Edmund Chattoe-Brown

The trouble with stupid decisions that are never institutionally labelled as such is that you can take them again (and again). How many times do students have to fail to sign up for "pick and mix" degrees (psychology and accounting anyone?) before the penny drops?

Tell the "over diagnosis" brigade to shut up and read this (if necessary doing catch-up on what evidence is): www.gov.uk/government/p...

Mildly interesting. Ask AI how economics handles a phenomenon. Am told there are three main approaches. Ask for recent peer reviewed examples of each approach. Get a sinking feeling. Ask for any non empirical examples to be replaced by empirical studies. All three had to be replaced.

Declining academic standards (and their enforcement) affected my mental health so I took voluntary severance. But I am still a competent academic and want to research. Google Scholar won't verify me (so I won't show in search) unless hooked to a _university_ email. Undeserved institutional status?

Targets are variables not processes. One cannot really object to HE admissions targets (on financial planning grounds) or progression targets (on HE monitoring grounds) but when you have both there are process consequences (students remain who should go) which are too easy not to admit/discuss.

Useful ...

The trouble with avant garde music on secondhand vinyl is that you can't be sure whether it is _meant_ to sound like that.

Sigh. Why do N academics have an absolute _minimum_ of N+1 preferred joint writing/collaborative communication software packages? I have so many such accounts I never seem to have used more than once.

"Rush to Diagnose Autism Can Damage Children". (Daily Mail front page 09.10.26). Anyone with any practical experience of supporting neurodiverse children within the NHS will know that "rush" is the _last_ thing you need to worry about.

According to Google AI 15 years ago 60-70 percent of universities had physical book shops. Now it is "less than 10-15 percent". Of course book shops are closing everywhere but you might hope this was a better than average customer base ...

There is too little thought given to how daft it is to give a three and a half line URL full of digits and characters as a reference in a print book. When you spend ages typing it in, it is usually wrong or the source has moved anyway.

What is not said is almost more important than what is (but much harder to spot). It took me years to realise that my employer never said "let's see if we can do a really good job of this" or "we need to look into what went wrong so it doesn't happen again."

Humanity is safe for a while longer. AI _so_ can't do puns and double entendres.

That's well thought through. To change your BS email, you have to type in a code sent to your previous email. There is no alternate mechanism apparent. So do I have to abandon my BS account because my work email has been shut down? They don't seem to register that any emails sent there are bouncing.

If it is clear that a film maker has not read or understood a book, should they be disallowed from using its title? But I guess the Helen Mirren/John Hurt reboot of Brighton Rock wouldn't have done so well at the box office if it had been called "Some Muddle About Gangs" instead.

Mountain Warehouse were really sniffy that i didn't want to give them an email for my receipt (i. e. _endless_ marketing). Oxfam wanted me to round up the price _they_ set for a book. Lakeland were out of stock of something really basic. Was shopping always this naggy/low hit rate?

We all know what right wing nasties _don't_ want. They don't want the RNLI fulfilling its mandate. They don't want to be in the EU. So should we let crossers drown? Or try to persuade the French to do something which common sense suggests may actively not be in their interests (keeping migrants?)

By definition "realistic" is a term that has an empirical referent. It is surprising how often in #abm researchers are simply willing to assert that X is (or isn't) realistic and reviewers are willing to let them.

Interesting what science "lets by". Huge plug for big data but much less attention to "Simpson's Paradox". In uncurated data disaggregated elements may give completely different associations from aggregate. But ⌗abm/complexity suggests that many process outcomes are likely to have this property.

I always wonder whether authors are aware when they describe someone as (for example) "The grand old man of gerontology" or say that "reproductive competition applies equally to all comers". I hope they do but I fear they don't ...

I am genuinely frightened of people I see interacting on the socials. If you can be an appalling racist and fend off all criticism as "woke crap" we are stuck with you voting for a***holes forever. We need, somehow, to get to people _before_ they become righteous at having burned in being horrible.

Consistency is a valuable scientific principle. Sure you can kick holes in the infallibility of peer review (which nobody ever claimed.) But you can't then tell me to look for the real truth in a paid podcaster screed hosted on Zenodo. Even the crappiest peer review is better (on average) than none.

The algorithms aren't _that_ smart. When I out some piece of climate denier anti-vax nonsense, why do they think I want more nonsense?

Social media is a massive warning of the failure of critical education: Basic numeracy, logic of argument, source evaluation. Many claims made here are frighteningly nonsensical.

A nice burn for the anti-vax, climate denier, conspiracy loons: "You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts".

Social media means that people who were formally too stupid, ignorant or intellectually dishonest to get their opinions widely heard now can. How can that not be a good thing?

Based on my own experience in Sociology, I am starting to wonder to what extent academia is still the keeper of scientific quality. If there is anything to this, the question follows, what can be done from outside to build either an alternative keeper of quality or to make academia do its job.

#booksky

Consider downrating any social media poster who says "the truth is", "the actual facts are" and so on. Seekers after truth (and recognisers of it) don't feel the need to say "here I am handing you a sandwich". They just hand you a sandwich.

I have long suspected the fact that no reference is readily offered for claims that positive/negative feedback is more effective than weakness focused. AI gave me references, which I need to read/follow. But my immediate impression from a quick scan is that AI can't find "the source study" either.

The reason we need the idea of facts of the matter is what just happened on social media about Jason Arday. No amount of gassing about who is racist will change whether Arday's works contain inappropriate borrowings. This is like arguing that a sexist surgeon can't take your appendix out properly.

Social Media: Let's hope the argument that is short enough to transmit and understandable by the Average Joe/Jane isn't one that will do for the species. Some apparently sincere posts on climate change absolutely beggar belief.

A real test for hard nosed evidence followers: Should Cambridge still have the inquiry into hiring processes and due diligence on CVs even now Arday is dead?

I wouldn't be too smug about getting a bit more than twice as many votes as someone dressed as a bin, especially when all the serious parties declined to stand.

Not exactly above the law but managing to maintain a very discouraging distance from it.

Bored with self interested fudge. Many books shops claim they can order are "reprinting". There is a future date but no reprint and when the date passes another future date is set. And repeat. No good faith about an actual reprint/when. You have to pay up front and fiddle about with a refund.

It isn't really the public's job to rate "sociology" and "universities" in general terms. There are bad scholars and good. Ditto departments. Sociology may leave more room for bad scholars than medicine but it is a simple fallacy to conclude "all bad" from "some bad".

Jason Arday made claims about why he resigned. However he also claimed to have published a book which he hadn't ...

Could be useful to just put _everyone's_ 4 best nominated articles though a plagiarism checker.

Amazed that anyone who has books that World of Books would want would know so little about them not to see how truly derisory their buying prices are.

Rising postage costs are quietly undermining any idea of a global market. To send a standard price hardback book from the US to the UK now effectively doubles the cost of the order.