New paper: "The Need for Benchmarks to Advance AI-Enabled Player Risk Detection in Gambling"

Out now in Journal of Gambling Studies

rdcu.be/e4ulZ

#5 - In a pre-record segment, don't be afraid to ask for a redo if you really dislike your first take. The worst they can say is 'no', which lands you exactly where you already are.

#4 - When an interview is scheduled in advance, ask the producer / journalist for a draft of questions they may ask.

If they send them, prepare a tight written response and rehearse it.

If they don't (usually the case), prepare to be asked to walk through the most general aspects of your topic.

#3 - It is not your job to get clicks or make the story *sizzle*. Stick to the facts that you know best, and watch out for bait questions like:
“Do you think the government is trying to get people addicted to gambling?”

When asked to speculate, carefully pivot the topic back to your key points.

#2 - Everything may be on the record, and long statements can be chopped into shorter soundbites that make you sound foolish.

Be careful how you phrase things. Better yet, write down ahead of time the three points you want to make sure everyone knows, and keep each ~15 words.

#1 - The phrase:

“I’m early in my research…”

is Segment Producer speak for:

“We’ll chat for a while, then I’ll say 'what are the questions I SHOULD be asking’. Then I’ll take those exact questions to one of your colleagues with a more prestigious title.”

You will not be quoted in this piece.

I did @bmj.com podcast and it was honestly a lovely experience, but it got me thinking about the many 'not' lovely interview experiences I've had over the years.

SO, here are the top five lessons I learned the hard way in #science, #scicomm, and #media:

What access to GPs tells us about the NHS 10 year plan, and online gambling

open.spotify.com/episode/6aZY...

I spoke with BMJ about online gambling regulation and the need for consistency across addictive products

beginning 25m35s

📢 The call for abstracts is open for the 2026 CAGR conference!

The conference is hosted by @ceacg.bsky.social, University of Helsinki on 28-29 May.

Deadline for submissions is January 15, 2026.

Find more information on our website: cagrconference.org/call-for-pap...

New Analysis piece:
"Online gambling requires greater government regulation"
from @virvemarionneau.bsky.social , Anna van der Gaag, and me.

www.bmj.com/content/392/...

2026 Conference Home April 30 - May 2, 2026 @ The Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS - The Alberta Gambling Research Institute's 2026 Conference, April 30th - May 2nd in Banff.

research.ucalgary.ca/alberta-gamb...

Deadline to submit: January 26th

"The message is clear: Big Tech cannot be trusted to self-regulate. We can’t let them mark their own homework when it comes to safety. The only way to incentivize these companies to change is for Congress to pass legislation that holds them accountable if their products are found to be unsafe."

"Honestly, we are sick of this. We are sick of tech companies utterly neglecting safety until they’re threatened with serious consequences — and then announcing flashy, new tools as a publicity stunt, while having zero intention to implement those tools properly."

thehill.com/opinion/tech...

Gambling-related bankruptcies have quadrupled in Ontario since iGaming's introduction Public service journalism

Sources:
theijf.org/article/onli...
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
igamingontario.ca/en/news/igam...

IJF is reporting a 331% increase in gambling-related bankruptcies in Ontario from 2021 --> 2025. Combined with increased helpline calls (Turner., 2024), increased advertising volume (Wheaton, 2024), and increased iGaming participation (iGO, 2024) over the same period, a clear picture is emerging.

Autism and Vaccines QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS PAGE 2 OF 9 | ALL PAGES J For Everyone NOV. 19, 2025 KEY POINTS • The claim "vaccines do not cause autism" is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism. • Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.

HHS Research on Plausible Biologic Mechanisms between Vaccines and Autism HHS will evaluate plausible biologic mechanisms between early childhood vaccinations and autism. Mechanisms for further investigation include the impacts of aluminum adjuvants, risks for certain children with mitochondrial disorders, harms of neuroinflammation, and more. * The header "Vaccines do not cause autism" has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that it would remain on the CDC website.

CDC has overhauled its website to assert that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim”

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, and it internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day, company documents show.

This piece contrasts meta as worse than google ads, but Google ads is also (at least on YouTube shorts) inundated with medical scams and hoaxes. AI video is making them harder to spot, and Google actively discourages ad blockers, making sure these scams reach people.

www.reuters.com/investigatio...

😮

Critics will likely argue that Leger respondents are not a random sample of Canadians, and this is true. But they represent an important segment of young adults -- those who may have income precarity.

These results suggest that online gambling problems fall heavily on these young Canadians.

www.ccsa.ca/en/online-ga...

New statistics on online gambling problems among young Canadians who do gig work.

Of 1,041 Canadian young adults who gamble and who participate in Leger panels, 32% report gambling online. Among them, 69% met the criteria for problem gambling (PGSI 8+).

Opinion | Gambling Is Killing Sports and Consuming America

In NYT Opinion today:

"...But the rising frequency of these scandals, and the public’s fading trust, points to an industry rotting from the inside — one that rewards corruption, punishes transparency and treats addiction as a business model."

What do you think?

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/o...

A decent (but not perfectly informative re: survey composition and weighting) survey with propensity weighting to estimate self-reported use of unregulated gambling products in the USA.

Could be improved by bootstrapped variance estimation, but still decent.

www.americangaming.org/wp-content/u...

After using ChatGPT, man swaps his salt for sodium bromide—and suffers psychosis Literal “hallucinations” were the result.

arstechnica.com/health/2025/...

B.C. residents betting billions on unregulated gambling sites, 2021 report found Province tried to prevent release of report with details about reach of offshore betting sites

A report on the state of unregulated gambling in BC. Raises (and maybe answers) the multimillion dollar question: if most offshore gambling is on the same sites lobbying for liberalization with regulation, what benefit do they perceive? Freedom to advertise and expand?

theijf.org/bc-residents...

A Nobel prize is fine, but what academics really want is to kick the creators of manuscriptcentral one time really hard in the shin.

UKRI policy fellowships 2025 Spend 18 months as a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) core policy fellow, Natural Hazards and Resilience policy fellow or What Works Innovation fellow to inform policy to address pressing national an...

UK Postdoc opportunity just posted: an 18 Month policy fellowship with the Research and Statistics Team at the UK Gambling Commission, funded by UKRI.

Details here:
www.ukri.org/opportunity/...

Distinguishing Persistent Versus Episodic Clusters of At-Risk Respondents on the Problem Gambling Severity Index - Journal of Gambling Studies The Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI) is a popular tool for assessing past-year problems related to gambling. Multiple categorization schemes have been proposed, with scores 3–7 variously interpr...

AND THANK YOU FOR READING!!

Find the paper here: doi.org/10.1007/s108...

Download my analysis scripts here: osf.io/uw94q/

a man with long hair and a beard is saying " thank you eternally " ALT: a man with long hair and a beard is saying " thank you eternally "

This project was made possible by my excellent collaborators, Drs. Sheurich, Monson, French, and Kairouz at UConcordia and UdeSherbrooke, as well as by funding from CIHR and FRQ-SC.

So, how do we make models our gambling harm detection models better?

1 - We try to account for these subgroups in large-sample research, or
2 - We use a graded intervention scheme instead of a binary decision threshold, or
3 - We select a different outcome variable with better properties.

In turn, these subgroups within the moderate-risk range varied on the specific items endorsed and several sociodemographic dimensions.

This kind of within-groups variability is exactly why a ML classifier might fail to perform optimally.