One of the giants of social psychology was a serial sexual harasser. This new report reveals how Miles Hewstone touched, bullied, and sexual harassed numerous women during his 18 years at the University of Oxford. It's amazing how often bullying and sexual harassment go together in academia.

Yesterday we were delighted to welcome @adrienfillon.bsky.social for two sharp and thought-provoking talks on scientific publishing practices and the limits of meta-analyses. Thank you for inspiring us to pursue science that is more open and built on integrity.

Interesting read, but worth considering (as the article does) the selection bias introduced by a) who is willing to initiate an adversarial collaboration and b) who manages to compete and publish it.

Thank you for this very impressive resource of 50 (!) reproducibility/replicability metrics; also includes a searchable online table at rachelheyard.com/reproducibil...

In our next episode of Nullius In Verba we will dive into the history of metascience. The first mention of 'metascience' in the literature we could find is Morris, 1938. Do you know of an earlier mention of the term 'metascience'?

Will this study about ketamine's effect on neuroplasticity ever see the light (publication)? It doesn't seem that ketamine changed synaptic plasticity after 2 weeks and 4 infusions.

Someone just sent me this study, and all I can say is that I don't understand why anyone would bother investigating this question. 1/n

Ketamine/esketamine have been claimed to work by enhancing neuroplasticity (quote from a KOL: "call them neuroplatogenes"). In this study synaptic plasticity was directly assessed but there seemed to be a near-zero effect. Results only posted on NCT in 2023. No journal publication yet, AFAIK.

Currently reading "Toward a causal interpretation of the common factor model" by Van Bork, Wijsen & @mijke.bsky.social (2017). Can't believe I had missed that one -- really good stuff! Link to pdf: pure.uva.nl/ws/files/354...

We built the simplest possible social media platform. No algorithms. No ads. Just LLM agents posting and following. It still became a polarization machine. Then we tried six interventions to fix social media. The results were… not what we expected. arxiv.org/abs/2508.03385

A paper by Dorothy Bishop on the replication crisis . . . from 1990! statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/08/05/a...

Just finished listening to this great episode by @stuartjritchie.bsky.social and @tomchivers.bsky.social on whether early-onset cancer rates are really up. Can highly recommend—it’s not only a relevant topic, but also a great exercise in the care that’s needed when somebody gives you a number.

super entretien sur la fraude en psycho avec Nick Brown dans "Répare ta science". J'ai écouté 2 ép. sur 3 Merci @nathlarigaldie.bsky.social @adrienfillon.bsky.social @steamtraen.eu micro-détail : "des nains sur des épaules de géant", c'est Bernard de Chartres (13e), Newton n'a fait que la reprendre

Wednesdays is ✨ free ✨ for World Children's Day in order to raise awareness about child sexual abuse. Grab it on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/2747770/... or Itch: artefrance.itch.io/wednesdays before November 21th 9PM CET!

Deuxième épisode sur la carrière de @steamtraen.eu On y parle de l'adaptation du livre de Stapel en anglais et des premières découvertes d'erreurs scientifiques en psychologie positive. creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

🧵 1/ Cette semaine dans la newsletter : croyances tenaces, science numérique, scandale au BMJ et une hormone qui sabote notre sommeil. 2/ Même les athées ont des intuitions… religieuses. 3/ Comment mesurer la compréhension de la science à l’ère d’Internet ? 🔽

Pourquoi on a mal La synthèse d'Yvan en 3 episodes, est tellement claire que je viens de me la réécouter Merci Projet Utopia et soutien à toutes celles et ceux qui douillent, parfois sans savoir pourquoi podcast.ausha.co/projet-utopi... #santé #douleur @yvansonjon.bsky.social

Have not read the study, but am willing to believe these results (small increase in grades, no statistically significant difference in well-being). On the pile it goes.

New article by me! Cardiovascular disease mortality rates have declined by around three-quarters since 1950, but we rarely hear about it. I explore some of the reasons behind the decline. ourworldindata.org/cardiovascul...

I don't see the point in giving sleuths credit for retractions. It doesn't seem like a good way of valuing labour and also further turns retractions into a kind of weird moral economy.

“‘History is best told as a story of organised crime,’ Kemp says. ‘It is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.’” Holy shit, this is insightful. It really explains how history rhymes.

Utterly incredible. My dad worked on weaponizing the immune system against cancer before pivoting to epidemiology, but I vividly remember him telling me that someday we’d be able to fight disease using the body’s own tools and a bit of help. Just a bit. Absolutely amazing stuff.

Here's a quick blogpost about alternative publishing models. You can bring a horse to water, and indeed wave the bucket temptingly under its nose, but it is likely to gallop off elsewhere. deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/07/new-... @ec.europa.eu @wellcometrust.bsky.social

Last week I declared terror management theory dead and accused my friend Steve Heine of motivated reasoning. Steve responded like the mensch he is with a solid rebuttal instead of blocking me. Read his guest post and tell us both who you think is right in the comments!

