Dr Barbara Eichner

Your monthly reminder that if you're using ChatGPT to do your science, you're failing your colleagues, community, and all of us. Here, ChatGPT makes up data and presents it as the real thing — then apologizes when confronted.

University of Nottingham, right now, is cutting 560 jobs. Do we need to rebrand universities as very large, very clean, land-based oil rigs to get government support?

If you use AI-produced writing in humanities scholarship you are dead to me. How I evaluate that kind of writing is by crossing you off my list,

"It found UOW and five other universities appeared to overstate their financial problems and went too far in restructures and staff cuts." Actual parliamentary enquiry! Not just copy-pasting management narratives! CAN #UKHE PLEASE DO THIS NOW RATHER THA IN HINDSIGHT? www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10...

Ulster University spent £800,000 on a project that was then abandoned. They are now proposing up to 450 staff redundancies. We have to expose the hypocrisy and incompetence of many of those leading the higher education sector in 2026. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

If the FT reports this, perhaps the evisceration of UK universities is now a legit *economic* challenge, and politicians might finally be moved to *do* something?!

"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.

Another BBC headline fail: these cuts are not "controversial", they are outrageous. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Simply put, across the US and UK, university administrators, their management consultants and their funders no longer consider the arts and humanities worthy of being studied, taught and transmitted. Their vision of human society is anti-humanist. No wonder the kids are at the barricades.

I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:

Ich muss das loswerden, weil es mich seit gestern Abend wütend macht. Gestern wurde beschlossen, dass das Deutschlandticket zum dritten Mal teurer wird. Parallel startet heute der Tankrabatt. Zwei Nachrichten, wenige Stunden auseinander, und sie erzählen alles über diese Regierung. 🧵

Strikes start today at Nottingham. “These are not cash-strapped universities.” Dr Jo Grady on R4 this morning. 700 jobs. 48 courses. All to drive a surplus. Show your support. ✊

Day 2 of the UCU workers' strike at the University of Edinburgh. The 1,800 jobs UCU estimates will be cut is unprecedented in Scottish higher education. It is happening in the wealthiest Scottish university, and the third richest in the UK, currently sitting with over £3billion reserves.

That would be peak Manchesterism.

That would be peak Manchesterism.

Three people, including a child, drowned in the Channel today. Our politics is so broken that the debate is never about how we stop these deaths and always about how we can come up with harsher policies that make more deaths inevitable.

2yrs after I finished my MA History at Goldsmiths, my research rights were bought and I was hired to work as historical consultant on this TV show. It's had BAFTA and International Emmy nominations. I got a book deal, too. Goldsmiths: "No point in MA History, let's fire everyone and delete it."

The BBC has long given up even pretending to be interested in who these people are, why they are coming or how they might feel, in favour of acting as a kind of shop window for the parties to display their wares of violence and cruelty

Which is why teaching in person is superior to online teaching.

I did say Shabana Mahmood would be on the side of the thugs. Burnham keeping her in post was an utter disgrace. Labour supporters should be brave enough to say so. So should Labour MPs.

Ditto 30,000 roles in universities in the past three years.

The BBC has decided that this constitutes news… A man who left for Monaco several years ago declaring he’s ’lost confidence’ in the UK His qualification for making the headlines? Owning £15bn Broadcasting like democracy already died! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

When it’s left-wing protesters, Home Secretaries have changed the law so they are now criminals. When far-right criminals break the law, they’re asked not to break the law again 🙄

This is not just grim, but also an admission of managerial and political failure on a large scale.

Celtic (UG), Chinese & Russian (UG), Contemporary History, Economics & Statistics (joint degree), Inclusive Education (MSc), Intellectual History, Italian & Classics (joint), Law & Social Policy (joint), Medieval History, Persian Studies (UG), Portuguese (UG), Psychology & Economics (joint)....

Time to deport all these fighting age men terrorising our patriotic lifeboat volunteers www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

LLMs obscure the very world science seeks to illuminate. They have no place in our knowledge work practices. Anyone who insists they are the "future" of scientific papers is either a charlatan, an ignoramus, or a saboteur, and should be treated with the same contempt they show to scholarship.

The RNLI has said the abuse of volunteers in Portsmouth has forced it to close the lifeboat station there and stop operating since September 10. Nearby stations have been providing cover to the area instead. One of the UK's largest coastal cities without a lifeboat because of the far-right.

So Burnham and Labour happy to jail *peaceful* anti-genocide and climate protestors, but are silent in the face of fascist mob rule that has the potential to injure / kill. Shameful pandering to racists for votes. cc. @davidpintod.bsky.social - you are my MP. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Madeline Odent absolutely nails the #Piddington situation. 🧵

The fallacy that University leaders pushing AI are falling into is thinking that the point of undergraduate research is to find things out. It isn't. What students find out is typically already generally known. The point of undergraduate research is to learn how to find things out.

Because women academics work in English and History just as a fun hobby and a ladylike accomplishment and for a bit of pocket money for their beauty sessions, with a hubby breadwinner holding down the real job.

Seems none of these universities seems to greatly care about their REF results in the "Strategy, People and Research Environment" department ...

Every year a delight to hear "Rule Britannia" and see a waving sea of European flags (and many other flags and national paraphernalia). #LOTP

"Universities fail to win over people who fundamentally hate everything they stand for (again)" www.ft.com/content/a314...

It's just weird isn't it when the British Museum is running a sold-out exhibition, when The Odyssey reports $1billion at the box office, when the V&A has just opened the most innovative and accessible museum model in Europe....and this is what our minister for research comes out with.

I hope the British ambassador to Pakistan is called in to explain why such a thing is allowed to happen.

’Amanda Martin, Labour MP for Portsmouth North … said it was "completely unacceptable that misinformation has led to young cricketers visiting our city being wrongly targeted"’. BEING ‘WRONGLY TARGETED’ IS NOT THE ISSUE HERE. BEING TARGETED IS THE ISSUE.

AI companies: This technology we’re developing is dangerous and might destroy humanity and we don’t know how to stop it Other people: So we should strictly regulate it, create legislative guard rails, and monitor its development? AI companies: lol no the opposite of all that & give us more money

I just think that risking your life at a moment's notice to save people you've never met in exchange for no money is a better expression of patriotism than dressing up like a Poundshop paramilitary and intimidating families with kids trying to get onto a ferry.

The balaclava blackshirted thugs are a result of a decade of politicians, tabloids and the broadcast media telling racists they have "legitimate concerns." The normalisation of actual fascism rhetoric and action has led to this and is a far greater "legitimate concern" than any migrant on a boat.

You’ve gotta use AI because it’s the future. But also it’ll take your job. But also it’ll create a paradise on earth and solve most of our problems. But also it’ll end humanity soon. But also you’ll get left behind if you don’t use it right now.

For those still learning about Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD, here are the salient facts:

Kent police said 'no arrests were made' of the people who blocked a port and roads. There's your two-tier policing, folks www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cm...