Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · 7d

How this TikTok deal puts US media control into the hands of the super-rich youtube.com/shorts/lEWwp...

How this TikTok deal puts US media control into the hands of the super-rich

YouTube video by The Guardian

youtube.com

1

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · 8d

"If you wanted to get a paper published in Science from 2015 to 2020, your odds were 70% lower if you were in China than in the United States. But being at an elite institution anywhere in the world may have given you an edge."
www.science.org/content/arti...

Whose papers have an edge at Science? In unusual study, journal looks in the mirror

Confidential data show being in the U.S., at a prestigious institution, and in a large team all may help

www.science.org

2

Reposted by Shin Asayama

holly jean buck @hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social · 11d

How can the #IPCC navigate generative AI?

What does it mean for scientific assessment more broadly?

New working paper looks at scenarios for AI adoption & resistance, w/ @dralaaclimate.bsky.social @shinasayama.bsky.social and Oliver Geden

Reflections welcome!

www.swp-berlin.org/publications...

www.swp-berlin.org

10 13

Reposted by Shin Asayama

Alaa Al Khourdajie @dralaaclimate.bsky.social · 13d

New working paper out: "Four scenarios for an @ipcc.bsky.social navigating Artificial Intelligence"

Led by @hollyjeanbuck.bsky.social, with @shinasayama.bsky.social and Oliver Geden

Thread 🧵

1/13

2 5 16

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · 18d

"Given all this, we are not advocating deploying geoengineering today. But if policymakers decide that it is needed, a more modest approach would be to run a small, carefully scaled program ... to compensate for the loss of cooling as sulfur pollution is eliminated."
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/o...

Opinion | Turns Out Air Pollution Was Good for Something

www.nytimes.com

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · 24d

"Younger children are more likely than their older counterparts to judge relationally, physically & phylogenetically distant others as worthy of help or protection. These findings suggest ... that development may not widen our moral circle but may sometimes narrow it."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

When development constricts our moral circle - Nature Human Behaviour

Although many believe our moral circles expand with age, this Perspective discusses an early-emerging tendency to care for others.

www.nature.com

1

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · 26d

"Hallucinations are a result of the fundamental way in which LLMs work. As statistical machines, the models make predictions by generalizing on the basis of learnt associations, leading them to produce answers that are plausible, but sometimes wrong."
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Can researchers stop AI making up citations?

OpenAI’s GPT-5 hallucinates less than previous models do, but cutting hallucination completely might prove impossible.

www.nature.com

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · 26d

"Researchers are scrutinizing AI-generated sentences while implicitly enabling these systems to choose which scholars are cited ... which research directions might be promising. They are accepting the outputs even though the underlying information has been distorted."
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI chatbots are already biasing research — we must establish guidelines for their use now

The academic community has looked at how artificial-intelligence tools help researchers to write papers, but not how they distort the literature scientists choose to cite.

www.nature.com

3 2

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · 26d

"many academic journals .. requir[e] authors to disclose whether they had used artificial intelligence (AI) to help write their papers. But .. 4 times as many authors use AI as admit to it—and that peer reviewers are using it, too, even though they are asked not to."
www.science.org/content/arti...

Far more authors use AI to write science papers than admit it, publisher reports

Finding highlights promise, questions about detectors of AI-generated text

www.science.org

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · 26d

"One major problem is that regulatory ... requirements force researchers to spend nearly half of their research time on paperwork associated with receiving federal grants ... The administrative tasks are unnecessarily complex, duplicative, and ... contradictory."
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Unburden American science

Science is one of the greatest engines of health, prosperity, and security across the world. Yet, in the United States, the enterprise is now under tremendous stress from an array of pressures, includ...

www.science.org

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Sep 2

What Counts as a ‘National Emergency’? youtube.com/shorts/IOn1e...

What Counts as a ‘National Emergency’?

YouTube video by The New York Times

youtube.com

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Aug 27

"Automation involves a transfer of knowledge from humans to machines. [Then], human skills are lost, perhaps irrevocably ... Every time a scientist abdicates their work to an AI tool, that is a tacit admission that the work is not worth being done by the scientist."
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

AI, peer review and the human activity of science

When researchers cede their scientific judgement to machines, we lose something important.

www.nature.com

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Aug 27

"We’ve built machines that sound like they care. Now, we must ensure that they don’t hurt the very people who turn to them for support. That means giving emotionally responsive AI not just more capabilities, but clearer boundaries."
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Why we need mandatory safeguards for emotionally responsive AI

Virtual chatbots that simulate conversations with famous actors or sci-fi characters can have real-world consequences.

www.nature.com

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Aug 27

"Conferences today tend to be “deeply shaped by Western and European traditions” ... If they moved to a more diverse set of locations, a wider range of scientists could go, which would benefit science itself by integrating diverse knowledge and experience." @nature.com
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Where is the best place to hold a scientific conference right now?

