Many people think they know what drowning looks like. But if you have not learned from some authoritative source (like this article) what drowning looks like -- then you do not know what drowning looks like

New blog post! Let's say an effect you are interested in varies between countries and you want to explain some of that cross-cultural variation. What could possibly go wrong? www.the100.ci/2026/05/20/f...

100% worth your 63 seconds if you have my reading speed. sinceyouarrived.world/taken

"The proliferation of references to fake articles threatens to undermine the legitimacy of institutional research across the board" -- by Miles Klee www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult... open access link: archive.ph/qt59c 1/🧵

Do people have favourite tools for detecting hallucinated citations (that aren't themselves reliant on LLMs)?

"Universities now use their credibility to wash the stains off weak claims, filtering pseudoscience through degree programs and endowed chairs." How integrative medicine gets laundered inside universities. skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/ep...

Doesn't feel too out there to say that every hour of work "saved" by AI just becomes someone else's hour of work.

Does engaging with the arts help to slow the aging process? According to this new paper from Fancourt et al the answer is yes! Alas, the paper is actually unsuitable for such claims. Let’s examine by discussing how you'd establish whether arts engagement actually caused future health! 1/18 🧵

I came for the mutant raccoons, but stayed for the awesome experience at PCI RR. This was a registered report via the scheduled review track, with open peer reviews that were wonderfully constructive and genuinely improved the thing. rr.peercommunityin.org/PCIRegistere...

Causal inference peeps, how do we feel about the "loneliness is as bad for your health as 15 cigarettes a day" meme? The original meta-analysis that seemed to spur the idea is here journals.plos.org/plosmedicine...

if you're really curious about the true state of reality, click below for the latest from @matthewmatix.bsky.social @scicomguy.bsky.social @srhastraea.bsky.social @lingtax.bsky.social @robert-m-ross.bsky.social @eddieclarke.bsky.social, Martin, and me reported in the @aunz.theconversation.com

Reminder: when authors observe Cohen's d = 4, no they didn't. Article now retracted: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Critique: osf.io/preprints/ps... Blog on plausibility of effect sizes: trustworthy.scientific.claims/posts/if-res...

Survey research is often interpreted as showing that belief in conspiracy theories can be surprisingly widespread, including belief in conspiracy theories that would be astonishing if true. For example, in The Atlantic we learn that “12 million Americans believe lizard people run our country”

Many folk are surprised to discover thay Risk of Bias assessment tools tend not to interrogate the question “Did this study actually happen? And are its results trustworthy enough to believe?” Jack’s Cochrane endorsed INSPECT-SR checks have done a lot to mainstream such Trustworthiness Assessment.

One of my favorites paper got published 🤓 It covers a lot of ground and it’s the best summary of my views on misinformation and what to do about it. Give it a read :) 🔓 osf.io/preprints/ps... 👉 doi.org/10.1177/1461...

How to be a science sleuth www.chemistryworld.com/careers/how-... via @retractionwatch.com Weekend Reads.

two teaching roles in Psychology at Auckland Uni, one of which will be focused on research methods. NZ$100K+ salary these roles are unusual in that they are permanent teaching-focused faculty roles

Dear Author, Please be aware that WE are the a predatory publishing group and we will NOT STAND for scammers and phishers preying on you by imitating us! MDPI

While we're talking implausible effect sizes, this one's a pearler. Not quite as large as the difference in liking of chocolate vs poop (cc @ianhussey.mmmdata.io ) but it's pretty close... pubpeer.com/publications... doi.org/10.5539/gjhs...

I've now written up some concerns about this paper on pubpeer. It has the trifecta of very large effect sizes, impossible means, and a p value that doesn't match the t statistic and df. Will the data turn out to be real? pubpeer.com/publications...

"Our results cannot be treated as evidence of causality, but also you should act as if they do". Ah, science.

Some.... interesting.... findings in a study about the effect of exergames on physical and psychological health doi.org/10.1089/g4h.... I imagine you can guess what the GRIM checks look like, dear reader.

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SHE'S ALIVE!!

good morning! here's a new preprint led by @matthewmatix.bsky.social on a fascinating idea about sincere responding on #conspiracybelief studies. together a bunch of us (it's all Matt) take a look at whether we can identify sincerity and whether it distorts known effect sizes osf.io/preprints/ps...

