Long day, filled with very productive (Board of Trustees) meetings at the @klaus-tschira-stiftung.de and catching the closing ceremony of the @hlforum.bsky.social.

Report: You To Be Fired For Reading This Headline About Charlie Kirk

“There's a 25% chance that the future of #AI will go "really, really badly".”

“Meta proposed … [that] [r]esearchers could also write about their findings more vaguely, avoiding terms like “not compliant” or “illegal.”” Another reason why Meta forcing arrangements to have their employees as co-authors on academic publications is so deeply troubling.

"Acceptance of the scientific consensus was very high in the sample as a whole (95.1%), but also in every sub-sample (e.g. no trust in science: 87.3%) ... [P]eople are motivated to reject specific scientific beliefs, and not science as a whole." journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

"Many researchers and educators lack the critical AI tools and resources to investigate fundamental #AI questions and train students."

“Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically? An astounding 88 percent said yes.”

Grateful to the Responsible AI Initiative for allowing me to spend time with them this fall. And looking forward to conversations and collaborations with @utah.edu colleagues about innovating responsibly in this deeply disruptive space.

"As a result, on September 30, 2025 this service and the associated software, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued." Holy sh*t! 😜

"[A]lthough universities unleashed an age of massive technical innovation, they failed to innovate their own designs to meet the changing needs of society." Most elite universities are ill-prepared for the corrosive amalgam of #AI, societal #polarization, and their own academic echo chambers ...

“[W]hether it's the way you pay your taxes, whether it's through health-care records, whether it's small things that apply to get a permit through international park or a campsite. All of this stuff is going to be part of the AI fabric,” US goes full China on #AI …

"[O]nly 1 percent of Google searches resulted in the users clicking on the link in the AI summary, which takes them to the page Google is summarizing." #AI won't kill the Enlightenment. Enlightenment will LLM itself to death ...

In the U.S., Democrats' confidence in institutions reaches new lows while Republicans' confidence has increased, mirroring which party holds the presidency. Confidence remains high for institutions like small business, the military, and science. news.gallup.com/poll/692633/...

I don’t understand how Wück didn’t bench the goalie after that first half …

In @pnas.org, we outline current challenges #scicomm research faces, incl. social media having all the power over data and issues that come with that. @dietram.bsky.social Press release: attheu.utah.edu/science-tech... Paper: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... @uofuhumanities.bsky.social

Scientists who show humility and recognize that science "doesn't have all the answers" will be more effective communicators with society, argues @dietram.bsky.social. Read more: https://morgridge.org/story/for-effective-science-communication-just-the-facts-isnt-good-enough/ #SciComm

"[T]he terms of what it is like to be a human are about to change in ways that rival the transformations of the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution, only much more quickly." One of the better #AI reads, and related to the "accelerated wickedness" of COVID-19 ... slate.com/technology/2...

Better late than never: The correct link with all the articles. My apologies! www.pnas.org/topic/575

“Scientists do a good job of answering the technical questions they think are relevant, about the risks and the benefits, but these are not the questions communities are asking.” Great chatting with @morgridgeinstitute.bsky.social’s Brian Mattmiller about our @pnas.org Colloquium issue …

“Switching languages frequently in the course of a day (or conversation) may be particularly important.”

"Scientists must compete in an attention economy in which they are just one of many voices, and in which ... algorithms now serve as ... gatekeeper." Is #scicomm becoming its own wicked problem? With huge gratitude to my co-authors, excited to finally see this in "print" ... #openaccess

Excited to see the @pnas.org colloquium issue for the 5th @nationalacademies.org "Reimagining #SciComm" colloquium finally being live. #openaccess www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

“They’re like a salad, but less refreshing, or like a sandwich, but less filling—a worst-of-all-worlds Frankenstein’s monster, an indistinguishable food slurry wrapped in edible cardboard.” I miss Gawker-type writing …

A few months ago, Nature published how-to guide for using ChatGPT to write your peer reviews in 30 minutes. This is, of course, a horrible idea. Here’s my response with @jbakcoleman.bsky.social .

As academics use AI to write their talks and presentations, they not only sound more and more like bots themselves, they also produce training material that will further homogenize the linguistic style of future LLMs. Yay!

