Berna Devezer
@devezer.bsky.social
Metascientist @ uidaho. I work at the intersection of behavioral sciences, statistics, and philosophy. Love thinking and talking about science. Post lots of cat and food pics. Allergic to unsolicited advice.
Pinned
Berna Devezer
@devezer.bsky.social
· Nov 5
I'd like to re-up this paper we published last year bec I believe it makes a fundamental contribution to theoretical metascience but it is woefully underappreciated. We address a key challenge in estimating the reproducibility of a result: The distance of a replication study from the original. 1/n
Reposted by Berna Devezer
I've blabbered a ton in threads about this, but I have to unpack what this actually means, because what I'm going to call "Academic Culture" normalizes sexual exploitation and regards it as, at worst, a petty crime akin to doing cocaine or public urination. 🧵
As more academic names keep coming up in the Epstein files, I keep thinking about this NYT interview with the Bard president from a few years ago, and wondering how many people were rationalizing in similar ways.
www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/u...
www.nytimes.com/2023/05/05/u...
February 1, 2026 at 1:39 AM
I've blabbered a ton in threads about this, but I have to unpack what this actually means, because what I'm going to call "Academic Culture" normalizes sexual exploitation and regards it as, at worst, a petty crime akin to doing cocaine or public urination. 🧵
i'll allow myself a contrived rhetoric for this once
academics: p-hacking should be criminalized. p-hackers should be jailed.
also academics: what if these men weren't pedos themselves but selflessly befriended and took money from one for the benefit of their labs?
academics: p-hacking should be criminalized. p-hackers should be jailed.
also academics: what if these men weren't pedos themselves but selflessly befriended and took money from one for the benefit of their labs?
February 1, 2026 at 6:05 AM
i'll allow myself a contrived rhetoric for this once
academics: p-hacking should be criminalized. p-hackers should be jailed.
also academics: what if these men weren't pedos themselves but selflessly befriended and took money from one for the benefit of their labs?
academics: p-hacking should be criminalized. p-hackers should be jailed.
also academics: what if these men weren't pedos themselves but selflessly befriended and took money from one for the benefit of their labs?
Reposted by Berna Devezer
instead of importance ranking the crimes and sins here (who actually was or wasn't a pedophile), can't we focus on the scale of the abuse, harm, and corruption all of these men have partaken in, contributed to, profited from, acquiesced to or looked away from.
January 31, 2026 at 11:56 PM
instead of importance ranking the crimes and sins here (who actually was or wasn't a pedophile), can't we focus on the scale of the abuse, harm, and corruption all of these men have partaken in, contributed to, profited from, acquiesced to or looked away from.
Reposted by Berna Devezer
"he probably knew epstein raped and trafficked young women, and didn't necessarily approve but he also wanted to get funding for his fraudulent research program so...."
do you even hear yourself?
do you even hear yourself?
February 1, 2026 at 12:01 AM
"he probably knew epstein raped and trafficked young women, and didn't necessarily approve but he also wanted to get funding for his fraudulent research program so...."
do you even hear yourself?
do you even hear yourself?
i honestly can't understand why any of you would spend mental energy on coming up with charitable excuses and defenses for why these names are in these files but sadly it is something so many people do in every individual sexual harassment case as well. so much cope, so much rationalization.
January 31, 2026 at 11:51 PM
i honestly can't understand why any of you would spend mental energy on coming up with charitable excuses and defenses for why these names are in these files but sadly it is something so many people do in every individual sexual harassment case as well. so much cope, so much rationalization.
Reposted by Berna Devezer
Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/
January 31, 2026 at 9:02 PM
Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/
Probably the only reform science needs is to dethrone its gods and heroes, and abolish and purge all elite (and otherwise) boys clubs. I strongly suspect everything else would start falling into place after that.
January 31, 2026 at 8:40 PM
Probably the only reform science needs is to dethrone its gods and heroes, and abolish and purge all elite (and otherwise) boys clubs. I strongly suspect everything else would start falling into place after that.
Relatedly I wonder what are the current elite boys club networks still in existence in academia? Being a woman in this environment de facto feels like a virtue and a curse at once. The lightness of being unaware and untainted by such depravity; the alienation of always being the outsider looking in.
Every time more Epstein files are released, I wonder who the "Epstein" is today because all of these billionaires and elite assholes can't have stopped abusing girls just because one guy died. Someone must have walked right in and filled that gap.
