"Ultimately, peer review didn’t transform Nature’s standing so much as protect it, converting exclusivity that might have seemed arbitrary into gatekeeping that appeared meritocratic." Nice piece by Robert Reason on the prestige of Nature www.asimov.press/p/nature

It is as it ever was. elevanth.org/blog/2022/01...

Did this for the first time in ages - felt great, highly recommend

NA->0 strikes again! @rmcelreath.bsky.social

Proc B with @sampassmore.bsky.social! We used simulations to explore the innovation strategies of speed climbers 🧗‍♀️ Innovation is higher among slower athletes and lower when the population size is larger, and the overall balance of innovation and copying appears to be suboptimal 🔗 bit.ly/499QjZM

The cultural evolution of Speed Climbing bit.ly/499QjZM New article w @masonyoungblood.bsky.social Innovations are more likely to occur in slower athletes & large populations. Simulations suggest innovation is underutilized!

it is your DUTY as a parent to be basic and cringe. if your child says "6-7" and you do not say, loud enough for their friends to hear, "8-9?", causing profound silence and intense discomfort, you are neglecting your responsibilities. being cool is for kids. your days of being laughed WITH are over

I like that, underneath all of this grousing, the answer to "Why I'm Leaving Harvard" is that he agreed to a phased retirement four years ago, at retirement age, and now he's retired. It's like saying you're leaving the restaurant because you finished eating dinner.

shel silverstein was a prophet

If I had a dollar for every British astrophysicist named Brian who put their career on hold to join a chart-topping pop group and then successfully pivoted back to astrophysics, I’d have two dollars, which isn’t much but it’s weird that it’s happened twice www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/w...

another robot highlight for 2025: man wearing humanoid mocap suit kicks himself in the balls

It’s a Christmas miracle: new highest chess rating!

My 14-yo-son has recreated the climax of Back to the Future in gingerbread and I thought you should know.

@matildellen.bsky.social bravely decided to do a registered report with @pci-regreports.bsky.social as the first manuscript of her PhD -- 2+ years later, it's out! It's on how bilingualism affects statistical word learning, and the results were quite unexpected. Read more:

“What’s unfolding now is more than dishonesty—it’s the unraveling of any shared understanding of what education is for.” www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

Really good (and damning) analysis of how LLMs are exposing deeper problems in citation metric-based scientific incentives

New paper: Three evolutionary radiations shaped the evolution of global religious diversity

Our new paper is out! Orangutan long calls are strongly isochronous, yet surprisingly they can also shift into double-meter patterns — a small but intriguing clue to the roots of musical rhythm. doi.org/10.1016/j.is...

Just submitted corrected proofs for my first book! Publication (open access) is scheduled for late Feb 2026 (but the preprint is already available if you don't want to wait: osf.io/preprints/ps...)

[Please share] Call for Fellowship Applications for Early Career Researchers from the Global South — to attend an international workshop on ‘spectral percepts’ and the Origins of Musicality in The Netherlands. Deadline : 19 December 2025 (23:59, AoE). See www.lorentzcenter.nl/index.php?pn...

I guess it's fitting that it's a reimagined, worse version of someone else's artwork

I largely agree, but we as educators are also failing to teach students how to efficiently read, write, and think critically. It has never been possible to read every word of assigned readings, and that's OK. I wrote a reading/writing tutorial that applies in a ChatGPT era: osf.io/p37zj_v3

I'm now thrilled to share the 2nd Stage 2 manuscript from our @pci-regreports.bsky.social programmatic protocol, led by Honours student Nelson Shi. In NZ English, we replicated song-speech acoustic differences and explored differences in social bonding effects: osf.io/mk34q_v1

“I am so bored by AI. One of the things I love about the theatre is AI can’t do it.” Ethan Hawke is a dude 👌🏻

Super proud of this paper with @apvelilla.bsky.social and @babeheim.bsky.social, now out in Psych Review. Non-paywalled version (preprint) here: osf.io/preprints/so...

Do any publishers include abstracts in book chapter PDFs (as is done in journal articles)? I asked Oxford, but they insist that they only include abstracts in the online version, not print/PDF versions. This seems like a waste given the abstracts are some of the most important/informative parts...

PCI Statistics and Machine Learning (@pcistatml.bsky.social) is now open for submissions!! statml.peercommunityin.org For an updated list of all the thematic PCIs, visit peercommunityin.org/current-pcis/

NZ continues to shoot itself in the foot with short sighted STEM obsession

Nice to see cultural evolution of music represented! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

We're very excited to see the first recommendation by PCI Psych out now in Peer Community Journal! 🎉 Not only can you read the full article for free below, you can see the full peer review history and editorial decisions. It cost the authors $0. This is what scientific publishing should be.

In journal club today an astute grad student pointed out that these macaque tapping data look nothing like human beat synchronisation data. Nor, for that matter, like data from vocal learners like Snowball the cockatoo. Doesn't seem like evidence for synchronisation - are we missing something?

This is the conclusion, which I'm pulling out from behind the paywall because it'll probably be a free newsletter or podcast one day. I think the AI era is a reckoning for the tech industry, one where consumers finally realize they're being abused.

Just had our first set of reviews from @pci-regreports.bsky.social for our proposed study on RT during GLP-1-RA treatment. Probably the most constructive and useful set of reviews I have ever had... and having them before starting the study makes them even better! 11/10 would recommend!

Today sees the publication of the Theme Issue featuring the CES Transformation Fund grant scheme. Enjoy! royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3... @durhamdcerc.bsky.social @durhamanthropology.bsky.social @cultevolfunding.bsky.social @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social

Good (albeit depressing and long) analysis of the existential crisis we face in higher education: www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-d...

In case you have missed Simine Vazire's excellent webinar yesterday, here is the link to watch it online: youtu.be/_vb1CNwC3CM Thanks again @simine.com for staying up so late and thanks to the audience for the great questions!

In a new Review for @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social -- and my first first-authored paper! -- @manvir.bsky.social and I argue that experience shapes the emergence and evolution of seemingly extraordinary beliefs. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I had no trouble reaching my audience on Twitter without using feeds. I am included in several feeds. I have 50K followers. I was hoping for engagement.

I think this is all the more reason to promote public peer reviews (which are required by @peercommunityin.bsky.social, among others). Won't solve the problem, but transparency makes it easier to identify and address low-quality reviews/reviewers (whether due to AI or other reasons).

And the Lord sayeth, learn to write at a college level.

By coincidence, just after this published my commentary on a different article about the uniqueness of human dance was published ("Toward non-anthropocentric definitions of music and dance"). Looking forward to more cross-species comparative work on this topic in the future! doi.org/10.1017/tmd....

Haven’t read the full article yet, but this is a big deal if true! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Same content posted same time to Bluesky vs. LinkedIn: ~10x more engagement on LinkedIn, although I have ~10x more followers on Bluesky...

Before the monstrous transformation of Twitter to X, it was considered normal to be active on academic Twitter. Now, even though we've migrated to Bluesky ("safe space"), I feel that many ppl (including myself) are less active in posting anything. Have you noticed this trend? Or am I imagining this?

My most-cited paper also used little more than counting. We did a few extra analyses, but the core was just to count which musical features appeared most/least often around the world. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

So excited to be visiting Aotearoa New Zealand in February for the Capitol City Complex Systems Symposium 2026 (with side trips to Otago, Canterbury, and U. Auckland). If you're in Wellington or fancy a visit, check out the program. www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/conferences/...

This is gonna be a shitshow