🚨New preprint and our results are rather concerning..
We find the "boiling frog" equivalent of AI use. Using large-scale RCTs, we provide *casual* evidence that AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance.
And these effects emerge after just 10–15 minutes of AI use!
1/
TX universities are doing this to Black students, Brown students, international students, queer students, and first-generation students. A generation of progress toward making everyone feel welcome, primed to learn, and more likely to graduate and become productive citizens--all up in smoke.
🚨FREE WEBINAR ANNOUNCEMENT🚨
Get an early start to #statnerdsummer with a free seminar on how multilevel models and structural equation models intersect.
I'll be showing this through MLM and SEM growth curves.
Sign up for free! Share widely!
You can register here: smart-workshops.com/workshops
A new analysis confirms what has long been suspected: grant cuts at NIH hit women and early-career researchers the hardest. As @jenna-m-norton.bsky.social told me, the findings here are unsurprising, but “documenting the damage from current policy is critical” 🧪
Bar chart showing the change in the number of providers — social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists — from the third quarter of 2023 to the end of 2025 on the x-axis and the number of providers from negative 400 to 800 on the y-axis. The trend starts with a peak of about 700 social workers and around 200 psychologists added in the third quarter of 2023, followed by a steady decline across all groups, dropping below zero by the first quarter of 2025 with social worker losses eventually dipping around 400.
The VA lost about 700 social workers and 500 psychologists and psychiatrists over the course of 2025 — a significant change for an agency that was adding mental health staffers nearly every month leading up to Trump’s return to office.
Read more: https://propub.li/4rBUJOV
New from me @thebulletin.org
We have effective interventions against health misinformation, but they don't do us much good when tech companies aren't willing to add protections and the misinformation is coming from those in charge of our health system 1/
thebulletin.org/premium/2026...
Basically a precursor to Eiko's paper, complete with considerations of utility (menus) www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhwc...
Paper title: “Examining the Foundational Assumptions of the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology” in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology
A new paper from the HiTOP Revisions Workgroup (and yours truly) on the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of the framework. Recommended reading for anyone interested in questions of classification and psychopathology!
Here’s the journal article: muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/articl...
Resharing again! I'm looking for a postdoc with experience or interests in longitudinal data collection OR analysis: indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/32132
⭐️📢PRESS RELEASE: Across Texas, students and faculty at all seven public university systems face efforts to censor student learning and faculty teaching. See below for an overview of the ways AAUP members and leaders are fighting back! Join us! ✊
aaup-texas.org/blog/f/facul...
Why does writing often feel worse right after we start?
This question behind is my 3rd piece in my Long Carve series on long writing projects.
If your writing suddenly feels worse after you begin, you may be exactly doing it right.
🧵
catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/writing-is...
Brian Evans, pres. of the Texas AAUP, says if students ask about current topics, instructors will have to decide whether to engage or not, since everything discussed in class will have to be pre-cleared. “What kind of education is this?” 🤬
www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/edu...
We hope to wrap up data collection in early March so please share widely! Thanks so much!
The Call for Abstracts has been extended until March 2nd, and we're excited about building an engaging scientific program. We hope you'll consider submitting your work, and hope to see you in June!
I'm looking for a postdoc to work on our NIH-funded R01 which is a longitudinal cohort of adolescents (13-20) doing EMA and passive text sensing! Please apply, especially if you have experience in the analysis OR collection of these data.
PLEASE SHARE!!
indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/32132
Banner image with screenshot of scientific article from nature Medicine, as well as two panels from the study method and results
⚠️ Despite all the hype, chatbots still make terrible doctors. Out today is the largest user study of language models for medical self-diagnosis. We found that chatbots provide inaccurate and inconsistent answers, and that people are better off using online searches or their own judgment.
Are you a grad student who wants to give a talk at Princeton’s psychology department (in-person or on Zoom)?
Nominate yourself or someone you know: forms.gle/WN2ybYMuZiW3...
Priority given to non-Ivy and URM students. International applicants welcome.
Deadline is this Friday (Feb 6)!
Editorial by @astridchevance.bsky.social on censorship in academia.
Worth your time.
#AcademicSky #PsychSciSky 🧪
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
LMK what a good medium would be. Bluesky doesn't support pics
I have pictures, which I would be happy to share backchannel
My kid's daycare did this, which is a wild thing to ask of babies/toddlers
Education is a public good for all.
When politicians censor classroom teaching in order to narrow the field of topics that students can engage in, they rob them of a stellar world class education.
This is what is happening at Texas A&M & other institutions in the state.
🧵
“Abbott’s order to block state agencies & public universities from using skilled foreign worker will lower the quality & diminish the value of education and research at Texas universities. This is political interference in students’ right to learn."
–Todd Wolfson, AAUP President
This misuse of children's data has been known for years by NIH. Accountability is overdue. We need real enforcement and an honest reckoning with how genomic data can be weaponized. We are witnessing a renaissance of scientific racism--federal institutions are both ignoring and encouraging it.
“More than anything that draws students to our campuses — more than winning sports teams & fancy dining halls, state-of-the-art labs & well-stocked libraries — academic freedom is what makes our universities work."
— Belle Boggs, North Carolina AAUP President
@ncaaup.bsky.social
Coming up! iRISE (improving Reproducibility In SciencE) is hosting 3 free virtual train-the-trainer workshops:
2/4: Intro to Reproducibility
🔗 forms.office.com/e/D...
2/18: Preregistration
🔗 forms.office.com/e/r...
3/4: Equity, Diversity & Inclusion in Research
🔗 forms.office.com/e/j...
Hey folks: Check out this grad student-led, interdisciplinary, virtual conference being held in April.
Abstract submissions due end of Feb
Writing is thinking
Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.
The commitments in the SAFE Labs Handbook.
A new community-driven lab handbook for reducing conflict and creating more positive and equitable work environments gets strong support from a survey of 200 researchers.
buff.ly/K7CGFLV
Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina Adam Scharpf Christian Gläßel Abstract: Autocrats depend on a capable secret police. Anecdotal evidence, however, often characterizes agents as surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect. To explain this puzzle, this article focuses on the career incentives underachieving individuals face in the regular security apparatus. Low-performing officials in hierarchical organizations have little chance of being promoted or filling lucrative positions. To salvage their careers, these officials are willing to undertake burdensome secret police work. Using data on all 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina (1975-83), we study biographic differences between secret police agents and the entire recruitment pool. We find that low-achieving officers were stuck within the regime hierarchy, threatened with discharge, and thus more likely to join the secret police for future benefits. The study demonstrates how state bureaucracies breed mundane career concerns that produce willing enforcers and cement violent regimes. This has implications for the understanding of autocratic consolidation and democratic breakdown.
Perennial reminder of this excellent paper about how secret police forces are swamped with underachievers
“We don’t want clever people. We want mediocrities.”
(Ungated summary here ajps.org/2019/10/08/w...)