Charlie Rioux, Ph.D.

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...

Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

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

THREAD 🧵

Academia.edu is changing its Terms and Conditions, and they're so outrageous (AI training; signing over ownership to them etc) I closed my account today.

A thread with some practical tips if you want to delete your account (5 steps):

How Indigenous-led health education in remote communities can make reconciliation real When Indigenous communities shape how health professionals are trained, it’s a path toward trust, equity and a health system that finally reflects the people it serves.

How Indigenous-led health education in remote communities can make reconciliation real

📣 Call for unpublished studies on discrimination of bisexual people!

⬇️ Please see the full call below

We are very grateful for all contributions!

#SocialPsych #PsychSciSky

Call for Papers: Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science is calling for proposals for manuscripts that discuss, demonstrate, and work to enhance replicability and reproducibility of methods research in psychology.

Proposals are due by September 15!

Confounding by Indication: A Research Bias You Should Know It’s September which means RFK Jr will soon be releasing his promised report on the ‘causes’ of autism. We can prepare by learning some key types of research bias.

RFK Jr has promised to release a report on the causes of autism in September. To prepare, it's a good idea to make sure we know what the common types of observational research biases are. First up: confounding by indication.
Read more here: open.substack.com/pub/epiellie...

ggplot2 4.0.0 A new major version of ggplot2 has been released on CRAN. Find out what is new here.

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN.

It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package.

Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

Why Teachers Say Yes (or No) to Research Participation—and What Researchers Can Learn From It
From SRI International

studentbehaviorblog.org/why-teachers...

3 Aug 25 - New study shows vast "over-representation of trans boys" turns out to be vast _under-representation_ of trans girls bec. they: a) come out ~10 years later; b) start puberty later; & c) delay transitioning longer because of deep social animus towards AMAB femininity.
tinyurl.com/yrwvmxws

Are you working on issues of replication and reproducibility of methodological research in psychology? Consider submitting a proposal to my call for papers, happy to chat about your ideas or answer any questions! www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

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Very excited (w/ @omarjcamanto.bsky.social) to share our preprint tutorial for using our R 📦 dySEM for #dyadic data analysis with latent variables, in cross-sectional data sets.

This paper has been literal years in the making, and provides three distinct tutorials.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Happy to share my new study, publ. in Social Science Research 🎉 Bottom line: Yes, adolescents use their phones a lot 🤳 But I find no support for the notion that this use displaces reading, homework, hobbies, physical act., sleep... Instead: Changing media preferences 📺 ->📱. doi.org/10.1016/j.ss...

STAGGERING: This new study of 133 countries is the first to estimate the impact of all USAID’s work. In 2 decades, it has saved *92M* lives. Current cuts, if not reversed, are forecast to cost up to *14M* lives thru 2030. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

We call them "plaster" in Quebecois French!

Technology is supposed to decrease teacher burnout – but we found it can sometimes make it worse Efforts to simplify teachers’ jobs through technology can backfire without a strong focus on teacher well-being.

🧵 addressing the argument: "AI won’t replace teachers, but it will save them time and make them more effective.”

Adding edtech doesn't necessarily save teachers time. A recent study found that LMSs sold to schools over the past decade+ as time-savers aren’t delivering on making teaching easier.

screenshot of our public handbook

every year my lab does a re-read + edit of our Handbook, a documentation resource for how we do science

this year we also updated our Public Handbook, an open-access version for folks wanting to improve their own docs

it's at handbook-public.themusiclab.org and available for noncommercial re-use

My Canadian university, Queen's, is offering TWENTY 4-year funded PhDs (40k CAD/yr) for a student of ANY citizenship who has been accepted at a top 100 US university but have had offer rescinded OR are reconsidering offer due to US policy.
Details found here👇

www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc...

📱 Want to know when to schedule your #EMA / #ESM beeps for the highest completion rates?

⏰ Timing matters: some moments during the day and week are more receptive than others.

See: link.springer.com/article/10.3...

The evolution of scientific writing: an analysis of 20 million abstracts over 70 years in health and medical science - Scientometrics For at least a century, scientists have been concerned with the need for clear scientific writing. This concern has grown with the advent of the internet allowing for global, interdisciplinary collabo...

Has our scientific writing gotten better or worse since the 1950s? Some cool data here.

#acwri #scipub

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Here’s a screenshot of the “addictive use” trajectories from the JAMA paper cited below. My educated guess from the details of the measure is that none of these lines comes close to bona fide “addictive” use

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Scientists have come under pressure in the information age; with fascist myth-making and autocratic political movements leading the anti-science aggression.

@lewan.bsky.social put together a team to provide key info & guidance.

I have some thoughts:

www.protagonist-science.com/p/the-anti-a...
1/

We will soon be hiring a research assistant in Calgary to work on projects related to brain imaging, prenatal alcohol exposure, and mental health. Please reach out if you're interested, and I will share the posting once it's live. @ucalgary.bsky.social @mathisoncentre.bsky.social

I'm trying to find someone to teach a short course helping SAS users (specifically) transition to #Rstats. If you are such a person or are willing to recommend someone, my DMs are open!

Now officially out with nice formatting and all 🥳 "Thinking clearly about age, period, and cohort effects" -- a gentle introduction to the age-period-cohort problem and how to "solve" it through various types of assumptions.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Special issue of Perspectives - Psychology in 100 years! Love the idea, @draehernandez.bsky.social

Abstracts by August 1! Get your creative juices flowing this summer!

www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

New website up & running! (with an up-to-date team section) www.developmentalneuroimaginglab.ca
@courtneygilchrist.bsky.social @bryce-g.bsky.social @kathrynmanning.bsky.social @xiangyuloong.bsky.social @mervsingh.bsky.social

Love this. The journal Behavioral Medicine has a call for papers from terminated public health grants:

The Terminated Public Health Science Issue

Check it out: acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:...

"Thinking time —the time needed to concentrate without interruptions has always been central to scholarly work. It is essential to designing experiments, compiling data, assessing results, reviewing literature and, of course, writing. Yet, [it] is often undervalued."
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

If you're currently working—or have worked in the past 5 years—in consulting or collaborative research as a biostatistician, we’d love to hear from you.

📅 Closes 11th July

This survey has been approved by the QUT Human Research Ethics Committee (approval #9691).