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Lorraine Hope @lorrainehope.bsky.social · 4d

Hard agree - this is insane; pretending it’s viable/OK is actually corrupt. What do advocates think they might ‘learn’ from it? Seeing the vagaries of human performance is part of the fun of research but importantly prompts further questions. This kind of data fabrication is just output grifting…

Richard D. Morey @richarddmorey.bsky.social · 4d

For me this is a hard red line in psychological science. If you advocate the use of "silicon samples" you do not understand what it is we're supposed to be doing (and likely don't understand LLMs, or are a grifter). Luckily I haven't seen much of this among people I'd consider my peer group.

Except from Table 1 of Guest & van Rooij, 2025:

3) Displacement of Participants

“I can use AI instead of participants to perform tasks and generate data.”

The providence of the data used in these models indicates it is not ethically sourced, falling below standards for our discipline, involving sweatshop labour and no consent for private data used in experiments. The output can contain direct original input data (i.e. double dipping), but smoothed to remove outliers, conform to our pre-existing ideas of what it should look like (data fabrication), and all-round irreplicable. Psychology is meant to study humans, not patterns at the output of biased statistical models.

Reposted by Lorraine Hope

Jeremy Noel-Tod @jntod.bsky.social · 6d

On National Poetry Day, the greatest poem I have ever read

A printed poem which reads:

I hav for breakfast Weetabix

I hav for lunch some meat

I have for tea 2 sosajis and thats enuf to eat

Peter Hazel, 5

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Lorraine Hope @lorrainehope.bsky.social · 6d

The most depressing but plausible article I have ever read. Onwards into the “moronic inferno”…

Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore @sjblakemore.bsky.social · 6d

jmarriott.substack.com/p/the-dawn-o...

The dawn of the post-literate society

And the end of civilisation

jmarriott.substack.com

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 7d

A lot of psych is already conducted with online convenience samples & ppl are probably excited about silicon samples bc it would allow them to crank out more studies for even less 💸

How about we reconsider the idea that sciencey science involves collecting own data.
www.science.org/content/arti...

AI-generated ‘participants’ can lead social science experiments astray, study finds

Data produced by “silicon samples” depends on researchers’ exact choice of models, prompts, and settings

www.science.org

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John Towse @jntowse.bsky.social · 7d

The Network Plus for Analytical Behavioural Science for Security and Defence (NABS+) has a call for Visiting Fellowships. Part of our commitment to develop the next generation of behavioural science for security & defence through x-fertilisation of knowledge & skills.
Submission deadline: 20/10/25

NABS+ Visiting Fellowships

Guidance on applying for the NABS+ Visiting Fellowship, including eligibility, required documents, assessment criteria, key dates, and funding conditions.

crestresearch.ac.uk

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Ian Sudbery @iansudbery.bsky.social · 8d

I wish more people got this. Science is inefficient. I'd say probably say inherently inefficient. I know we all want to hurry up and make the world a better place with those tax dollars, but I believe the harder we try to rush things, the less effective we will be in the long run.

Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 8d

"Science is not broken, and it most certainly is not dying. It is an inefficient human activity....When we catastrophize, we feed a disillusionment which political actors can weaponize to get rid of scientific evidence they find inconvenient."

#AcademicSky 🧪

Henning Dekant 📎 @quaxquax.bsky.social · 9d

Difficult for me to put into words how disappointed I am in Sabine Hossenfelder. Many years back when she was just blogging about physics I was a huge fan, and she published a lot of intriguing papers. Now she makes money as a social media arsonist. 🧪
www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 8d

Looks like my favorite paper on the age trajectory of happiness is finally out!!! So happy for the authors. Go check it out, it’s great.

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Reposted by Lorraine Hope

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 11d

At least clippy didn't make everyone decide learning isn't worth it anymore

Clippy saying "Hey there it looks like you're trying to take down big tech. Can I help you with that?"

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Mark Hooper @markhooper.bsky.social · 14d

Some folks confuse these things —who think the 'water movement' must be flawed, since bottled water is expensive, and contaminated water is poisonous. Clean water and #openaccess both cost $. We don't really need corporations selling packaged products, but communities funding reservoirs and taps.

On the left is a glass of clean water labelled ‘Delicious open access.’ In the middle is a plastic bottle of clean water labelled ‘Delicious open access, but stupidly costly.’ On the right is a plastic bottle full of putrid water labelled ‘Predatory open access.’

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Richard D. Morey @richarddmorey.bsky.social · 16d

Microsoft OneDrive is one of the most useless, frustrating pieces of software I have ever encountered in my life.

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M.J. Crockett @mjcrockett.bsky.social · 17d

Glad Science collected this data (though the results are entirely unsurprising). GenAI cannot accurately summarize scientific papers, sacrificing accuracy for simplicity.

And shame on publishers who are pushing genAI summaries on readers. Great way to accelerate an epistemic apocalypse.