The absolute state of academic spam

A new study from Anthropic finds that gains in coding efficiency when relying on AI assistance did did not meet statistical significance; AI use noticeably degraded programmers’ understanding of what they were doing. Incredible.

I am very proud to have published my second file-drawer report at my favourite journal Meta-Psychology together with Lisa Incerti, @tobiasrebholz.bsky.social, Christian Seida, and Frank Papenmeier. It includes four failed attempts to confirm a new hypothesis on #anchoringeffects.

1. Aotearoa New Zealand friends and colleagues 🇳🇿, Logistics for my February trip are coming together. I'd love to meet more of you and/or talk with groups of interested colleagues about AI course and teaching in a ChatGPT world (thebullshitmachines.com). Right now, my schedule is as follows:

Good to see that Gauhar (2016) is now retracted, with a pretty frank editorial note. spj.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

Some people bring up (1) the cost of criticism and (2) that a lot of criticism has already been voiced but ignored. Both points are valid, so here are some suggestion for (1) reducing backlash and (2) increasing impact (from this talk of mine: juliarohrer.com/wp-content/u...

A neat APS Observer piece in which I am proudly nonsignificant

Testing the socio-functional model: Does precarity cause conspiracy belief? TLDR; probably not huge thx: Antipodean Misinformation and Conspiracies Club @matthewmatix.bsky.social @lingtax.bsky.social @scicomguy.bsky.social @srhastraea.bsky.social @eddieclarke.bsky.social & students osf.io/nq3y7/

Doing non-causal inference (and being explicit about it), yet using a causal word as second word in the title. If you pay Nature € 10.690, they will publish this in Nature Ageing. I can tell you what I think of that for free. www.nature.com/articles/s43...

years ago I took some interest in the notion of precarity–the subjective experience of permanent insecurity rising from objective material strain–causing conspiracy belief. along with my undergraduate students (over 2 yrs), and my antipodean collaborators we tested this theory osf.io/preprints/ps...

Come join an absolutely amazing researcher here in stunning Christchurch ! 📓

Did you guess "that paper does not actually exist"? Did you also guess that NOT A SINGLE PAPER IN THEIR REFERENCES APPEARS TO EXIST? (Though I confess I only thoroughly checked for half of them, including databases for the journals.)

When your country's collective ability to bullshit on the internet is extensive enough to shape AI slop.

We might be at a stage where systematic reviews without checks of trustworthiness become a problem in itself - even a danger to patients, as these reviews are considered as highest level of evidence and the foundation of guidelines and clinical practice

Do you find the peer review at Frontiers too demanding? The standards too rigorous? The frontiers too... plural? Introducing: Frontier in Medical and Health Research!

7. the kinda appealing, but substantively indefensible, idea that somehow AI is different to other technology, like calculators, in a pedagogical context — but we totally ban a great deal of technology in the classroom. (Section 3.7 here doi.org/10.5281/zeno...) 9/n

Stop submitting AI slop to journals and preprint servers This is anti-social behavior. It is making life harder for everyone involved except for the person submitting the slop

My time as Editor of AMPPS is coming to an end-- here are some parting thoughts. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... .

What prompts people to change their minds about conspiracy theories? Associate Professor Matt Williams and team from Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University set out to answer this curious question! 👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽 www.royalsociety.org.nz/research/new...

our dear leader @matthewmatix.bsky.social has posted on what the Antipodean Misinformation and Conspiracies Club has been up to over the past few years www.royalsociety.org.nz/research/new...

JW: We developed a tool, INSPECT SR, which looks at various red flags, such as retractions, inconsistencies between preregistration and publication, image duplications, means vs SDs, outcome data, etc. We do give training workshops. bmjopen.bmj.com/content/14/3... #IRICSydney

Experimental participants to us

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

More fundamentally, every active scientist has been brought up in a system where The Drain was already normalized. This system hasn't always existed. For-profit publishers are a recent invention. Their value proposition has always been awful, and now they are actively eroding trust in science. 5/n

Getting nervous for the talk I'm about to give at a workshop about "using AI to drive impact" which features slides such as these.