A Nature survey shows how widely researchers disagree on what quantum mechanics says about reality. Read the results - and find out what interpretation suits you - at this @nature.com article by @lizziegibney.bsky.social A run-down of major findings: 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

J’espère que de nombreux collègues de François Héran au @college-de-france.fr auront le même réflexe. Il en va des libertés publiques, pas seulement académiques. Cette institution élective va-t-elle se laisser donner ce type d’ordre par son ministre de tutelle sans broncher ?

New paper: Blaming the Thermometer for the Fever: Separating Misapplication from Method in Null Hypothesis Significance Testing, with @laabho.bsky.social and @jnwulff.bsky.social. We – strongly – push back on criticisms against NHST and argue for proper application. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... >

New blog post! Calculating a correlation is easy enough. But let's say you calculated two of them and they happen to differ. What follows from that? Turns out there are too many moving parts for an easy answer. www.the100.ci/2025/07/28/w...

Before reading any article about microbiome biomarkers, see this: Zhang, J.,et al (2025). Identifying reproducible biomarkers for microbiome association studies requires thousands of sample sizes. Science Bulletin, 70(13), 2056–2060. doi.org/10.1016/j.sc...

one thing I learned fairly early in my statistical consulting career: if you suggest using ordinal regression, all of your collaborators will hate you

🧵1/ 🚨 New article out! How robust is the psychology of social class? Together with Nicolas Sommet and ‪@frederiqueautin.bsky.social‬, we conducted large-scale replications of 35 hypotheses across four countries. Published in Nature Human Behaviour: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Obesity is primarily about food. Activity levels don't affect it much, and exercise interventions don't work to reverse it. It's the food. www.npr.org/2025/07/24/n...

Ok, just wow. If the content of this article is right, this is depressing. We're slowly reaching the point where ~100% of what I was taught in Social Psych was either innocently wrong or plainly frauded onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

This is really fascinating. I like that it offers a framework for deciding annoying little decisions like whether or not to purchase things like travel insurance or extended warranties or more car insurance.

"Honest yet unacceptable research practices: when research becomes a health risk" bmjopen.bmj.com/content/15/6...

Taking inspiration from @dingdingpeng.the100.ci et al.'s Loss of Confident Project, I've posted my own Loss of Confidence statement on my blog. tl;dr: I don't have much confidence in my early empirical publications conducted before I embraced open science practices.

What is SES? We experimentally test the big 3 components in lay & expert participants. Once you dissociate $ from job from education, it's mostly just money (but not exclusively!). Experts also overvalue education. This was one of my favorite projects! osf.io/76w9m_v1/dow... #psych #econ

Replication Crisis https://xkcd.com/3117/ Maybe encouraging the publication of null results isn't enough--maybe we need a journal devoted to publishing results the study authors find personally annoying. Explain xkcd: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3117

Newsletter #66 - Une nouvelle étude ne trouve pas de bénéfice du LSD sur la créativité - Augmenter le SMIC ne change rien à l'employabilité et augmente le bien-être - 30% des familles américaines ont un membre qui a une dépression

If you are having trouble falling asleep, you can listen to me droning on about stuff in French for an hour (with more to come in later episodes). This might not help you get to sleep, of course. #NoWarranty

Merci aux clermontoises et aux clermontois venus si nombreux Merci à la librairie Les Volcans, à l’université Clermont-Auvergne Et à bientôt dans toute la France !

400 personnes à la Librairie des Volcans, plus de 1 000 à la faculté, toutes curieuses de s’approprier les savoirs, de réfléchir aux nouveaux horizons de la démocratie : C’est à Clermont-Ferrand que la grande bataille citoyenne pour la justice fiscale a commencé 🧵

1) Avant la détection d'erreur : les origines de @steamtraen.eu Dans ce premier épisode d'une série d'entretien, on revient sur le passé de Nick, avant qu'il ne s'engage dans la détection d'erreurs. Si vous aviez envie de le découvrir, l'épisode se trouve ici : creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

@bmj.com Please look at PubPeer comments on an article you published last week. pubpeer.com/publications... I think your research integrity dept shld act swiftly on this one, given clinical significance. I'm aware of even more evidence of problems so let me know if this is not sufficient.

🚨 I’ll be joining Psychological Science as an Associate Editor starting next month. People at, or near, my intersection of psych genetics, clinical psych, psychological Epidemiology should consider the journal for your best work! (read the EiCs editorial on the journal policies/goals below)

Le mec était bras droit de Blanquer. Il a mis en place les politiques qui ont mené à cette situation. Et maintenant il vient comme une fleur dire « ah iii c’est pas terrible… MAIS BON 4000 POSTES EN MOINS QUAND MÊME LES GUEUX ! »

Newsletter #65 🔹 La “menace du stéréotype” en maths ne tiendrait plus. 🔹 Lire de la fiction rend notre vision du monde plus complex 🔹 Nous sous-estimons radicalement la richesse des 1 % les plus riches. 🔹 Et certains essais randomisés… ne comparent rien. newsletter.kessel.media/newsletter/p...

People normally think that certain things should not be for sale (e.g., organs) But what happens when people consider the principled arguments economists have given for the view that these things *should* be for sale? link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Paper in Nature 150 years ago. Beats reading any single-cell experiment…