Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Apr 5

We want to believe we know what's going on when we prompt - see the cheat sheets that suggest we can prompt to adjust parameters (no, mentioning temperature is not the same as adjusting the temperature)

www.anthropic.com/research/rea...

Reasoning models don't always say what they think

Research from Anthropic on the faithfulness of AI models' Chain-of-Thought

www.anthropic.com

Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Apr 3

Started module getting them to make custom GPTs to produce Cochrane clinical answers. Finished by making an authoring tool, developing a CoT prompt to get a customGPT to guide themselves thru PRISMA2020, and check they had requisite information for each item. #AI #evidencesynthesis #highereducation

Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Apr 3

Finished teaching. In teams of 8-10, students learn question frameworks, reusing existing search elements, SRAccelerator / Rayyan, summarisation and data extraction using LRM+RAG, MMAT2018, SWIM and PRISMA. Between 2weekSR tools and priority screening, you CAN teach students to do systematic reviews

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Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Mar 30

London, Cambridge, Warwick, Leeds, Exeter, Newcastle, Birmingham, virtual, and Bristol. I can't remember the order even other than London and Cambridge were the first 2.

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

Emma Good @emmagood.bsky.social · Mar 27

This week I presented some of my PhD research at the #UKSBM2025 Annual Scientific Meeting. Fantastic experience and great to hear about so much exciting research!

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

Dr Emma Garnett @emmagarnett.bsky.social · Mar 26

Very powerful video shared by @francesmair.bsky.social in her #UKSBM2025 plenary on the challenges of managing multiple health conditions, particularly on the poverty line.
We have to tackle poverty&inequality to improve our public health.
youtu.be/uJiVUPFFXBw?...

Juggling multiple health conditions: Roberts story

YouTube video by SysteMatic

youtu.be

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

Gareth Hollands @gjhollands.bsky.social · Mar 25

20 years of UKSBM (that's the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine)! 🥳 I was lucky enough to be at a fair few of these. Here's to the next 20 #UKSBM2025

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London @arc-southlondon.bsky.social · Mar 27

Social care and implementation researchers at ARC South London have produced a new guide to designing and conducting implementation research within social care. #ImpSci

👉 arc-sl.nihr.ac.uk/news-insight...

Social Care ImpRes

YouTube video by NIHR Applied Research Collaboration South London

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

Gareth Hollands @gjhollands.bsky.social · Mar 25

Hopefully UKSBM can move their society accounts over here in the near future. I don't really want to 'join the conversation' on Meta and X thanks... #UKSBM2025

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Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Mar 25

Great call to action in community pharmacy research from Ade Williams @adewilliams.bsky.social #UKSBM2025

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · Mar 22

UK Universities Funding

"The 'solution' used to be growth – reckless growth. Now it seems it is downsizing – reckless downsizing. In both cases, this is for the business model’s sake, and for the increasing number of business partners — not for students...and not for staff."

#UKHE #AcademicSky

UCU Edinburgh @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social · Mar 21

The latest from our Joint Unions Finance Working Group looks at the 'logic' behind the huge cuts being proposed at the University of Edinburgh

www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/tlwewp3...

Reckless downsizing: the “logics” of management’s cuts — UCU Edinburgh

Unpacking the “business model” behind the UoE cuts

www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

Glen O'Hara @gsoh31.bsky.social · Mar 16

Despite drawbacks, several good points here: (1) Dundee University is genuinely fighting for its life; (2) some uni management teams in some unis are out of control; (3) the multiple UK govts don't even have a clue what's going on, no controls and no plan... (1/2) www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/...

Nigeria currency crisis leaves Dundee University fighting to survive

Profuse spending left the institution ill-prepared for a sharp drop in foreign students after Nigeria, a fertile recruiting ground, devalued its currency

www.thetimes.com

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Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Mar 12

This article misunderstands how you can effectively use LLMs for academic writing. The error is common among my colleagues. I teach my students to write using LLM+RAG and writing style prompts. scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/03/11/g.... Comment is in the image

The author misunderstands how LLMs can be useful in writing articles. Using LLMs without using RAG is just relying on the patterns learned in the training of the model. If you know the relevant literature, using RAG, it fetches the relevant info from the papers you give it, adds it to the prompt and generates a response based on the relevant retrieved information. This addresses issues with hallucinations, cut off dates and citations. Tools like ChatGPTs Deep Research, and The-Literature add search to the beginning of this process.

My students know that if want an essay out of an LLM, upload the PDFs of the papers in the reading list, the assessment guidance and the marking criteria. If they are using notebookLM, they could listen to a chatty podcast, or chat to the podcast in interactive mode to give them ideas for prompts.

