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.
Last semester, I had one student thank me for bringing some difficult topics up, but Idk how the rest felt about it. Yesterday, I felt their undivided attention on me as the class got very quiet. But can't say what that means, really. Not in the current environment in the States.
January 30, 2026 at 7:15 PM
Last semester, I had one student thank me for bringing some difficult topics up, but Idk how the rest felt about it. Yesterday, I felt their undivided attention on me as the class got very quiet. But can't say what that means, really. Not in the current environment in the States.
i know a colleague who presents his own ideas as "rumor on the street/in the hallway is..." to make them seem more plausible or imminent, I think. it's a very interesting tactic of narrative control, referring to some amorphous other entity as a source of epistemic legitimacy...
January 30, 2026 at 7:03 PM
i know a colleague who presents his own ideas as "rumor on the street/in the hallway is..." to make them seem more plausible or imminent, I think. it's a very interesting tactic of narrative control, referring to some amorphous other entity as a source of epistemic legitimacy...
It does sadden me a lot too. She seemed to be in her prime tbh! Such an enjoyable presence on screen.
January 30, 2026 at 6:34 PM
It does sadden me a lot too. She seemed to be in her prime tbh! Such an enjoyable presence on screen.
That could play a role indeed but there also seems to be an additional lack of understanding about what the aim of exploration is and what it means to do it rigorously, ethically justifiably.
January 30, 2026 at 6:04 PM
That could play a role indeed but there also seems to be an additional lack of understanding about what the aim of exploration is and what it means to do it rigorously, ethically justifiably.
oh and we wrote about conditional inference here
From our 2021 paper "The case for formal methodology in scientific reform" on the validity of exploratory/confirmatory statistical inference and their theoretical equivalence
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
January 30, 2026 at 5:30 PM
oh and we wrote about conditional inference here
and
I beg you please stop calling p-hacking exploratory analysis. Call it data dredging, fishing expedition, cherry picking, significance chasing. Labeling your non-pre-reg'd analyses clearly as exploratory isn't a license to p-hack. Stop bastardizing scientific exploration and stop hiding behind it.
January 30, 2026 at 5:09 PM
and
I also wrote numerous threads about this issue
People are feeling compelled to torture their experimental data every which way to find statistically significant patterns they can report as "serendipitous" findings under the now-acceptable label "exploratory analyses". It's neither exploration nor serendipitous discovery.
January 30, 2026 at 5:07 PM
I also wrote numerous threads about this issue
And wrote about a broader perspective on exploratory research here
Alright it's here! Where we push back against the exploratory-confirmatory distinction that's become canonized in metascience and talk about what we think exploratory research (including exploratory experimentation and modeling) means and why our view is incompatible with 'unplanned data analyses'.
January 30, 2026 at 5:05 PM
And wrote about a broader perspective on exploratory research here
We wrote about model-based rigorous exploration here
Received a delightful email from a colleague this morning informing me that their phd student writing a #metasci dissertation was raving about one of our papers: "Rigorous exploration in a model-centric science via epistemic iteration"
I want to talk about it a bit.
psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-...
I want to talk about it a bit.
psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-...
January 30, 2026 at 5:01 PM
We wrote about model-based rigorous exploration here
Amen! Also bad stats ≠ exploration
January 30, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Amen! Also bad stats ≠ exploration
I was thinking the same thing. And another exacerbating factor is institutional assessment of teaching performance via student course evaluations. They are always correlated with grades. Faculty are incentivized to give high grades so they can get higher evals themselves.
January 30, 2026 at 4:27 PM
I was thinking the same thing. And another exacerbating factor is institutional assessment of teaching performance via student course evaluations. They are always correlated with grades. Faculty are incentivized to give high grades so they can get higher evals themselves.
As I told Cat
never feels like i'm being brave when i do so but i hate that i'm being forced into a position of being brave de facto
January 30, 2026 at 3:30 PM
As I told Cat
never feels like i'm being brave when i do so but i hate that i'm being forced into a position of being brave de facto
January 30, 2026 at 1:45 AM
never feels like i'm being brave when i do so but i hate that i'm being forced into a position of being brave de facto
A silver lining to end on a positive note: Perhaps this gives us an opportunity to think more clearly about what we consider to be junk science, how we evaluate scientific activity, how we cultivate principled scientific workflows, etc. instead of assuming that the status quo is/has been inevitable.
January 29, 2026 at 10:39 PM
A silver lining to end on a positive note: Perhaps this gives us an opportunity to think more clearly about what we consider to be junk science, how we evaluate scientific activity, how we cultivate principled scientific workflows, etc. instead of assuming that the status quo is/has been inevitable.
Interesting! That's obviously a very economic model of science, which is not my own mental model for it so it gives me food for thought.
January 29, 2026 at 10:36 PM
Interesting! That's obviously a very economic model of science, which is not my own mental model for it so it gives me food for thought.
I'll have to think about what difference that makes since it isn't immediately obvious to me.
January 29, 2026 at 10:31 PM
I'll have to think about what difference that makes since it isn't immediately obvious to me.
(Setting ethical issues aside for the sake of the exercise)
January 29, 2026 at 10:30 PM
(Setting ethical issues aside for the sake of the exercise)
And if I come back to your first post with an open mind: if and where that is the case, then I don't think there's much to worry about AI-slop. We'd just need to find new principled workflows to integrate AI wherever it adds value without detracting quality/rigor.
What if we have been doing principled science the entire time?
January 29, 2026 at 10:30 PM
And if I come back to your first post with an open mind: if and where that is the case, then I don't think there's much to worry about AI-slop. We'd just need to find new principled workflows to integrate AI wherever it adds value without detracting quality/rigor.
Ah ofc. But it makes sense because academic science has a lot of shares and public platforms to discuss their problems, and non-academic science may be more dispersed. I honestly don't see a lot of solutions being offered either way.
January 29, 2026 at 10:18 PM
Ah ofc. But it makes sense because academic science has a lot of shares and public platforms to discuss their problems, and non-academic science may be more dispersed. I honestly don't see a lot of solutions being offered either way.