Richard Shaw

Helsinki goes a full year without a traffic death A city traffic engineer credits the success to lower speed limits and smarter design.

HUGE NEWS FROM HELSINKI, FINLAND

Helsinki, a city of 690 000 people, has now had a full year without any traffic fatalities. None. No pedestrian, cyclist, scooter user or car deaths.

This is a huge achievement for a city of our size. 💪🏻

A little background 🧵 1/

yle.fi/a/74-20174831

UMich cancels doctoral epidemiology program admissions for 2026 The University of Michigan School of Public Health will not admit a 2025-2026 admissions cycle cohort to its PhD in Epidemiologic Sciences program.

Due to disruptions in funding, there will be no applications admitted for U Michigan's epidemiology PhD this fall. 🧪

www.michigandaily.com/news/news-br...

Slightly worrying that some journals are responding to the difficulty in finding peer reviewers by having a single peer reviewer, plus comments by the editor. Especially when the editor is mostly commenting on the style of writing and not the scientific content.

It's a consequence of the production line approach in medical research requiring people to finish things within the 12 to 18 months for which research is funded.

Other disciplines submission can be based on working papers. It's not the conference that is the problem it's the disciplinary area.

Publishing abstracts goes back decades. It made sense when the conference packs came with a printed special edition, which people needed to read to choose which session they went to.

They make much less sense now that they are online.

The Health Survey for England 2025 will be the last HSE in it's current format. Please consider adding your views to this consultation if you think that timely national health data is important! Deadline 25 July, please retweet @socsocmed.bsky.social

Brandolini's law (aka the bullshit asymmetry principle):
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

It would be good if more senior academics spoke about how much work is necessary for effective peer review. I often hear academics say that they can review papers in one or two hours.

It just creates a culture of overwork and/or superficial review processes. Plus imposter syndrome.

Never heard of James McCune Smith?

He’s only the first Afro-American to obtain a medical degree, at @uofglasgow.bsky.social, having been denied entry to US universities because he was Black.

Also an abolitionist, the man was a total boss 💪🏾

#HiddenFigures

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M...

I’m working with @glasgowbell.bsky.social this week and on my way to Paisley for a rally about proposed redundancies at UWS. If you’re staff or a student who’ll be there and want to chat - or if you want to catch up separately - give me a DM. You can be anonymous!

Reckless disregard for the truth coming from cops, doctors, and scientists: A rant.
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/06/24/r...

People at Glasgow: what’s the mood in your executive & governance board about this?

Would dearly like to know how me made the case that he’s a great leader, and if Glasgow knew about these Lancaster plans when they appointed him or if they are surprised as well.

I am absolutely fascinated by people farming nineties nostalgia who are just updating boomer memes and inserting games consoles, video shops and dial up modems into memes about playing out and having sleepovers. And how many of them have nostalgia for American things that didn't happen in the UK.

People are depressed and anxious because they care. Being a carer provides intrinsic rewards and will focus people with ADHD. Autistic people will tend to do what they think is right.

The problem is neurotypical leaders. They may say that they care, but all evidence is that they don't.

There is a big problem in academia of people advocating for novel methods without understanding them. It can lead to the widespread use of inappropriate methodology and misleading results. It suggests a lack of regard for the truth and is quite possibly bullshit.

It's the kind of book where a physical copy is essential. Much easier to read when you can go somewhere with Zero distractions.

Causal Inference: What If Causal inference is a complex scientific task that relies on evidence from multiple sources and a variety of methodological approaches. By providing a cohesive presentation of concepts and methods th...

Causal Inference What If by @miguelhernan.org ‬ seems to have progressed to Pre-order notification for Hardback copies.

www.routledge.com/Causal-Infer...

Scotttish UKHLS User Group Meeting August 2025 Short talks and discussions on UKHLS with other Scotland-based users.

The next meeting of the Scottish UKHLS User Group will be online on Friday 15th August from 1500-1630

This time there will be talks from Laurence Rowley-Abel (University of Edinburgh) and Mhairi Webster (Glasgow Caledonian University).

Sign up here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/scotttish-...

Basic problem with UCU is that the vase majority of members expect it to operate on a service model, with other people doing things for them.

The small number of ones who are actually active and trying to develop an organizing model burn out rapidly.

Post Docs have been saying this for decades, while warning that job security was gradually creeping up the hierarchy.

Petition: Commission a public inquiry into the impact of the UK exiting the European Union Given that it has stated its aim of growing the UK economy, we think the Government needs to quantify the effects of exiting the European Union as soon as possible by setting up an inquiry.

I didn't expect the government to hold a public inquiry into the impact Brexit. However, the lack of any mention of evaluations is deeply concerning.

It's not a functioning democracy when parties collude to prevent voters being adequately informed.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/70...

When I first started it seemed to me that the people were considered stars based on their original ideas and they didn't necessarily have large research groups.
These days the "Stars" have research groups and funding, I am not particularly convinced they have original ideas.

Then we need a different model to fund journalism for the whole population. Making disinformation freely available, while keeping high quality journalism behind paywalls is a recipe for disaster.

Mental health of UK youth following the removal of the Education Maintenance Allowance in England: a natural experiment study using Understanding Society data Background The Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) encourages people in low-income households to stay in education. It was abolished in England but continues in the rest of the UK (RUK). We investig...

New Paper: Mental health of UK youth following the removal of the Education Maintenance Allowance in England: a natural experiment study using Understanding Society data.
bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/3/1/...

People working in precision medicine seem to have rebranded social determinants of health "personomics", with the help of chat GPT-4, and seemingly ignorant of wide body of research in this area, and published in what I thought was a reputable journal.

I suggest that people stop reading anything by Matt Goodwin and read Harry Frankfurt's on Bullshit instead. vultureofcritique.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

There are a lot of unfair things in relation to the aviation industry such as lack of fuel duty. If a business treats it's customers like crap, it will also treat the environment and staff like crap too.

Article processing fees give journals an incentive to publish things for which there is limited interest. This includes peoples "Tantalizing ideas" that are developed as cases for support for grant proposals but are not sufficiently interesting to be funded.

Un-splashy work requires grant funding, and tantalizing ideas are a pre-requisite for that. Maybe this is a downside to open access?
Thirty years ago, perhaps only one or two journal articles would have been published, and everybody else's work would have been buried in rejected grant proposals.

A lot of success in academia is being able to be at in the right place and the right time, and that takes privilege to stay in the "game" until a person gets lucky, at which point the person becomes even more privileged.