If you can’t train your students to do better than LLMs plus RAG, then their graduate jobs aren’t going to be around for long. Pretending LLMs fed with the relevant literature and trained in a academic writing style (like notebookLM is trained to generate output in a podcast style) is to bury your head in the sand. Knowledge work is going to change and we have to prepare ourselves and our students for what’s coming. If Google trained a LLM on all the lectures that were captured over the pandemic, they could have create an automatic lecture generator, that fed with relevant papers could generate a lecture. It’s so obvious someone will. Like Uber drivers are really training the driving model that will replace them, all our open papers and lectures, not to mention all our feedback on Turnitin, are training the models that will replace us if we can’t to do more than just regurgitate knowledge. This article doesn’t illuminate the work we’ve got ahead of us

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Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Mar 11

Will the use of generative AI shift higher education from a knowledge-first system to a skills-first system? - HEPI search.app/DvsRQJAR5r58...

Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Mar 9

How to trash a University's reputation And demotivate the people you need to help you succeed nation.cymru/opinion/how-...

How to trash a University's reputation And demotivate the people you need to help you succeed

Leighton Andrews Hey, please come to the ‘reshaped and reduced Cardiff Business School’! It’s not the most obvious marketing slogan, is it? Nor is it a motivating mantra for our academic staff, whatev...

search.app

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

Prof Christina Pagel @chrischirp.bsky.social · Mar 3

This is why @kityates.bsky.social post is so relevant today

kityates.substack.com/p/science-is...

and why my dystopian piece is perfectly plausible.

christinapagel.substack.com/p/a-dystopia...

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

Marianne Musinszki @mariannemusinszki.bsky.social · Mar 2

Pubmed is back! Obviously the DNS server issue has been resolved.

Nevertheless, I've created an account on Europe PMC and implemented my saved searches... better safe than sorry. Scientists are so dependent on NIH services, we should start to support more decentralized/federated infrastructure!

🧪

Marianne Musinszki @mariannemusinszki.bsky.social · Mar 2

I'm from Germany, and here both are down since yesterday. Just tried again - no matter what system/ browser (tried Linux, Windows, Android phone with firefox, duckduck, chrome)
Glad to have Europe PMC, but what a concerning development.

screenshot of browser message after connection to pubmed failed

screenshot of browser message after connection to pmc failed

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

Hilda Bastian @hildabast.bsky.social · Mar 1

PubMed down .... Here's my post on what to do

Hilda Bastian @hildabast.bsky.social · Feb 14

Hate that it has come to this, but it's time to consider PubMed vulnerable to enshittification. My latest post @plos.org discusses the lines we need to fight to hold – and alternatives we can rely on internationally:

absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2025/02/14/w...

#medlibs

What if We Can't Rely on PubMed? - Absolutely Maybe

PubMed is incredibly reliable. And a lot depends on it. It’s an ecosystem built around MEDLINE, the steady feed of new publications…

absolutelymaybe.plos.org

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Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Mar 2

Freaking out that PubMed is down. An incomprehensible act of vandalism. Trying not to join the dots to RFK's bizarre ideas.

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Alice Roberts @profaliceroberts.bsky.social · Mar 2

It seems PubMed has disappeared. This is the digital equivalent of burning a library.

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Andy Williams @llantwit.bsky.social · Feb 21

Two Weeks In The Death Spiral Of Cardiff University, by an anonymous academic.
This is truly shocking read.
The Cardiff executive board should hang their heads in shame.
voice.cymru/two-weeks-in...

Two Weeks In The Death Spiral Of Cardiff University -

Reading Time: 4 minutesBy an anonymous academic. Cover image by Adwitiya Pal On the second day of classes…

voice.cymru

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Reposted by Ian Kellar

Munya Dimairo @mdimairo.bsky.social · Feb 20

Looking for an NIHR pre-doctoral fellowship opportunity in trials methodology? Feel free to contact me!

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Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Feb 19

Even works in Claude.ai

Reposted by Ian Kellar

James Thomas @jm-thomas.bsky.social · Feb 19

The first consultation for the Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative is now live. If you're interested in the future shape of global evidence synthesis do take a look and have your say!

evidencesynthesis.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/...

Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative - Evidence Synthesis Infrastructure Collaborative

evidencesynthesis.atlassian.net

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Ian Kellar @driankellar.bsky.social · Feb 19

@cvonbastian.bsky.social - I am aiming for BattleZone next.

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