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Mark Burnley @drmarkburnley.bsky.social · 23d

But this is the point: those falsely accusing us of brainwashing students want to be able to do that themselves. They can’t bullshit people if they can critically evaluate information and arguments, and that’s a threat to them. Which is why universities are a primary target in the culture wars. /end

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Elisabeth Parés Pujolràs @epares.bsky.social · 25d

Excellent piece.

We know how to improve writing ability: it's by doing more, not less of it.

"LLMs do not improve one’s writing ability much like taking a taxi does not improve one’s driving ability. Students should hone their writing, thinking, and other academic skills at every opportunity."

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Tanay Katiyar @adigitaltanay.bsky.social · Aug 29

On Prolific, "we estimate that about 34% of online study participants use LLMs to answer open-ended questions atleast some of the time..."

Seems like a very timely paper for behavioural scientists using online samples: osf.io/preprints/so... ;

We really need more papers on this issue

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Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · Aug 12

Why we need trust in science: @carlbergstrom.com nails it.
This is why I’m sleuthing in retirement. Some say that talking about fraud destroys trust in science.
No. Turning a blind eye to fraud and pretending it’s not happening is what destroys trust.

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Aug 12

1. "'Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy," Kennedy said."

It's literally a vital feature of both science and of representative democracy.

I've written a fair bit about trust in expertise as a vital mechanism in the collective epistemology of science.

RFK Jr. in interview with Scripps News: ‘Trusting the experts is not science’

HHS Secretary RFK Jr. sat down with Scripps News for a wide-ranging interview, discussing mRNA vaccine funding policy changes and a recent shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

www.scrippsnews.com

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Lorraine Hope @lorrainehope.bsky.social · Aug 11

🤣🤣🤣 Studiously avoid it until a couple of months ago… and yes, I see where he’s coming from 🤭

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EAPL - European Association of Psychology and Law @eapl.bsky.social · Aug 11

After an amazing conference in Vilnius, congratulations to the EAPL 2025 Student Award winners!

🏆 First Prize: Milli Melodia Marika Leinonen
🥈 Second Prize: Weronika Bandarzewska
🥉 Third Prize: Obed Appiah

🖼 Best Poster: Md Yeasir Yunus @yeasiryunus.bsky.social

Details: eapl.eu/young-members/

Students – European Association of Psychology and Law | EAPL

eapl.eu

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Siobhán McElduff @siobhanmcelduff.bsky.social · Aug 10

History says, Don’t hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

- Seamus Heaney

Bruno J. Navarro @brunojnavarro.bsky.social · Aug 6

Millionaire American trophy hunter Asher Watkins, 52, was gored to death on the horns of a buffalo he tried to kill on a trip to South Africa.

Millionaire trophy hunter gored to death by 1.3 tonne bull on African safari

Asher Watkins, 52, was tracking a 1.3 tonne Cape Buffalo bull, known as the Black Death, on Sunday when it suddenly charged at him at 35mph.

metro.co.uk

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Lorraine Hope @lorrainehope.bsky.social · Aug 10

Wow! Excellent support.

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Lorraine Hope @lorrainehope.bsky.social · Aug 7

Well done @yeasiryunus.bsky.social who presented a component of his phd work yesterday at #EAPL25 : Understanding culture, memory, and trauma in asylum interviews:
A mixed-methods systematic review and meta-analysis

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Lorraine Hope @lorrainehope.bsky.social · Aug 4

Had an amazing adventure cycling almost 300km on the Coastal Camino from Porto to Santiago de Compostela last week. Strangely relaxing despite the sweat… with the most beautiful scenery, trails, tracks and hospitality ❤️ (we also met some great doggos!)

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Lorraine Hope @lorrainehope.bsky.social · Aug 4

En route to @eapl.bsky.social in Vilnius… interesting progressive programme with a focus on impact of digital technologies in psych-law domain. Looking forward to catching up with friends and colleagues! #EAPL25

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Lorraine Hope @lorrainehope.bsky.social · Aug 1

Rewriting for accuracy is often an absolute necessity - don’t worry about stepping on toes…

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JAMES HEATHERS @jamesheathers.bsky.social · Jul 25

Finally had time to read this.

Not all negative results are created equal, and the burden of proof interacts with any given negative result.

Super well-conducted comprehensive study with negative result? Legit concern about that getting suppressed.

POS that didn't work? Less problematic.

Nature @nature.com · Jul 23

Scientists overwhelmingly recognize the value of sharing null results, but rarely publish them in the research literature

go.nature.com/450KElr

Researchers value null results, but struggle to publish them

Survey finds that fear of reputational harm and a lack of support and publication platforms are among respondents’ key concerns.

go.nature.com

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Lorraine Hope @lorrainehope.bsky.social · Jul 17

Check out this dynamic spotter 😆