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Posts by Marco Bertamini

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I always had the vague feeling that Scientific Reports and Nature Communications are mainly APC business models.

A paper estimated the total APC for gold/hybrid Open Access per journal 2015–2018: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...

Surprise, surprise - there are 2 outliers at the top😐

4 weeks ago 103 51 5 10
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A couple and their 5 and 7 year old kids…

Shot and killed in front of their 2 other kids by the IDF

This would be on every front page and condemned by politicians far and wide if the victims has been Israelis

And yet when they’re Palestinians…

Utterly utterly shameful.

1 month ago 1023 469 58 15
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Palantir CEO Makes Shocking Confession on Disrupting Democratic Power They’re saying the quiet part out loud now.

Technology is politics.

You can't embed Palantir into the army, the police and the health service without embedding its poisonous politics.

So there's no place for Palantir in our NHS.
newrepublic.com/post/207693/palantir-ceo...

1 month ago 289 124 14 9
ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.

Delayed foveal and parafoveal masks disrupt peripheral target processing:
authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

1 month ago 0 0 0 0
NHS official pushed to add patient data to Palantir platform whilst also advising company

NHS official pushed to add patient data to Palantir platform whilst also advising company

A lobbyist who worked directly for Peter Mandelson, on the Palantir board, and on the board of *four* NHS trusts.

Lobbying the NHS to hand over even more patient data to Palantir.

This absolutely stinks. Get Palantir out of the NHS. Sign my petition:

you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/st...

1 month ago 3443 1571 137 74
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End the sewage pollution scandal We're sick of it. Sick of the lies, sick of the greed, and sick of a system rigged against us. This is a scandal and this dirty business must end. For more than 30 years water companies have put corpo...

I can't believe how much water companies have gotten away with. They're putting profit before public health - it’s a scandal and the Government MUST take action. Add your name to the petition today: you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/pr...

1 month ago 0 0 0 0
ScienceDirect.com | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.

Perceptual organization and its visual subcomponents in schizophrenia and schizotypy: A systematic review: authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

3 months ago 0 0 0 0

I'm writing about the Palestine Action hunger strikers at the moment, any of whom could die at any moment, and the astonishing media and government silence surrounding them. The Establishment seems to have become even crueller than when Thatcher was PM.

3 months ago 2447 1029 76 31
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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.

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).

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.

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

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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

7 months ago 3944 1974 111 406

Bartolomeo Colleoni, a 15th century condottiero, was said to boast about having three testes, but it may just be a story linked to the three balls on the coat of arm. His statue (by Andrea del Verrocchio) is in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, one of the most beautiful places in Venice.

7 months ago 5 0 0 1
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Exited to be in Tübingen for this symposium with an amazing group of vision scientists: summerschool.lizhaoping.org

8 months ago 4 1 0 0

"And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness. So they were doomed."

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions (1973)

9 months ago 24 10 2 1

If thousands of us stand up and say "I support #PalestineAction", what is the government going to do? Lock us all up for "terrorism" offences?
This is where we show them how solidarity works.
My latest with the great @doubledown.news

9 months ago 1105 512 63 65
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Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan among 380 writers and groups to call Gaza war ‘genocide’ Letter also signed by Hanif Kureishi and Russell T Davies urges ceasefire and unrestricted distribution of aid

Our letter condemning the genocide in #Gaza and calling for an immediate ceasefire. A great crime is being committed, and we cannot stand by.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

10 months ago 992 341 27 14
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A long long time ago, in a far away galaxy... the US used to tax the rich

10 months ago 4464 2048 113 215
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I'm very honoured to have given the Geoffrey J Burton memorial lecture on the topic 'On the appearance of shapes in the visual periphery'. Unfortunately this is the only picture I have.

11 months ago 1 0 0 0
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Our final keynote of the day is from Prof Marco Bertamini (Uni of Padova) on the phenomenal appearance of shapes in the visual periphery #AVA

11 months ago 4 1 0 0
A tweet by Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25
) reads: "He’s threatening media companies who are critical of him. He’s talking about sending Americans to foreign prisons. He’s signing executive orders to investigate former staff members who spoke out against him. Don’t you see what’s happening here?"

