1/ @sadcatlab.bsky.social research "in press" at Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. In 274 adults with 7 weekly measurements, we find that cognitive change in CBT predicts subsequent symptom change, controlling for time-invariant confounds + linear trends osf.io/preprints/ps...

Good to see saliva is still relevant to associative learning...

Exciting day. My set-theoretic reconceptualization of the DSM (w/ MDD, GAD, and PTSD as empirical examples) is out today in JPCS, along with four invited commentaries and my response. I'm biased, but I recommend all six papers. I was really jazzed by all four commentaries. 1/25

www.nature.com/articles/s41... one pays a price to change research fields & directions but it's fun. so that's that.

As suspected the heat did a number on me and I was mostly busy with ruminating on heat-related issues. Anyways, here are a few papers I still was able to read (and process):

1. Do antidepressants really need weeks to "kick in"? A paper correctly dispelled this myth. Unfortunately, they replaced it with other problematic claims, igoring principles of RCTs. My letter to the editor was rejected, so I posted it on PubPeer and summarize it below pubpeer.com/publications...

Another week full of interesting science :) June 15th-20th reading list.

Anesthesia is just like dreamless sleep, right? RIGHT? Cover story @anesthesiology.bsky.social this month - we developed an operating room protocol to promote dreaming during emergence from anesthesia... under the best conditions we found that **93%** of patients had experiences

This week's Experimentology chapter is "Estimation". The most important move in planning an analysis isn't picking your test or your model — it's clearly defining what you're trying to estimate. 🧵 experimentology.io/005-estimat...

Really cool work! This group is doing some of the coolest and most relevant addiction research I'm aware of!

Atlantic article discussing current/novel psychedelics, emphasizing parameters like expectancies, context, compound, dose, etc. There is SO MUCH scientific work to do to improve on preliminary work & explore altering variables that have not yet been tested! www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/...

Even in Denmark, with its excellent provisions for children, parenthood marks a sharp divergence in academic careers (from employment to tenure to publications) for men and women -- for a variety of reasons reflecting both structure and agency. opus4.kobv.de/opus4-hsog/f...

After a short hiatus I got back into the paper reading flow. Started with some placebo work and then drifted to more diverse papers. Enjoy.

IMHO this is a fantastic collection of chapters! However I'm a bit biased as I contributed a chapter on neuropsychological risks of psychedelic use

Ein direkter Angriff auf unsere Demokratie. Einschüchtern und Angst verbreiten. Rechtsextremisten sind bereit für exzessive Gewalt bis hin zu Mord. www.hessenschau.de/gesellschaft...

Pretty much exactly the advice I give the predocs in our lab! I also encourage colleagues to add some individuality and passion into their talks: let the audience know why the topic of your talk is interesting TO YOU. I love hearing talks from people who deeply care about the subject.

This newly published paper is also a great companion piece: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Would be great to add placebo conditions (and suggestive conditions, as in @madelinestein.bsky.social work) to see how these results change!

Finally got around to reading this preprint. Fantastic work! This It's right up my alley and I believe quite important for psychedelic science. I'm actually in the middle of analyzing results from a similar project. Hope to share the results this year still 🤞 Congrats @madelinestein.bsky.social !

Reduced drug use without full abstinence should count as success, not failure. 
This topic is very important to me, harm reduction is ALWAYS a success.

One of our new projects with the University of Cambridge, Exploring the Grey Zone: A Biopsychosocial Approach to Religious Delusions and Conspiracy Beliefs, is looking to hire a fixed term Research Associate in Psychiatry or Psychology: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/researc...

Postdoc position @unimarburg.bsky.social in the project: "Bridging the Gap Between Verbal Psychological Theories & Formal Statistical Modeling with Large Language Models" (funded by @volkswagenstiftung.de) 📅Start: 01.10.2026 |⏳3 years 🔗 Job posting: uni-marburg.de/78NrWT Thanks for sharing!

Oh hell yeah @amnesty.org comes out swinging: "Amnesty International finds that standalone generative AI systems... are fundamentally incompatible with IHRL. As such, Amnesty International is calling for a prohibition of such systems." www.amnesty.org/en/documents...

