If you run across a gen A.I. slop 🤖💩 diagram in an academic journal, I’d love to know about it! Please fill out this form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Slop in journals is illuminating about journals’ quality control. And journals would like you to forget their mistakes. #AcademicChatter

So I thought that Elsevier was already as enshittified as possible. I was wrong.

"We included 608 articles, of which 243 articles were identified as problematic (40.0%)." (bit.ly/3X4PtGF) This finding of so many image-related problems by a team that wanted to do a systemic review, is deeply concerning.

arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month. Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.

New blogpost on my concerns about Wellcome LEAP new $50m program on autism/microbiome links. deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/10/a-le... #autism #microbiome #biomarkers #diagnostic

📢Nominations are now open for the UFAW Medal for Outstanding Contributions to #AnimalWelfareScience! Do you know an individual whose research, teaching, service, or advocacy has significantly benefited the welfare of animals? Nominate them here: ow.ly/Bs7b50X3ENT 📅 Nominations close 10 December

Open Science Workshop - detecting errors and misconduct in science Dates: 20-22 October Location: Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Registration link: tinyurl.com/3xkd8twf ONLY PHYSICAL ATTENDENCE POSSIBLE! NO ONLINE POSSIBILITIES.

In discussion with a computer scientist from the University of Cambridge last night: Me: "you've described some of the things that AI is good at. How would you describe the category of things it's not good at? **pause** Him: "Anything where it has to be right".

Please RT 2 new positions in the lab as postdoc & PhD! Interested in stress, pain, or reward? This project has it all! We are a friendly but ambitious group. Oslo is a capital city on the fjord & bordered by forest, great urban & outdoors opportunities: 💃 ⛷️ 🚣 🎭 🎶 www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

You’re think *you’re* depressed? Try being at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association right now with 5,000 political scientists presenting their work on the state of democracy, public opinion, and media. They are also drinking heavily.

Orson Welles would murder every one of you motherfuckers with a hammer.

IMO the strongest challenge against your view is that the sludge does in fact pollute meta-analyses and systematic reviews (an issue which is likely to grow as evidence synthesis becomes more AI-assisted) Cf e.g. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

when i'm asked to review the revised version

A guide to academic event names

The "reproducibility crisis" in science constantly makes headlines. Repro efforts are often limited. What if you could assess reproducibility of an entire field? That's what @brunolemaitre.bsky.social et al. have done. Fly immunity is highly replicable & offers lessons for #metascience A 🧵 1/n

There is no scientific concept of "real world" data or evidence - there is nothing about this terminology that can't be more accurately and honestly conveyed using other accepted methodological terms.

This Delphi is live! Invitations are rolling out. Contact me if you have expertise in trials and would like to participate.

Help me find a paper! I think it came out 5-10 years ago, and it showed that academic psychologists (or maybe social scientists) had trouble interpreting complex statistical interactions, and couldn't explain a 4-way interaction. 1/2 #openscience #psychology #metascience #statistics

I spoke to @raphavisses.bsky.social about how he blew the whistle on a colleague — my latest for @chemistryworld.com: www.chemistryworld.com/news/how-i-b...

It's been a long journey, but our study of (potentially) fraudulent studies in preclinical medicine is finally out as a peer-reviewed paper!

This is the way to go. We should celebrate also our null results! We are not our hypotheses and if we get to anxious about being right all the time, we become worse and more cowardly scientists.

Freshly published: In this study we show that it is possible to use voluntary intake protocols (e.g. with sweet condensed milk) in reward related behavioural testing #behaviour #mda #refinement

Finally!

Top quality teamwork by @cost-teatime.bsky.social repositories WG to address a key issue in maximising the impact of #Home-cageMonitoring. From the first working group meeting @mrcharwell.bsky.social in Oct’24 to V1 of the preprint in May’25!! Take a sneak peak 👀 here: osf.io/preprints/os...

International Research Integrity Conference. I am arranging this in Sydney in November 16-18th 2025. researchintegrityconf.com Note the excellent speaker list. Contact me!

TIL

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

I found the most incredible graph on the other site

is this a good sign

welp

TEATIME members @okalliokoski.bsky.social and @nunohfranco.bsky.social are leading a workshop before #FELASA2025 in Athens, as part of ESLAV/ECLAM summer school. eclam.eu/home/pre-diploma/residents/suggested-study-references/study-resources/eslav-eclam-summer-school/ #animalresearch

I'm putting together a slide illustrating how generative AI is being forced on people even though they don't want it, and this is sort of funny. Here's are Google's autocomplete suggestions for "google gemini how to", and Bing's autocomplete suggestions for for "microsoft copilot how to".

Is it too late to give it a new funeral? Or whatever it is that you're supposed to do with this thing?

new paper by @deadneanderthals.bsky.social and colleagues documenting the disturbing phenonmenon of stealth corrections in the scientific literature onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Most squares estimation

@fmriguy.bsky.social put it more succinctly

The call for applications to participate in our 4th Training School is open! See you in #Bratislava this June. cost-teatime.org/training/sec... #animalresearch #behavior #training @costprogramme.bsky.social

Bad. But how bad? I once asked myself, while finding fakes in the Scientific Report @natureportfolio.bsky.social. So I decide to "do my our research" - I took 100 articles in a row from Physical sciences that contains diffraction. Result - 15 fakes out 100. Details in the 🧵 #ResearchIntegrity 1/x

Another exciting preprint coming out from the Géranton-lab 😍 👏🏼 Well done everyone 💪🏼 #uclresearch #stress #pain #epigenetics

“maybe I’ll do some writing between christmas and new year” Between christmas and new year:

We're thrilled to announce the creation of the Retraction Watch Sleuth in Residence Program.

For those worried about fake papers polluting systematic reviews, I've an article up today on efforts to make it easier to spot untrustworthy work. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Fake or flawed studies are polluting systematic reviews in medicine and other fields - but how do you spot them? For Nature, I report on efforts to create a short checklist of red flags, and on the automated integrity tools emerging to help. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Should I be worried that an MDPI journal I have absolutely not reviewed for and don't have an account with sent me an end of year email thanking me for being a reviewer?

Welcome to COST TEATIME Action - a network of European researchers revolutionizing biomedical #research with automated #behavior monitoring in #animal home-cages. Our mission: enhance quality, reproducibility, and #welfare in animal studies using cutting-edge tech. 🔗www.cost-teatime.org