Three people with a Bee Friendly Insector remote sensing insect monitoring system in a renaturated quarry.
Two people setting up a Bee Friendly Insector remote sensing insect monitoring system in a renaturated quarry.
Today we set up two insect monitoring stations in the glorious sunshine as part of a Masters thesis project. We will be comparing this with traditional monitoring to improve our understanding of the role of AI to supplement and enhance insect monitoring 🐝🪰🦋💚 @globalchangeeco.bsky.social
05.03.2026 14:07
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Birds are vanishing from tropical forests. Is another ‘silent spring’ coming?
As mysterious bird declines crop up in the Amazon and beyond, scientists suspect climate change may be to blame
"The number of birds captured in mist nets plummeted by 40% between 2001 and 2014. Likewise, bird numbers fell by 50% during systematic surveys of birds by sight and sound. The most severe declines occurred among species that feed on insects."
27.02.2026 05:52
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Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
We promote relaxing long-held views of what a statistical interval does, or should, represent and see interpreting confidence or credible intervals as compatibility intervals as a step in this direction.
Giving less power to statistical power
doi.org/10.1177/0023...
26.02.2026 15:53
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Sure! We wrote:
While similar cautions apply broadly for statistical methods, in power-related practices we often see blatant ignoring of the underlying model and its connection to theoretical error rates, leading to overconfident expectations about reality and questionable study design decisions.
24.02.2026 09:20
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Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
A successful study should result in useful information about how compatible the data (and background assumptions) are with values large (or small) enough to be deemed practically important.
Giving less power to statistical power
doi.org/10.1177/0023...
24.02.2026 08:50
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Front cover of my book, titled "Comparative musicology: Evolution, universals, and the science of the world's music" (published today by Oxford University Press)
1st of my 4-page essay published in Nature today titled "Music is not a universal language - but it can bring us together when words fail"
Picture caption: "Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (centre) performed in Spanish at the half-time show of the 2026 American Football Super Bowl LX."
My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪
You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do!
I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!
23.02.2026 12:10
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ERROR RATES ARE HYPOTHETICAL!!
"They seem to bring an air of objectivity and comfort to an otherwise challenging and messy research process; but their roots inhabit the same soil as statistical hypothesis tests that have been criticized for decades"
20.02.2026 16:09
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Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)
YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Stay free
28.01.2026 17:02
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Nightingales are known for their remarkable vocal flexibility. During their night-time singing duels, they adjust both the pitch and timing of their songs to match those of their rivals. - Copyright © MPI for Biological Intelligence / Susanne Seltmann
Nightingales are masters of imitation! New research shows: During territorial contests, a male matches a rival’s song in real time by tracking and imitating both, pitch and syllable duration. This shows a remarkable precision in hearing and v...
weiterlesen
13.01.2026 09:13
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A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below.
1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.
A figure detailing the drain on researcher time.
1. The four-fold drain
1.2 Time
The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce,
with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure
1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material
has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs,
grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for
profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time.
The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million
unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of
peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting
widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the
authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many
review demands.
Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of
scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in
‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow
progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to
volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier,
local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with
limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging
with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks
intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.
A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below:
1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.
The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised
scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers
first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour
resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:
a 🧵 1/n
Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
11.11.2025 11:52
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I like to think that if the military r&d had instead gone into solar we'd be where we are now by like 1992
01.12.2025 16:39
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Energy transitions can happen faster than we think:
In 2000 almost 90% of Denmark's electricity was from fossil fuels.
In 2024 less than 10% of Danish electricity was from fossil fuels.
01.12.2025 16:18
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from Amrhein, Greenland, & McShane ("Retire statistical significance," Nature, 2019)
"For example, the authors above could have written: ‘Like a previous study, our results suggest a 20% increase in risk of new-onset atrial fibrillation in patients given the anti-inflammatory drugs. Nonetheless, a risk difference ranging from a 3% decrease, a small negative association, to a 48% increase, a substantial positive association, is also reasonably compatible with our data, given our assumptions.’ "
from Amrhein, Greenland, & McShane ("Retire statistical significance," Nature, 2019)
"Whatever the statistics show, it is fine to suggest reasons for your results, but discuss a range of potential explanations, not just favoured ones. Inferences should be scientific, and that goes far beyond the merely statistical. Factors such as background evidence, study design, data quality and understanding of underlying mechanisms are often more important than statistical measures such as P values or intervals."
I like this from @vamrhein.bsky.social et al. I assigned it to my class last semester and tried to explain that p-values measure how compatible (vs. surprising) the data are with the null, given our assumptions. But yeah, tests & CIs are hard to understand!
www.blakemcshane.com/Papers/natur...
22.11.2025 18:31
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book cover of a pocket guide to scientific writing and publishing
"This is the book we need to give every single new PhD student in our labs."
I love reading comments on the book
Thanks!!
27.10.2025 12:56
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Great to see our new paper "Health losses attributed to anthropogenic climate change" out in print today in @natclimate.nature.com, which builds on our landscaping project on climate-health attribution a couple of years ago, funded by @wellcometrust.bsky.social
17.09.2025 13:43
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For Trump and his allies, renewable energy is akin to the new Cracker Barrel logo: something they oppose largely because it’s different and seems to be forced upon them. But unlike the logo, there’s no going back on wind and solar.
www.pbump.net/o/why-trump-...
06.09.2025 13:22
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Could AI slow science?
Confronting the production-progress paradox
Could AI slow science? Confronting the production-progress paradox
#AI #GenAI #ChatGPT #Claude #Science #WCRI2026 #WCRI
www.aisnakeoil.com/p/could-ai-s...
23.08.2025 23:28
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