📢 New preprint! "Association of Oral Contraceptives with Depression Symptoms, Diagnosis, and Treatment in Healthy Women: A Meta-Analysis" papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

📢 New paper! "An App-Based Behavioral Support Intervention Promoting Physical Activity (APPROACH) in Patients Diagnosed With Breast, Prostate, or Colorectal Cancer: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial" www.researchprotocols.org/2026/1/e77096

Phil Manzanera has spent five decades shifting between genres, scenes, and roles as a guitarist, composer and producer. His work with Roxy Music and output across a diverse solo career reflect natural curiosity and fierce ambition. Watch and read my new interview: www.innerviews.org/inner/phil-m...

JOB ALERT! 3-year postdoc at @girtoncollege.bsky.social - research anything you like in History, Archaeology or Anthropology in a wonderful, welcoming scholarly community. PLEASE SHARE! Closes 12 January www.girton.cam.ac.uk/job-vacancie...

Worth noting this for other Tidal users -- while they pay most artists better royalties than Spotify, they don't pay people on that "uploads" thing they're pushing at all. So if you see some band in the uploads section you want to check out, go to their bandcamp instead.

Policy #evaluation inherits concepts from multiple disciplines, and somewhere along the way many of them have become muddled. This blog post sketches what I think are seven of the most irritating myths. andifugard.info/seven-persis...

“Where are the findings? You only provide quotes.” New article considers qualitative researchers’ experiences of methodologically incongruent peer review feedback Open Access: dx.doi.org/10.1037/qup0... Few quotes follow 🧵

New paper by my PhD student Maria Xenou, and many others! samajournals.co.za/index.php/sa...

Continuing the fine tradition of declining to review for Nature Publishing Group, in my case @natmentalhealth.nature.com for all the fine reasons Alex descibed in this letter. The APC for this journal is £9190.00/$12690.00/€10690.00. Join us!

📢 Deadline extended! You now have until 7 January to submit abstracts & workshop proposals for the 2026 Behaviour Change Conference. A huge thank you to everyone who’s already submitted. We look forward to your submissions & to welcoming you to Lisbon for #BCConf2026! 👉 www.ucl.ac.uk/behaviour-ch...

Did you know that this government has been defeated over 100 times in the House of Lords? The new edition of our constitutional review suggests that it is surprising to see the Lords challenging manifesto commitments to the extent that it has. Read more 👉 www.ucl.ac.uk/social-histo....

Was in the kitchen when something beeped several times. Flatmate & I were confused. Was it the robot vacuum? No. The washing machine? No. The fridge maybe? No. It was the bread machine. #firstworldproblems

Former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández—pardoned by Trump while the counting in Honduras’ current presidential election is still in progress—-was accused not only of drug trafficking, but also of election fraud during the 2013 and 2017 Honduran presidential elections. 1/

“Thousands of very competitive projects in areas like cancer, diabetes, aging, neurological disorders and public health improvements most like went unfunded in 2025. Similarly, at the National Science Foundation, the roughly 3,000 fewer new grants encompassed reductions to every area of science”

North Korean-style. A Potemkin village of fake journalists.

🧵1/ Romania has the highest cervical cancer incidence & mortality in Europe. Yet screening coverage is under 30%. Why? Our new study explores the emotional & practical barriers faced by vulnerable women. @cbigscreen.bsky.social @horizoneu.bsky.social

"Runctitiononal features"? "Medical fymblal"? "1 Tol Line storee"? This gets worse the longer you look at it. But it's got to be good, because it was published in Nature Scientific Reports last week: www.nature.com/articles/s41... h/t @asa.tsbalans.se

Important new paper by my colleagues, Youssof Oskrochi et al., showing very poor digital health technology compliance with clinical safety standards in NHS England: www.jmir.org/2025/1/e80076

New research: Do fitness apps do more harm than good?📱 Analysis of 58k+ posts on X about the 5 most profitable fitness apps found almost 1 in 4 had negative sentiment. 📘 Paper co-authored by Dr Lucy Porter: bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @uclbrainscience.bsky.social

Emotional strain of fitness and calorie counting apps revealed www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/oc... Research by my colleague Paulina Bondaronek et al.

New from @harrymlewis.bsky.social @hannaeldarwish.bsky.social & team: 'Social Cure and Savouring: Attending Live Music Events Is Associated With Wellbeing and Behaviour Changes to Maintain Wellbeing' Please share. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Genesis of the Daleks

had some stuff to get off my chest about strategies ~ gilest.org/notes/strate...

