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Nick Holmes
Nick Holmes
@thehandlab.bsky.social
handy neuroscientist | touch & movement | brain stimulation | neurobiography.info | @tmsmultilab.bsky.social https://tms-rat.org https://tms-smart.info | pod @theerrorbar.bsky.social theerrorbar.com | b. 335ppm C💚2 | pro birds | Associating with Professors
2K followers1.1K following1.6K posts
Nick Holmes reposted
The report “Preserving Our Humanity, Supporting Our Students: Doctoral Advising in Mathematics” by the Teaching Working Group of the Association for Human Mathematics #AHM just dropped! Spread it far and wide! 🫳📄 www.ahmath.org/doctoraladvi...
Nick Holmes reposted
Nick Holmes reposted
Nick Holmes reposted
Powerball Adds Essay Section https://theonion.com/powerball-adds-essay-section/
Nick Holmes reposted
Nick Holmes reposted
This week, NIH advisors rebuked RFK for harming #NIH and US science. Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported it. Then RFK posted calling her sources anonymous or corrupt. I'll say this hoping it does good: I'm an NIH scientist, I'm not anonymous, and RFK Jr is destroying NIH. More in attachment:
"Neuroscience" does not feature as a research sub-field in this new list of numbers 🧠🤔. (Seems like Ioannidis has had a 'problem' with neuroscience for a while - since the (very poor) hatchet-job they did on us in Button et al. 2013) Ho hum. Guess understanding the brain is so very 20th century...
I saw the new Ioannidis / Elsevier ranking and (probably because I haven't been online too much in the last weeks) haven't really seen discussion about it. What are main concerns folks have about the c-score and the resulting ranking? topcitedscientists.com
Nick Holmes reposted
Nick Holmes reposted
Nick Holmes reposted
Or: don't outsource thinking. If your academic writing is absent of thought, then what value is being created by the act? If, instead, writing forces you to engage with the subject and truly *think* about what you are saying and why, then having an LLM do it is absurd.
I know you've invested a lot of time into honing your academic writing skills. But just accept that certain skills become obsolete over time and move on. It has happened to humans for centuries.
Anyone ever poured milk into a bowl and onto a spoon so perfectly that the milk follows the curve of the spoon and acccelerates, arcing up and over the edge of the bowl onto the nearby table, magazine and smartphone, and been so overwhelmed by its beauty that you just keep pouring? I need more milk.
Nick Holmes reposted
Just a few hours left to get tickets to our event in Oxford tonight! 🎟️ Our panel will explore travel, flying and the climate crisis through four inspiring and thought-provoking presentations, followed by a Q&A. See you at 6:30pm! Free tickets: tickettailor.com/events/fligh...
Nick Holmes reposted
Nick Holmes reposted
Our Oxford event is tomorrow! Our local panel will be discussing the numbers behind the carbon, local activism, and tips on flight-free travel, followed by a Q&A! Join us at 6:30pm at East Oxford Community Centre (or online!) Free tickets: tickettailor.com/events/fligh...
SE / SD confusion is one of the most common errors in scientific papers, and it messes up all meta-analyses that use the data. Cross-check *every* effect-size you add to your meta-analyses 👇
New ACE audit report: Singh et al. (1997), one of the most cited trials of resistance training for depression in older adults. Misreporting of standard deviations and impossible statistics led to many meta-analyses having artificially inflated effects. auditclinicalevidence.org/reports/ACE2...
"The danger in particular is that technology will become enthroned as the new religion"
This documentary from 1969 is remarkably relevant today: Why spend billions on space when we have poverty, hunger, nuclear & biological crises on Earth? On the other side: technology trumps everything 😕 Panorama, Apollo 11: The Impact on Earth: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0142pxj via @bbciplayer
I don't recall any discussion of 'AI' or modern tech on mainstream TV/radio* that gets anywhere close to the depth & seriousness of this live(?) BBC discussion. In 1969. * Carole Cadwalladr did a fine job of skewering tech criming on Iannucci's 'Strong Message Here' (www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...)
"The danger in particular is that technology will become enthroned as the new religion"
This documentary from 1969 is remarkably relevant today: Why spend billions on space when we have poverty, hunger, nuclear & biological crises on Earth? On the other side: technology trumps everything 😕 Panorama, Apollo 11: The Impact on Earth: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0142pxj via @bbciplayer
"The danger in particular is that technology will become enthroned as the new religion"
This documentary from 1969 is remarkably relevant today: Why spend billions on space when we have poverty, hunger, nuclear & biological crises on Earth? On the other side: technology trumps everything 😕 Panorama, Apollo 11: The Impact on Earth: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0142pxj via @bbciplayer
This documentary from 1969 is remarkably relevant today: Why spend billions on space when we have poverty, hunger, nuclear & biological crises on Earth? On the other side: technology trumps everything 😕 Panorama, Apollo 11: The Impact on Earth: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0142pxj via @bbciplayer
Nick Holmes reposted
Thank you François for writing things so clearly and showing us we're not alone. lookingup.francois-rincon.org/an-open-lett...
This matches my experience so far: scientists using LLMs to write code quickly (if they're not already expert coders) are just kicking the learning can down the road, or worse: kicking it to their colleagues & supervisors who must spend longer debugging the verbose code tangles presented to them.
Harvard just dropped a study AI productivity in software engineering and it found the average increase in productivity from using Claude code is.....zero and for exactly the reasons you'd think fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf
Nick Holmes reposted
Harvard just dropped a study AI productivity in software engineering and it found the average increase in productivity from using Claude code is.....zero and for exactly the reasons you'd think fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf
Nick Holmes reposted
24 month FT Research Assistant role with the excellent Dr Victoria Newell on a project to refine, validate, and implement the Self-Harm Questionnaire – Autism (SHQ-A), a new assessment tool co-developed with autistic people. Details here... jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...
Nick Holmes reposted
People ARE worried - but will it change how we travel? Here's the thing: staying grounded is one of the most powerful things we can actually do. Worry is a start. Action matters more. 🌎💚
62% now say extreme heat is the most pressing climate impact, up from 36% in Oct 24. Concern about wildfires has jumped from 13% in Oct 24, to 47% in 2026. But research also shows experiencing extreme weather has a negligible effect on climate change belief. theconversation.com/did-the-hot-...
The enshittification begins at last 💩
OpenAI plans to show ads while generating images. As someone who works in ads, I dislike the incentive this creates. If ad views depend on image generation time, creating images faster could reduce ad revenue. Ads making the experience so bad that you’re compelled to pay reminds me of YouTube.
Nick Holmes reposted
Neuroscience & mental health: 4.4% success rate for #MRC #UKRI grants assessed in Spring 2026 Years & years & years of wasted effort 👇
MRC success rates drop sharply after grants overhaul. Warnings of “catastrophic” impact on medical researchers as some rates fall below 5 per cent. www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...
Nick Holmes reposted
Happy to announce that I am searching for for a graduate student, starting Fall 2027. If you want to study the neural mechanisms of reaching and grasping, come join us in the rich environment of the Sensorimotor Superlab. For details: www.pruszynskilab.com/positions.html
"You're absolutely right: I incorrectly described a Chinese cargo in the Middle East as 'nuclear' when in fact it was 'unclear'. You deployed the Navy Seals. That's on me." "Is there another cargo that I can help you with? Or perhaps I can declare intercontinental thermonuclear war for you?" #LLM