Veli-Matti Karhulahti

Once again, a long post with strong opinions. It's probably twice as long as it should be, it's also repetitive and written in affect. And you probably disagree with my argument. So maybe you shouldn't read it. On the other hand, most things worth reading are written in affect.

Once had 123 456 and there was no else to see it 🥲

the deadline for open feedback is February 28 so there isn't much time left, repost if this is something you care about!

context: JUFO is operated by the Finnish academic system but the classification is used in many other countries too more or less officially-- eg Denmark, Iceland, Slovakia

especially, this is the opportunity make high-quality diamond journals visible & concretely rewarding, and to expose bad journals that run paper mills & operate primary to serve the stock price (looking at springer nature & friends)

Propose changes to the level classifications of publication channels

The nonprofit journal classification JUFO needs your input. Starting 2026, journals are ranked from "none" to Levels 1 and 2-- here you can directly influence scientific assessment. Leave positive notes for journals that deserve it, negative for crappy venues

julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/news/prop...

Sweden always walked solo on this in the Nordics-- Denmark/Finland/Norway/Iceland have had rather consistent goals

Null results as such isn't the problem, sometimes null is surprising itself (something that should work *doesn't* after all)-- this is rather an epistemic problem where ppl feel the need to claim meaning for their work via binary significance rhetoric that's simple enough for the internet

it’s understandable that stakeholders want reviews but sadly it’s garbage in garbage out; there’s no easy way to disseminate this complexity

Thanks, a nice overview of their work. The problem is (=continues to be) that dicussions, like those on the site, are based on reviews while very few publications are able to tackle the issue

there's also "interviews with experts in multiple fields, including behavioural addiction"-- why isn't this data shared? Relative to a) the seriousness of this topic, b) the fact that expert views on design aren't sensitive & c) resources isn't an issue, sharing this data should be no-brainer

the features listed in the press release are used by almost every successful platforms/products-- I'd like to understand how TikTok design is different (beyond its size), and what specific combos/types produce addiction here (ppl have studied this for ages with little success)

European Commission's formal analysis of TikTok has concluded today & finds it to represent 'addictive design'

--great that someone is doing this work but would really appreciate some transparency in the process so that experts (like myself) could understand

ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

Piranesi (novel) - Wikipedia

Piranesi! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranes...

In the survey, the respondents were first asked about their perceived health and quality of life, before moving on to digital gaming. They were asked about the amount of time and money spent on gaming-related things per week. Respondents were also asked how much they liked or disliked various aspects of games. Non-gamers were asked why they do not play digital games and how much they have played various non-digital games.

Background variables included the respondent's mother tongue, gender, year of birth, age, level of education, party affiliation and NUTS3 region of residence.

Some examples could be to class those who play from those who don't, or by those who failed the control item, or by employment situation/eduction (if these things count)

The survey includes the following additional measurement indicators: Gaming addiction scale (GAS7), Internet Gaming Disorder Test (IGDT10), Gaming disorder test (GDT), Problem gaming test (THL1), PROMIS General Mental Health (GMH-2), PROMIS General Physical Health (GPH-2), Work ability index (WAI), Work recovery question (WR), Perceived loneliness (PL), Pathological gambling (BBDS), General anxiety disorder scale 2 (GAD-2) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).

How large? We have a nationally (FI) representative n≈8000 dataset open for use here

services.fsd.tuni.fi/catalogue/FS...

Preregistering qualitative research The threat to reproducibility and awareness of current rates of research misbehavior sparked initiatives to better academic science. One initiative is preregistration of quantitative research. We i...

Not exactly what you look for but among the most interesting takes on postdiction that comes to mind:

doi.org/10.1080/0898...

Orange is light disagree & red is strong disagree, there's only ~7% ppl who disagree in total which imo falls well within some natural noise

Thanks Marcus, hope to meet again somewhere soon!

indirectly though: he co-created many of measures in the field so his work pace (haste) has likely contributed to the issue that way

Yeah the sample included several of his papers too. For his credit, he was rather helpful with the materials requests (& I've heard he has been in the past too)-- I don't think this affected results much bc the prevalence rate was ~zero anyway

I don't find it so strange tbh. Eg weekly lotto is betting real money, but associating it with gambling stereotypes (slot machines etc) isn't necessarily clear for everyone

In English, betting real money is, indeed, 99% gambling (in Slovak, terms operate a bit differently, as it does in Finnish and Swedish, which is interesting for sure!)

Yeah there's plenty of variation in psych too, nuance over generalisations!

There are two things: a) yes, fundamental psych RQs aren't statistical in nature, plus, b) psych constructs tend to be language bound & language games evolve, so psych can never be science in physics terms

Thanks :) The vagueness of related concepts is indeed a long-standing issue in other contexts too-- the chapter sounds interesting, looking forward to check the PDF!

In a critical cultural analysis of the gambling industry, Kingma describes how operators and regulators denominate their industry by 'games of chance', 'entertainment', 'customers', 'guests' and 'consumers', rather than 'gambling' and 'gamblers', as these last words carry connotations of excessive and irresponsible gambling for money. Therefore, they prefer the word 'gaming' over 'gambling' [36, p. 178] Indeed, for example, the official representative body of the United States gambling industry is still today named as the American Gaming Association. When terminological confusions such as this are vocally promoted by the industries themselves, it is not surprising that survey respondents provide inconsistent interpretations about what gaming and gambling are.

Yeah the intentional confusion by the industry certainly doesn't help..

Thanks for the kind words! Tbh, I *think* the finding isn't as big as it first sounds, as a lot of general surveys are with kids & they don't gamble so much-- then again, papers often operate with diagnostic cutoffs which should be very strongly affected

Thanks Ian!

It will still take decades before social sciences understand with what Wittgenstein tried teach them 70 years ago

bsky.app/profile/mkar...