Daniel Ucko

Pleased to report the book of my dissertation on the #philosophy of #peerreview is coming out next week from @degruyterbrill.bsky.social, just in time for the holidays! Featuring anonymity, trust, and variations on a theme of openness of review and access. brill.com/display/titl...

Join us at Publication Integrity Week for the session 'Authorship norms across disciplines'. 4 Nov. 14:15 to 15:15 UTC. With: Itamar Ashkenazi, Lisa DeBruine and Dr Lisa M. Rasmussen. Moderated by @danielucko.bsky.social 👉 Full schedule and register: ow.ly/13Hu50ZYosJ

I for one think it’s bad that the president can just say crazy stuff all day every day and 99% of it doesn’t make the news because we’ve normalized having an insane president

If filtering by peer review fails it will be by reputation. But: ”Reputation does not behave like a currency you can earn; it behaves like land. It is finite, it is inherited, and its owners collect on it without having to produce anything new.” So AI-generated research will bring back feudalism.

A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Informa of perpetrating a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging exorbitant article processing charges.

Half the planet is having a massive fight about how to correctly interpret an Ancient Greek poem but go ahead, close some more humanities departments.

Admirable clarity @science.org

🌱 We're thrilled to share that our editorial team is growing! Under the leadership of Matt Hodgkinson (Editorial Lead), SIA’s newly formed Editorial Committee brings together a stellar group of experts.✨✨ @mattjhodgkinson.scicomm.xyz.ap.brid.gy @andre-brasil.bsky.social @danielucko.bsky.social

"How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor?" A Dramatic Reading of The Recent New York Times Dispatch from the Hamptons. Presented by The Gilded Age's Morgan Spector.

NEW: The FDA may yank Pfizer's under-5 Covid vaccine this fall. Pfizer has the only pediatric vaccines for all kids over six months, not just those with health conditions. My latest: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

First off, a sincere thank you for actually reading the PNAS article. For those interested: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Swedish transport unions have advocated for shorts in uniforms during hot weather, but the option keeps disappearing with new contractors. An effective tactic has been for male employees to wear skirts instead, which has led to the reinstatement of shorts thrice: in 2002, 2013, and now again.

Folks, the situation with the latest anti-vaccine preprint making the rounds is way worse than initially assessed. There's even a dash of plagiarism! reeserichardson.blog/2025/07/28/n...

I have lots of things on my to-do list today, so naturally I have been distracted by the latest anti-vax bullshit. The regular crowd is abuzz with the news of a new study (preprinted on preprints.org by @mdpiopenaccess.bsky.social). The lead author posted this illustrative video on Twitter.

In a horrifying article about the dangers of Teslas, one point stands out: Teslas automatically disengage self-driving mode <1 second before an imminent crash--not enough time for the driver to react, but enough for Tesla to deny responsibility for fatal crashes, since self-driving "wasn't engaged."

It's happening. As some of us predicted. Dark times:

It’s a very good letter from these brave EPA employees. They highlight how Zeldin flipflopped between his Senate hearing and now. And they squarely connect President Russell Vought to what’s happening at EPA.

🚨 BREAKING NEWS 🚨 At 7:59am, Zeldin - Trump crony and head of EPA - received the Declaration of Dissent from EPA workers. Workers are uniting against political interference, censorship & rollbacks at EPA under Zeldin’s leadership. Someone’s week is off to a bad start. (1/5)

For parents, for physicians, for everyone - The American Academy of Pediatrics will continue to publish *evidence-based* vaccine guidelines for children.

The parents of kids in the original pediatric Covid vaccine trials care more about scientific integrity than the people leading our scientific agencies. Unbelievable. And maddening. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

“Moderna was trying… to invent a vaccine platform it could deploy rapidly against several types of influenza, including the H5N1 bird flu… it’s not the price of eggs keeping infectious-disease doctors up at night. It’s the possibility that a strain mutates, jumps species, and ends up in humans...”

Dr. Who is a terrifying premise. Don't like the idea of an alien that can go any where any time but still chooses to mostly hang out with the British.

