"For instance, randomized controlled trials could explicitly manipulate multilingualism"

Pretty much no one can make their ideas clear to others on the 1st attempt. The two main reactions are "let's painstakingly clarify this with some back and forth", and "doesn't matter as long as the various interpretations are themselves interesting", leading to the 2 main branches of philosophy.

In the new #openaccess companion on student notes from Latin Europe (@leuvenup.bsky.social), our own Lorenz Demey, together with collaborators, contributes a chapter arguing that student notes hold great promise as sources for intellectual #history 👇 lup.be/book/student... #HPS #earlymodern #philsky

Is the psychology replication crisis (at last) catching up with animal cognition? "Our results indicate low statistical power and inflated effect sizes in both primary studies and meta-analyses." Preprint here: ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

*Globalizing Wildlife*, a book edited by @vbateman.bsky.social, Tom Quick, and myself, is now available for pre-order with @uncpress.bsky.social! Using code 01SOCIAL30 at checkout, you can save 30% www.uncpress.org/book/9781469...

"The Riddle of Organismal Agency" is now available as a paperback version! Edited by @alejandrofabregastejeda.com, Jan Baedke, Guido Prieto and Gregory Radick, the volume puts together reflections from #HistSci and #PhilSci on the topic of organismal agency. #HPBio www.routledge.com/The-Riddle-o...

Research funds are scarce & competition is fierce. A recent paper by @andreasdeblock.bsky.social & colleagues explores how this competition shapes science—its practices, risks & ethics—and proposes ways to make funding fairer & more effective👇 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... #AcademicSky #HPS #scipol 🧪

"If the groups we rely on for information are, in fact, more ideologically captured than they were fifty years ago, then -- assuming we were right to trust them in the first place -- we are now justified in trusting them less."

Why are so many professors so afraid to speak their minds? @amnauncensored.bsky.social & I discuss this question with UPenn historian of education Jon Zimmerman. Inspired by "Why Aren't Professors Braver?" by @paulbloomatyale.bsky.social in @chronicle.com. banished.substack.com/p/are-too-ma...

De combinatie lage kost voor de student en zeer brede toegang is gewoon vreemd (problematisch). HO in Scandinavië is gratis voor student maar wel (erg) selectief. Vgl. bijv. deze cijfers voor Zweden met VL waar bijna iedereen met diploma secundair aan HO start.

Each generation seems to rediscover the riddle of organismal agency: are organisms agents that pursue intrinsic goals—and how could we know? Our 📕 gathers historians, philosophers & scientists to explore this debate—now available in paperback!👇 www.routledge.com/The-Riddle-o... #philsky #HPS #evobio

1-11% success rates for arts, humanities, and social science grant applications in the UK. What a monumental waste of time and energy.

"The decline in success rates is absolutely not satisfactory, because it sometimes borders on a lottery” Nature 17 October 2025 Well, an honest lottery would IMHO be far better. For the reasons outlined here: blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...

The academic publishing industry is an oligopoly, an inefficient market. Oligopoly actors force us to buy a long list of crap so we can read the dozen journals we want. Anti-trust action would be rational. Let's hope at least that exploitative bundle deals are refused. We can walk away!

Fully-funded 4-year #PhD in Cultural Evolution! Join my @erc.europa.eu project exploring how compression & compositionality drive cultural innovation: hmc-lab.com/ERCPhDCultur... Apply by Nov 12! Maybe of interest to folks from #COSMOS2025 or @eslr.bsky.social? Please feel free to share! 🙏

Latest by my colleague Tim Lewens. Most envious of people who manage to pack in arguments into 3000 words, especially such meaty arguments as this one #philsci #philsky

🚨 Deadline to submit an abstract for our IUSSI winter meeting in beautiful Leuven, 18-19 December has been extended to 31st October 2025 🚨 Please register at: www.iussi-nweurope.org/meetings Come and join us - will be great fun & great lineup of speakers! Plenaries by Ido Pen & @rmash.bsky.social

“96% of statistical errors directionally supported scientists’ hypotheses, suggesting credulity among scholars toward favorable outcomes.”

Are you curious about what computational methods can offer to #HPS? Then check out the edited volume by Grant Ramsey & @andreasdeblock.bsky.social, published by @upittpress.bsky.social, showcasing key tools, questions, and investigative perspectives 👇📕💻 upittpress.org/books/978082... #philsky #DH

Next time an institution tells you how seriously it takes research misconduct, ask them if it's *this* seriously. www.bmj.com/content/297/...

super cool study found human artifacts in Bearded vulture nests, incl. "weaponry like a crossbow bolt and wooden lance, decorated sheep leather, and parts of a slingshot....a shoe made from twigs and grass is ~675-years-old." link to paper: doi.org/10.1002/ecy..... www.popsci.com/environment/... 🧪🌍🦉

If you’re not yet using ChatGPT, you’re missing out, argues @victorckumar. Used wisely, it’s an invaluable tool—not necessarily for your job, your art, or for social companionship—but for everyday life management, just like Google… only much more so: buff.ly/njVdHjD

#AcademicSky I'm trying to compile a list of academic conferences (> 1.000 participants) that were supposed to be organised in USA in 2025/2026 but that were canceled or made hybrid. (I saw some such instances here I think, but hard to find them again) Let me know if you know of such conferences.

zag hier een aantal smalende posts over Stijn Baert en zijn stelling dat moral hazard een goede verklaring is voor het grote aantal langdurig zieken in België. Ze kregen veel likes en kwamen van mensen die vermoedelijk nog nooit van moral hazard gehoord hebben.

