It's really nice when people actually use software that you create. This is an updated usage figure for the MRIQC.org Web API showing continued usage for the last 7 years, with more than half a million unique BOLD images in BIDS datasets! If you aren't already using MRIQC, check it out!

Using containers for reproducible computing russpoldrack.substack.com/p/using-cont... - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series

Our new paper is out! It offers a tool to assess collinearity impact on contrast estimates *and* uses simulations + MID data to show how common collinearity avoidance strategies can bias results. Huge thanks to @russpoldrack.org , M Demidenko, and the ABCD folks. 🔗 direct.mit.edu/imag/article...

If you use the Monetary Incentive Delay task or any task with complex events in fMRI, you should read this. We demonstrate that common modeling approaches can result in bias due to omitted variables. By @jeanette-mumford.bsky.social & the ABCD task fMRI team. direct.mit.edu/imag/article...

Ten Simple Rules for AI-Assisted Coding in Science arxiv.org/abs/2510.22254 - our latest, led by @ericwbridgeford.bsky.social

The goals of a scientific software project - the first section from a new chapter on Project Structure and Management in Better Code, Better Science. open.substack.com/pub/russpold...

Great piece by @natolambert.bsky.social on the current state of human exhaustion in the AI world. Makes this important point:

Apple's Mail.app AI summaries have officially become useless.

If you are on the job market this fall, listen to this! The tips here are great for everyone, not just for quant folks. I have a couple of additional comments:

OpenNeuro @openneuro.bsky.social just hit a huge milestone: 1500 datasets! Congrats to the team on making this project so successful over the last 7 years.

Pope Leo quotes Hannah Arendt: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist." www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

These datasets live on OpenNeuro. Shout out to @russpoldrack.org team's vision to build a data-sharing platform that accelerates discovering + maximizes the ROI of painstakingly collected data. Access these datasets and more at: wbhi.ucsb.edu/researchers/...

When @laurapritschet.bsky.social & Pavel Shapturenka set out to build the 28&Me + 28&He datasets, I don't think any of us could've predicted the spectacularly creative ways the datasets would be used years later. That's the power of open science. 👇🏼

This is pretty hilarious github.com/TomLefley/i-...

A better way to track problem solving during agentic coding - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series russpoldrack.substack.com/p/a-better-w... - I have found this relatively simple approach to work very well.

I know that citation statistics are faulty indicator, but I have to say that there is something humbling in knowing that people have decided 100,000 times to cite a paper that I was involved in.

My mom called me last night about the Kimmel firing, saying "This is how Hitler got started!" I quickly responded, "By firing the late night tv hosts?" Turns out, mom was right.

I have just dropped a new version of my academicdb project, which helps prolific researchers generate a CV automatically. Now with a web interface! If you are interested, please try it out and let me know what you think - it takes a bit of setup work but then runs easily using Docker.

In our Trends in Cogn Sci paper we point to the connectivity crisis in task-based human EEG/MEG research: many connectivity metrics, too little replication. Time for community-wide benchmarking to build robust, generalisable measures across labs & tasks. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Can large language models stand in for human participants? Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research. One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want. THREAD 🧵

I am really glad that I'm not playing a drinking game where I have to drink every time Claude Code says "You're absolutely right!" because I would probably be dead from alcohol poisoning.

A free and democratic society cannot silence comedians because the President doesn’t like what they say. This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.

Strategies for effective coding agent usage - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series russpoldrack.substack.com/p/strategies...

Similarly, Claude Code has a very difficult time following a test-driven development model. Despite clear instructions, it will regularly pronounce "All tests are passing!" even though no functional code has been written yet (violating TDD). These models really like to succeed, at any cost.

It's interesting how some instructions are really hard for coding agents to follow. Recently I have been using a problem file, in which I include an instruction to only mark a problem as fixed once I have confirmed that the fix worked (see image below). Claude Code basically refuses to do this.

This great piece by @addyosmani.bsky.social resonates strongly with my recent experience using AI coding agents

I have many thoughts about Charlie Kirk—and perhaps even more about the white elites, including some on the left, who insist we can’t hold multiple realities at once. We can. And we must. A brief 🧵

Great explainer on variance partitioning

Do you ever wish you could just use python to pull together the files and code for running FSL's randomise? Me too! I made this: github.com/jmumford/ran... It will even replace the numbers in the file outputs with contrast names of your choosing (and replace corrp with 1minusp).

Within the last few weeks, Github has released a new tool called Spec Kit github.com/github/spec-... that helps streamline the development of specification files for agent-based workflows like I wrote about earlier this week on my Substack.

This was a fun piece to write

Retention and data exclusion challenges for representative longitudinal neuroimaging in the understanding of addiction www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... - new preprint by @jocelynricard.bsky.social with Keith Humphreys

Workflows for agentic coding (and the limits of vibe coding) russpoldrack.substack.com/p/workflows-... - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series

This is an amazing success story. We are happy to have published several papers there - it really has become the top neuroimaging journal within just two years. Kudos to all who had the courage to make it happen!

@BIDSCommunity, it’s time to nominate 🏆and elect 🗳️two new Steering Group members! The nomination period opened on September 3rd and will close on Friday, September 19th at 11:59pm (Anywhere on Earth; UTC-12). 👉Nominate yourself here: forms.gle/vFNjKCNuP29L...

About this Florida vaccine story: When they were little - 1 yr and 3 1/2 - my two older boys, who’d had all their shots, got whooping cough. We asked their pediatrician what would’ve happened if they hadn’t been vaccinated. “Oh, they’d have died.”

We recently lost a great friend and colleague, Bob Bilder. Bob was highly influential on my career in the early 2000s at UCLA, as a collaborator on the Cognitive Atlas ontology and a driver of the idea of "cognitive phenomics". He was a wonderfully warm and creative human who we will miss deeply.

*Sharing for our department’s trainees* 🧠 Looking for insight on applying to PhD programs in psychology? ✨ Apply by Sep 25th to Stanford Psychology's 9th annual Paths to a Psychology PhD info-session/workshop to have all of your questions answered! 📝 Application: tinyurl.com/pathstophd2025

Agentic coding using Claude Code - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series open.substack.com/pub/russpold...

Josh Buckholtz @joshbuckholtz.bsky.social has started a new Substack - this should be great!

I really wish that the AI companies would stop training their models to reflexively say "You are right" when they have no clue as to whether I am actually right or not. I want to know when I'm wrong.

You know it's a tough problem when Claude Code says "Now I'm very confused."

AI-assisted coding approaches - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series russpoldrack.substack.com/p/ai-assiste...

Using AI Coding Assistants - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series russpoldrack.substack.com/p/using-ai-c...

Our department is seeking applicants for an Assistant Professor position with a focus on affective science. Please apply and/or pass this along to anyone who might be interested! facultypositions.stanford.edu/en-us/job/49...

Optimizing the testing workflow - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series. open.substack.com/pub/russpold...

Automated testing with GitHub Actions - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series russpoldrack.substack.com/p/automated-...

Property-based testing - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series russpoldrack.substack.com/p/property-b...

Parameterized testing - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series russpoldrack.substack.com/p/parameteri...

Test fixtures and mocking - the latest in my Better Code, Better Science series russpoldrack.substack.com/p/test-fixtu...