Hail in suburban Chicago last night was no joke! (1 inch = 2.54 cm)

also, throwing out a prediction: Grammarly will bring this feature back, but only for the long-dead.

A lot to detest here, but especially: 1) the presumption that experts' opinions are fungible with AI approximations of their opinions 2) the implication that you wouldn't otherwise have access to these experts' thoughts! experts love to be asked their opinion!

Scientists/science writers I found in Grammarly's 'expert review' system: David Spiegelhalter, Ivan Oransky, Mary Roach, Rebecca Skloot, Ed Yong, Melinda Wenner Moyer, Deborah Blum, Tom Knight, Michael E Mann, Corinne Le Quere. [pic: results of 5 trials w/ free burner acct]. No doubt many more.

New COSIG update! 3️⃣4️⃣

fantastic work @sholtodavid.bsky.social 🫡

The digital sophists: "[LLMs remind] one of the ancient Greek sophists, sharply opposed by Socrates in Plato’s dialogs: masters of argumentation who could defend and attack a thesis with equal dexterity, largely unconstrained by commitments to truth or consistency." doi.org/10.1038/s443...

When you collect data online, are the results from humans or AI? In a project led by Booth PhD student Grace Zhang, we estimate the prevalence of AI agents on commonly used survey platforms: osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵

Intéressant www.digital-science.com/blog/2026/02...

Multiple news outlets are reporting a US attack on an Iranian #desalination plant. If verified, this violates international law protecting #water systems during wars, and it sets a dangerous precedent, given intense dependence of Gulf countries on desalination. timesofoman.com/article/1691...

what it feels like to drive a Kia Soul

This proposes a way of using AI agents to produce research. Ok. But this bit is a pipe dream: "And human scientists should retain authority over — and responsibility for — framing the question, validating the path and signing off on conclusions." Here's why... /1

Markus Englund built a tool for identifying repetitive sequences in scientific datasets! Read up here: www.sciencedetective.org/scientific-d...

Everything is for sale

The official journal of the Canadian Paediatric Society has just acknowledged that more than 100 of its case reports are fabricated. Incredible reporting from @retractionwatch.com retractionwatch.com/2026/03/03/c...

“The chronic ongoing problem, for nearly two decades, is that the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis proponents withhold the evidence they claim to have. When independent scientists ask to see it — in the form of materials, for example — we are attacked for ‘suggesting fraud.’”: @boslough.bsky.social

The full sequence

Stunning discoveries at @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social ! 🦠 Vibrio cholera [sic] has a nucleus 🦠 It performs “signaling to nucleus” 🦠 And contains something called “inter membrane space” Top-quality peer-reviewed content by @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social /sarcasm www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/12...

A great deep dive into the sorry state of gaming journalism by @jacksonwryan.com !

Some post-script that didn't make this piece: A whole heap of expired websites with high authority can be used to rank well on Search. Buy em up, get their authority. That happened to the dormant Australianaid website. In 2023, it campaigned for aid. In 2025, it began listing Best Online Casinos.

These NOFO delays have created so many gaps in longstanding programs, including programs that are congressionally mandated. www.science.org/content/arti...

what!!!!

Authors say paying APCs "feels like legalized extortion." That's what we heard at ER&L! Credit to Lauren Collister and Matthew Estill for their conference presentation. Read more about their research: www.iastatedigitalpress.com/jlsc/article...

My sister made me a personal bookplate for my birthday and it is beyond sick

Amidst overwhelming Epstein revelations, I've heard from many scientists, especially women, about the deafening silence from so many corners. Many ask "how could things be different?" In this post, I answer with three metaphors, grounded in the science he tried to own medium.com/p/61a537ee8e...

Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started

when your dataset is definitely real

In support of #OpenScience, we routinely ask authors to openly share their #research #code before publication. We are now formalizing this practice with a mandatory #code-sharing policy and clarifying what we mean by code sharing. May be nice to cut-out the box for reference plos.io/47dPeOW 🧪

Breathtaking anecdotes from medical professionals in Iran about the massacres last month.

