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

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This graph took me 3 years to make. It's perhaps the largest-ever #metaanalysis of #TMS #BrainStim data. It includes my first real scientific discovery 🧵: When you stimulate the hand with a brief electric pulse, your brain and spinal cord are momentarily less excitable: muscle output decreases 1/n

Nick Holmes reposted

One thing that has genuinely shocked me over the past year is how many faculty are now using LLMs for nearly every part of their jobs. Not as tools to assist their thinking, but to offload the entire job itself. 1/7

Trouble with AI? Do you need to AI your AI? Are you having AI problems AIing your AI? Do you need AI to AI the AI in your AI? Then we're here to help. Just AI AI to A I A I and we'll AI the rest. Saitaisfaictaion guairainteed. #AI

Nick Holmes reposted

Your monthly reminder that if you're using ChatGPT to do your science, you're failing your colleagues, community, and all of us. Here, ChatGPT makes up data and presents it as the real thing — then apologizes when confronted.

Do students read anymore? When we assign a book chapter or an article, do students read it, or do they just ask something to summarise it? Genuine question, motivated by my teaching today. If you have a view, please reply 🙏 👇

So far so good! Migrated my sites from 5.6 to 8.0 this morning... ... will I be caught out before the day is done 😬? might opt for a quick lunch, just in case...

Nick Holmes reposted

Who should I follow to see critical perspectives on published qualitative research with a focus on flawed methods? Thanks!

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...

Eiko Fried@eikofried.bsky.social

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

Government support for drilling at #Jackdaw takes a wrecking ball to any pretence of UK climate leadership & pours fuel on an overheating world - and for what? It’s equivalent to just 2 months of UK gas demand, creates just 27 direct jobs & has *no* impact on energy bills🧵1/4

Nick Holmes reposted

The next TMSMultiLab meeting: 30th October, 16h UK time (GMT, after clocks go back): Dr Antonio Capozio "Who is Afraid of Brain Stimulation? Acoustic Startle Contributes to Variability in Motor Evoked Potentials" Meeting link is available via our Slack channel & github page #TMS #Brainstim ⚡️🧠🧲

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.

Paul Hünermund@p-hunermund.com

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

Liquidambar leaf palette. This tree puts on such a stunning show in October. If you know of one growing near you maybe go and visit it -they look like a sycamore or maple that’s part of a Pride parade…intense leafy dopamine fireworks 🍁:

Nick Holmes reposted

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 👇

Matthew B. Jané@matthewbjane.bsky.social

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"

Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social

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

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"what happens when smaller and smaller and more and more powerful units of organisation in the world, achieve greater and greater technological mastery... which is denied to other people?"

"The danger in particular is that technology will become enthroned as the new religion"

Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social

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

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"They may be enslaved by power... the real battle is to maintain people's humanity, to stop people becoming robots... it's always possible that great technological changes will enslave people"

"The danger in particular is that technology will become enthroned as the new religion"

Nick Holmes@thehandlab.bsky.social

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

"Do you think there's any likelihood... that the world will have to accept an arrangement of power dictated by a very small group of people... with elite technocratic knowledge?"

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

bbc.co.ukPanorama - Apollo 11: The Impact on EarthFirst transmitted in 1969, Robin Day hosts a special edition, marking man's first steps on the surface of the moon.

LinkedIN just moved the Notification button on my Android without any warning. If only there was a place they could notify you about changes to the app 🤔

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.

Butlerian Jihadist of House Dornick@shimminykricket.blacksky.app

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

My next door neighbour's house is for sale; the main photo on the estate agent's website is 'AI'-manipulated, with nonexistent lush green grass, shadows in three different directions, weird blurry patches, paths & drains appearing in the wrong places. Which house-buyer will be fooled by this #slop?

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. 🌎💚

Better Homes Enfield@betterhomesenfield.bsky.social

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 💩

Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social

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.

Neuroscience & mental health: 4.4% success rate for #MRC #UKRI grants assessed in Spring 2026 Years & years & years of wasted effort 👇

Research Professional News@resprofnews.bsky.social

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...

"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

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