The most impt change at #NIH and to US science this year is bigger than grant cancellations— it’s how the agency is governed.
For 75 years NIH has been largely independent of presidential control. That’s changed this year. New piece from me and @nataliebaviles.bsky.social in @nature.com
🧪
I was introduced to this Anti-AI slop site by @kamkonek.bsky.social where your answers come from humans LARPing as AI and you in turn also pretend to be AI. youraislopbores.me
Kids on a playground with the words “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber”
This!
A reminder that Girl Scouting of America has welcomed trans and nonbinary girls from the first one that asked, has always had lesbian and bi members and adults, never declared bankruptcy to avoid paying for sexual assaults, and never poached the other side to recover from said bankruptcy.
This recent RCT of an "AI stethoscope" claims the technology "shows promise" for diagnosing cardiovascular conditions.
It does not.
It is a textbook example of the risks of conducting unprincipled 'per protocol analyses'. Once again, peer review at a major medical journal has failed.
🧵 1/
📣 Phoneticians/phonologists: CorpusPhon is happening again this year on June 29th at LabPhon in Montreal! Submissions due Friday, March 13th. Hope to see you there!
sites.google.com/view/corpusp...
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Germans started writing 40,000 years ago! You know what that means? Any day now they might be getting to the verb
Front cover of my book, titled "Comparative musicology: Evolution, universals, and the science of the world's music" (published today by Oxford University Press)
1st of my 4-page essay published in Nature today titled "Music is not a universal language - but it can bring us together when words fail" Picture caption: "Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (centre) performed in Spanish at the half-time show of the 2026 American Football Super Bowl LX."
My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪
You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do!
I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!
The title of this new article by >30 deaf and hearing authors says it all "Avoiding unintended consequences: Science of reading policies have potential to harm deaf children" doi.org/10.1093/jdsa...
If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle.
It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get.
www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...
Research plug: we're currently seeking (bilateraly, congenitally) blind adults & Deaf adults for a *paid* online research study (screen reader compatible) on how individuals experience words across perceptual modalities. Ping bergelsonlab@fas.harvard.edu if interested! Reposts welcome! #Blind #Deaf
Congratulations Kyle!
![Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Maria Loconsole1*, Silvia Benavides-Varela2,3, Lucia Regolin1 Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of this association, and whether it is unique to humans, we tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby domestic chickens (Gallus gallus). as a precocial species, chicks can be tested shortly after hatching, allowing us to control their pretest experiences. Similar to humans, both 3-day-old [experiment 1 (exp. 1)] and 1-day-old (exp. 2) chicks spontaneously choose a spiky shape when hearing the “kiki” sound and a round shape when hearing the “bouba” sound. results from naïve young animals suggest a predisposed mechanism for matching the dimensions of shape and sound, which may be widespread across species.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:v6qwaqo24zfrq5fj7ceibxqk/bafkreigaspshdrleahxzyp6b6rjodus6gk4zcoaw77smu7olklmbshdx74)
Matching sounds to shapes: Evidence of the bouba-kiki effect in naïve baby chicks Maria Loconsole1*, Silvia Benavides-Varela2,3, Lucia Regolin1 Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords “kiki” and “bouba” with spiky and round shapes, respectively, a phenomenon named the bouba-kiki effect. To explore the origin of this association, and whether it is unique to humans, we tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby domestic chickens (Gallus gallus). as a precocial species, chicks can be tested shortly after hatching, allowing us to control their pretest experiences. Similar to humans, both 3-day-old [experiment 1 (exp. 1)] and 1-day-old (exp. 2) chicks spontaneously choose a spiky shape when hearing the “kiki” sound and a round shape when hearing the “bouba” sound. results from naïve young animals suggest a predisposed mechanism for matching the dimensions of shape and sound, which may be widespread across species.
main fig from the paper showing the association between bouba/round and kiki/spiky in newborn chicks
the new paper on bouba/kiki in chicks is utterly compelling
canonical, elegant method from comparative cogsci & its partner in developmental science, ultra-simple design, ultra-clear effects, no need for fancy analyses, machine learning, or AI
it appeared in an appropriately badass venue (Science)
DOGE Bro’s Grant Review Process Was Literally Just Asking ChatGPT ‘Is This DEI?’
Federal grants that had been approved after a full application and review process were terminated by some random inexperienced DOGE bros based on whether ChatGPT could explain—in under 120 characters—that they were…
6 bad doodles with text under each one. horseshoe crab is literally the animal horseshoe crab. shoehorse crab is a crab riding a shoe, cowboy style. crabshoe horse is a horse wearing literal crabs as shoes. shoecrab horse is a horse telling a crab to go away. crabhorse shoe is a pair of shoes, left one crab shaped, right one horse shaped. horsecrab shoe is literally the same pair of shoes, flipped.
#InvertebrateShitposting as per @joabaldwin.com's request
Recent work has shown how vulnerable online survey research is to LLMs. Motivated by this, we examined our online Posner cueing data from Prolific. It's concerning. We now must carefully consider when (or whether?) online behavioral data can be trusted.
see our comment:
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point.
I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion
People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it
It’s once again Girl Scout cookie season so it’s time for me remind everyone to please consider buying from NYC’s Girl Scout Troop 6000, which is entirely made up of girls living in NYC homeless shelters 🙏❤️
Roses are red
Violets are grue
In Ancient Egyptian,
Pashto, and Zulu
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2...
1/9 Comparison of carnivore brains beyond brain size
They compared the brains of 26 carnivore species (including canids, felids, and ursids, among others) using magnetic resonance imaging.
(paper) elifesciences.org/articles/100...
I am looking to hire 2-3 post-docs over the course of the next few months to work on questions related to cognitive control in humans, broadly construed. EEG, TMS, DBS, sEEG, fMRI or related methodological experience preferred.
Apply here:
jobs.uiowa.edu/jobSearch/po...
Lab website: wessellab.org
"An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library." Pubpeer, journals are next!
theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...
If you work at the intersection of computational neuroscience and machine learning, consider applying for this postdoc position (January 2027 start date):
academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15868
An opportunity to work with a great group of people across Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley.
Jeremy Wolfe’s lab at Harvard is recruiting for a postbac RA!
So, if you know a graduating undergrad…
Disturbingly detailed analysis of my first rewatch incoming
🚨Job alert! I'm recruiting a postdoc! If you want to study the time course of task-driven visual perception, please reach out! #neuroskyence #VisionScience #CogSci barnard.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Facult...
My dept - Psychology & Education at Mount Holyoke College - is searching for a 1-yr visitor in developmental psych. 3/2 teaching load with research support mtholyoke.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job...
We are hiring next year in semantics- one year positions of course less exciting and good for the field than straight up tenure track postings, but on the other hand hiring in something that isn’t computational feels like a win anymore in linguistics. Come bring some innovative takes on meaning!
Soon hiring a lab manager! Looking for someone who is really interested in language neuroscience, who is organised, motivated, a great communicator, and who works well in a research team. Express interest by submitting this form: tinyurl.com/glysn-labman...
Reposts appreciated!
