Oops. Ooooooooooooops. I do hope that nobody has been given or denied a job/promotion based on their SpringerNature citation counts in the past 15 years. arxiv.org/pdf/2511.01675 h/t @nathlarigaldie.bsky.social

The Qld police are catching fewer badly behaving motorists, but yet they still find time to fine cyclists for speeding on the bike path. I saw four officers doing this a few months ago. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...

Have increased capacity for this December INSPECT-SR online training workshop following a successful 1st event today. Book here: www.trybooking.com/uk/FKHV

Glad to share our full paper on why deployed clinical prediction models should not discard predicted risks in favour of thresholds with @rexwp.bsky.social and @aidybarnett.bsky.social now up on @jclinepi.bsky.social. A brief explainer (1/4): #statsky #rstats authors.elsevier.com/a/1m1D83BcJQ...

🎲 Working in a bingo hall as a boy, #AusHSI Prof @aidybarnett.bsky.social is well-versed in the game of chance. In @significancemag.bsky.social, learn about the #lottery for #researchfunding he now runs for the @britishacademy.bsky.social and how it works. 🔗 bit.ly/3J7689t | 🔓 bit.ly/47HTlDH

My dog loves sleeping in a pot plant

The dark truth behind FormatMyPaper.com

With only about 10 spots left, #AIMOS2025 will almost surely sell out this year. Register now to make sure you don't miss out! aimos-inc.github.io/aimos.confer...

Some real fake news! Paper mills are creating fake authors who can then serve as fake reviewers. The illustration of the fake reviewer sitting at their desk is excellent. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

👉Also Sorbonne bsky.app/profile/sorb... pulled out of 'THE' University Ranking 👇 Important step in times of massive, systematic gaming by Universities, being a main incentive for Hyperprolific Publishing, Citation Cartels, Paper Mills & Junk Science! #researchintegrity, #Chemsky, #CompChemSky

Is it fair for grant reviewers — who are often our colleagues — to judge the legitimacy of career breaks due to personal circumstances? go.nature.com/48yaJvF

A good argument for preprinting everything here: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I once worked in a bingo hall and saw the joy of people winning money at random. Now I randomise academics in the serious business of who wins research funding. With funding lotteries growing in popularity, I reflect on how to run them and the lessons from bingo. academic.oup.com/jrssig/artic...

I think a lot about the general lack of statistical competence. Misspelling the great John Tukey's name as Turkey may seem harmless, but I can't think of how anyone whose is serious about statistics would do this.

2025. (not just cancer lit....) Low quality papers are flooding the cancer literature — can this AI tool help to catch them? A large language model scans abstracts and titles for signs that an article was produced by a 'paper-mill' company. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Lotteries may be fair in theory, but new research shows people prefer expert committees to decide who gets scarce medical treatment.

Free data resources in science are having the shit mined out of them to produce X,000's of bullshit papers. What should we do? (Warning: I sat on this draft for too long, and publishers are already doing some of it. That's what I get for engaging with the news.) open.substack.com/pub/jamescla...

At last, a simple diagram that explains random forests. Go forth and make random diagrams, I mean random forests. From www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejo...

It's 2025.723 and scientists are still putting too many decimal places in their results.

When the zombie apocalypse starts in Brisbane

Peer reviewers are more likely to recommend accepting papers that cite their work — my latest for @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/policy/publi... @aidybarnett.bsky.social

“I still yearn for the good old days…” From the latest Private Eye, out now.

Since search is dead, how soon do you think Google Scholar is headed for the Google Graveyard? I'm betting it's soon, and academia is NOT prepared

Reviewers are more likely to approve manuscripts if authors agree to cite their work than those who don't get cited. Thanks to @aidybarnett.bsky.social, @balazsaczel.bsky.social and @econfeld.bsky.social for chatting with me for this story! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Don't miss out!

Sadly familiar story on the ABC over government interference in scientific results www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08.... I fully support the statistician (Adrian Baddeley) for quitting.