Does the elections white paper go far enough? On 24 October, join @catsmithmp.bsky.social, @rosewhiff.bsky.social, Tom Hawthorn and David Howarth at our free, online event to consider if the government's plans are sufficient to ensure electoral integrity. Sign up 👉 www.ucl.ac.uk/social-histo....

🎵 They did the Monster Slash 😭 @ellecordova.bsky.social

Happy Friday! Today is #WorldMentalHealthDay with the theme of access to services - mental health in catastrophes and emergencies. An appropriate paper from our team is one on digital problem-solving intervention in Ukrainian children displaced by war -

📢 New: "Behavioural perspectives on personal health data sharing and app design: an international survey study" www.cambridge.org/core/journal... by Veronica Li @carlawashbourne.bsky.social me et al. We looked at the factors influencing personal health data sharing by users in London and Hong Kong

🔊 Exciting research role available if you're interested in applying evidence synthesis to food policy and public health. Part of a @nihr.bsky.social study evaluating supermarket policies restricting the use of price promotions. Closes 8th October. Further details 👇 www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Did the universe come about because an Egyptian god knocked one out? Asking all the big questions in my new (old) book

Pet parrots which typically live alone (whilst those in the wild live in large flocks) were given the technology to call each other. They would use it for up to three hours a day, and developed favourite friends 💔 on.ft.com/3K05vhS

New paper by my colleague Paulina Bondaronek & more, "Using machine-assisted topic analysis to expedite thematic analysis of free-text data: Exemplar investigation of factors influencing health behaviours and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic" bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

My colleagues at the MHRA and Brunel University London are exploring the use of AI in clinical decision making. They have developed a survey that takes about 10 minutes to complete. If you are a clinician, please help out by filling it in... yoskrochiucl.github.io/mhra_questio...

Feels about right www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

🧑‍🔬💰 PhD Scholarship open for a September start at #SussexUni Great opportunity if you're interested in sleep, biological rhythms and signals, physical & mental performance, or elite sports. Application deadline: 25th July Details at: realitybending.github.io/jobs/phd/ #Psychology #PhD

Stroke survivors with depression or anxiety who attend talking therapy sessions are more likely to recover from their psychological symptoms, finds a new study by @uclpals.bsky.social researchers.

Quick #DoctorWho #TargetBookClub update: We've only 20 tickets left, which feels weird. Tickets: bit.ly/escape2danger

We've published a new paper with @sciencecampaign.bsky.social reviewing the UK’s innovation ecosystem looking across 10 technologies. Innovation is not a linear process from idea to market & so Govt intervention should not take a one-size-fits-all approach www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications...

Inside the digital publishing industry, which I try to monitor closely, this is the big news. By Julia Alexander at Puck.

Problematising menstrual tracking apps: presenting a novel critical scoping review methodology for mapping and interpreting research literature Sarah Riley, Siobhán Healy-Cullen, Carla Rice, Katrin Tiidenberg, Alexandra Hawkey, Tracy Morison et al www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #ISCHP2025

Happy World Porcupine Day! For those wondering what a baby porcupine is called, it’s a porcupette. For those wondering what a group of porcupines is called, it’s a prickle. And for those wondering what porcupines sound like, turn up your volume for this smol guy called Kemosabe nomming on a banana…

Which Quotations to Use? Guidance on Selecting and Reporting Quotations in Qualitative Research Sarah Yeo and Seungheon Han journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Plenty studies showing that your postcode is a better predictor of your health outcomes than your genome.

Seems like the most blatantly self-motivated of the administrative funding cuts so far…

New preprint: Optimizing Online Support Groups: A Realist Review of What Works, For Whom and in What Circumstances for Patients with Cancer preprints.jmir.org/preprint/77445

Google have such a monopoly on search that they no longer worry too much about quality, according to ... Google, in court documents.

I created a Wikipedia page (this one's more job relevant)! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomi...

I created a Wikipedia page (only a stub)! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_R...

Out today! The Unofficial Fan Guide To Oasis, a history of the group written by me, aimed at people too young to remember them splitting up! Available from the usual places (Amazon is an affiliate link): www.waterstones.com/book/the-uno... blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro... amzn.to/4lLETzz

What role do emotions play in public involvement? To what extent is PPI labour emotional labour? Join us to explore how we can recognise, value and make space for this kind of labour in research. arc-sl.nihr.ac.uk/events-train...

My Google Scholar h-index has fallen! (Obviously, h-indices are crude measures of research value and we shouldn't pay attention to them, but, you know, if some people are looking at them, let me just check what mine is...) Google Scholar seems to have done a big clean-up on citations. #bibliometrics