New preprint!
Episodic future thinking (EFT) as a type 2 diabetes intervention? 💭
RCT results suggest that EFT helps improve HbA1c and supports future-oriented decision-making in patients with high delay discounting. #BehSci #PsySci #healthpsych #type2diabetes
doi.org/10.31234/osf...
What is this ad doing? Is it just mid-aughts nostalgia for middle-aged folks around the time more of us start considering Ozempic? Got lost wondering whether Ozempic is supposed to be Mac or PC.
Thinking we need a meta-AI that calculates inter-rater reliability among all the other AIs. Something that asks all the robots your question and returns kappa or ICC.
Snopes.com, if you're still around and wanting to reinvent yourself, please???
![Comic. [Banner: Mathematical Society: 2025 Meeting.] PERSON 1 with bun: Any other new developments from the year to cover before we wrap? PERSON 2: Oh, the teens picked a new funny number. PERSON 3 with short hair: Aww, I’m glad to hear they’re still doing that. PERSON 4 with ponytail: I’ll add it to the list. [List: 23 (skidoo!; 42; 69; 420; 1,337; 58,008; [circled]: 67]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreig43e2u4zzpifhq6fbf2iwplmva2lt5rokfg5uws5dysbe55up6wa)
Comic. [Banner: Mathematical Society: 2025 Meeting.] PERSON 1 with bun: Any other new developments from the year to cover before we wrap? PERSON 2: Oh, the teens picked a new funny number. PERSON 3 with short hair: Aww, I’m glad to hear they’re still doing that. PERSON 4 with ponytail: I’ll add it to the list. [List: 23 (skidoo!; 42; 69; 420; 1,337; 58,008; [circled]: 67]
Funny Numbers
xkcd.com/3184/
Gonna suggest that AI hallucinations aren't the biggest problem here. If anyone is doing LLM-based lit reviews without keeping a human in the loop, that probably signals a much larger pattern of negligence and not a whole lot of "regular" intelligence.
19, but do I get extra points if I've used some of these recently? Or performed 2 or more simultaneously?
Scene from OFFICE SPACE with Michael Bolton replying to Samir Nagheenanajar: “No way. Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.”
when someone tells me not to use em dashes because AI uses em dashes
Clear and long-established evidence that ⬆️nicotine in cigarettes leads to ⬆️dependence (physiological and subjective measures). Growing body of evidence suggests e-cigs are no different, which is reckless to ignore. Not an enemy of nicotine, but it's also not productive to discuss without nuance.
Good question. Need to balance the harms of higher nicotine (greater dependence) vs. lower nicotine (more exposure to the bad stuff). Unclear where that balance should be, at present. But it's not a question of if they're harmful, but how much less harmful, which appears to depend on use patterns.
Increasing e-cigarette nicotine strength doesn't appear to make e-cigarettes better substitutes for combustible cigs. New data suggesting that both low- and high-nicotine e-cigarettes support product switching about the same.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
Here’s the clip if anyone is interested! www.goodmorningamerica.com/video/127625...
SCORIGAMI, part 1 of 4
now on youtube, free to watch for everybody
the rest of the episodes will drop every tuesday through the end of the month
youtu.be/FHNwUiu_8Eg?...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jeab.70044
Take-home: perceived uncertainty about future rewards is related to higher delay discounting. This appears baked into the task even when specifying that rewards are 100% certain.
Good timing, 2 new collaborations with
@VT_biostats in the same month:
psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...
Take-home: simulated scarcity increases cigarette craving, and delay discounting mediates this effect
graph with scientist names on the x axis and colored indicators for NIH, NSF, and Other funding. Also indicators for active pre-1960 and Outside US
When we communicate science, we often don't say where the resources for it come from. This is clearly a mistake: people consuming science should know who is funding it--and if that funding is being taken away. So, I decided to document the funding sources of every scientist mentioned in my book.
Scientists,
I am asking us to do something that goes against our nature:
Step away from fine-grained, nuanced arguments. Zoom WAY out. Share the big picture. Don’t soften the seriousness of this moment with “xxx may be ok in xxx circumstances” talk.
It’s uncomfortable AND necessary.
Excerpt from the AJDAA article "“I drink less and that’s no small matter”: A qualitative descriptive study of a managed alcohol program evaluation in Barcelona" by David Filomena Velandia, Ester Aranda Rodríguez, Amaia Garrido Albaina, Catrina Clotas, Montse Bartroli Checa, M. Isabel Pasarín Rua & Mercè Gotsens: "...By covering their basic needs, the MAP also allowed participants to focus on activities other than coping with living on the street. The most important health benefit was facilitating their access to other treatment: women in particular benefited from re-engagement with mental health services, while men started treatment for hepatitis C eradication."