An immigration crackdown makes the United States less attractive. These locations could steal its crown and make conferences more globally inclusive.

www.nature.com

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Aug 25

"But progress always involves reaction and revision. Historical nostalgia may be helping a younger generation to harness the benefits of new technology while preserving the virtues of the tangible, physical experiences that remain essential to human flourishing."
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/o...

Opinion | Why Gen Z Is Resurrecting the 1990s

www.nytimes.com

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Aug 22

"this is not a call to revive the fatally flawed 20th-century notions of “development.” Rather, it means that we need to learn from what worked and what was poisonous ... to create a concept that actually accomplishes what “development” imagined it was about..."
www.compactmag.com/article/the-...

The Long, Slow Death of ‘Development’

Over the past several months, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s manifesto Abundance has set off a wide-ranging debate about the future of progressive politics and governance.

www.compactmag.com

2

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Aug 20

"If reviewers typically favor submissions from their own countries, but reviewers from only some countries are well represented in the reviewer pool, this can create a “geographical representation bias” favoring authors from those well-represented countries."
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Geographical diversity of peer reviewers shapes author success | PNAS

Scientific institutions like funding agencies and journals rely on peer reviewers to select among competing submissions. How does the geographical ...

www.pnas.org

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Aug 18

"Now, simulations with ... virtual users generated with [AI] may have revealed why social media tends to become so polarized ... The results suggest that just the basic functions of social media—posting, reposting, and following—inevitably produce polarization."
www.science.org/content/arti...

Don’t blame the algorithm: Polarization may be inherent in social media

In simulations, AI-generated users of stripped-down social media without content algorithms still split into polarized echo chambers

www.science.org

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Aug 10

"Scholarly publishing relies on peer review to identify the best science. Yet finding willing and qualified reviewers to evaluate manuscripts has become an increasingly challenging task, possibly even threatening the long-term viability of peer review as an institution."
arxiv.org/abs/2507.10734

Will anyone review this paper? Screening, sorting, and the feedback cycles that imperil peer review

Scholarly publishing relies on peer review to identify the best science. Yet finding willing and qualified reviewers to evaluate manuscripts has become an increasingly challenging task, possibly even ...

arxiv.org

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Aug 10

"There’s an obvious fix to the problem of reviewer overwhelm: do less peer review. Some researchers have raised the prospect of more selective use of organized peer review ... there isn’t enough capacity in the system to do high-quality peer review of everything."
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

The peer-review crisis: how to fix an overloaded system

Journals and funders are trying to boost the speed and effectiveness of review processes that are under strain.

www.nature.com

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Jul 31

Mike Hulme & Arthur Petersen: "The upcoming [AR7] of the IPCC has an opportunity to be better attuned to the world’s religious faiths as holders of knowledge about human meaning, ethics and behaviour, and to incorporate such knowledge explicitly in its assessments."
mikehulme.org/the-ipcc-and...

The IPCC and Religious Knowledge – Mike Hulme

mikehulme.org

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Jul 31

"Publication rates rise sharply during the tenure-track, peaking just before tenure. However, post-tenure trajectories diverge: Researchers in lab-based fields sustain high output, while those in non-lab-based fields typically exhibit a decline." @pnas.org
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Tenure and research trajectories | PNAS

Tenure is a cornerstone of the US academic system, yet its relationship to faculty research trajectories remains poorly understood. Conceptually, t...

www.pnas.org

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Jul 29

"Conservatives consistently disfavored purchasing both Teslas and EVs, irrespective of their perceptions of Musk. Liberals showed declining intentions to purchase Teslas compared with other EVs, and, to a lesser extent, declining intentions to purchase EVs in general."
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Liberals are less willing to buy Teslas than other electric vehicles, moderated by perceptions of Elon Musk - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - Liberals are less willing to buy Teslas than other electric vehicles, moderated by perceptions of Elon Musk

www.nature.com

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Jul 29

Piers Forster: "Yeah, I’m a stammerer, and I’ve done quite well in lots of really supportive environments ... If people see me doing my job and think, ‘Oh, perhaps I can do that sort of thing,’ then that would make me feel chuffed." @science.org
www.science.org/content/arti...

This scientist advises the U.K. government on climate policy—and it has to hear him out

As Piers Forster steps down as chair of the influential Climate Change Committee, he chats with Science about his role in guiding the country toward decarbonization

www.science.org

Shin Asayama @shinasayama.bsky.social · Jul 24

"[T]he blame may lie on “lazy author syndrome,” in which authors extract information only from abstracts or titles without digesting or even reading the full text. Authors may be more likely to skim this way—and introduce errors—when writing background sections..."
www.science.org/content/arti...

‘Lazy’ authors? One in six scientific papers mischaracterize work they cite

New study of long-standing problem takes novel approach, asking cited authors to evaluate accuracy

www.science.org