Two papers by Max Planck, the legendary Nobel laureate in physics, were retracted by Springer Nature in 2011, likely due to an algorithm flagging the papers for self-plagiarism and copyright infringement. Read on for how stupid it all is. 🧪

Suomen sijoitus akateemisen vapauden indeksissä on pudonnut rajusti. Tilanne ei ole vielä katastrofaalinen, mutta muutoksen nopeus on todella huolestuttava. Meidän pitäisi olla naapurimaittemme Viron (2.) ja Ruotsin (5.) joukossa, ei Israelin tai Sri Lankan takana. www.helsinki.fi/fi/uutiset/t...

For what it is worth, I expanded my critical remarks on the #BoghossianReport to a brief note: philpapers.org/rec/RAAACN #Philosophy #PhilSky

one anecdote: I was searching for a link to one of my old papers on Google, and the automated Gemini summary attributed all of my lab's work to my husband

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.

jokaisella internetiin jotain sisältöä tuottavalla taholla on sama ongelma: kuinka saada jutut niille jota asia saattaisi kiinnostaa. ennen somea erilaiset viranomaiset muistaakseni lähinnä luotti siihen että ihmiset eksyy niiden verkkosivuille. ei kauhean tehokas ratkaisu. eli on hyvä [...]

Hallitus lanseerasi kehysriihessä ennennäkemättömän kuvion. 20M€ tutkijoiden itse hankkimasta EU-rahasta lasketaan lain mukaiseksi t&k-lisärahoitukseksi ja valtion omia panostuksia vähennetään saman verran. Järjestelmätasolla tällainen ajattelu luo käsittämättömän anti-insentiivin.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I applied in 2025. In step 1, the reviews found just one fault in my proposal: they doubted the feasibility of the (methodologically ambitious) project. -> B. In 2026 they stopped assessing feasibility in step 1. Now they decided that I can't apply in 2027 because of that B in 2025.

Celebrating the one-year anniversary of this submission. (For the first nine months, it was "with editor".)

I'm a data scientist @ourworldindata.org and I need help from a botanist or someone local to Kyoto, Japan! 🌸 We present one of the world’s longest climate records: 1,200 years of peak cherry blossom dates in Kyoto. The researcher who maintained it, Prof. Yasuyuki Aono, sadly passed away last year.

“I will NOT sacrifice the Oxford comma. We've made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They assimilate the em dash and we fall back. They capture ‘not just X but y’ and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!”

We had a three-year project on pseudoscience in working life. Two papers introducting one of the project's key results – the notion of social pseudotechnology – are now out. I'm so proud of this team. Links in comments.

If you work on values in science, and have noticed that the literature is a bit too focused on values in science in Anglophone democracies – and that it therefore stays silent on issues that we should be talking about – please consider submitting an abstract to our workshop! (24–25 August, Helsinki)

And here - in one simple diagram - is why most of the “free speech” debating is insincere posturing. It’s not free speech the right supports. It’s control over the means of communication.

In our Perspectives on Science Seminar on March 2, Inkeri Koskinen & Santtu Kauppila (TINT / Helsinki) will give a talk titled “Towards a Satisfactory Social Epistemology of AI-based Science: Forward-looking trust in collective pursuit”. More here: tint-helsinki.fi/2026/02/24/2... #philski #philsky

We are organising a pre-conference workshop on Values in science in the rest of the world in Helsinki in August, just before ENPOSS 2026. Please consider submitting an abstract!

I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point. I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it

Our Perspectives on Science Seminar schedule for Spring 2026 is here. All are warmly welcome! #philsci #philsky

If you read one thing today, it should be this Iran report says 16,500 dead in ‘genocide under digital darkness’ www.thetimes.com/article/01ba...

a bunch of MEPs: trump's threats on Greenland are unacceptable. we must consider using the anti-coercion instrument me: that sounds reassuringly bureaucratic and not too anxiety-inducing. i should look that up wikipedia: "also known as the Trade Bazooka"

Yet another AI slop paper in a journal of a gigantic "academic" publisher that makes outrageous profit. It seems that e.g. Springer has no interest in even trying to control this.

Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).

"I’m going to pause here just to review: an institution that purports to be a university has told a philosophy professor he is forbidden from teaching Plato." surreal times dailynous.com/2026/01/06/t...

