The last three years of marking in particular make me extremely concerned about what this means not just for (higher) education but for democracy more generally as the work required for developing critical skills and learning become increasingly shunned and/or the guarded domain of the privilege few

I built some ecological inference modelling, and found by far the largest swing is abstention -> Ref. Lab -> Ref is relatively small bsky.app/profile/oska...

Thank you for calling. Please listen closely, as our menu options have changed. If the old world is dying, please, press 1. For new world is struggling to be born, press 2. If now is the time of- Ok. You selected "Monsters." If it is the time of monsters please have your reservation code ready.

Are we still posting our raw datasets now that they're being farmed for genAI-written papers? I'm starting to feel differently now sharing data before I'm totally done with my own research questions...

'A report published on 28 April identifies domestic political fragmentation as one of several “drivers of change” for the UK research system over the next 20 years.' Like it or not, science is political. 1/2

New paper— everyone is collecting intensive longitudinal data but recent review studies report that less than half of studies consider measurement/psychometrics. The paper covers a few foundational psychometric methods for ILD and provides a shiny app to apply them link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Statement from UK Biobank - 'Listings offering access to UK Biobank data (which did not contain any personally identifying information) were found on a Chinese consumer website. These listings were swiftly removed before any purchases were made.' www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/news/a-messa...

It is obvious - as a revealed preference - that a 33% rise in crossings is treated as x10 or x100 as newsworthy as a 33% fall in crossings. When this is most salient issue, BBC and public service broadcasters [if not the newspapers] should be checking that skew: it feeds a big public misperception

It's a bit of a myth that rents are constantly increasing faster than earnings or overall inflation - on average, they're not. So what *is* the problem of unaffordability in the private rented sector? And what does this mean for how we go about fixing it? Our take 🧵⬇️

I learnt a heck of a lot working on this piece, now out in American Psychologist. Big thanks to all collaborators particularly the mentorship of @omidvebrahimi.bsky.social and @ludvigdb.bsky.social. And of course the amazing resource that is the UKHLS @usociety.bsky.social

🔴 MAPPED: The Reform-Orbán Network Ahead of elections in both countries, DeSmog has catalogued the connections between Hungary’s autocratic government and Farage’s operation. 📝 @adambarnett.bsky.social

🚨New preprint and our results are rather concerning.. We find the "boiling frog" equivalent of AI use. Using large-scale RCTs, we provide *casual* evidence that AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance. And these effects emerge after just 10–15 minutes of AI use! 1/

I’ve been describing supply loss from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as an “air pocket” moving through the normal flow of oil out of the Gulf Helpful map from JPM highlighting when that air pocket will “land” in different major consuming regions: Asia this week, Europe next, N America two more

There is a difference between 1) having emotions about the state of the world and 2) trying to convince people that it’s too late to act on climate (a false premise that assumes climate change is pass/fail when it’s a matter of degrees). Impeding climate action is complying in advance.

Progressive resistance against the far right must be uncompromising and, as such, must be radically intersectional. Some communities cannot be sacrificed to appease the far right and all must be protected. An injury to one is an injury to all If you want to read more: feps-europe.eu/publication/...

🚨New policy study🚨 There must be an alternative: Against mainstream defeatism and towards the rejuvenation of the democratic public space We make seven key recommendations to turn the tide @feps-europe.eu 🧵 1/ feps-europe.eu/publication/...

Sometimes I feel like academic work is a poor fit for the moment. While the university is under threat, engagement with the public is not incentivized. Along with some friends, we started Society Workshop as a way to bring more social science to the public. www.societyworkshop.org

Holy shit: the guy who cut millions in grants because they were DEI cannot form a coherent explanation of what DEI is bsky.app/profile/lmrh...

This is definitely worth a read. The electoral implications of two deprivations: "In the parts of the country where you can get a good job, you can’t get a good house; in the parts of the country where you can get a good house, you can’t get a good job."

If you have experienced #bereavement in the past 12 months? Please consider taking part in our research on the impact of #money problems on grief. #Grief #Debt #MentalHealth #CostofLiving tinyurl.com/costofgrief

this!!

really interesting analysis (and beautiful data visualisations) from @profjanegreen.bsky.social. take-home for me: "Reform are starting to make substantial in-roads in Labour areas ... but it is not true that they are doing so by making substantial in-roads among Labour’s recent **voters**"

What happens when everything can become a bet? Based on British Academy-funded research by @sarah-mills.bsky.social, this article explores the rapid rise of prediction markets – and what they mean for regulation, public trust and democracy. 👇

The Green victory in Denton is the result which will have the biggest effect on Labour, far more so than a Reform win. The blithe assumption progressives have nowhere else to go has been proved catastrophically wrong. Can’t help thinking of this quote from a Labour minister, a year ago…

can't wait to see what comes out of this project to determine the best predictive model of the onset of depression - deadline now extended to mid March so consider re-sharing and submitting your model!