This is a blatant example of political censorship of science and a violation of the principles of academic freedom. The autocratic dismantling of US science continues. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Presidential budget is out. Here's NSF. Biggest cut, by amount, is $1 billion, or 66.8%, from MPS (Physics & Math directorate). nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

Last week / this week

“Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires the government to provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason.”

DURBIN: How can we give hope to people across the country who are suffering from so many diseases when our government is cutting back on that research? RFK Jr: I do not know about any cuts to ALS research D: I just read them to you! R: I didn't know about them until you told me about them

HASSAN: What is habeas corpus? NOEM: Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country HASSAN: That's incorrect

1/ The US government has ordered the Swedish city of Stockholm to end its diversity, inclusivity and equality (DEI) programmes within 10 days. The city authorities say the demand is "bizarre" and they won't be complying. ⬇️

I hope everyone working on LLMs has reckoned with their role in building a technology that, so far, has offered little to no benefit to humanity — while causing real harm by degrading art, undermining labor in creative industries, and straight up automating political propaganda

So good. 🤡 @brendanvduke.bsky.social

Fun fact: the US constitution does not ban convicted felons from running for office or serving in office. I guess the founders did not think this might happen. France on the other hand might have been more cynical, to their benefit. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

"Blanket sanctions on journals harm researchers’ development" Really interesting article, with a perspective from an EiC. Well worth a read, so that we see both sides of the story. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-euro...

A few years back, centrist Democrats & the Very Serious People mocked & dismissed the slogan ‘abolish ICE’. Today’s actions are a reminder of how ICE is a rogue, lawless agency that is easily weaponized by an authoritarian administration & that it very much should be abolished.

"Paper self-citation: An unexplored phenomenon." Yes, there are 44,000 papers that purportedly cite themselves in the Web of Science dataset. These authors had the opportunity to do the funniest thing but alas. arxiv.org/pdf/2503.04324

BREAKING: The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University has reneged on their commitment to host the @sciencewriters.org annual conference and withdrew their entire financial support. The National Association of Science Writers is now looking for a new venue, sponsors, and partners.

"No Other Land," the Palestinian-Israeli made film showing the destruction of the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers, just won the Oscar for Best Documentary. It can't get a distributor in the US. Which tells you everything about censorship in the US.

Not a good sign for overall scientific research integrity in the US - but hopefully publishers, with the support of partners like @stmassoc.bsky.social Integrity Hub, @clearskiesadam.bsky.social, @dataseerai.bsky.social and more can, step up, and step forward! retractionwatch.com/2025/02/27/e...

NEW: “Kennedy paused a multimillion dollar project to create a new Covid-19 vaccine in pill form on Tuesday, and the Food and Drug Administration canceled an advisory committee meeting on updating next season’s flu vaccine.” newrepublic.com/post/192059/...

As promised, here are the slides I shared with students to convince them to NOT use chatGPT and other artificial stupidity. TL;DR? AI is evil, unsustainable and stupid, and I'd much rather they use their own brains, make their own mistakes, and actually learn something. 🪄

NATO can't protect Europe from Russia because the US has defected. The EU can't because UK is no longer a member. The UN can't because of Russia & US. We need a body with Europe + UK but not Russia + US, with existing admin infrastructure. What I'm saying is: arm the Eurovision Song Contest.

COPE’s position on banned terms in scholarly publications and restrictions on researchers' activities. It is monitoring the situation closely to understand what additional guidance will be needed, and encourages its communities to approach it directly with questions or concerns #PublicationEthics

🧵 How bad science fuels vaccine misinformation – and what happens when the data doesn't fit the narrative. You might remember Christine Stabell Benn & Peter Aaby, whose terrible study on COVID-19 vaccines my team and I debunked: 📌 osf.io/preprints/j8ykx

Trust in science, and the status of science as a public good, has relied on public institutions as a foundation for providing resources and infrastructure and for adopting policies that promote research integrity. The last few weeks suggest that we could lose some of that foundation in the US. 1/