I'm quite happy to 'bear the cost' of young people being more educated and generally having more choices and agency about what they do with their lives. When it comes to bearing the cost of people earning over £100k a year avoiding and evading tax that is a different story

It's ready! And by finished I mean ready to sit in my drafts for 9 months whilst I start and finish up my mat leave, which is an odd feeling. Hopefully I still think it's good in November...

“These findings provide clear evidence that data collected on MTurk simply cannot be trusted.”

Should PhD be included in the list of abbreviations within a PhD thesis? 🤔

My top books that I read in 2025 🎉 Any recommendations for similar very welcome!

A politician making me feel hopeful? Zack I don't know how to feel about this, don't break my heart, it's the hope that kills you

How childhood trauma affects our ability to understand minds 🧩 New review finds that childhood neglect is consistently linked to weaker mentalisation, especially in psychosis. Abuse shows mixed results, but the overall pattern spans diagnoses. 🧵 THREAD #ChildhoodTrauma #Mentalisation

The idea that politicians pledging something which then doesn't materialise exactly as promised is some sort of unique threat from the Green Party, as opposed to being *the main running theme through UK politics for the last few decades* is completely unhinged.

Unlike politics, there’s no such thing as public health centrism. It’s evidence-based radicalism. It’s all about change towards health justice and equity, not tinkering around the edges trying to keep everyone happy. Such notions, my friends, are rather radical and there’s no shame in that.

Today is the first day in 26 weeks of pregnancy that I have enough energy to use my standing desk! What a wild ride

I am absolutely furious with everyone and anyone who had the audacity to have a choice over whether they got up at normal clock time or normal body time. And I have no right to be as I went to bed before my toddler and also got up after him but still.

My god, the sheer relief of reading a piece by someone who knows something about this football match and didn't just learn to spell Maccabi two days ago www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

NI Numbers don't stop illegal working Passports don't stop illegal working Residence cards don't stop illegal working Driving Licenses don't stop illegal working Bank statements don't stop illegal working its almost as if you can't stop illegal working

I got caught out by this recently, didn't know it was a relatively recent piece of legislation. HUGE implications for accessibility and vulnerable people being disproportionately impacted.

Just so we're clear: wearing a tshirt to support an anti-genocide group is a criminal offence, but directly instructing people to assault a group which is protected under the equality act is 'free speech' which needs to be protected? Cool cool cool www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

New PhD milestone: found myself physically banging my head against the wall next to my desk. Mendeley creating a brand new reference list for no reason. IYKYK

Please donate today if you can, Molly shares lots of accounts and does a huge amount of work to verify they are legitimate. My heart is breaking for families in Gaza

Was advertised this 'opportunity' through the University recently. I wonder if the students whose work is submitted will get the opportunity to consent in taking part? Or be told? Or indeed if they will be penalised for using AI for assignments that are used for this pilot?

Someone has clearly never been to Bristol and seen our average bystanders

I feel like we are 6-9 months away from being told that an essential element of teaching impartially about Nazi Germany is to acknowledge that 'some of the people protesting against the Jews had legitimate concerns, actually' and maybe even 'it's not their fault Hitler took it too far'. Ludicrous

I can't tell you how happy it makes me to find a Lord of the Rings pun on a research paper in the wild. I don't know what to do with myself now, kinda feels like I should take the rest of the day off

I am begging university admins - if anyone, staff or student, emails you and shares that they are pregnant, then asks a follow up admin/HR question, it is completely appropriate to say congratulations rather than just ignore the news and address the query. Is this just me? I think it's so rude!

Analysing focus group data from a group of parents hits different when you are 4 months pregnant. I've been looking at this data since April, why am I now crying at the quotes about parenting being hard and peer support 😭 is it appropriate to mention pregnancy hormones in my reflexivity statement?

Productivity hack: just make all the logins and referencing software and file backup systems work. I'm in a reasonable state of flow today EXCEPT I have to stop every 5 minutes to add a reference, fix Google Drive, cajole a journal website into accepting my institutional email... It's so disruptive

THIS IS SO THRILLING

Victoria Clarke off of Braun and Clarke's Reflective Thematic Analysis just 'liked' my witty LinkedIn comment on her post about the perils of AI in qualitative research. Such a great niche claim to fame now surely I can use this to forge forward with my focus group analysis!