We extended the deadline of our machine learning competition by a few weeks until mid March! Still time to participate. We currently have 233 participants with 111 total submissions (some of them will be test submissions etc).

Spoiling a lot of takes but begging a large number of other questions... "Worsening graduate fortunes, it turns out, are a particularly British problem" www.ft.com/content/649d...

A very recognizable and useful read. Not everyone gets energized by endless political debate or outrage!

Ouch! Far-right Reform Party almost as big as the parties that have been the foundation of Britain's two-party system, Labour Party and Conservative Party.

"It would have been nice to skip the detour through countless replication failures, but sometimes that’s how the meandering path of progress goes."

1/2 'In social psychology, the current ease of online surveys, vignette experiments and so on only reinforces a point made 20 years ago that studies of "behaviour" are rare compared to studies of self-report....'

Thrilled to announce the Oxford Psychological Networks Summer School (OxPNS)! This is the first-ever psychological network analysis workshop in the UK, to be held in magical Oxford from June 22-26, 2026. To apply and for more information, please visit: oxfordpns.com A brief thread 🧵

🔺 New preprint 🔺 Why does poverty increase time discounting? With W. Frankenhuis and @danielnettle.bsky.social, we argue that current models do not account for discounting in *persistent* poverty, and show that a desperation threshold can! A quick 🧵

Excited to be recruiting for an ESRC-funded #PhD studentship examining gambling persistence and early life environments/adversity. The project is joint between @sopvs.bsky.social at University of Leicester and Aston University Application deadline: 23rd Feb www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQF033/e...

@hcrichardson.bsky.social wrote about a 1945 US leaflet on how to spot fascism in America. I thought it might be worth screenshotting the relevant bit. ALL of the these warnings have come to pass in the past year. 1/2

If the Palestine Action hunger strikers die - which they could do at any moment, as they are now very close to the end - it will be the government that killed them. Today’s column explains why. Please share, and write urgently to your MP. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I'm writing about the Palestine Action hunger strikers at the moment, any of whom could die at any moment, and the astonishing media and government silence surrounding them. The Establishment seems to have become even crueller than when Thatcher was PM.

and for anyone who needs a reminder, @iwriteok.bsky.social has a good primer on how this went last time round podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

held up by parental leave and weeks of industrial action, finally managed to get this preprint up. we apply a perceived causal relations approach to lay views of the interplay between "biopsychosocial" causes, exploring how this differs for groups based on their symptoms, finances + pol orientation

"Exiting the market" is such a soulless way of describing threats to people's livelihoods and the loss of training and opportunity for so many search.app/KvG3k

More than half of ethnic minority Brits say the England flag has now become a racist symbol, with Brits of all colours now tending to say the raising of the flag is mostly about expressing anti-migrant, or anti ethnic-minority sentiment

@leicesterchem.bsky.social dream team taking a stand ✊ Some of these fine minds are directly in the firing line! ☠️ 🪓 saveleicesteruni.com

Here's my argument with Sir Bernard Jenkin MP about the report showing how the racist intimidation of Black and Brown NHS workers on home visits has been exacerbated by the far right's wall of flags.

Exhausted after three days of collective consultation meetings. Hoping lots of people can join us protest school closures and mergers* and centralising professional services which will all result in job losses and a diminished university.

We have had surveys that have shown us exactly this in the UK, France, the EU etc for many years What we need to ask ourselves is why have journalists, politicians, academics etc chosen to focus on surveys that hype immigration This is what I explore here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Today colleagues across 5 academic and 1 Professional Services area were informed that their redundancy consultation process starts next week. Spare a thought for all these people who will spend the next 4 months in limbo. Our fight continues and we will be out on strike again from 10 November

Do you live in Birmingham? Have you signed the Brum Together statement yet? #BrumTogether #RefugeesWelcome #StopTheFarRight #StandUpToRacism #Pride #Unity #Grassroots #RaiseTheLove Add your name here: tinyurl.com/brumtogether...

aaand we are officially in the hide-your-neighbors stage