Junaid Merchant

"What I take from Aaron is that the best way to be truly productive on the margin, is to try to build for other people and connect them together."

The New York Times piece today about US science is terrible and wrong—in many ways.

I could write a whole article about this, but as one example:

“To close observers, the original crisis began well before any of this…”
No. I’m a close observer of science, and this is incorrect.

📢 @markkho.bsky.social & I are recruiting a joint postdoc interested in computational models of social interaction & mental health

💻 Ideal candidates have experience w/ multi-player web-based experiments & computational modeling

📅 Apps are reviewed on a rolling basis

🔗 apply.interfolio.com/165809

Current NIH worker seeking formers NIH workers and community allies. 👀👋🏻

Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind | PNAS Theories of the evolution of cooperation through reciprocity explain how unrelated self-interested individuals can accomplish more together than th...

Our new paper is out in PNAS: "Evolving general cooperation with a Bayesian theory of mind"!

Humans are the ultimate cooperators. We coordinate on a scale and scope no other species (nor AI) can match. What makes this possible? 🧵

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Really excited to share our new preprint led by @ahmadsamara.bsky.social with Zaid Zada, @vanderlab.bsky.social, and Uri Hasson titled "Cortical language areas are coupled via a soft hierarchy of model-based linguistic features" doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Biden is reportedly planning to endorse Cuomo in the Democratic primary today.

NIH is soliciting public comments on the very thorny challenges Generative AI poses to data sharing initiatives. I hope the Open Science community will weigh in. Comments are due by July 15th.

Merchant et al. perform a meta-analytic investigation of neurocognitive systems involved in real-time social interaction doi.org/10.52294/001...

@fmri-today.bsky.social @mallarchak.bsky.social @ohbmofficial.bsky.social

Gift article link: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...

9 Federally Funded Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed Everything

We don’t always know what questions will change the world.

But public science has a way of answering them anyway.

Federal science funding isn’t just lines in a budget. It’s a vote for progress, for possibility.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...

How the Rich and Powerful Destroyed Free Speech And how we get it back.

I’ve an essay out today on the importance of moving beyond perpetual debates about what free speech means to instead confront—in an age of billionaire control over media and universities—what free speech discourse does.
www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Baraka Arrested for 'Trespassing' at Controversial Immigrant Detention Facility - Insider NJ Authorities with Homeland Securities Investigations at the ICE detention facility Delaney Hall this afternoon arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka

Ice has arrest Mayor Baraka, a candidate for NJ governor.

We have moved into the phase where they are testing whether they can arrest political opponents.

If you wondered when you should speak up, it's now. Definitely now. www.insidernj.com/baraka-arres...

a little girl is sitting on a bed and saying `` thank you you da best '' . ALT: a little girl is sitting on a bed and saying `` thank you you da best '' .

Once again, the country owes a debt of gratitude to those brave folks within NIH who are helping us understand the machinations behind the scenes at NIH.

/fin

Alert! Developmentalists & all who care about young children - the next few weeks are a critical period for federal budget development - this is an ideal time to get your voice out there on behalf of children.

I have a template you can use to write a local op-ed. It's easy - I just sent mine in.

Judge Young:

A couple requests going forward:
- Please provide a list of grants actually affected (I HAVE THIS!!!)

- To HHS lawyer, "I understand gov't is against DEI. But this is about healthcare for all Americans. "Respectfully, I just don't know what [DEI] means" here. I need a definition.

Americans’ Trust in One Another Americans trust each other less than they did a few decades ago. We explore why this is, and why some are more trusting than others.

We took a broad look at social trust in America today. With a survey of almost 37,000 people we were able to look at levels of trust across the states and even in metro areas. Check out our new report here www.pewresearch.org/SocialTrust

3/ A sweeping Israeli Channel 13 investigation has exposed the Biden administration’s complicity in Israel’s 19-month war on Gaza. Nine top Biden officials acknowledged avoiding real pressure on Israel—even as the death toll surpassed 30,000.

NIH insiders: Trump is ‘dismantling and destroying everything’ After just 100 days, agency scientists say U.S. health institutes are demoralized and have lost essential staff and funding

“However bad everyone on the outside thinks it is, it is a million times worse. They’re dismantling and destroying everything.”

Read, share, respond. Call your representatives.

The health and well-being of Americans & America's innovation economy are at stake.

www.science.org/content/arti...

"I would not have dared to dream that metastatic melanoma would become a treatable disease in my lifetime. Yet here we are today, with 43% of people diagnosed with metastatic melanoma living 10 years or more, due to treatments that we broadly refer to as cancer immunotherapy." Barry P. Sleckman, UAB

#neuroskyence #neuroimaging

Should statistics respect
science more? Our third speaker Gang Chen (@gangchen6.bsky.social) argues that strict adherence to statistical conventions may obscure rather than clarify, and suggest ways in which rethink about how we model our data and report our results:

Pre-registration of Multiverse Analyses walkthrough
@johnflournoy.science

johnflournoy.science/multiverse-p...

Dr. Paul Bloom's Interactive multiverse analysis explorer!

pbloom.shinyapps.io/amygdala_mpf...

Specification curve analysis (SCA) tutorial | DANIELLE COSME This tutorial was presented at the University of Oregon Developmental Seminar, May 3, 2019. The repository can be found at: https://github.com/dcosme/specification-curves/ div.grey { background-colo...

Cosme Lab Specification curve analysis (SCA) tutorial
dcosme.github.io/2019/06/28/s...

Just attended the Best Practices in Methods session at #SANS2025 so many practical takeaways! From Dr. Clelland and Dr. Cosme's push for SCA (links below), to Dr. Chen’s approach to voxel activation reporting, and Dr. Burns guidance on motion exclusion for hyperscanning—super useful insights!

For those who think more data just means more headcount, here’s a quirky twist: the number of data points per individual actually matters--a lot. If you're into a bit of rigor, this article highlights a factor that’s often overlooked. Thanks for the shoutout!
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Opinion | Science Suffers With Trump’s Funding Freeze America’s scientific enterprise demands reliable stewardship, not destabilizing political intervention.

My father-in-law, Jack Strominger, and I wrote a letter to the @wsj.com editor about the current threats to science due to Trump's funding freeze. Please repost! www.wsj.com/opinion/scie...

It has quotes from Senators talking about the value of research.

2/n

A letter to Republican Senators from concerned federal workers at NIH.

I received this letter, sent to 11 Republican members of Congress this weekend from anonymous NIHers.

1/n
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