January 31, 2026 at 4:42 PM
Relatedly I wonder what are the current elite boys club networks still in existence in academia? Being a woman in this environment de facto feels like a virtue and a curse at once. The lightness of being unaware and untainted by such depravity; the alienation of always being the outsider looking in.
Every time more Epstein files are released, I wonder who the "Epstein" is today because all of these billionaires and elite assholes can't have stopped abusing girls just because one guy died. Someone must have walked right in and filled that gap.
January 31, 2026 at 4:13 AM
Every time more Epstein files are released, I wonder who the "Epstein" is today because all of these billionaires and elite assholes can't have stopped abusing girls just because one guy died. Someone must have walked right in and filled that gap.
gosh, you all! how do you remember so many college classes? i can name five jobs i worked at while in college. or five mountains i climbed. or five things i had stolen from my dorm. or five friends i lost contact with.
classes though? i got not much memory of them. now grad school otoh... ama.
classes though? i got not much memory of them. now grad school otoh... ama.
January 31, 2026 at 1:59 AM
gosh, you all! how do you remember so many college classes? i can name five jobs i worked at while in college. or five mountains i climbed. or five things i had stolen from my dorm. or five friends i lost contact with.
classes though? i got not much memory of them. now grad school otoh... ama.
classes though? i got not much memory of them. now grad school otoh... ama.
Noooooo 😞
January 30, 2026 at 6:16 PM
Noooooo 😞
I am even warier than the authors about the broad-brush applications of the QRP label. However, I stand firmly against classifying data dredging/fishing expeditions as responsible research practice and as exploratory research. Science reform has distorted our understanding of scientific exploration.
P-hacking vs Exploratory Analyses
"Reanalyzing data through multiple methods in search of statistically significant results (i.e., p-hacking) is questionable only if concealed; when justified and transparently reported (e.g., exploratory studies), it reflects responsible practice."
"Reanalyzing data through multiple methods in search of statistically significant results (i.e., p-hacking) is questionable only if concealed; when justified and transparently reported (e.g., exploratory studies), it reflects responsible practice."
January 30, 2026 at 4:35 PM
I am even warier than the authors about the broad-brush applications of the QRP label. However, I stand firmly against classifying data dredging/fishing expeditions as responsible research practice and as exploratory research. Science reform has distorted our understanding of scientific exploration.
Did I talk to my students about ICE and immigration policies? Yes. Did it make me feel ultra self-conscious and somewhat apprehensive as an immigrant speaking to many first-gen college students, in rural Idaho, of all places? Yes, it very much did.
January 30, 2026 at 1:22 AM
Did I talk to my students about ICE and immigration policies? Yes. Did it make me feel ultra self-conscious and somewhat apprehensive as an immigrant speaking to many first-gen college students, in rural Idaho, of all places? Yes, it very much did.
Keep thinking about this and the core problem, of course, isn't the use of AI tools for science. It's the fact that we have established such a system of scientific norms and incentives that generated literatures-full of junk science that we're scared of a tech capable of scaling that up real fast.
Just like democracies are being put to the test around the world (and succumbing sooner than we hoped), our ideals of research integrity and scientific rigor are being tested by ever-invasive AI tools. I am not hopeful science will survive this unscathed. We'll need to rethink a lot of what we do.
OpenAI just released Prism, a LaTeX editor with embedded ChatGPT for free.
Writing a paper has never been easier.
Clogging the scientific publishing pipeline has never been easier.
It took me 54 seconds to write up an experiment I did not actually conduct.
prism.openai.com
Writing a paper has never been easier.
Clogging the scientific publishing pipeline has never been easier.
It took me 54 seconds to write up an experiment I did not actually conduct.
prism.openai.com
January 29, 2026 at 9:13 PM
Keep thinking about this and the core problem, of course, isn't the use of AI tools for science. It's the fact that we have established such a system of scientific norms and incentives that generated literatures-full of junk science that we're scared of a tech capable of scaling that up real fast.
received an ai-generated cover letter using keywords from all my pubs in one ridiculous paragraph but the student forgets to spell out what it is they're asking from me/what they're applying for. mindless, wasteful use of chatbots is making email even more intolerable. never knew that was possible!
January 29, 2026 at 5:32 PM
received an ai-generated cover letter using keywords from all my pubs in one ridiculous paragraph but the student forgets to spell out what it is they're asking from me/what they're applying for. mindless, wasteful use of chatbots is making email even more intolerable. never knew that was possible!
this is what happens when you get life advice from ChudGPT
Sounds fun!