A tweet by Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25 ) reads: "He’s threatening media companies who are critical of him. He’s talking about sending Americans to foreign prisons. He’s signing executive orders to investigate former staff members who spoke out against him. Don’t you see what’s happening here?"

I see it. I have lived it. 83 years ago, the U.S. government turned upon a group of its own citizens and residents and sent them to internment camps without due process. I was there among them. American fascism is back. It is here. It is now.

1 year ago 45256 14422 953 481
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PhD position opening in Padova. It is a multidisciplinary project in Experimental Aesthetics and Psychology of Art.
www.bertamini.org/lab/MIRACLE....

1 year ago 4 6 0 0

The looming shutdown of the Department of Education is about control, not reform. As @teacherscollege.bsky.social faculty warn, dismantling education stifles critical thinking and undermines democracy. When politics dictate learning, society pays the price. #AcademicFreedom #EducationMatters #USPol

1 year ago 6 3 0 0

The so-called school choice and voucher systems were set up to further starve down already cash-strapped public schools. The goal: To widen the chasm between the rich and the poor. #AcademicSky #EduSky

1 year ago 10 5 0 0
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Sky must stop funding hate speech CW: Homophobia, hate speech Sky launched its programme for Pride 2024 with a ringing declaration the company was “proud to celebrate LGBTQ+ stories”. But while it was posting shiny videos claiming to ...

Demand that Sky stops buying ads and funding hate on GB News. Join @GoodLawProject now to increase the pressure: goodlaw.social/c9g8

1 year ago 0 0 0 0
STAND UP FOR SCIENCE 2025 - DC and NATIONWIDE Stand up for science with us on March 7th, 2025, because science is for everyone! More info at www.standupforscience2025.org

Stand Up for Science rallies will be held in DC and state capitals on March 7th. Share with friends. Sign-up here to get email updates with details: www.eventbrite.com/e/stand-up-f...

1 year ago 8047 2928 149 80
The AVA - Promoting Vision Research and its Applications

Applied Vision Association meeting in Liverpool on the 28th of April www.theava.net/meetings.php...

1 year ago 4 4 0 0
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PhD Position: Neural Mechanisms of Imagery and Perception at the Donders Centre for Cognition | Radboud University Do you want to work as a PhD Position: Neural Mechanisms of Imagery and Perception at the Donders Centre for Cognition at the Faculty of Social Sciences? Check our vacancy!

A PhD position is open in @peelen.bsky.social Lab at the Donders Institute - please spread the word and consider applying if you are interested about how imagery and perception relate to each other www.ru.nl/en/working-a... - plus we are fun people to work with ! :)

1 year ago 46 35 1 1
Application - Summer School

Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium:
Aug. 11-22, 2025 Tübingen, Germany

The Third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school is designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision.
summerschool.lizhaoping.org/application

1 year ago 4 1 0 0
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Oxford scientist resigns from Royal Society over Elon Musk’s continuing fellowship Prof Dorothy Bishop said fellowship was ‘a contradiction of all the values’ of UK’s national academy of sciences

Prof Dorothy Bishop resigns from Royal Society over Elon Musk’s continuing fellowship. Fellowship is "a contradiction of all the values" of UK’s national academy of sciences

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

1 year ago 1 0 0 0
CARPE “Centre for the Study of Perception and Art” (CArPe) Welcome to the home page of the Centre for the Study of Perception and Art (CArPe)

This may be of interest mainly to those in Italy, however on Monday (Sept 30) we inaugurate a new Centre for the Study of Perception and Art (CARPE)
www.dpg.unipd.it/en/carpe

1 year ago 0 1 0 0
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Great idea, thanks Rebecca!

1 year ago 2 0 0 0
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Testing if this works...

Trying to make a starter pack for researchers in #perception science

Please share ! Will be adding more folks as I learn how #academicsky works !

go.bsky.app/V99fSBK

1 year ago 115 61 41 6