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Gareth Hollands

@gjhollands.bsky.social

3K followers 880 following 160 posts

Behavioural science + evidence synthesis at UCL • population health • interventions • environments • unpopular culture • architecture (& morality) • "fun-sponge boffin" (Daily Star) 🔗 https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/92345-gareth-hollands 🌍 London, UK

profiles.ucl.ac.uk

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Gareth Hollands @gjhollands.bsky.social · Mar 13

🗣 Privileged to have played a very small part in this hugely important trial, published today in @thelancet.bsky.social.
A short thread🧵 on the findings follows below 👇

The open access paper is available here: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

#MedSky #BehSci #publichealth

Behavioural interventions to increase uptake of FIT colorectal screening in Scotland (TEMPO): a nationwide, eight-arm, factorial, randomised controlled trial

Adding a single sentence suggesting a deadline for FIT return in the invitation letter to FIT colorectal screening resulted in more timely FIT return and reduced the need to issue reminder letters. Th...

www.thelancet.com

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Reposted by Gareth Hollands

Suzi Gage @soozaphone.bsky.social · 19h

I mean I know this will never happen, because she's a crank and she's not getting anywhere near power, but this is still a profoundly depressing world view. What are we without the arts, without creativity, without imagination?

Otto English @ottoenglish.bsky.social · 20h

Badenoch and Co see education only as a means to a massive income in some soul destroying career.

Devoid of imagination and the power of knowledge they view life entirely through the prism of the CV.

My advice always is to study what interests you and the rest will follow

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Reposted by Gareth Hollands

Sung Kim @sungkim.bsky.social · 5d

I know people are submitting AI-generated papers and some are AI-assisted, but…

There were 26,646 new submissions to arXiv in September 2025.

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Reposted by Gareth Hollands

The Lancet @thelancet.com · 5d

The world produces enough food, yet billions lack access to healthy & sustainable diets. A new EAT–Lancet report presents a science-based approach to improve health, safeguard our environment & provide for a projected 9.6 billion people by 2050.

🔗 bit.ly/3W7rxlP

Cover of the 2025 EAT–Lancet report, featuring an image of a person scooping up green vegetables in their hands from a large plate. The report quote: “The targets of the EAT–Lancet Commission for healthy people on a healthy planet with just food systems can only be met through concerted global action and unprecedented levels of transformative change.”

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🎃 public HELLth guy 🎃 @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 13d

from worst to best versions (off the top of my head)

Hierarchy of Scientific Evidence
Strongest to weakest top to bottom
Meta-analyses & systematic reviews
Randomized controlled trials
Cohort studies
Case-control studies
Cross sectional studies
Animal trials & in vitro studies
Case reports, opinion papers, and letters

same pyramid but at the top is another pyramid that says 25+ scientists signed an opinion paper

same pyramid but at the top is mom’s advice

a shitpost pyramid with “the other shit” on the bottom and “Thoughtful, well-conducted studies of any design” at the top. probably the best version i’ve seen

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Hannah Forde @hannahforde.bsky.social · 16d

We're are now accepting applications for an exciting DPhil at the @oxprimarycare.bsky.social, *FUNDED* by the THRIVING Food Futures research hub!
The project is about divisive policies, supervised by me, Dr Rachel Pechey @petescarbs.bsky.social @ashakaur.bsky.social
lnkd.in/eezGaZZ3
Pls share! ✨

Crowd-pleasers or food fights? Exploring UK public support and objection to divisive policies that aim to reduce the environmental harm caused by the food system

www.phc.ox.ac.uk

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Gareth Hollands @gjhollands.bsky.social · 19d

Interesting blog from @kdeloyde.bsky.social @bristoltarg.bsky.social following up their trial from a few years ago of the effect of adding alcohol-free beer options in pubs (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....).

So what's been happening with those pubs and their alcohol-free offerings since?

TARG Bristol @bristoltarg.bsky.social · 19d

🔊Blog out today: How a simple swap led to lasting changes in pub and bars across South West England - What happened after the alcohol-free draught beer introduction study?
bit.ly/4mzFi7C

@kdeloyde.bsky.social‬ @ClaireVGarnett @JennFerrar @Clarke_NC1 @MarkAPilling @joe__matthews @OliviaMaynard17 @GJHollands @MarcusMunafo @AngelaAttwood

Reposted by Gareth Hollands

EPPI Centre @eppicentre.bsky.social · 20d

🔊 Exciting research role available if you're interested in applying evidence synthesis to food policy and public health. Part of a @nihr.bsky.social study evaluating supermarket policies restricting the use of price promotions.

Closes 8th October. Further details 👇 www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

www.ucl.ac.uk

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The Sutton Trust @suttontrust.bsky.social · 20d

🚨 NEW: Britain’s most powerful people are still 5x more likely to have been privately educated than the general population.

Our brand-new research reveals that jobs in the media, business, charity, creative and public sectors remain dominated by those from private schools ⤵️🧵

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Gareth Hollands @gjhollands.bsky.social · 22d

Even only working in adjacent fields this regularly causes issues, so I dread to think about how often it arises if you're actually working in public health. Probably needs one of those automated warnings on every email and document: "Are you sure you didn't mean to write "public"?"

Reposted by Gareth Hollands

UCL Social Research Institute @sriucl.bsky.social · Sep 8

As part of the celebrations of our 10th anniversary as a UCL Department, we have launched an inaugural lecture series. You can watch the first here and there will be more to come this academic year! www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/departme...