"[M]igrating @bsky.app users are signaling political separation from an increasingly conservative X and giving up on the idea of a town square that holds all voices simultaneously." I missed this when it first came out. And no, "Musk started it" is not a constructive counterargument ...

"When scientists warn of the harm this does, they risk being seen as part of a scornful anti-MAGA elite ... Meanwhile, genuine problems with the way science works in America are being neglected." Just finally getting around to reading this issue of @economist.com ...

"[O]n January 6, 2021, the American experiment lost its veneer of infallibility. It shifted from being an aspirational North Star to being just one of many democracies struggling with internal tensions and a changing geopolitical landscape. " Thanks to AAPSS for sharing this ...

How might America’s Supreme Court rule in the biggest cases on its docket? We built an AI model to predict the possible outcomes. Find out how it works: https://econ.trib.al/v0WEoBE

Every fall, I wonder if I should continue to teach the Spiral of Silence and climates of opinion in my intro class. And every year, I am glad I do ... www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

New paper alert! Published in Social Cognition, people want experts to be intellectually humble, but see all these experts as falling short of this ideal level of intellectual humility. We discuss implications for person perception and public trust. Full paper here: doi.org/10.1521/soco...

What could possibly go wrong?

“This is why I must step away from my work with two federal institutions … that offer guidance about how the Executive and Legislative branches can be stewards of knowledge and create structure to enable discovery, innovation, and ingenuity.”

"It's frustrating that this even needs to be said." Another great piece by @danwphilosophy.bsky.social. What's particularly ironic is that the "Good vs. Evil" dichotomy promoted by some misinformation researchers is itself so deeply authoritarian and anti-academic ...

“Being around less confident people, for example, could make a dog more nervous, while having an anxious dog can exacerbate an owner’s worries. Similar influences have been found in human-human relationships.”

We have an open teaching position in "Scientific Writing" at @uw-lsc.bsky.social. Join a great group of students, staff, and faculty in the best #scicomm program in the world. ;-) #science #writing #journalism #nasw

"[D]ie altmeisterliche Manier regt einen Kommilitonen aber so auf, dass der ein Protestschreiben verfasst und an der Akademie verteilt. Es endet mit dem Ruf: „Hier ist eine Akademie und kein Spießerverein!“ Herrndorf hat das Flugblatt sein Leben lang aufbewahrt."

"[I] empathize with the people ... who ... believe things I find troubling. Because I understand that their choices often make sense to them, given the life they’ve lived, the fears they carry, and the people they love." Huge congrats to all our 2025 @uw-lsc.bsky.social scholarship winners ...

“As long as COVID and President Trump are the two most easily retrievable examples of what misinformation correction looks like, we have a problem.” Always great talking to (and getting pushback from) @kakape.bsky.social …

"LSC was the nation’s first department of agricultural journalism ... and now we are the first to launch a PhD program in science communication." The end of an era in @uw-lsc.bsky.social. Huge thanks to @brossard.bsky.social for all her work positioning LSC at the very top of our field ...

“Governance should not be understood as an impediment to AI innovation but as an essential component of it.”

Yet another reason for avoiding ORD …

“Most universities are not panicking but want to be prepared for the worst.”

"Earlier this month, news broke of Washington’s third most expensive home sale in the history of the city. The buyer? ... Mark Zuckerberg." Tech gets ready for the age of regulation wars ...

“This was partly their own fault. In too many cases they succumbed to faddish groupthink about oppression, became scared of their student-customers and turned away speakers in the name of safety.”

“The primary culprit is Congress, which has — due to a combination of partisanship and political cowardice — become both unable and unwilling to act as the supreme lawmaking body. Instead, it began delegating significant amounts of its own authority to the executive.”

"40% of U.S.-affiliated Nobel Prize winners in the sciences — physics, chemistry and medicine — between 2000 and 2023 were immigrants."

"Black female scientists received the lowest ratings in both warmth and competence, with ratings dropping further when introducing a story about a White patient." Depressing findings from one of the more unusual research-practice partnerships I've had the privilege to be part of ...

It's so painful to see @nature.com use another one of their self-selected surveys for a clickbaity headline. Basing a worthwhile policy argument on crappy social "science" will, unfortunately, backfire every single time ...

“I argued for …. integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance, economic might and cultural influence … Together, they make America a superpower.” I haven’t agreed with HC much over the years. This one is spot on …