Dr Afrodita Marcu 🇷🇴🇬🇧🇪🇺

Coming up later this month:

Fear of stigma blamed as 0.1 per cent of papers declare AI use Worries over admitting ChatGPT use for editing and drafting may explain extremely low disclosure rates, study suggests

Only one in 40 scientific papers suspected of deploying AI writing tools admits using them, says study which suggests stigma of admitting ChatGPT use might explain exceptionally low figure www.timeshighereducation.com/news/fear-st... via @jgro-the.bsky.social

“Computer literacy. Internet literacy. Social media literacy. Mobile literacy. Virtual reality literacy…The pitch to train schoolchildren on the latest tech has stayed roughly the same since the introduction of personal computers in the late 1970s…”

And yes indeed, we do fall for it every time.

How tech turned against women As AI-generated sexualised images proliferate and app-facilitated abuse spreads, we are sleepwalking into a new age of gender inequality. It is time to regulate properly

"large language models such as ChatGPT were consistently advising women to ask for lower salaries than men in recruitment processes,... AI tools already in use by more than half of England’s councils were downplaying women’s medical conditions, potentially resulting in unequal care"

Take your academic writing skills to the next level Whether writing a paper or a book, find out how to improve your academic writing at each stage of the process

Whether writing a paper or a book, find out how to improve your academic writing at each stage of the process: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/take-your-academic-writing-skills-next-level #AcademicWriting #AcademicChatter #ECRchat #PhDSky #Academia

‘Let’s treat writing as shared infrastructure rather than private struggle’ Academic writing is often framed as something faculty should simply manage better; when they struggle, the blame is put on the individual academic. But this explanation doesn’t hold, as Rachel Gabriele explains

Academic #writing is often framed as something faculty should simply manage better; when they struggle, the blame is put on the individual academic. But this explanation doesn’t hold, as Rachel Gabriele explains: https://ow.ly/kFFA50YiI3g #Academia #HigherEd #AcademicSky

The promise and pitfalls of AI in health | LSHTM There has been considerable hype about the transformative potential of AI across many domains of society. Hetan will consider the promise and pitfalls of AI in health, and how we should think about

I’m giving the 40th Annual Health Services Research Lecture (which will be the inaugural Nick Black lecture) in March on ‘the promise and pitfalls of AI in health’. All welcome!
www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/e...

If progress is not to falter, students must be trained in open research The how and why of conducting transparent, rigorous, ethical research must be explicitly taught, say Madeleine Pownall, Charlotte Pennington and Flavio Azevedo

“Open research is about more than the tightening of analytical and methodological standards. The movement also invites us to reconsider how, and by whom, knowledge is created, shared and evaluated”

By @maddipow.bsky.social, @drcpennington.bsky.social, & @flavioazevedo.bsky.social

#MetaSci #OpenSci

Google puts users at risk by downplaying health disclaimers under AI Overviews Exclusive: Google fails to include safety warnings when users are first presented with AI-generated medical advice

Gina Neff, prof. of responsible AI at Queen Mary University of London: the “ 'problem with bad AI Overviews is by design' and Google was to blame. 'AI Overviews are designed for speed, not accuracy, and that leads to mistakes in health information, which can be dangerous.' ”

Assetizing academic content and the emergence of the ‘assetizen’: education platforms, publisher databases, and AI model training - Higher Education Higher Education - Academic content, such as teaching materials and academic publications, has become an economic resource. This has occurred through assetization as the key economic regime in...

New OA article just out on "assetizing academic content" led by @jkom.bsky.social with me, @keanbirch.bsky.social & Klaus Beiter, exploring how academic materials are turned into value-generating digital assets by HE institutions, edtech platforms, and AI companies link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Is notion of a reproducibility crisis in science "exaggerated"?

After ERC's Maria Leptin suggests just that, @fionamcintyre.bsky.social talks to those studying the issue.

To judge whether there's a crisis, we would need to know "normal" level of reproducibility, says @martmichaelis.bsky.social

@dmaupin.bsky.social Food for thought!

