Ian Hussey

I have managed to abstract the template for replies to critiques.

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...

Our scale search machine got a major update! Now with 31% more scales, 21% more items, 58% more coverage of measures by use, and 100% more goth!

Most systematic reviews and meta- analyses now include some assessment of study quality but these don't usually impact a review's conclusions. It's typically just some tick boxes or traffic lights and vague qualitative statements. We should instead filter out poor studies. What is wrong with us?

The more parsimoneous explanation is that infants express a preference for the Type G British/Irish electrical plug socket, which is objectively the best type of plug socket. This is evidence for innate rationality in newly born infants.

New paper! Accepted at Perspectives on Psychological Science. A textbook finding in infant psychology is that newborns - within ~1 hour of birth - visually track a simplified 'three blob' facelike stimulus further than its inverted control (see picture). This suggested inborn knowledge of faces!

This post does a great job of articulating why the development and release of metacheck has been pretty slow compared to other tools. One of our core values is validation, which is one of the things that has not been made a lot faster by LLMs. www.scienceverse.org/metacheck/#o...

”Using vibe-coded, unvalidated forensic meta-science tools to evaluate the trustworthiness of published research risks holding authors vs. tools to unequal standards. The solution is less vibe-coding and more validation.”

An extraordinary example of a paper that cannot logically address its estimand: effect of restricting under-18 playtime. But sample has no age data, and most of the sample is adults. Reviewer #3 even noted this, and authors agreed. See link in quoted for details.

Our reflections on the recent "AI and Research Integrity" meeting in Montreal: We are somewhat worried that many AI trustworthiness assessment tools are not trustworthy. @lhdjung.bsky.social @jamiecummins.bsky.social trustworthy.scientific.claims/posts/trustw...

🍫 or 💩? About the effect size reported in a trial that shaped the estimated effect of fluoxetine in meta-analyses of pediatric depression, my stellar co-author @ploederl.bsky.social says: “It’s the kind of effect size you only get if you ask people whether they prefer chocolate or faeces.” 👇👇👇

A Systematic Literature Review of Causal Mediation Analysis in Social Psychology, from @jiwoo-kim.bsky.social and @felixthoemmes.bsky.social doi.org/10.1525/coll...

Did you know that there’s only a single letter separating an “idionomic clinical workflow” from an “idiotnomic clinical workflow”? I haven’t managed to write my screed about cluster analysis yet, here’s another blog post in the meantime: www.the100.ci/2024/10/28/i...

My lukewarm take is that when people disagree about whether LLMs can do X (be it reasoning, creativity, etc), the substantive disagreement is really about what X means, rather than about LLMs themselves. Aka Wittgenstein was right

This ketamine study on bipolar depression reported substantial effects. Interestingly, the primary outcome was changed from 2w to 4w after start of recruitment, and one secondary outcome (MADRS suic item) was withdrawn. Unfortunately, no access to PDF jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Germany has cancelled funding for the German Cochrane Foundation. Bad news all around. Cochrane’s benefit to cost ratio is huge. @cochrane.org www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/wark...

SCOOP: Top researchers at Columbia, Stanford, and others thought they were elected to elite scientific societies alongside Nobel laureates. The catch? The organizations are a sham. I spent the last month diving deep into a massive academic scam spanning continents, for @nature.com

Reproducibility depends heavily on where you start. From authors' final analysis data: ✅: 58.2% fully reproducible 🟡: 32.8% partially reproducible ❌: 9.0% not reproducible From raw data: ✅: 28.4% fully reproducible 🟡: 34.3% partially reproducible ❌: 37.3% not reproducible

Applying this to a Cochrane review I've critiqued: Lenells et al. 2025, breastfeeding support to prevent postpartum depression. Ten RCTs; its one "may prevent" finding rests on a single small trial. Pre-registering an INSPECT-SR audit plus re-pooled analysis. wildetruth.substack.com/p/cochranes-...

The integrity of evidence synthesis is threatened by problematic randomised controlled trials. These may be fraudulent, or subject to critical errors. INSPECT-SR is a tool to assess trustworthiness of RCTs - out today: www.bmj.com/content/394/...

I was involved in this! It was a cool learning experience and I got to work with a lovely team of researchers also interested in replication🤓

Next INSPECT-SR online training workshop is November 3rd, 2-4pm GMT/UTC+0. Free, book here: www.trybooking.com/uk/HAMZ

I disagree

I sincerely hope this paper will be seen as a turning point in how the medical sciences think and approach the issue of trustworthiness assessment (and I hope the social sciences follow suit!). Congrats to @jdwilko.bsky.social and colleagues (incl. @ianhussey.mmmdata.io and @lhdjung.bsky.social)!

INSPECT-SR – a tool for assessing the trustworthiness of randomized controlled trials – has been published today in @bmj.com, giving researchers a structured way to identify problematic studies before they're included in systematic reviews. 🔗 www.cochrane.org/about-us/new... #ResearchIntegrity

We just published a new paper (led by Love von Schreeb) demonstrating how large language models can be used to link published results to trial registrations with very high accuracy! Now out in Journal of Clinical Epidemiology - check it out: www.jclinepi.com/article/S089...

The paper was led by the excellent doctoral student Abby Person, who has a hilariously fake-sounding name when using her first and middle initials with her last name.

Retractionwatch coverage of the retraction @grinschglsandra.bsky.social @malte.the100.ci @jamiecummins.bsky.social retractionwatch.com/2026/09/14/a...

Happy Sunday morning! This article was finally retracted: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202... Unfortunately the author continues as is - no accountability. Curious if we will see more sloppy work from her published in Psych journals soon-ish 🧐

In totally unrelated news www.newsobserver.com/news/local/e...

The cover-up is always worse than the crime? Harvard's latest filing says that Gino manipulated a file to cover-up fabrication, hid the laptop used to do it during the discovery process, and did more [redacted] destruction of evidence after being compelled by the court to share the laptop.

MFW the work of a ”global keynote speaker on AI & Neuroscience” turns out to be AI slop all the way down