In honor of #AlcoholAwarenessMonth, learn more about the benefits of managed alcohol programs. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
I'll pass it along thx
Yes, generally. And especially if you're referring to the ceiling effect in violin plots. Starting to think a table is a better place for those data.
New from our group:
Can GPT be used to implement episodic future thinking (EFT) interventions in the tx of obesity and other chronic disease? EFT is promising, but an AI-based solution could increase its scalability and reach.
We begin exploring that here. More to come!
arxiv.org/abs/2503.16484
Why are there so few public-facing science educators in the biomedical sciences (vs. physics, astronomy, math)? Need more of them right now (and tomorrow x 3).
@hankgreen.bsky.social @vsauce.bsky.social @veritasium.bsky.social @neildegrassetyson.com @smartereveryday.bsky.social #STEM
New #recovery research at @fralinbiomed.bsky.social
Severity of SUD, years of substance use, substance type, and age of onset are associated with needing more quit attempts to achieve abstinence.
#addictionsci
#TobRegSky #PedSky #MedSky #EpiSky #addictionsci #policysky #polisky #PCCM 🧪🛟
Would RFK Jr. buck or bow to Big Tobacco?
www.startribune.com/would-rfk-jr...
My colleagues and I showed that if you instruct participants to respond systematically, reliability is fine. So: anxious participants are not responding systematically.
psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-...
“Our feeling is that it’s the consumer’s right to know. Consumers should be empowered with better knowledge about alcohol consumption in terms of its health risks and how to mitigate those risks.”
www.vicnews.com/local-news/n...
Taxes reduce sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption, but policies can have unanticipated consequences. In this paper, grad student Haylee Downey developed a novel and scalable experimental marketplace to forecast potential impacts of SSB taxes. More to come!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Cover of book AGNOTOLOGY THE MAKING & UNMAKING OF IGNORANCE EDITED BY ROBERT N. PROCTOR & LONDA SCHIEBINGER W he
Text: Marketing has always involved a certain persuasion bordering on de. ception, insofar as laundry soap is pretty much the same throughout the world. The tobacco industry early on recognized health concerns as market impediments, which is why L&M Filters were offered as "just what the doctor ordered," Camels were said to be smoked by "more doctors," and so forth. The industry was barred from making such claims in the 195os and moved to more subtle inducements, associating smoking with youth, vigor, and beauty, and later freedom, risk, and rebellion. For a time in the 1980s, when health infringements centered around secondhand smoke, we were told that smoking was a form of free speech. The industry likes to have it both ways: smoking is patriotic yet rebellious, risky yet safe, calming yet exciting, and so forth. Marketing tools of a novel sort were introduced in the early 1950s, following the explosion of evidence that cigarettes were killing tens of thousands every year. Responding to this evidence, the industry launched a multimillion dollar campaign to reassure consumers that the hazard had not yet been "proven." Through press releases, advertisements, and well-funded industry research fronts, epidemiology was denounced as "mere statistics," animal experiments were said not to reflect the human condition, and lung pathologies revealed at autopsy were derided as anecdotes without "sound
Text: science" as backing. Cigarette manufacturers often invoked the laboratory as the site where the "controversy" would be resolved, knowing that it was difficult to mimic human smoking harms using animal models. Small animals just don't contract cancer from breathing smoke; it takes twenty or thirty or more years for human smokers to develop cancer, and rats don't live that long. And even when cancers were successfully produced in mice (by painting tobacco tars on their shaven backs), the industry admitted only the presence of "mouse carcinogens" in smoke. Cigarette apologists worked in a conveniently tight logical circle: no evidence was good enough, no experiment close enough to the human condition. True proof was hard to have short of experimenting on humans-but do you really want us to experiment on humans? What are you, some kind of Nazi? We don't yet know what evil genius came up with the scheme to associate the continued manufacture of cigarettes with prudence, using the call for "more research" to slow the threat of regulation, but it must rank as one of the greatest triumphs of American corporate connivance. 25 The idea was that people would continue to smoke so long as they could be reassured that "no one really knows" the true cause of cancer.
A little side reading, courtesy of a collaboration wit @drtomori.bsky.social @jlynch13.bsky.social and @hauschildt.bsky.social
“Cigarette manufacturers often invoked the laboratory as the site where the "controversy" would be resolved, knowing that it was difficult to mimic human smoking harms”
Standing with NIH
Long a ‘Crown Jewel’ of Government, N.I.H. Is Now a Target
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/01/h...
Plenty of variability within cultures, too. So unless someone on the committee knows the letter writer and can help interpret the presence or absence of hyperbole, it's like reading tea leaves. Quantitative ratings would be more informative in most cases.
... after finding it by mistake when searching for an unrelated email thread