Four senior UKRI leaders appeared at a press briefing this morning in the wake of RPN stories over the last week about a shake-up to research council funding

Our story that the MRC is expecting to fund fewer grants through applicant-led calls that closed in September last year was confirmed

...

It's also a reminder of the consequences of pandering to the 'legitimate concerns' about immigration of the 'left behind' - not least for 'left behind' areas.

🔓NEW Open access (free) textbook

Digital Co-Production of Public Services: Citizens, Challenges and Cases

www.elgaronline.com/edcollbook-o...

📢 Webinar - Process evaluations: How do we explain why interventions work or cause harm?
Join Prof Rhiannon Evans (Cardiff University) for a talk on process evaluations, covering causal pathways, implementation, context & key frameworks.
🔗 universityofgalway-ie.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
📅 12/02 @ 1pm

Science Is Drowning in AI Slop Peer review has met its match.

For more than a century, scientific journals have been the pipes through which knowledge of the natural world flows into our culture, @rossandersen.bsky.social writes—now they’re being clogged with AI slop:

Call for Papers: The Future of Rigorous Qualitative Research Call for Papers for Special Issue of Qualitative Research in Psychology The Future of Rigorous Qualitative Research Special Issue Guest Editors: Dr Madeleine Pownall, Dr Nicki Lisa Cole, Dr Annayah ...

New CfP in Qualitative Research in Psychology:

🔮 "The Future of Rigorous Qualitative Research"

We're inviting papers that address the big question: What does the *future* of good, quality, rigorous qual research look like?

📄 Deadline Sept 2026
💬 Happy to answer Qs
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

What should we do as editors when a reviewer has clearly used AI to write their peer review?

In my opinion, this is academic misconduct. But it's almost impossible to prove. Should we just ignore the review? Should we report it to their employer? Should we have a blacklist of suspect reviewers?

Saturation in Qualitative Health Research: An Overview and Analysis Through the Lens of Epistemic Injustice - Jackson P. Loyal, Michelle Amri, 2026 The concept of saturation was originally developed within grounded theory. It has since been extended and widely adopted as a marker of rigor throughout qualita...

Saturation in Qualitative Health Research: An Overview and Analysis Through the Lens of Epistemic Injustice

Jackson Loyal and Michelle Amri

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

If you think you know what constitutes best practice in #QualitativeResearch methods in #HealthResearch, here's a list that may confirm or challenge your understanding 👇

If it challenges you, perhaps give the full paper a read? link.springer.com/article/10.1...

#academicsky #ImplementationScience

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage | Cory Doctorow AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots

"AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed there with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more."

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

"For three years now, we’ve heard arguments about making education and work more purposeful, more meaningful, so students and employees don’t simply offload their thinking to a machine. I’ve made such arguments many times, but I’m also beginning to see how far removed from reality this is."

Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt, professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London, brings together numerous research projects confirming what we have always suspected - art is good for us. It helps us enjoy happier, healthier and longer lives. One study found that people who engaged regularly with the arts had a 31% lower risk of dying at any point during the follow-up period, even when confounding socioeconomic, demographic and health factors were taken into account. Studies also show that visiting museums and attending live music events can make people physiologically younger, and a monthly cultural activity almost halves our chances of depression. As Fancourt argues, if a drug boasted such benefits governments would be pouring billions into it. Instead, funding has been slashed across the culture sector and arts education has been devalued and eroded in the UK.

‘If a drug boasted such benefits [as the arts] governments would be pouring billions into it. Instead, funding has been slashed across the culture sector.’
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The implication is severe: careless responding on MTurk isn’t rare noise; it’s systematic enough to flip the sign of relationships and generate results that are the opposite of what they really are.

Wow; this is pretty damning.

link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Experts warn AI is making your brain work less Generative AI tools have become hugely popular but some experts worry about the effect they have on the brain.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

AI Is Inventing Academic Papers That Don't Exist -- And They're Being Cited in Real Journals Academic articles from authors using large language model are creating an ecosystem of fake research that threatens human knowledge itself.

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

The 2025 British Academy book prize winner is a fascinating read, glad I got it in time for the Christmas break.

A social sciences and humanities reading list on AI in education 🧵