Once you pull on one thread, more starts to unravel.

Should academic misconduct be catalogued? Proposed US database sparks debate Repository would require US universities to register research fraud and workplace harassment.

A federal misconduct registry for academia? A fine proposition - provided @pubpeer.com and @retractionwatch.com are accorded their rightful seat at the table.
🔗 nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01147-x

For context on another seminal example of the @thelancet.com commitment to the scientific literature, see: pubpeer.com/publications...

The Internet's Most Powerful Archiving Tool Is in Peril As major news outlets cut off the Wayback Machine, journalists and advocacy groups are rallying to protect the Internet Archive’s vast collection of web pages.

The Internet's Most Powerful Archiving Tool Is in Peril

www.wired.com/story/the-in...

Why we won’t be funding open access publishing any more - Cancer Research UK - Cancer News The open access movement was bold and promising, but ultimately disappointing. Now is the time to stop and call for a new way to make publishing work…

CRUK goes green [OA] news.cancerresearchuk.org/2026/04/01/w...

Reproducibility and robustness of economics and political science research - Nature Robustness checks and reproduction of analyses with existing and updated data based on 110 articles in economics and political science journals with data and code-sharing requirements found high level...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

profoundly odd

Finally - retraction of www.bmj.com/content/391/... Cudos to @deevybee.bsky.social

Florida bans sociology from core curriculum at state universities For years, Republican lawmakers and education leaders have argued that sociology — especially high-enrollment introductory courses — has been overtaken by progressive ideology

Florida bans sociology from core university curriculum www.miamiherald.com/news/politic...

Enhancing Scientific Integrity: Progress and Opportunities in the Social and Behavioral Sciences - A Workshop This workshop will bring together researchers, journal editors, publishers, funders, and scientific association leaders to identify practical, forward-looking strategies for strengthening data integri...

Uh oh.

NASEM workshop on 'scientific integrity' features fireside chats w/leaders of the flawed Santa Clara serological survey - Jay Bhattacharya and John Ioannidis - who claimed that COVID was 50x-85x milder than believed and perhaps similar to flu.

🧵

www.nationalacademies.org/projects/DBA...

Wikipedia Bans AI-Generated Content “In recent months, more and more administrative reports centered on LLM-related issues, and editors were being overwhelmed.”

NEW: Wikipedia has banned AI-generated content.

ERC clarifies limits on AI use in grant evaluation The ERC Scientific Council has adopted new guidelines on the use of artificial intelligence in the evaluation of grant proposals. The guidelines aim to safeguard the integrity of peer review while all...

New guidelines on the use of artificial intelligence in the evaluation of ERC grant proposals.

The aim is to safeguard the integrity of peer review while allowing limited use of AI where it does not compromise privacy or trust.

Read more 👉 bit.ly/47HqTld

Matt Kaplan, "I Told You So! Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right" YouTube video by Harvard Science Book Talks and Research Lectures

Only 25 minutes in, but I'm captivated.

1) Galileo was more fascinating than I knew

2) yeah the scientific community is not the bastion of integrity my naive childhood self imagined (and later adult self idealized bc look at the rest of the world...)

youtu.be/HYrMk5EKabs

Remarkable retraction notice.

London, San Francisco and Beijing achieve ‘remarkable reductions’ in air pollution Cycle lanes, electric cars and other interventions have helped 19 global cities slash levels of pollutants by more than 20%

They said it would take 193 years to clean London’s air. We did it in nine. 💨

London has now met legal limits for nitrogen dioxide air pollution.

AI is programmed to hijack human empathy — we must resist that As artificial intelligence begins to mimic consciousness with uncanny skill, we need design norms and laws that prevent it from being mistaken for sentient beings.

“AI agents should have no more rights or freedoms than my laptop”
“If society surrenders to the illusion of sentient AI, it risks entering a digital hall of mirrors from which it might never fully emerge” writes @mustafasuleymanai.bsky.social in our WorldView column
🧪
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cascade of A.I. Fakes About War With Iran Causes Chaos Online (Gift Article) The technology has been used to create misleading fakes before. But never at this scale.

GenAI: not only a huge problem in science, but also for news rooms. Fake news all around.

Cascade of A.I. Fakes About War With Iran Causes Chaos Online
By Stuart A. Thompson and Alexander Cardia @nytimes.com
#GiftLink

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Confidential health records from UK BioBank project exposed online Exclusive: Guardian investigation finds data from flagship medical research leaked dozens of times

"When intending to upload code, some researchers have also accidentally published partial or entire Biobank datasets to GitHub, a popular online code-sharing platform." www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

5 million deaths a year globally are attributed to lack of physical activity. Many countries have set policies to promote physical activity but never implemented them.
No improvement in >20 years!
3 new papers
nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com/articles/s44...
nature.com/articles/s44...

Anthropic’s Ethical Stand Could Be Paying Off The AI company gave up a $200 million contract—and might be getting something more valuable in return.

Anthropic’s principled stand against the Department of Defense continues to pose enormous risks for the company—but some early indications suggest that it just might pay off, Ken Harbaugh argues.

Damn.

OpenAI hit with lawsuit claiming ChatGPT acted as an unlicensed lawyer ChatGPT maker OpenAI has been accused in a new lawsuit of practicing law without a U.S. license and helping a former disability claimant breach a settlement and ​flood a federal court docket with meri...

www.reuters.com/legal/legali...

Some more ideas developed from the BMJ stem cell paper www.wjst.de/blog/science...

On sabotage of our young scientists, by @holdenthorp.bsky.social @science.org
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Data Visualization A Practical Introduction

Here’s a full draft of the upcoming second edition of my “Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction”: socviz.co

The international boycott of ChatGPT has absolutely exploded.

2.5M people have already joined, and this is just the beginning.

Go to quitgpt.org.
Cancel your subscription, delete your account.
And tell at least one person why.

My op-ed: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Data | Academic Abuse Explore real-time data on academic abuse in higher education. Our dashboard aggregates news stories on bullying, harassment, retaliation, and more to support students, faculty, and advocates in…

The #EpsteinFiles meet #TheUList.

26 universities (and counting) with ties to #Epstein tracked at buff.ly/lR3UE29

🪜 🎓 📜 🍎 ♀️👩🏾‍🔬 #PhDSky #Blackademia #AcademicChatter #AcademicSky #MeToo #HigherEd #PhDChat #FeministSky

I have professionally followed war in the Middle East going on 8 years. I have had my analysis published in internationally respected outlets. I have not once purposefully watched one of those videos. You don't need it.