Fascinating stuff on Start the Week this morning: The Peasants War, the last known victims of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and the neurology of selfhood, all in the words of prize-winning authors. Join Lyndal Roper, Hannah Durkin @masudhusain.bsky.social and me just after 9:00 on Radio Four.

The December issue of Brain is out with a wonderful cover. Interested to know what those delicate helical structures are? Yes, this is Treponema pallidum, the bacteria that causes syphilis and which proved so elusive to detect when researchers first attempted to isolate it. academic.oup.com/brain

The Times and Sunday Times science/environment books of the year are out! By @masudhusain.bsky.social @adamweymouth.bsky.social Tim Gregory Liam Shaw @hannahritchie.bsky.social Suzanne O'Sullivan and Bollore/Bonnassies. List here (click science/environment) www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

On the Neurology of Apathy www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...

Nice to have made this cut with OUR BRAINS, OUR SELVES in the Financial Times Best Books of 2025 list.

This turned out to be a really stimulating interview on the University of Oxfords' CortexCast podcast series on what patients with brain disorders reveal about our selves podcasts.ox.ac.uk/season-3-epi...

The current environment is making it near impossible to run clinical trials in the UK. One key issue discussed in @brain1878.bsky.social is the duplication - or worse - of regulatory oversight at NHS hospitals & universities. My views on how to change the system academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

Still a bit stunned but delighted to receive this from @royalsociety.org

We're very happy to announce that the winner of this year’s Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize is ‘Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain’ by debut author, clinical neurologist and neuroscientist Masud Husain. #SciBooks royalsociety.org/news/2025/10...

This one made me smile. The cover of the September issue of @brain1878.bsky.social depicts Hume and Sartre in animated conversation, accompanying a new essay on mental imagery by Margherita Arcangeli and Paolo Bartolomeo academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

There's greed and then there's Springer Nature greed. No wonder some people are smiling!

To my astonishment, my new book Vanished has been shortlisted for the Royal Society’s Trivedi Science Book Prize. Thankful to all the roarsome people who helped make it happen, from the Royal Society and judges to many beloveds. Roaring! 🐯 #Extinction #BookSky #HPS #Skystorians

Very happy to be in such great company, shortlisted for the @royalsociety.org Trivedi Science Book Prize with 'Our Brains, Our Selves' published by @canongate.co.uk

Latest edition of @brain1878.bsky.social includes a new paper on General Paresis of the Insane and an accompanying editorial, explaining why it and neurosyphilis still remain conditions which we can't afford to forget academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

Our Dementia Research Oxford Seminar series recommences on Sept 11th with Prof Martin Turner on 'Advancing therapy development in ALS'. 12 Noon on Zoom us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi... @masudhusain.bsky.social @ndcnoxford.bsky.social

July issue of @brain1878.bsky.social includes an article on AI-based tools for urgent decision-making for thrombectomy in acute #stroke. Unlike the White Rabbit, we don't want to be late! academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

Very pleased to see 'Our Brains, Our Selves' made it into the @financialtimes.com best of this year's science books www.ft.com/content/0f0b...

This month's issue of @brain1878.bsky.social contains two fascinating essays - runners up from last year's competition, as well as a fantastic range of articles from anti-NMDAR encephalitis, through to stroke and neurodegenerative diseases. academic.oup.com/brain/issue/...

I'm planning to write an editorial in @brain1878.bsky.social entitled "If patients only knew". It's about obstacles that slow down or prevent people from participating in clinical studies and the pace of initiating #ClinicalTrials. If you have experience or comments please message me and repost.

"Thinking time —the time needed to concentrate without interruptions has always been central to scholarly work. It is essential to designing experiments, compiling data, assessing results, reviewing literature and, of course, writing. Yet, [it] is often undervalued." www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Had a wonderful time at the International Dublin Literature Festival #IDLF discussing my new book 'Our Brains, Our Selves' with Shauna Bowers from the Irish Times, and having some fantastic conversations with a lot of people curious about brains and their disorders.

