Academic Chatter

🚨 Today (Fri 23rd) is the last chance to download the full 109 page BBS collection on 'conscious AI and biological naturalism', including target article, 50 commentaries, and my author response. Don't miss out (& do click 'save pdf')! doi.org/10.1017/S014...

The Elsevier journal Stoten has recently retracted 161 papers. Can editors who are handling hundreds of papers a year be expected to keep oversight of such matters, or do publishers need to design better systems? #research #retractions https://ow.ly/xGb850ZYQyn

Researchers will stop optimising for research metrics when research metrics stop being used to assess researchers

What would universities look like if their success were measured by their contribution to society, rather than just their position in a hierarchy of institutions?

What does it cost to uphold research integrity in scholarly publishing? "In 2025, one of the Royal Society journals [...] rejected approximately 9% of submissions on account of suspected papermill activity [...] 2026 has already passed the 2025 figure." www.royalsociety.org/blog/2026/10...

‘Higher Ground’ initiative to raise ambitions for the future of UK higher education and research "...our higher education and research system is no longer delivering as well as it could be [...]" www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/higher-...

📢 We are recruiting a Postdoctoral Researcher in Statistical Machine Learning for Genomics. The role involves developing new statistical and machine learning methods for large-scale genomic and health data. Closing date: Tuesday 10 November 2026 ➡️ Find out more: https://tinyurl.com/2tnyrf23

My recent book AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview is free online today and tomorrow (through Oct 19, presumably UK time). I don't think the hard copy is available yet. Get it while it's free! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

New post! In which I discuss a truly amazing piece of science sleuthing that recently appeared on @pubpeer.com neuroskepticbsky.substack.com/p/the-sherlo...

You can tell a lot about how deeply someone has thought about human cognition, consciousness and the nature of the mind by how readily they attribute those things to AI.

Hey educators, tidyplots.org is great for teaching students data visualization because it is 🕊️ Free and open-source 🚀 Easy, intuitive and fast 💾 Loaded with demo datasets 🏆 Embracing best practices 🌈 Beautiful #rstats #phd #dataviz #education

For my angst-ridden mathematician friends: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKrw...

It's quite alarming that we're already having to filter AI-generated content out of our libraries, and I suspect this is very much the future. Though "AI authors" is a strange term. An AI can't be an author. It's a way of stealing other people's work.

The idea that professors have successfully indoctrinated a generation that won't even read the syllabus is quite something.

Why is Psych Science doing a bunch of special issues? We want to get more submissions on these topics! Authors may not submit papers on these topics because they don’t see many examples in our journal. Hopefully special issues can help! www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Concerns about course closures to be raised at University of Edinburgh governing body next week. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2663661...

I think I'm being quietly structured out of my job and no one is willing to say so straight out. (I know they want me to continue with the gen ed course I teach because there's no one else who has capacity to do it and it's the biggest gen ed in the school, but the core course I've been teaching...)

You lost me at "AI personhood"

Unrealistic timeline. The AI would first have to learn to accept a certificate it doesn't trust, from a network it can see but can't join, in a building where the signal is strongest in the car park.

As a PhD student designing my first survey, I added what I thought was a throwaway question at the end. To my surprise, thousands of academics answered it! The paper is out today: doi.org/10.1093/pnas...

Starting work on 'Corinne'. I've been experimenting with using checkboxes in Obsidian to keep track of open research questions, partially formed ideas and possible lines of enquiry. I'm finding it another useful way to organise my research as it develops.

you don’t hold "AI" accountable; you hold AI developers, vendors, and corporations that profit off it accountable holding "AI accountable" is like holding a toaster accountable. it's an inanimate object. it doesn't have wishes, feelings, or desires

I'm getting very bored of peer reviewers asking for more and more additions while editors keep demanding you stick to the original word limit. I've just had a journal ask me to cut a manuscript by 500 words, and I'm tempted to just remove all the pointless additions demanded by the peer reviewer.

You are not a failure. You've given your life to work you love and you're excellent at it, and it matters, even when the system acts like it doesn't. Solidarity.

I really admire people that can simply admit that they're wrong. Not a little wrong, or wrong in this way, or from from this angle, but just flat out wrong. Such a strength.

Collaboration isn't the soft option. It's harder than competing, because you have to trust people.

What do you think makes a good leader (in any area of life)?

One of the things I worry about is how easily we confuse the production of research outputs with actual intellectual progress. More papers, more results, more publications. But what have we actually learned?

There's something deeply depressing about a world-leading scientific facility having to scramble for funding to keep doing the very thing that made it world-leading. We shouldn't have to choose between preserving the history of science and funding the science itself.

Academics must resist LinkedIn’s enshittification "The platform now feels transactional and hollow, overrun by humblebrags, hyper-personal confessions, self-congratulatory reflections and engagement bait." www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/acad...

1/2 🎇 Good news! 🎇 The kind people at Behavioral and Brain Science have made the new collection on "Conscious AI and biological naturalism" #OpenAccess for a limited time: target article, all 50 commentaries, & my response. Go to the link and click 'save pdf': doi.org/10.1017/S014.... Do share!

A story that these numbers don't tell, however, is the generations of classicists and ancient historians who are being really severely let down and blocked from career advancement. My job should have been a freshy PhD's first job, and I should be a senior lecturer somewhere. But...

we have a policy for the use of genAI at the @aial.ie. we reflect on values key to scientific integrity, such as replicability, and err on the side of not using it blogpost: aial.ie/blog/gen-ai-... pdf: zenodo.org/records/2322...

Does male insecurity increase Ferrari sales? Do memes work for government communication? Will an AI ever replace a police interrogator? 🦍's CEO @evershedjo.bsky.social joined Phill Agnew on the #NudgePodcast to put these + 3 more psych myths to the test. 🎧Tune in: bit.ly/4hkUqX0

What happens when a supposedly flexible part-time PhD meets an inflexible teaching timetable? I’m already learning that doing doctoral research isn’t quite the same as *feeling* like a doctoral researcher. @academic-chatter.bsky.social

I really love teaching first year Greek history. That is all.