Pretty heartbreaking how many of these comments are making fun of women for being idiotic enough to hope they avoid major surgery when giving birth. Medical intervention is absolutely incredible. AND the c-section rate in this country is over double what WHO recommends. It shouldn't be that high...

1000% times this. I can actually feel my brain stretching trying to wrap my head around this. There is a literal genocide going on and people are going miles out of their way to ignore it, Disgusting and shameful. More power to Bob Vylan

I love open science! Found a really interesting preregistration of a systematic review from 2023 on OSF, emailed the author, they replied the same day to say it is under review but they sent me a draft! I feel so cutting edge right now

Academia in 2025: For weeks I’ve been working through botched copy-edits of my monograph, outsourced by the publisher to a company I’d never heard of, until it finally dawned on me the terrible job might be AI. A quick search confirmed the company recently launched new AI software, which now means..

This is so frustrating for so many reasons... but especially absolute, barefaced cheek of adults asking children if they like school, being told "no", and concluding that actually school is fine, it's the kids who are disengaged (and who need special attention)

Palestinian author Yasmin Zaher has won the Dylan Thomas literary prize. I've just ordered her debut The Coin from a local independent bookshop and you should too! Or, put it on order at the library.

Read this yesterday and now I am similarly afflicted

"Universal interventions need to be part of a bigger picture... building supportive relationships and a sense of belonging across the whole school community" This part is key. Interventions are a drop in the ocean if the school environment isn't experienced as safe, unfortunately now very common

Spent a lot of time at the end of last year getting my pilot study protocol submitted to a journal, it's been on 'editor assigned' since 13th February. A long delay but a more pressing issue is that the pilot has now taken place! Not sure how useful the reviewer comments will be, if they ever come..

On a great training session today about decolonisation, it’s taken me on a journey though

Another Meta-Analysis on Long Covid, But This Time with Controls. Here's What You Need to Know. 🧵

I can only attend one day of my uni's PGR conference and of course I get the day where the keynote is 'AI guy' and I miss the infant health and nutrition keynote, gutted!

My second first author paper was published last week! 📣 A qualitative analysis of the support needs of young people exposed to Adverse Childhood Experiences journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... I spoke to lots of young people and here's what I found out. 1/

Nothing gets me fired up for the week quite like spending 20 solid minutes first thing on a Monday doing the Waffle whilst waiting for my phone, computer and email to talk to each other and successfully verify two passwords. Lets go!

Behind the headlines and the stigmatising language about disability benefits are real people - millions of them. People who are scared about what this news might mean for their day-to-day lives. 1/2

'Leading neurologist' is a wild way to describe Suzanne O'Sullivan, epilepsy specialist who has decided to write a non-evidence based book. There is absolutely no scientific consensus on overdiagnosis of mental health conditions, the framing of this question is infuriated

Great paper finds ACEs and experiences of school belonging and bullying are independently associated with poor health outcomes. "Only 6% of individuals with no ACEs reported both being bullied and lower school belonging compared to 51% of those with four or more ACEs" (1/3)

The formatting part of having a paper accepted seems to be specifically designed to drain any kind of joy or pride out of the process. The admin has absolutely annihilated any good feelings

An intelligent barrister friend just sent me this, thinking it was good 😵‍💫 Where do I start. ADHD and autism aren't negative diagnoses of suffering! Honestly impressive to write a piece this long and omit any research done by neurodivergent people. So damaging. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Important new evidence published today: large-scale DofE trial (N=12,166) found that two universal MH awareness interventions, in secondary schools, led to an *increase* in emotional symptoms at long term (9-12 month) follow up tinyurl.com/4ffday8y Thread below /1

AI is the future, except this is what I got from a AI voice note transcription. Welsh gibberish. Voice note was in English, but I was in a school in Wales so it’s possible my phone picked up a very incoherent ghost 🤔 👻