Interesting discussion tonight on How to Hack your Brain to improve learning at Oxford Biohacking Society with my neuroscience colleagues bstaresina.bsky.social‬ and vineytj.bsky.social

Absolutely spellbinding talk from @masudhusain.bsky.social on the neuroscience of apathy - what a great start to the final day of #BNA2025. Off to order the book now 👍

Needless bureaucracy and “bullshit jobs” are preventing academics from fulfilling their core creative responsibilities and making clinical research an “impossible task”, a leading neuroscientist has warned. @patrickjack.bsky.social reports #AcademicSky

On Sunday 11 May at Stratford Upon Avon Literary Festival, hear from @masudhusain.bsky.social on 'Our Brains: Our Selves' @oxexppsy.bsky.social

If you happen to be in central Oxford on Sat 5th April and you're interested in the relationship between brains and selves, I'm speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival

Here is a chance to make your voice heard within the university and reduce the administrative burden.

At @ox.ac.uk it's time for the staff survey. Here's my answer to: "What is the main thing the University could do to help you to progress your career?" Please repost and respond similarly to the survey if you agree. It's the only way to get our points across!

It's not just clinical research either!

Ditto here in Australia…

It is important that we move toward changing this before it is too late and leave us far behind researchers in other countries.. in fact, other items on the list, such as inflexible environments, also have roots in the designed beurucracy for clinical research in the UK.

Thank goodness people are waking up to the fact that there is a crisis for clinical research in the UK @financialtimes.com High on the list are the bureaucratic processes that have become an obstacle to getting things done

Review of my book 'Our Brains, Our Selves' @financialtimes.com www.ft.com/content/e9c2...

The number of patients entering clinical trials in the UK fell by 27% from 2018 to 2023 and new industry trials declined 38%. To revive clinical research we need to streamline systems and dismantle bureaucracy, writes @masudhusain.bsky.social www.bmj.com/content/388/...

Writing this took some guts, but we are all thinking it.

Clinical research in the UK is under threat, partly because it takes so long to get a study or trial approved. Here are some of my suggested solutions in this BMJ Opinion piece @nihr.bsky.social @wellcometrust.bsky.social @ukri.org www.bmj.com/content/388/...

Additional: If you are on a committee, resist the need for more processes

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Thanks to everyone for comments on my Brain editorial. There've been lots of questions on solutions. I'm afraid it's unlikely that any supreme body is going to come to our rescue. We have to do it ourselves. The problems came one by one. We can dismantle them one by one.

Some took offense to the travel example in the article (doi.org/10.1093/brai... ), so I outlined others in some detail: external compliance, internal weirdness, and some good processes with poor implementation. Importantly, we ALL benefit (administrative and academic staff alike!) from reduced BS.

Recently, @masudhusain.bsky.social argued that corporatisation of universities has overloaded us with inefficient processes that drown out teaching and research. Others read it as against administrative colleagues, and/or badly-timed DOGE ammunition. Some thoughts: www.dalmaijer.org/2025/03/redu...

Totally ! Yes. As a scientist I used to think "meh! why am spending my time booking this trip myself …" But fact is, when I booked the trips, it was cheaper and faster. Now, it is a back and forth of e-mails over several days or weeks until the agency makes the booking, while the prices increase.

So true it hurts

“If contracts like this were the policy of a small, developing nation, some people might wonder which gangster was pocketing the profits.” if our board was getting free holidays because we signed a deal with Diversity, it’d make *at least someone* better off. The whole editorial is, btw, great!

These guys saw it coming ten years ago! pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Yeah collaboration agreements are one major example. While they have great potential purposes, our uni routinely takes 6 months to create them and the end result is always a legal nightmare while the researchers waste time and money, and everyone loses interest by the end.

The travel agency scam is quite the beauty. Staff: "But I can book my flight and hotel *much* cheaper elsewhere!" Response: "Does not compute. Please comply with existing guidelines and follow policy. Refusal to comply may result in premature termination".

Great article. The growing mountain of unnecessary administrative burden and corporatization is slowly strangling UK academia….just as it is in the NHS and Royal Colleges.

This is great Masud -- There was a good description of Chomsky's position on anarchy and authority on the Philosophize This podcast that presaged bullshit jobs -- He argued that authority is required to justify its existence. www.philosophizethis.org/transcript/e...

Thank you Masud for giving voice to the thoughts that many of us have. There are horror stories to share about travel agents contracted by universities. They cost more money & time as you say, and they often put at risk colleagues, especially women, who found themselves in dangerous situation