SRI Inaugural Lectures

Inaugural lectures hosted by the UCL Social Research Institute.

www.ucl.ac.uk

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Marion Campbell @marionkcampbell.bsky.social · Sep 8

I seem to have been discussing pilot and feasibility studies a lot this week. One question often asked is how big should my pilot/feasibility study be? 1/6
#MethodologyMonday #124

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Reposted by Gareth Hollands

Jack Wilkinson @jdwilko.bsky.social · Sep 5

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

INSPECT-SR: A tool for assessing trustworthiness of randomised controlled trials.

INSPECT-SR: a tool for assessing trustworthiness of randomised controlled trials

The integrity of evidence synthesis is threatened by problematic randomised controlled trials (RCTs). These are RCTs where there are serious concerns about the trustworthiness of the data or findings....

www.medrxiv.org

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Reposted by Gareth Hollands

Journal of Clinical Epidemiology @jclinepi.bsky.social · Sep 4

Our updated @jclinepi.bsky.social starters pack!

go.bsky.app/DNtLZWo

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Reposted by Gareth Hollands

Wilhelm Hofmann @wilhelmhofmann.bsky.social · Aug 26

🚨 We’re hiring! 🚨
The Social&Environmental Psychology Group @ruhr-uni-bochum.de is recruiting 2 PhDs and 1 Postdoc
as part of the ERC-funded SUSCON project on sustainable consumption.

Details here:

PhDs:👉 jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/7...

Postdoc:👉 jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/jobposting/e...

Doctoral Researcher (m,f,x)

jobs.ruhr-uni-bochum.de

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Reposted by Gareth Hollands

Ginny Hendricks @ginsta.bsky.social · Aug 14

Very good article and thread about open alternatives to google scholar, which clearly will go away when its founder retires. The @barcelonadori.bsky.social movement is getting a lot if attention and OpenAlex.org a lot of support. The Lens currently looking for new home about.lens.org/expressions-...

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Hazel Cheeseman @hazelcheeseman.bsky.social · Aug 14

Stumbled across a map of tobacco retail licence distribution in England in 1634 (for those wondering, the distribution in 21stC would be a blank map as no licence is needed to sell tobacco until government passes Tobacco and Vapes Bill)

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C20 Society @c20society.bsky.social · Aug 13

This September, Dalston’s beloved Hackney Peace Mural celebrates its 40th birthday. Commissioned by the GLC and designed by artist Ray Walker, it’s a key survivor of the Community Art Movement of the 1970s and 80s.

Click to back the anniversary party crowdfunder: crowdfunder.co.uk/p/hackney-peac…

Hackney Peace Mural in 1985.
Image Credit: Alan Denny

Hackney Peace Mural in 2025
Image Credit: Richard Blanshard

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Gareth Hollands @gjhollands.bsky.social · Aug 11

Ha. I'd like to see the same with dice. I presume unless they're extremely expensive they're already quite unbalanced, but I'd very much like a technique for improving the odds of a six

Gareth Hollands @gjhollands.bsky.social · Aug 11

Also "Future work may attempt to verify whether “wobbly tossers” show a more pronounced same-side bias than “stable tossers”" 🙂

Gareth Hollands @gjhollands.bsky.social · Aug 11

I don't understand much of the stats here or probably all of the implications, but I love this! Great work @fbartos.bsky.social and all.

I also hope there are no triallists still clinging on to coin-flipping as a means of randomisation...

František Bartoš @fbartos.bsky.social · Aug 11

Fair coins tend to land on the same side they started: evidence from 350,757 flips.

That's the title of our paper summarizing ~650 hours of coin-tossing experimentation just published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association.
doi.org/10.1080/0162...

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Gareth Hollands @gjhollands.bsky.social · Aug 10

A true trailblazer in not just children's television in the UK, but television full stop. Richard Marson's biography of her is superb

Christopher Anstey @chrisanstey74.bsky.social · Aug 10

RIP Biddy Baxter. An extraordinary woman by anybody’s standards.

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Jack Birch @jackmbirch.bsky.social · Aug 8

Very happy to see a big paper from my PhD *OUT TODAY*

We explored if there were inequalities in the attendance & effectiveness of behavioural weight management interventions in an individual participant data meta-analysis.

See the thread for findings 👇

bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/3/2/...

Are there inequalities in the attendance at and effectiveness of behavioural weight management interventions for adults in the UK? An individual participant data meta-analysis

Objectives Interventions for obesity that require individual behaviour change, such as behavioural weight management interventions, may contribute to health inequalities. We explored if there was evid...

bmjpublichealth.bmj.com

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Reposted by Gareth Hollands

The Cochrane Collaboration @cochrane.org · Aug 4

We are now on Bluesky! Follow us for:

The latest insights from Cochrane reviews 📖

Training and support for researchers 👩🏫

Information on research integrity, innovative methods and our global community 🌏

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The Psychologist @psychmag.bsky.social · Aug 4

Congratulations to Professor Beth Jefferies on the @bpsofficial.bsky.social President's Award.

www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

Impact and inclusivity in the Presidents’ Award | BPS

The winner of the 2025 British Psychological Society’s Research Board Presidents’ Award has been announced.

www.bps.org.uk

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Reposted by Gareth Hollands

UCL Social Research Institute @sriucl.bsky.social · Jul 31

A fantastic opportunity in our amazing department! Come and join us as Director of our Centre for Longitudinal Studies www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

UCL – University College London

UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

www.ucl.ac.uk

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