciences. 1/2

A depressingly long list of universities who are implementing cuts and redundancies, as well as the petitions and actions against them (via @onslies.bsky.social) qmucu.org/qmul-transfo.... This is a national emergency that should be responded to with national policy.

Editors of a journal run by a prestigious math institute will close up shop and form a new journal with an independent publisher, with one editor citing Wiley’s increased oversight as the reason behind the move.

Hybrid conference coming up "Beyond Birth Rates: Advancing a Pro-Alignment Approach to Low Fertility in North America": 20 August, Montreal & online Discussions focus on facing our demographic future with facts not fear & developing policies that respect reproductive autonomy & support all families

'With the higher-education sector generating £52.3bn of income, any large-scale losses would first and foremost hit the public purse as well as further compound this country’s significant productivity problem.' (Prof. Anne-Marie Kilday, VC University of Northampton) 1/3

Applications for the Postdoctoral Fellowships are open. This fellowship is a three-year award made to an annual cohort of outstanding early-career researchers in the humanities or social sciences. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4xWduAS

If you have (or will soon) complete your PhD & would like to join a thriving cultural evolution research group in NEW ZEALAND, drop me a line. UoA offers a handful of funded research fellowships. Applications must be made by a faculty member. Deadline August. Pls share with your students

“This is irresponsible. Given the current climate of the culture wars, chancellors and presidents—in consultation with their donors, of course—will have their own ideas about how to cash this blank check they have been handed.” Philosopher Richard Moran on a recent report on humanities scholarship:

“his pride and joy the Mankind Quarterly” from an obituary of Roger Pearson

"If the research community truly wants healthy, trustworthy research, it must start by creating healthier, more trustworthy research environments. Because - although this may represent a significant shift in perspective for many - the bad barrel makes bad apples"

Primate Profiles #51: Putty-nosed monkey Males are usually at the group edge, rarely interacting with females and offspring. When threatened, the male takes the lead and mobs the predator to allow females to escape. They group with other guenons to reduce predation. Image: @photokeen (iNat.org)

Good data is essential for policy. Today it’s been a year since we had a permanent National Statistician. No news on what is happening with the current recruitment which began Oct 2025. This is an under the bonnet issue that points to state failure 🧵 uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/news/stateme...

Poppy wrote a blog about her new paper showing that vaccination in the first half of the menstrual cycle is associated with higher likelihood of reporting side effects, possibly because of a stronger immune response to the vaccine press.lshtm.ac.uk/blog-18

Summary of a fascinating paper which reconstructed historical trends in child stunting worldwide: "the reductions achieved in child stunting represent one of the great, if underappreciated, improvements in human welfare"

Very, very happy that our paper is finally out! We look at how tight a fit primates experience at birth, and found really cool results. It has been a long journey from collecting the first data seven years ago! A brief thread (1/8) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A tight fit between the birth canal and the baby’s head is not unique to humans, with comparable or tighter fits found in several other primates, including squirrel monkeys and bush babies, according to a study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. go.nature.com/4vDV0nu 🌎🧪

Primate Profiles #50: Black-tailed marmoset Parents carry infants until just 2 weeks old, after which older siblings take over. By 8 weeks old, infants spend 90% of their time moving independently. Marmoset families sleep in holes in trees and cacti 🌵 Image: W Teixeira Florentino (iNat.org)

Cultural evolution and digital humanities people check out the very cool positions @sobchuk.bsky.social is recruiting for! #EHBEA #CES

📢NEW RESOURCE: A new web resource and accompanying report to explore the vulnerabilities to political interference of 33 key UK scientific public bodies & 11 scientific advisory committees! unchecked.uk/public_body_... 1/7

Next week on You’re Dead To Me we’re exploring the history of Eugenics — sadly, it’s not confined to history 👇

The manifesto of Germany's far-right party includes plans to co-opt demography for their political agenda. We are now very literally re-running the 1930s

It starts in Germany now too….

This Special Feature from #ProcB showcases research from scientists, countries and regions underrepresented in the scientific literature, while addressing inequities in publishing and "helicopter science". Discover the collection: buff.ly/RjnbPC7 | #Ecology #GlobalSouth

Recommended listen on why race science isn’t scientific, or even pseudoscientific (because race scientists don’t put in enough work to be considered either…)

This is an important intervention. It is also a demonstration of a major weakness of eugenics and race science & eugenics (race science etc.): They sound evolutionary without doing the evolution. Attacking race science etc. on this front as @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social does is vital.1/7

Someone submitted a paper and said in the acknowledgments: "AI made it possible to explore an unfamiliar academic discipline with a level of linguistic precision and scholarly orientation that would previously have required years of immersion." Fun for the writer, not so good for science.

Excellent post explaining why it’s not possible to breed criminality out of human populations, a claim beloved of eugenicists. Did not realise the source of this particular claim 👇 was a paper published in Evolutionary Psychology

The average immigrant worker in Canada's biggest immigration wave faced a large & persisting earnings penalty relative to the native-born, according to Ian Keay & Daniel Teeter who use new complete count census data to argue that assimilation was slower in Canada than in the US.

The right takes academia seriously, and is pouring money into neutering it. Would be good to see left wing politicians taking academia equally seriously, and taking action to support it www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The University of Exeter is not in budget deficit. Yet are proposing to cut 150 academic jobs. This include my job. Please sign and share the petition, write our Vice Chancellor, to your MP, and get the word out about the act of self harm this university is about to commit. c.org/yKcx6Zr29H

One of Elon Musk's most cryptic posts says this: "Whatever happens, we have got the spaceships, and they do not." We decode this here. It's a serious statement about the future he actually envisions: newrepublic.com/article/2119...

Not suffering too badly from the UK’s lack of air conditioning this evening

Paper under discussion here is very weird all round. Another data source for analysis is Wikipedia 🤔 and claimed changes in sexual dimorphism in height are interpreted as the result of sexual selection even though these changes occurred over mere decades

The 1901 Canadian census was the first to enumerate earnings for an entire employed population. Shari Eli, Nicholas Li & Janki Shah review the strengths & limits of these newly available data alongside other historical status indicators with particular attention to the social position of farmers.

The 1901 population census is the single most complete tally of Indigenous peoples in territory claimed by Canada. This new paper argues the census was a colonial construction limited by its presuppositions but still informative of the diversity of First Nations including a large number of Metis.

The rhythmic patterns of laughter found in apes and humans reveal that complex primate vocal control might have started evolving 15 million years ago go.nature.com/4eO0lkT