Olen nähnyt et:n kasvun epäpätevien opettajien heittopussista ammattitaidolla opetetuksi hienoksi oppiaineeksi, jolla on kunnon ops ja materiaalit. Huoli sen kohtalosta on iso, jos yhteinen katsomusaine käsitetään uskontojen esittelyksi. Toivottavasti yhteinen aine rakennetaan et:n pohjalta.

I finally got some time to flesh out my rant about these headlines... TL;DR: age differences ≠ aging jenndowd.substack.com/p/does-adole... #demography #episky #medsky #neurosky

I deeply regret that this explainer thread about Finnish radical right racists insulting pretty much all Asians, and the “moderate” right parties being spineless servants of their financiers as usual, remains relevant. I can only say that the majority of Finns are appalled and ashamed too.

Dismantling NCAR. Denying the science is not enough - they will destroy it. The Trump administration has gone full Lysenko. If the US is ever won back, this will be spoken of in the same way in the history books.

An academic disliked an Oxford Very Short Introduction (145 pages) in his field so much that he wrote a 200 page book review attacking it. www.pierre-legrand.com/ewExternalFi...

The number of global deaths of children under-5 is projected to increase this year (from 4.6m to 4.8m) for the first time this century. (FT) The price of aid cuts.

Even the the damn twitter card for this Nature Scientific Reports is clearly AI Slop.

Forthcoming chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Values and Science, edited by Kevin Elliott and Ted Richards.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

AI for the win again

I do not know the author, but this really chaps my hide. It reads like a blended smoothie made of the work of everyone in my field (myself included - ‘AI is a mirror’, okay) without attribution or even any mention of the field, nor a single one of us who have built it for the past decade. WTF

A permanent post in my department. Closing date Dec 14th 2025, interviews in March. Please spread #histsci

Tämä ei ole hyvän mielen postaus, mutta ehkä syksyn tärkein postaukseni. Suosittelen kaikille tutkijoille ja tutkimusryhmille: käsitelkää törkyriskejä ja suunnitelkaa toimenpiteitä etukäteen yhdessä. Lähiaikoina on tiettävästi odotettavissa törkyä tiedeyhteisöä kohtaan. Ketjusta muutama pikavinkki.

Book launch for “Methods in the Philosophy of Science: a user’s guide”. Ftf in Exeter and online on the 29th of Sept feat Sophie Veigl, Kerry McKenzie, Hasok Chang, and me. It should be fun! (the book will be open access in July, contact me in the meantime) www.exeter.ac.uk/events/detai... #philsci

Absolutely wild to me that this guy gets a heroic feature in the NY Times when his clearly articulated climate policy throughout has been "let's not do a single thing to reach the previous government's climate targets but just keep them on the books anyway to point at in case anyone asks".

Welcome to our panel discussion on pseudoscience in working life. Among other things, we will talk about how the University of Helsinki last year ended up using questionable competency and personality tests in the the application process for salaried PhD positions. blogs.helsinki.fi/pseudoscienc...

This is a link to a hybrid book launch for the megavolume Methods in Philosophy of Science edited by the amazing @phieveigl.bsky.social and @adrian-currie.bsky.social Chapter 5 is mine with @inkerikoskinen.bsky.social The book will become open access in July 2026: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255224...

🤷🏿‍♂️

Welcome to our panel discussion on pseudoscience in working life. Among other things, we will talk about how the University of Helsinki last year ended up using questionable competency and personality tests in the the application process for salaried PhD positions. blogs.helsinki.fi/pseudoscienc...

Jan-Willem Romeijn’s closing address from a typical European podium #EPSA25 #philsci

Luonnonmetsän keittäminen selluksi on käänteistä arvonlisää järjettömässä mittakaavassa. Valtava elonkirjon rikkaus muutetaan bulkiksi teollisuustuotteeksi. Elinympäristöjen pirstoutumisen takia haitta on vielä suoraa vaikutusta suurempi. yle.fi/a/74-20178686

Fans of "slow television" are in for a treat, as Swedish TV is live-streaming the effort to move an entire church in Kiruna from one place to another over the course of two days: www.svtplay.se/video/KnDgQ9... Enjoy!

AI slop and the destruction of knowledge irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/a...

Epistemic Challenges of Non-native English Speakers in Philosophy: Evidence from an International Survey philpapers.org/rec/PETECO

How many times did Israel deny doing this? And how many times did politicians, journalists and pundits online suggest that saying that Israel was doing anything other than the most "moral warfare" was rank antisemitism?