1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it). But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that

1 To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised! 🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...

🦘🦘🦘 If you ever wonder why roos jump in your headlights (or even if you don't) here is a brief overview of why and what is different about marsupial cognitive ability. 🦘🦘🦘 uploads.strikinglycdn.com/files/c595eb...

It was a pleasure being part of this collaboration led by Barry Brook with @johnalroy.bsky.social @willgearty.bsky.social et al! Watch this space for more 🐅🐆🐈🦝

Randomly coming across a MDPI article where the author cites himself every time he's unsure what to cite (t-test, Fisher). It's also the editor's choice 🤦‍♂️ www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/14... 50 out of place self-citations! AI or just negligence? plantscience.psu.edu/directory/rp...

Public info institution the BoM never mentions fossil-fuelled global heating, even during mega-droughts, heatwaves, bushfires floods. Why? Perhaps because its board is controlled by Shell, Santos, Woodside & Chevron? If you think this stinks, make a subsmission! michaelwest.com.au/undue-influe...

Human impacts on large mammals went well beyond triggering late Quaternary mass extinctions. A new paper by Brook et al. showing that biogeographic patterns were erased by the spread of domesticated species: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... A related paper is in press. Stay tuned.

We are recruiting a PhD student to work on a decision-support tool for food producers to assess and optimise the environmental sustainability of products. Ideally, someone who is knowledgeable about food production, sustainability and can or is willing to learn how to code in R/Shiny or Python.

Crab-like creatures are famed for having evolved five times in evolutionary history. But anteaters have evolved at least 12 times--in half the evolutionary span. Cool story by @jakebuehler.bsky.social for @science.org

🚨 First PhD chapter is out! My work thus far, with @andy2dobson.bsky.social We found that formerly common species have declined the fastest, on average. 📄 North American bird declines are driven by reductions in common species | Science Advances www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

my guess is that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of unethical conduct.... ⬇️

-- Metascience 2025 Virtual Preconference -- "Critical Metascience: Does Metascience Need to Change?" 23rd June 15:00 BST nomadit.co.uk/conference/m... 🔹️ Sven Ulpts 🔹️ Sheena Bartscherer 🔹️ Me! 🔹️ Carlos Santana 🔹️ @lisamalich.bsky.social 🔹️ @jbakcoleman.bsky.social #MetaSci #STS #PhilSci

all this talk about changes in p-value magnitude being interpreted as an increase in the "quality of evidence" necessitates that i share this. we all should share and actually read this in fact (for starters). #stats #metasci

What theoretical & methodological challenges emerge when investigating #behavior across the tree of life? We are organizing an interdisciplinary workshop on 'comparative behavioral biology' (Sept. 26-27). Please help us share the open CfA! 📢👇 hiw.kuleuven.be/clps/events/... #philsci #HPbio #evobio

Dire Wolf (Aenocyon dirus) thread. No, those wolves in the news yesterday are NOT dire wolves. To be clear those are Gray Wolves with just a few genes modified based on Dire Wolf DNA through CRISPR #paleoart #direwolf #aenocyon

Sketch, capture and layout phylogenies www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 🧬🖥️🧪 github.com/husonlab/phy...

As Jumana Bayeh argues in her scholarly close reading, Universities Australia's definition of antisemitism has one purpose only — to silence voices in support of Palestinians.

Interpreting residual plots can be tricky - how strong must patterns be to indicate model assumption violations? The latest #Rstats 📦 nullabor update makes this easier with lineup plots! 🔍 📈 Learn more: mansthulin.se/posts/nullab...

Slowly shifting from 3 to 4 currently 😂🤣

Our latest rant w/ Simone Blomberg in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social - The fallacy of single imputation. We make a convincing case that single imputation is misleading and should not be (mis)used especially for trait datasets (also confirmed by simulations) doi.org/10.1111/2041...

Missing data and the problem of handling variable-incomplete datasets is a common feature of ecological, evolutionary, biogeographical and palaeontological analyses. Here is a refreshing review arguing for the application of a generalized "Multiple Imputation" Rubin (1976) procedure 👇

Here are some cool animations I made a couple years ago for teaching DAG-based causal inference Confounding!

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take. thebullshitmachines.com

(2022) A natural history of vision loss: Insight from evolution for human visual function www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... by @alealisousa.bsky.social @orlinst.bsky.social @michaelproulx.bsky.social

Do we know the number of neurons in the human brain? A typical value cited in the literature is 86 billion. However, as I argue in this essay, the data does not justify this number and we do not have yet a satisfactory answer academic.oup.com/brain/advanc...

2025. Fully recovering Australia's threatened species would cost 25% of GDP. We can't do it all at once—so let's start here phys.org/news/2025-01...

Fascinating study on trust in scientists in 68 countries (N=71,922) by @colognaviktoria.bsky.social et al. One big negative predictor? Individual-level social dominance orientation (support for group-based hierarchy; domination of ‘inferior’ groups by ‘superior’ groups) 🧪: osf.io/preprints/os...

🧠 Come work with us! In addition to our postdoc position on modelling, our lab at @institutpasteur.bsky.social we also seek a postdoc to help us create the most complete open atlas of brain folding development! This is part of our ERC Synergy project Unfold (unfold-lab.github.io). Join us! (1/10)

«The available evidence supports a conclusion that the “placebo effect” is not a real healing effect, but a product of response bias, questionable research practices, and misunderstanding.»

Our new study out in @ScienceAdvances shows human presence in Tasmania at least 41,600 years ago, nearly 2000 years earlier than previously thought, and Aboriginal people burned and used wet forests. Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...