UNSW School of BABS Special Seminar
Peer review meltdown
Carl T. Bergstrom, University of Washington
Host/Chair Prof Mark Tanaka
Monday 23 June 2025
1pm-2pm
Mathews Theatre C
You’ve seen it yourself. Peer review is coming apart at the seams. Editors face a mighty struggle to recruit reviewers. Researchers are overwhelmed with review requests. Authors wait months or longer for low-quality reviews of their work. In this talk, I present a series of simple mathematical models to illustrate what is happening and why. (1) An elite journal relies on peer review to identify the top papers; knowing the quality of the peer review process, authors self-screen and send only their best work to this journal. But when the reward from publishing in the elite journal increases, submission volume increases. (2) When submission volume increases, review quality drops as the most qualified reviews are no longer available — but we prove that when review quality drops, submission volume necessarily increases as more authors try to sneak in undeservedly. This feedback process swamps the journals with submissions and erodes the quality of review. (3) We next consider what happens as elite journals proliferate and show that, paradoxically, as the number of elite journals increases, researchers self-screen more assiduously, but the review load continues to increase. To illustrate the consequences, we consider welfare measures for authors, reviewers, and readers. (4) Finally, we explore the way in which aggressive desk rejection policies can partially check this peer review meltdown.
Australian friends!
I'm going to be visiting Sydney in just over a week. I'll be at UNSW on June 23-25th and Macquarie on June 26-27th.
I'd love to catch up with people in person, and also will be giving (at least) two talks at UNSW.
The first is science-of-science modeling talk, on June 23:
13.06.2025 04:47 — 👍 125 🔁 25 💬 10 📌 1
As was I (same conference)
06.06.2025 11:49 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Diabolus Ex Machina
This Is Not An Essay
Possibly the best thing I've read about ChatGPT yet.
h/t @melaniemitchell.bsky.social
amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-e...
04.06.2025 04:41 — 👍 1032 🔁 381 💬 55 📌 120
For example, explaining that smoking causes lung cancer "directs people to believe one idea over another regarding health outcomes."
Helping people understand that vaccines prevent diseases and do not cause autism "directs people to believe one idea over another regarding health outcomes."
26.03.2025 19:39 — 👍 244 🔁 43 💬 5 📌 0
A core element of public health involves working with the public to help them understand how they can protect themselves and their neighbors from disease.
This memo (see the next post) equates this vital aspect of public communication with censorship.
26.03.2025 19:35 — 👍 622 🔁 227 💬 12 📌 8
Here NIH officials target contracts that "may be related to any form of censorship at all or *directing people to believe one idea over another regarding health outcomes*."
Directing people to believe one idea over another regarding health outcomes IS public health. It's also education.
26.03.2025 19:37 — 👍 427 🔁 127 💬 10 📌 9
A science agency wants to stop knowing which ideas are true and which ones aren’t.
26.03.2025 18:27 — 👍 124 🔁 44 💬 3 📌 1
Nailed it
26.03.2025 19:51 — 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
I would very much like the researchers we already have in Australia to be properly funded, before we consider new money for poaching people from other countries. But one cannot help but contrast this ERC announcement with the narrow thinking here in Australia.
25.03.2025 22:54 — 👍 36 🔁 2 💬 2 📌 0
Very important paper that avoids saying ANZ had some easily followable approach to COVID, while at the same time drawing out genuinely general principles for pandemic response - not least that it requires but is not receiving adequate resources.
20.03.2025 08:08 — 👍 14 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
Latest post on measles vaccines and the fallacy of ‘one more study to settle things’: kucharski.substack.com/p/a-wild-vac...
13.03.2025 02:26 — 👍 174 🔁 52 💬 5 📌 0
In one week:
- An unnecessary study to investigate a debunked vaccine conspiracy has been authorized.
- Federal grants to study vaccine hesitancy have been rescinded.
- False conspiracies regarding measles are been pushed by health leadership.
The scale of damage this is causing will last decades.
11.03.2025 10:37 — 👍 441 🔁 131 💬 11 📌 10
I don't know how else to say this except for bluntly:
It is not normal to have outbreaks of preventable diseases in wealthy countries.
It is not normal to have children dying from preventable diseases in wealthy countries.
This is the first US measles death in 10 years. There should be none.
28.02.2025 11:15 — 👍 1383 🔁 403 💬 12 📌 15
PhD position (Melbourne, Australia)
Developing an integrated modelling and health economics approach to understand Strep A transmission and control.
with Rebecca Chisholm, Angela Devine
at La Trobe University
More details: http://iddjobs.org/jobs/2281
28.02.2025 21:59 — 👍 2 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
this is how it's done
21.02.2025 21:57 — 👍 270 🔁 72 💬 2 📌 1
PhD position (Melbourne, Australia)
Mathematical modelling of antivirals against influenza virus infection
with @ada-w-yan.bsky.social @jmccaw.bsky.social
at University of Melbourne
More details: http://iddjobs.org/jobs/2268
19.02.2025 17:25 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1
The quadratic formula is one of the great achievements of human civilisation; artists of all people should realise that we should provide support to and education in all such endeavours regardless of immediate utility or variability in subjective enjoyment.
