RDM Weekly - Issue 041 A weekly roundup of Research Data Management resources.

Issue 41 of #rdmweekly is out! 📬

➡️ Scrapers, Pipelines, and AI, Oh My! Tools to Accelerate Data Rescue - Workshop @datarescueproject.org
➡️ How to…Write a Lab Handbook @mehr.nz
➡️ SQL Murder Mystery
➡️ It Depends - A Comical Data Steward Replacement
and more!

rdmweekly.substack.com/p/rdm-weekly...

'Like Gaza': IDF razes south Lebanon villages during cease-fire, sources say Sources Describe a Policy Modeled on Gaza Operations, With Contractors and Heavy Machinery Demolishing Civilian Infrastructure South of the Litani; Officials Say It Aims to Prevent Residents' Return a...

IDF commanders told Haaretz that southern Lebanon is being demolished “like Gaza.” The declared goal is to prevent civilians from being able to return.

Both are war crimes punishable under international law.

www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...

What Does Palantir Actually Do? Palantir is often called a data broker, a data miner, or a giant database of personal information. In reality, it’s none of these—but even former employees struggle to explain it.

This article about Palantir was v useful www.wired.com/story/palant...

Paper title: The Hypothesis Generating Machine Author: Philip Cole

It all reminds me of one of my favorite papers:

pdf: goodscienceproject.org/wp-content/u...

Virtual lecturers to be overseen by academics at AI university New model that will see students taught by AI tutors set to launch in June after being given stamp of approval by regulator

For an industry paper, this is a very incurious article about an organisation that was incorporated 7 years ago as "Geeks College Ltd" and whose website lists 6 MSc degress and four (4) faculty, all adjunct. Fees are £9900. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/virtual...

OK this is the worst case of kernel smoothing I have ever seen

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

Power without accountability: The Palantir manifesto The problems with our tech philosopher kings

New, from me: Take the Palantir manifesto seriously, if not literally.
It reveals that our tech philosopher kings want public money, but without public accountability. This creates a dilemma for governments unaligned with its techno-fascist vision. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/palantir-w...

Understanding where people with tuberculosis seek care to serve them better In an ideal scenario, someone with chronic cough, fever, and weight loss would promptly seek care at a public tuberculosis clinic, be tested immediately for tuberculosis with a rapid molecular test an...

If we better understood where people seek care and why, could we not serve them better?

The answer is YES, and that's what our Lancet paper is about

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Thinking Like an Economist™️

Here’s the director of the NIH explicitly espousing populism over expertise as the means of determining priorities for federally science funding by leaning into the stupidest possible examples: ivermectin as cancer therapy .

1/
"Silicon samples" are becoming more and more common in research and polling.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

The updated version of this preprint is now online!

THREAD🧵

arxiv.org/abs/2509.13397

The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...

Plus, the data that comes from AI is "weird in ways we don't understand." (Bisbee) Research from metascientist Jamie Cummins finds that "....a very small number of decisions can dramatically change the correspondence between silicon samples and human data."

Be ready to be shocked and offended at university, students told Guidance has been published by the Office for Students on new free speech rules coming into force this year.

Half the country now believes university lectures are just a boring version of The Moral Maze or Question Time www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

248 US military flights over Ireland went unreported due to ‘administrative error’ Irish Times investigation finds almost 250 more overflights than previously disclosed by Department of Foreign Affairs

There were almost 250 more US military aircraft flights over Ireland than previously disclosed by the Government since last summer, an Irish Times investigation has found

www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...

cc @dri.ie

‘Such a mix of people’: Ireland of 1926 was not monocultural, release of census shows Archive is freely available online from 18 April, revealing the lives, occupations and secrets of 2.9m people

The 1926 Irish National Census has been digitised and is being made available online from today - a treasure trove for researchers and for families!
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Reupping my review of Alex Karp’s embarrassing pamphlet of a book.

Palantir is run by a nitwit.

Harvard and Yale so thirsty for this.

Can't wait for him to be welcomed back into the academic fold with open arms after all of this because that is exactly what will happen. Very serious people will insist it's about "viewpoint diversity".

Palantir put plans for techno-fascism in a document. Like a techno-fascist manifesto with themselves at the center. Features fascistic distortions of language and declarations of inherent superiority that should be acknowledged and made permanent, but driven by and with a more central role for tech.

How a Renaissance gambling dispute spawned probability theory A dispute over how to divvy up the pot in an interrupted game of chance led early mathematicians to invent modern risk assessment

How a Renaissance gambling dispute spawned probability theory www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...

"We feed the nation" - a widely applauded falsehood.

"Cities subsidize the countryside" - a widely vilified truth.

Pancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting results in an early trial Scientists caution that more research is needed, but nearly all of the patients who responded to the personalized vaccine are still alive six years later.

Reminder: The Trump regime cancelled nearly $500 million in federal contracts for mRNA vaccine development last year.

1. The paper with the implausibly large effects of Omega-3 fatty acids on mental health was now retracted. A little thread on the process where @ianhussey.mmmdata.io and I was involved.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Don’t believe headlines saying that vaccine skepticism is widespread Despite some headlines, a new poll does not show that most Americans no longer trust vaccines.

A badly worded poll is making vaccine skepticism look more common than it is. www.statnews.com/2026/04/17/v...

This council home in Cork city centre has been boarded up since 2024
City council say they haven't resources/budget to bring hundreds of homes like this back into use
Despite dire need of so many
Yet they wrote off €3.7m in derelict site levies rewarding property hoarders & vandals

#speirghorm

From the cognitivescience community on Reddit Explore this post and more from the cognitivescience community

Man when you lay it all out like this it sounds crazy, but it's somehow basically true www.reddit.com/r/cognitives...

The trials that quietly changed our lives Testing claims matters more than ever in an age of misinformation, overconfident assertions and unsubstantiated opinions

My article in the Financial Times about my book. It includes a wonderful randomised trial of beer glasses (which you might unknowingly have been part of if you bought a pint in some British pubs c.1998)

“Testing claims matters more than ever in an age of misinformation”
as.ft.com/r/f5a2f313-a...

You win

😑