“We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically.”

This is consistent with what I see in my practicals. Very few students use a ChatGPT and the likes.

‘Study after study shows that students want to develop these critical thinking skills, are not lazy, and large numbers of them would be in favor of banning ChatGPT and similar tools in universities’, says @olivia.science www.ru.nl/en/research/...

Last chance to turn it off. On Monday, November 3rd, Microsoft will start using your LinkedIn data for AI training. And remember, you're opted in by default. To toggle it off 👉 Account - Settings & Privacy > Data privacy > Data for Generative AI Improvement.

Seeing AI images in talks immediately makes me not trust the findings. The rush towards using AI for figures has further confirmed my suspicion that many scientists don’t value soft skills, like being able to visually communicate your ideas.

AI won’t exterminate humanity with Terminators. It’ll kill us with terawatt data centers — burning through water, accelerating climate collapse, and deepening unemployment and poverty. All for surveillance, profit, and control by billionaires. 🤖🔥

The Planetary Research Cooperative is getting close to launching our #PlanetaryScience diamond open access journal. If you would like to see what we've been doing the past six months, check out this video recording of yesterday's community meeting. solarsystem.video/w/v8MB1SS3fE...

I continue to hold that the entire premise underlying all of these metrics is extremely flawed, and that what it all comes down to is unimaginative managers who are content to offload scientist performance reviews to publishing companies, resulting in a perverse incentive structure. 🧵

Some cool melted meteorite debris found in soils returned by China's Chang'e 6 mission. These come from carbonaceous chondrite-like impactors, like the Bench Crater fragment. Not sure how that one survived impact! Described in @katie-h-joy.bsky.social paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

“I use AI to write emails.” OK well I have a sense of dignity.

Why is a Labour Home Secretary perpetuating this myth in The Sun? Asylum applications in the UK are significantly below the average for all European countries. The only person helped by spreading this falsehood is Nigel Farage

Absolutely shameful language from this Labour government. Why on earth should we expect immigrants to 'give more than they take'? And how are we going to measure this?! I so despise these people. They are paving the way for extremists to gain power because they fundamentally Agree with their racism.

If you can figure out how to give a one year old an age appriopriate understanding of polo you've probably earned this insane salary....

I've received an 'exclusive' invite to try Nature's new 'research assistant', which will burn down a forest to provide a 'summary of the paper' I'm reading and I have SUCH exciting news for them, that's called an 'abstract' and the actual authors already wrote it for me, no forest-burning required.

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

The impact of PhD studies on mental health - A longitudinal population study PhDs can be and some would likely argue, should be hard. But surely not *this* hard? #AcademicSky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

A thread mostly for astronomers, who have just submitted several thousand proposals to use the marvellous #JWST - the vast majority of which are marvellous and which are about to be rejected as the telescope is hugely oversubscribed. 🔭

👏

Help @weareagc.bsky.social grow, send us your great papers!

✨ Monthly Recap from AGC ✨ 📄 2 new publications in cosmochemistry — bringing us to 5 since the launch! 📨 Our ISSN is now permanent, a big milestone for the journal’s recognition. 🎨 The call for designs is still open — share your creative ideas (link in comment) Let’s keep growing together! 🌍✨

Planetary scientists - we have a continual lament that goes like, waaah we have too many meetings how can we work and put in so many abstracts! Here's a solution! Choose a different meeting!

"Going to LPSC" is not an inevitability, and treating it like some kind of cost incurred for participation in the field at large is absurd to me! We can change that, and it would not be hard to do. And to go, but go guiltily, and tell me how bad you'll feel for going, doesn't help anyone.

LPSC is already in a state that's unsafe for large portions of the community, and now the conference itself is erasing traces of marginalized groups and efforts to make the field better. We could let them know how much we dislike those choices! We could demand our scientific organizations help us!

It's really disheartening to try to talk to colleagues about boycotting a conference that removed all its records of abstracts pertaining to DEI, only for the response to largely be "I don't want to go, but..." But what??? Each of us has agency! You can choose not to go!

Lol the Nobels can't even acknowledge women's contribution to discovery. But sure let's acknowledge The Machines.

A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.

This also indicates the essential dishonesty of saying “it’s just a tool.” A hammer is a tool. Nobody writes about the “inevitability” of hammers. Nobody has ever studied the harmful effects of hammers on learning and concluded that teachers must all hit their students with hammers “responsibly.”

Delighted to see this paper out in @weareagc.bsky.social! We finally have a great journal where we can publish cosmochemistry papers that are free to read, and free to publish. No need to provide free labour to Elsevier, Wiley and co. so that they can make billions of $$$ and feed ChatGPT..

New paper alert! Tartèse et al. just published their new work in AGC: "Petrogenesis of Néma 001, an alkali-rich meteorite from the acapulcoite-lodranite parent body" Full free article available here: doi.org/10.33063/agc... The cosmochemistry is well represented this week, thanks for your trust!

Musk FRS.

The elimination of USAID is a moral atrocity and all involved made a choice to enable, and then lie about, ending the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world.

As an aside, "Excellence" must be the single-most overused, empty, boilerplate word used in academic bureaucracy and it's typically a stand-in for "We don't know what we want so you should do everything".

Wow, 3 men 🙄

Can't wait for it to pop! 🍾 www.theguardian.com/business/202...

New paper alert! Oliveira et al. just published in AGC: "A petrological, geochemical, and geochronological study of Ramlat Fasad 532: An Omani addition to the Antarctic `YAMM' lunar meteorite group" Here you can read the full free article: doi.org/10.33063/agc...

Can’t decide what to buy on Prime Day? Try: absolutely nothing, and then go support indie bookstores instead 📚

New @weareagc.bsky.social publication! This time, Oliveira et al. present a study of a new lunar meteorite and investigate its parentage and transit to Earth. More here: doi.org/10.33063/agc...

Am wondering if all of those suddenly deciding they’re against communities living “parallel lives” might reconsider their support of religious schools? Or indeed private ones?

It helps to be able to spell the country you say only you are competent enough to run.

At some point, an important function of the Conservative Party as it used to be has gone into reverse. What used to happen is that hard-right but bright MPs were given responsibilities as junior ministers and taught that slogans were all very well but governing involved the real world…

😂 what a long pathetic end of reign for Macron

Don’t answer any calls from +33 numbers today. It’ll be Manu trying to tempt you with a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to be prime minister for a week.

Conventional wisdom says motherhood should wait for tenure as before you land a permanent post, #academia is just not that family friendly🙁 @carersinstemm.bsky.social are calling for change and to celebrate their new report, a Saturday🧵on parenting & academia! 1/9 👩‍🔬🧪🔭⚛️ ℹ️: carersinstemm.co.uk

If journals want me to give a shit about their time to publication metric, they can pay my ass to edit/review and offer an incentive to publish with them. People who get my effort for free don’t get to make demands on timeliness.

Please join me in congratulating Woman on her appointment

This is why we can't have nice things! This is why we can't even get a boycott of LPSC going, because so many people are willing to ascribe individual successes or failures to personal character instead of confronting the much bigger picture. I'm so tired

That sounds like a lot of power. I hope we’re doing useful things with ChatGPT. 🙃

I am so dismayed a the statement today from the President of the @royalsociety.org that I want to publish here the letter I wrote to him yesterday urging him to address the clear concerns of the UK scientific community.