January 29, 2026 at 5:22 AM
this is what happens when you get life advice from ChudGPT
Reposted by Berna Devezer
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Stay free
Stay free
Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)
YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen
youtu.be
January 28, 2026 at 5:02 PM
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Stay free
Stay free
Reposted by Berna Devezer
I struggle every day to figure out what my role in this new hellscape is. I’ve dove much harder into teaching, and trying to teach philosophy as lifecraft and world building. But I have no idea whether it will ever feel worthwhile to write again.
January 28, 2026 at 7:16 PM
I struggle every day to figure out what my role in this new hellscape is. I’ve dove much harder into teaching, and trying to teach philosophy as lifecraft and world building. But I have no idea whether it will ever feel worthwhile to write again.
Reposted by Berna Devezer
My colleague Kevin Munger asked me and a bunch of editors to sit and think through AI and peer review. Our take:
osf.io/9sxnc/files/...
We envision an increased (!) involvement of humans in the evaluation of social science.
osf.io/9sxnc/files/...
We envision an increased (!) involvement of humans in the evaluation of social science.
January 28, 2026 at 11:46 PM
Reposted by Berna Devezer
REAKING: A federal judge in Minnesota has barred the Trump administration from arresting / detaining the state's 5,600 refugees while they await lawful permanent resident status. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
January 28, 2026 at 10:55 PM
REAKING: A federal judge in Minnesota has barred the Trump administration from arresting / detaining the state's 5,600 refugees while they await lawful permanent resident status. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Reposted by Berna Devezer
It turns out that the information economy is just a continuous firesale of everything that made us informed in the first place, from journalism to science.
Just like democracies are being put to the test around the world (and succumbing sooner than we hoped), our ideals of research integrity and scientific rigor are being tested by ever-invasive AI tools. I am not hopeful science will survive this unscathed. We'll need to rethink a lot of what we do.
OpenAI just released Prism, a LaTeX editor with embedded ChatGPT for free.
Writing a paper has never been easier.
Clogging the scientific publishing pipeline has never been easier.
It took me 54 seconds to write up an experiment I did not actually conduct.
prism.openai.com
Writing a paper has never been easier.
Clogging the scientific publishing pipeline has never been easier.
It took me 54 seconds to write up an experiment I did not actually conduct.
prism.openai.com
January 28, 2026 at 10:27 PM
It turns out that the information economy is just a continuous firesale of everything that made us informed in the first place, from journalism to science.
some people can be so casually cruel that mere exposure to it leaves me emotionally drained. it's one thing to experience that online or indirectly but witnessing it irl just sucks all life right out of me. i feel so aggravated
January 28, 2026 at 8:26 PM
some people can be so casually cruel that mere exposure to it leaves me emotionally drained. it's one thing to experience that online or indirectly but witnessing it irl just sucks all life right out of me. i feel so aggravated
Just like democracies are being put to the test around the world (and succumbing sooner than we hoped), our ideals of research integrity and scientific rigor are being tested by ever-invasive AI tools. I am not hopeful science will survive this unscathed. We'll need to rethink a lot of what we do.
OpenAI just released Prism, a LaTeX editor with embedded ChatGPT for free.
Writing a paper has never been easier.
Clogging the scientific publishing pipeline has never been easier.
It took me 54 seconds to write up an experiment I did not actually conduct.
prism.openai.com
Writing a paper has never been easier.
Clogging the scientific publishing pipeline has never been easier.
It took me 54 seconds to write up an experiment I did not actually conduct.
prism.openai.com
January 28, 2026 at 4:48 PM
Just like democracies are being put to the test around the world (and succumbing sooner than we hoped), our ideals of research integrity and scientific rigor are being tested by ever-invasive AI tools. I am not hopeful science will survive this unscathed. We'll need to rethink a lot of what we do.
Reposted by Berna Devezer
First post of the year, new paper out today: we present possibly the biggest case of systematic Measurement Schmeasurement in tech use. It seems that most studies on gaming (videogame) addiction/disorder haven't measured gaming after all. This research took years, so long 🧵 doi.org/10.1098/rsos...
Confusion in gaming disorder measurement
Abstract. Measurement is important for the scientific programmes of addictive behaviours. In the present study, we investigated the measurement of gaming d
doi.org
January 28, 2026 at 9:56 AM
First post of the year, new paper out today: we present possibly the biggest case of systematic Measurement Schmeasurement in tech use. It seems that most studies on gaming (videogame) addiction/disorder haven't measured gaming after all. This research took years, so long 🧵 doi.org/10.1098/rsos...