Retraction by ‪@mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social‬ of a paper in which a University of West Florida professor appears to have photoshopped his model airplane into a photo of a NASA wind tunnel mdpi.com/2226-4310/7/... pubpeer.com/publications...

If there's anyone listening from the Global Burden of Disease, your data is being used for trash studies and your reputation is heading down the toilet.

Care about #reproducibility in research & publishing? Join this webinar on Aug 27th, jointly organised by @aimosinc.bsky.social & @ausrepro.bsky.social on statistical reproducibility with @michelenuijten.bsky.social & @tomhardwicke.bsky.social Free - register here qut.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

A new preprint showing strong evidence of peer reviewers engaging in transactional peer review as some only approved a manuscript after requesting and then getting cited osf.io/preprints/os...

The NHMRC has today released a Good Institutional Practice Guide. I'm biased, because I was involved in its development, but I think it's a great document that the Australian research community really needs. www.nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/pub...

Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community. reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...

Once upon a time, two science journalists had an idea for a blog about retractions. And on Aug. 3, 2010, Retraction Watch launched. And now, 15 years and 6,700 posts later, that work seems more important than ever. Happy 15th anniversary, Retraction Watch.

As a statistician, I am getting very "First they came" vibes here, but this is just rot and bonkers. I remember campaigning for Andreas Georgiou when the Greek government pulled a similar trick. I know the international stats community will rally together again, but will anything change?

Almost all my bug bears in one paragraph

Two thoughtful and rapid reviews, MetaROR is the best place for meta-research.

I’m thinking of starting a new field of research that compares lettuces. Its name? Cos-effectiveness.

Monday morning mood

The research literature is an unsafe workplace... flagging papers with verifiable errors will improve the safety of everyone working in the research literature. 🧬 search.app?link=https%3...

Australia's failure to enforce research integrity: "CSIRO chief executive Doug Hilton said the Smyth case clearly highlighted the need for an independent research misconduct watchdog instead of allowing universities to investigate allegations against their staff." www.smh.com.au/national/the...

Thrilled to welcome University of Bremen & the University of Oldenburg as new German #MoreThanOurRank signatories! Celebrate diverse excellence―learn more: inorms.net/more-than-ou... 🌍🙌 and shorturl.at/W6jja

“Australia joins 24 countries to demand immediate end to Gaza war” - better late than never. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

An important paper on the growing issue of "one click science" papers that were only created to boost track records and have contents that are, at best, hollow and at worst dangerous. I have been a big advocate for open data, but some data sets are too open. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Time for your yearly reminder that “We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons”. #OTD 1948 Douglas Altman b (d 3 June 2018) “One of the most influential medical statisticians of the past 50 years” he led reforms in medical research reliability & reporting. 1/3

I am seriously concerned about the state of scientific research. It was bad before LLMs, but now the rubbish is the mode.

All retracted articles should immediately become open access.

Innovations in #ScholarlyCommunication and #ResponsibleResearchAssessment need to go hand in hand. New guest post by @jasonchin.bsky.social, @ludowaltman.bsky.social, and Kathryn Zeiler, editors at @metaror.bsky.social, share insights on these connections. Read more👇 sfdora.org/2025/07/08/m...

The MJA is proud to publish a Special Issue on Indigenous Health titled “Carving our path with spirit, strength and solidarity” Available online at buff.ly/O5ARJkz or as an eJournal at buff.ly/BUAR6CA #NAIDOCWeek #NAIDOC2025

🖇Today, we look at a paper whose "authors examine reproducibility and replicability in qualitative research". According to the assessment, "both reviewers found the article to be technically sound, interesting, and of likely value to the field." 👇 Read the assessment, reviews & full text on MetaROR

Last day to come along and say hello and grab a copy of the Practical Guide to Implementing Responsible Research Assessment at Research Performing Organizations and an @dorassessment.bsky.social brownie! And come along to the session at 11.30 on the many dimensions of research assessment