My much more radical opinion is that all ethical approvals for human/animal biomedical research should be openly published, and all papers resulting from those studies should be easily linked to the approval. This one *really* freaks people out and I suspect we all know why.

An exciting opportunity to work closely with our lab - a fully funded PhD scholarship is available at the University of Sydney on the psychological mechanisms underlying the nocebo effect. Open to domestic + international applicants: - $42,754 p.a. for up to 3.5 years - Applications close 9 June

First week of approaching my goal of reading every paper using or discussing balanced placebo designs (BPD). Step 1, read all 166 results hits on pubmed. May 11th - May 16th:

Translation rocks! Congrats to @stefaniebrassen.bsky.social and team from @sfb-trr-289.bsky.social for her recent work on expectation responsiveness and longterm treatment trajectories in major depression published in Translational Psychiatry. www.clearskyscience.com/en/10.1038/s...

Here's a free link to the paper: rdcu.be/fiyrF

Found some interesting works for this week. Reading list, May 4th- May 10th:

I posted about the paper in questions previously and was astonished by the results. Great to see some pushpack on this!

**Circuit dynamics** Yesterday I shared this paper which I believe is in the right direction needed for basic/translational neuro. Here, I outline several ways in which it also falls short. So, right direction but... #neuroskyence

A few years ago (when working on The Edge of Sentience) I took a close look at the claims of "covert consciousness" in unresponsive patients with brain injuries - and the big risks on both sides of getting this wrong. It's now out in the Journal of Medical Ethics (1/3): jme.bmj.com/content/52/e...

#PostDoc #job available for 6 years at @uni-graz.at in the #clinical #psychology group. You will be working with #eyetracking, #fMRI and/or #EEG. We conduct research on, e.g., #disgust, #placebo effects, and #appetite. I'm happy to answer any questions about the job and the city of #Graz.

The SSA is recruiting people with lived or living experience of addiction to help shape the future of addiction science. -Online meetings (every four to six weeks) -Payment for involvement Apply now: www.addiction-ssa.org/about/joinin... #LivedExperience #AddictionResearch #PublicInvolvement

Claiming one's own preferred form of psychotherapy is somehow exceptional and must be kept pure is, ironically, the most standard and un-exceptional thing to do. People who identify with any particular form of therapy have done this since the beginning of therapy-school-based identity politics.

Reading diary, April 27th - May 3rd, back again on one of my favorite topics: drug science

New paper by Bruno Moses, Enzo Tagliazucchi, & me in which we critique the Entropic Brain Hypothesis & neural entropy metrics regarding what they can tell us about psychedelic fx. Lots of technical and theoretical points, but I'd like to highlight a few. 1/10 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

📣 The difference between replicable and not replicable is not itself scientifically replicable. 📣 New work with Erkan Buzbas, showing that verdicts such as "X% of results replicated" are based on an inferential machinery that doesn't work. arxiv.org/abs/2604.26268

Here are the most popular neuromodulators (made you a new github repo): github.com/koerding/neu...

Reading list April 12th - April 19th:

Would love to see such a fantastic approach for all neuromodulatory chemicals

been thinking a lot about this 1972 Weizenbaum paper a lot lately, especially when i hear people say things like access to llms reduce inequality by leveling the playing field, solve the mental health crisis & the loneliness pandemic, etc, all of which are problems rooted in very technology itself

Me agreeing to a new project knowing full well it’s gonna add stress 🇲🇽

This is it. This is the editorial that nails everything wrong with not only celebrating the recent psychedelic EO but the flaw at the heart of where our modern psychedelic renaissance has ended up.

I don't know if I'm just turning into a Luddite but replacing participants with technology seems just preposterous to me. Imo it completely destroys the human part of psychological science.

Years ago @mikeduncan.bsky.social told me "you can rewrite shit but you can't rewrite nothing" and it's made every draft easier since.

Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

Paper haul for April 13th-April 19th:

I feel like this is part of a broader cultural tend towards an exclusive focus on "critique" - we're developing infinite ways to articulate how things can be bad and/or getting worse, but very little to balance it out and recognize that good things are good.