LMU Munich invites applications for a W2 Professorship in Philosophy Education, starting in October 2026. We are looking for candidates with an outstanding research record in philosophy and a strong profile in philosophy education. Deadline: 15 November 2025: job-portal.lmu.de/jobposting/b...

we kunnen op onze beide oren slapen: als we alles buiten beschouwing laten, wordt het een fantastisch WK.

Today's blog post (link in comments): DigiDan's "Mistake": Fidelity vs Novelty in Digital Replicas Philosopher Dan Dennett's digital replica was sometimes arguably truer to the overall gist of his corpus than Dennett himself was at the end of his life.

Some argue that generics (e.g., "ravens are black") express existentially quantified rather than strong generalizations. In their recent paper, @olivierlemeire.bsky.social & CLPS colleagues counter this, defending the traditional view of generics 👇📃 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.... #philsky

Published online today and available soon at your favorite purveyor of fine reading materials. And it's open access.

I’ve been training my whole life for this moment

Hello, #AcademicSky! We are the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science (CLPS) at KU Leuven. Our senior and junior researchers focus on #logic, #epistemology & #philsci. We’re here to share our work and connect with logicians and philosophers of science worldwide—help us spread the word! #philsky

studenten zijn in een bepaalde zin consumenten, niet van entertainment, maar van onderwijs. Dat begrijpen ze zelf maar half, met als resultaat dat ze hun tevredenheid als consument doorgaans meer laten afhangen van amusementswaarde dan van leerwinst.

Now in high impact journal, crows learn new behaviors through trial-and-error. Ignoring Skinner for now, let's reiterate Tinbergen in The Study of Instinct: Animals must learn to i) do new things, & to ii) refine existing behaviors. Our five cents on this: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

#AcademicSky Submitting your grant application at the 11th hour

dit kan niet genoeg herhaald worden.

Interestingly, when a rolling deadline was introduced for the FIFPRO scheme in Norway, this led to a DECREASE of the number of applications (and an increase of the success rate).

I’ve done reviews for funding bodies where the top rating was 'outstanding' and the next-best 'excellent'. Anyone after that was, at best, 'very good'. This shows three things: (1) funders should buy a dictionary, (2) grade inflation is everywhere, and (3) science funding is broken.

Ban grant-writing consultants.

In our latest work, we show that risk estimates for patients are HUGELY uncertain due to model, data, and population uncertainty. Even for well performing models (c statistic, calibration, utility) based on large N. @laure_wynants @ESteyerberg @lasaibarrenada.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2506.17141

We now have some data on the environmental impact per AI prompt: Gemini: 0.00024 kWh & 0.26 mL water ChatGPT: 0.0003 kWh & 0.38 mL ...the same energy as one Google search in 2008 & 6 drops of water. Seems to be improving, too: Google reports a 33x drop in energy use per prompt in a year. But...

My two co-authors Michael Brownstein and Alex Madva talking about our soon-to-be-a-real-thing book _Somebody Should Do Something_ on The Philosopher's Zone podcast @michaelbrownstein.bsky.social @madva.bsky.social @mitpress.bsky.social www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

If you were offered the chance to know the exact moment of your death, or indeed to *choose* it (knowing it would be definitive), would you take it? Or is there a limit to what we wish to know and to control? If so, maybe IVF treatment is approaching it: buff.ly/CXM25Tl

🚨 New, short article by myself, Clark Barrett and @kevinlala.bsky.social on the legacy of Wilson's 'Sociobiology: The New Synthesis', which was published 50 years ago. @science.org #ehbea #histbiol #evobio #psyscisky Revisiting the human sociobiology debate |Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

new working paper: osf.io/7v4zj tl;dr: taking the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor seriously requires taking the nuances of actually-existing markets seriously, which means thinking about tradeoffs between transaction costs and conformity costs. applied to misinfo and ideological belief systems.

🐱"Huemer argues that politics and not science explains the continued belief in the IAT. This is electric because one wonders how so many academics could base beliefs about bias on an unreliable and invalid test, and one that suggests that society is even more biased against men than blacks."

Ik kon het niet laten om een antwoord te schrijven op het opiniestuk in @standaard.be over "Het is tijd voor wat e-bikeschaamte" (www.standaard.be/opinies/het-...).

This is weird indeed. We can ask: what is the function of reviewers and editors? I'm not saying that they don't have a function. But I'm saying that we should start asking this question, systematically. And we should be prepared to find out that there is none.

wat een absurd slechte begeleiding krijgen onze thesisstudenten soms. En als het dan misloopt, moet de student (en niet de promotor) op de blaren zitten.