Cam Hostinar, Ph.D.

The STRESS Lab is recruiting 4 full-time Research Assistant I positions across multiple research projects led by @nicoleweiss.bsky.social (Director and PI of the @stresslab.bsky.social).

Position details and application instructions are linked below.

84% of the time, “ChatGPT Health” killed a customer using their paid service as advertised

Potentially Harmful Consequences of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbot Use Among Patients With Mental Illness: Early Data From a Large Psychiatric Service System Click on the article title to read more.

Potentially Harmful Consequences of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbot Use Among Patients With Mental Illness: Early Data From a Large Psychiatric Service System - Wiley Online Library (Feb 6, 2026) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

I’m not seeing any avocado toast there… that would have been peak millennial.

Assistant Teaching Professor in Computational Social Science and Cognitive Science University of California, San Diego is hiring. Apply now!

Our department is hiring an Assistant Teaching Professor!! This is a joint-appointed position with Computational Social Sciences (css.ucsd.edu). It's 75+ degrees F and sunny today, just thought I'd mention apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04461

I appreciate this distinction, but I think there is another issue causing contention: the ethics of how the product was obtained. Does it matter that you got your good grant idea from ChatGPT if it’s a good idea? Yes, if it’s stolen without attribution from online preprints, Pubmed & NIH reporter.

Public anxious about AI? Yep. 👇

via @economist.com

Are you a junior faculty member interested in spending 2-4 weeks at Princeton Psych? Please apply for our Microsabbatical program! It’s a fully funded visit for professional development and creating long-term collaborations.
psych.princeton.edu/diversity/mi...

It’s so funny to think about the fact that there’s people out there deferring every life decision to this

Banner image with screenshot of scientific article from nature Medicine, as well as two panels from the study method and results

⚠️ Despite all the hype, chatbots still make terrible doctors. Out today is the largest user study of language models for medical self-diagnosis. We found that chatbots provide inaccurate and inconsistent answers, and that people are better off using online searches or their own judgment.

🚨Thrilled to share I am able to hire someone (PhD preferred) with coding expertise to work on our HAPPE software for EEG! Knowledge of Matlab, Python, and EEG signal processing required. Enthusiasm for teaching/mentoring, collaboration, and developmental science preferred!

“Describe 3 states of mind that you cannot have”

Trauma or Toxic? A Deep Dive into the Impact of Stress on Kids’ Health UCSF researchers found evidence that stress occurring as early as before birth or as late as adolescence can affect multiple conditions in kids, from asthma to mental health to cognitive functioning.

Ug- thanks for the heads up @camhostinar.bsky.social !
Corrected link: www.ucsf.edu/news/2026/01...

A brief history of precision self-scanning When a researcher solved a logistical problem by going rogue, the idea proved remarkably infectious.

When a brain researcher solved a logistical problem by going rogue, the idea proved remarkably infectious.

By @lyrebard.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin...

This UCSF link is broken for me, but I could find the paper on the journal website, maybe repost if an issue?

Will likely become a classic! And welcome to BlueSky @nicolebushphd.bsky.social 🎉

Feel better soon! You’ll get back to work faster if you rest, so you owe it to your work to rest!

The Inconceivability of the CLPM and RI-CLPM Written by Brent Roberts and not ChatGTP. Really* The existence of an observational scientist can be a frustrating affair. Relegated to second class citizen status due to interest in phenomena that…

A bit of a Festivus inspired post about CLPMs and RI-CLPMs: floggingpvalues.blog/2026/01/20/t...

Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows Brown Swiss in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways – something only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees

A study shows a cow using a "multi-purpose" tool — a broom, for scratching.

"multi-purpose tool use... is extraordinarily rare. Beyond humans, it has only been shown convincingly in chimpanzees."

Another example of "this animal is smarter than we thought"
🧪

www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Our recent paper discussing why children might care more about animals. A joy to write with @lmcguire.bsky.social @nadirafaber.bsky.social Jared Piazza and Katja Liebal.

academic.oup.com/cdpers/advan...

Writing is thinking

Outsourcing the entire task of writing to LLMs will deprive us of the essential creative task of interpreting our findings and generating a deeper theoretical understanding of the world.

New paper in @acamh.bsky.social's JCPP! We found that early adversity doesn't affect positive emotions uniformly-- youth follow 4 distinct developmental trajectories. & This heterogeneity matters for understanding depression/anxiety risk.
🧵 1/5

📊 Paper: acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A few days left to apply to join my lab as a PhD student! We study how people explore, how new ideas form, and how thinking develops. Learn more at liquinlab.github.io. Application review begins 1/15.
#PsychSciSky #CogPsyc #CogSci #DevPsyc

The effect of acute stress on executive function in children: Moderation by parasympathetic nervous system activity Executive functions (EF) are crucial for children’s self-regulation and academic performance. Thus, understanding factors that can undermine or promot…

New paper alert! Led by Dr. LillyBelle Deer (@lillybelledeer.bsky.social), we found that an acute stressor task did not significantly impact EF performance in middle childhood. Children with greater parasympathetic reactivity (RSA) performed better under stress.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

🧠 Hiring a Research Assistant/Lab Manager! Share widely! 📍 St. Louis | ⏰ Full-time

We're launching the How We Learn Lab @WashU, studying attention, learning & memory interactions. Perfect for anyone interested in dev cog neuro who wants hands-on experience before grad school.

deckerlab.com

Information literacy and chatbots as search By Emily This post started off as a thread I wrote and posted across social media on Sunday evening. I'm reproducing the thread (lightly edited) first and...

I've been shouting about this since Google first floated the idea of LLMs as a replacement for search in 2021. Synthetic text is not a suitable tool for information access!

buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch...

/fin (for now)

If you are submitting an NIH grant in February, you will be required to use SciENcv to prepare you biosketch.

IT IS MUCH WORSE THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE.

Set aside *at least* 4 hours just to transfer an existing an biosketch into SciENcv.

I don't think you non-science people realize what it takes to get a grant funded by NIH. Started experiments in Sept 2021 to generate 3 new mouse mutants to model human disease. Prelim dara shows they have relevant disease phenotypes worthy of study. Need a small grant first to characterize /1

A List of Predictions Made in 1926 About 2026

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