@sjmelchor.bsky.social writes for @nature.com about how to spot dubious papers, interviewing @elisabethbik.bsky.social, @abalkina.bsky.social, @jabyrnesci.bsky.social, myself and and my fellow @cosig.net maintainers @solalpirelli.bsky.social and Yagmur Ozturk! www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Remember Larry, the #scholastic #cat? 2 y ago, but still shows how easy it is to fake #papers & #citations. What can we do? Maybe simply value #quality over (easily measurable) #quantity when assessing #scientists. It's more work, but surely pays. #PaperMill #AI #ResearchIntegrity #FakeScience

New research integrity technical term coined by @elisabethbik.bsky.social: “Paper mill hairball.”, e.g., “Where every paper that overlaps with another paper will lead to more papers with overlaps.” pubpeer.com/publications... 😸

1. Kevin Gross and I have a new paper out today PLOS Biology. We used economic models based around screening games and the market for unpaid labor to highlight a meltdown cycle threatening peer review.

My own university has a "strategic goal" to increase research "outputs" by 10% annually (7 year doubling time). Your university is almost surely working towards the same. University rankings are now the main driver of this damaging institutional behavior. Publication is an out-of-control arms race.

In which we learn @acm.org is exceptionally bad at retracting articles that need retracting: arxiv.org/abs/2602.191...

Well done, @grumpygasbag.bsky.social !!!

Springer Nature adding new journals to the "Nature portfolio"

Many are appropriately outraged by Altman’s comments here implying that raising a human child is akin to “training” an AI model. This is part of a broader pattern where AI industry leaders use language that collapses the boundary between human and machine. 🧵/

We wrote a 1-year update post on stealth corrections. Thank you @deevybee.bsky.social for hosting it. We also wrote a @cosig.net guide to make reporting stealth corrections more streamlined cc: @gcabanac.cpesr.fr

Thanks to René Aquarius and Alex Glynn for their contributions to this guide. Don’t miss their one-year update on stealth corrections hosted on Dorothy Bishop's blog: deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/02/gues... cc: @deadneanderthals.bsky.social @gcabanac.cpesr.fr @deevybee.bsky.social

Stealth corrections happen when a publisher makes changes to a scientific article after its publication, without issuing any public notice. To learn more, check out the latest COSIG entry on Stealth Corrections! osf.io/34nj5 COSIG (33 guides and growing!) is available at cosig.net.

📰 David Adam reports for Nature News on our Replication Initiative "A European project calls for help to verify whether carbon quantum dots are really able to sense chemicals in cells." 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/d41... @nature.com

Image duplication found by René Aquarius. One of 5500 animations we have created to support the tireless image sleuths. pubpeer.com/publications...

Another wonderful diagram of a bacterial cell with mitochondria, this one in Frontiers in Microbology (10.3389/fmicb.2023.1194292). Reminder: Bacteria are prokaryotes, they do not have mitochondria...

I just went to PubPeer to comment on the restrictive data availability statement and found several people have already expressed concerns about other issues, including trial registration. pubpeer.com/publications...

Mithras mentioned 🗣️🗣️🗣️ www.bbc.com/news/article...

I’ve been sued for considerably less, and it’s an huge, time consuming hassle even when you win on anti-slapp grounds. www.geekwire.com/2021/mainstr...

reading...

UnEDXpected Peaks - New and fascinating data explorations from @elisabethbik.bsky.social scienceintegritydigest.com/2026/02/09/u...

In 2018, Ilja Van Braeckel created a font based on Charles Darwin's handwriting for #DarwinDay. It was based on 12,000 pictures of Darwin's original manuscripts! Link rot happened, and the original files are missing. I have put it up again here: drive.google.com/file/d/14Kcn... Happy Darwin Day!