Jo Etzel

#introduction I'm currently a staff scientist at Washington U in St Louis (USA), but (late 2026, early 2027) looking for a new position. I'm a big fan of task #fMRI, #BIDS, #baseR #Rstats (incl. graphics) and #knitr, #QC, and papers with very extensive #supplementary materials, but not AI.

Great postdoc opportunity with Peter Bandettini @fmri-today.bsky.social (and me).

📣 ciftiTools macOS Tahoe users: your cortical surface plots are back! As a bonus, multiple PNGs now render invisibly instead of opening multiple XQuartz windows. To get it: update.packages("ciftiTools"). See how it works in the updated vignette at www.statmindlab.com/software. #OHBM #fMRI #rstats

Next AFNI Bootcamp: Oct 20-22, 2026! Classes cover: FMRI visualization, full subject-level processing, alignment, regression modeling, and quality control. Registration is free & open to both NIH and non-NIH researchers. Registration+details: afni.nimh.nih.gov/bootcamp Please share widely.

"the author of one paper tried to describe the methods they used for analysis, but inadvertently ended up describing an entire p-hacking workflow." Asking Authors About Their Own Papers By Nihar B. Shah Interestingly, Prasad Jalepalli's comment below is also about AI for p-hacking.

Searching for myself on YouTube is more mixed-content than I expected: Bobbiejo Etzel (no relation) was charged for murder a few years ago. (The www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNbT... link is for my job search; anyone in the EU looking to hire staff (me!) for fMRI/dataset QC/analysis/project management?)

So… we just found out that GPT sol can complete a complex online behavioral/cognitive study producing nearly indistinguishable behavior and subjective reports… right as we are about to launch. Is this doomsday for online cognitive testing?

BIDS Community, it’s time to nominate 🏆and elect 🗳️two new Steering Group members! The nomination period opened on September 15th and will close on Friday, October 2nd at 11:59pm (Anywhere on Earth; UTC-12). 👉Nominate yourself here: forms.gle/xMjkqGfiTgCW... #BIDS

Back in 2020 I shared some of my lack of fondness for containerized software (though the OHBM session was fun! github.com/ohbm/osr2020...) ... and I must say (after spending days on a workaround for an old dcm2niix in a container no one here can rebuild) that my opinion has not mellowed with time.

Check out @mklingelhoeferj.bsky.social's prospective longitudinal fMRI fear conditioning study! I don’t even want to think about how long this actually took us... Let me just say: a pandemic sucks extra hard when it hits in the middle of running follow-up measurements in a longitudinal fMRI study. 🫠

3-day intensive #fMRI course *live online* Sept 9-11, 2026. #SPM, #ICA, GLM, connectivity, mediation, MRI physics, #DataScience with @vcalhoun.bsky.social & Kent Kiehl. We love talking methods & connecting! Come join us! Explore the schedule & register here: torwager.github.io/mindfmricour...

We're planning our work queue for September through to the end of December 2026 and I would LOVE to learn more about your research, how you're navigating any transcription needs you might have, and see how we might be able to help. Doing data collection this Autumn & hate AI? Come say hi!

Awesome new website. Take a look! It is such a pleasure to work with the Grant Witness team! Broad knowledge, deep commitment to getting things right, eager to do what is needed to inform discussions. Plus it is good for me to feel like a complete amateur data scientist compared to some real pros

Not sure that this increases my chance of a job offer, but it is honest: "My goal is to write readable code that works, for years, on a variety of machines and is readily adaptable; I prefer base R, no “AI”, and generally aim for the least number of the most stable dependencies."

DON'T GET ALL EXCITED AND ASSUME GOOD WILL. This is an effort to rebrand already appropriated dollars and already developed programs before the midterms so they have something they can use against being called anti-science. THIS IS NOT NEW INVESTMENT. THESE ARE NOT NEW DOLLARS FOR SCIENCE.

New Blog post: Which Data Repository Should you Use? In light of OSF closing down, I compare Zenodo, Dataverse, ResearchBox, PsychArchive, and local repositories on six important dimensions. If you want to know which to pick: It depends! daniellakens.blogspot.com/2026/08/whic...

Yikes “Starting November 16, 2026, no new projects or child components of existing projects can be created on OSF. After February 19, 2027, all public and private OSF projects will become read-only.” www.cos.io/osf-changes

I work in grants and do science. The federal government is not just going through a weird phase. They are trying to destroy universities. Expect to be asked to do more with less, expect to be forced to compromise your values, expect to fight. There isn’t going to be a new normal to hold out for.