15.12.2024 18:47 — 👍 60 🔁 11 💬 9 📌 0
Struck today looking at the {EpiNow2} contributors page how much work it takes to maintain a package over the long term.
Below link is filtered to just the maintenance period in which there has been no "output" (in the traditional academic sense).
github.com/epiforecasts...
06.12.2024 11:07 — 👍 30 🔁 12 💬 1 📌 3
This is so backward
1. Science is more than just commercialisable widgetry
2. Making progress on our biggest problems (climate change, infectious diseases, misinfo to name a few) will need more collaboration between STEM and hum/social sci not less.
04.12.2024 02:46 — 👍 217 🔁 69 💬 8 📌 14
Make no mistake, colleagues: the exclusion of humanities & social science research from national competitive funding could easily happen here in Australia. The signs & actors are already clear. We let it happen at our collective peril.
04.12.2024 05:06 — 👍 129 🔁 56 💬 4 📌 4
Near Mt Magdala, Victoria Australia, looking towards Mt Buller.
Looking west from the Horn, Mt Buffalo, Victoria Australia
Inspired by @michaelplanknz.bsky.social 's pictures, and that hiking is one of my go-to pastimes, I thought I'd post a few photos of my favourite places in Victoria, Australia - Mt Buffalo (in colour) and near Mt Magdala (in b&w). These are from summer 2023, both covered in snow during the winter.
25.11.2024 02:45 — 👍 11 🔁 1 💬 2 📌 0
IDDjobs — Research Fellow - Infectious Disease Dynamics (Multiple Positions) — The University of Melbourne
Find infectious disease dynamics modelling jobs, studentships, and fellowships.
Well, I'm making my first post here, and it is a fun one: I have recently advertised for up to 4 post-doctoral research positions, 3-5 years in duration. If you are interested please get in touch or apply. An opportunity to work in Melbourne, great team, great city! Details at iddjobs.org:
24.11.2024 22:29 — 👍 35 🔁 19 💬 1 📌 2
Epidemic epistemic trespassing. Knows a lot about graphene.
Monash Uni. Directed fleet.org.au. Fellow @scienceacademy.bsky.social.
Plays bass for www.instagram.com/push_the_trigger
Bird photos at www.flickr.com/photos/off-world
Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics @ UGA.
Modeling and Data Analysis of Infectious Diseases.
https://www.andreashandel.com/
Infectious disease epidemiologist
Team leader Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne | Immunology | Virology | Influenza | COVID19 | Aging | T cells | TCRs
Researcher in infectious disease modelling
Part human, part bot, 100% UNOFFICIAL. I track Australian Research Council grant outcomes. Bot checks outcomes announcements each min. DMs open. FAQ: https://tinyurl.com/ARC-Tracker-FAQ
Australian journo. NOW: host of ABC Radio National's BIG IDEAS, THEN: Founding presenter/creator of All in the Mind & Science Friction podcasts, host of Life Matters, MIT Knight fellow, World Federation of Science Journalists board. Owned by a wolfhound-x.
ID modeling / viral dynamics
Postdoctoral Associate @ Yale School of Public Health Modeling Unit
PhD @ Melbourne Mathematical Biology Group
McKenzie Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Mathematical modelling of infectious disease dynamics.
PhD student in infectious disease modelling at the University of Melbourne. Interested in immunity!
MathBio and Applied Maths at Uni of Melbourne.
Curious how the immune system works, multi-scale and dynamical systems, and tissue dynamics
Mathematical biology, inference, identifiability. Hooke Research Fellow at the Mathematical Institute, Oxford
Professor of Mathematical Biology at the University of Leeds. Doing research in Mathematical Immunology and Epidemiology. All views my own.
Senior Research Associate, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge. https://aezarebski.github.io/
Maths, models, and decision science for biodiversity conservation. Professor of mathematics. Lead QUT Applied Mathematical Ecology Group, CI in @arcsaef.bsky.social
Lecturer in Business Analytics at Monash University. Research in networks, observation models and infectious diseases. Focus on healthcare acquired infections.
Extreme user of R, extreme lover of data.
https://www.michaellydeamore.com
ARC Future Fellow and Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Melbourne
Senior lecturer at UniMelb. Using maths to understand biology, from the very small (nanoparticles 🧪, cells 🦠) to the very large (whales 🐳). More at: stuartjohnston.xyz. Views my own.
Professor of Epidemiology Harvard Chan SPH, Director, @ccdd-hsph.bsky.social. Views my own.