Thom Baguley

Letter from FBI Director Kash Patel firing veteran FBI agent Walter Giardina, whose wife died of cancer last month at age 49. Patel accuses this agent, a Marine combat veteran, of “weaponization.” Many of his FBI colleagues told me he did his job scrupulously and ethically.

New executive order puts all grants under political control All new funding on hold until Trump administration can cancel any previously funded grants.

It's been obvious for a while that they were headed in this direction, & this attempt almost certainly won't go unchallenged, but you need to understand that this is & has been America's Lysenkoism moment knocking on the door, & it has to be resisted every way it can.
arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Cover page for the manuscript: Morey, R. D., & Davis-Stober, C. P. (2025). On the poor statistical properties of the P-curve meta-analytic procedure. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.2025.2544397

Abstract for the paper: The P-curve (Simonsohn, Nelson, & Simmons, 2014; Simonsohn, Simmons, & Nelson, 2015) is a widely-used suite of meta-analytic tests advertised for detecting problems in sets of studies. They are based on nonparametric combinations of p values (e.g., Marden, 1985) across significant (p < .05) studies and are variously claimed to detect “evidential value”, “lack of evidential value”, and “left skew” in p values. We show that these tests do not have the properties ascribed to them. Moreover, they fail basic desiderata for tests, including admissibility and monotonicity. In light of these serious problems, we recommend against the use of the P-curve tests.

Paper drop, for anyone interested in #metascience, #statistics, or #metaanalysis! @clintin.bsky.social and I show in a new paper in JASA that the P-curve, a popular forensic meta-analysis method, has deeply undesirable statistical properties. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... 1/?

If you haven’t gotten into marginaleffects yet, this may be your chance. Learning about it has been quite transformative for how I think about statistical modeling 🪄

The Relation Between the Capacities of Imagination and Visual Memory in the Short Term | Request PDF Request PDF | The Relation Between the Capacities of Imagination and Visual Memory in the Short Term | Visual imagery and short-term memory utilize similar brain networks, but the extent to which they...

New paper by Chris Atkin and colleagues on the capacity of visual imagination - full text @ResearchGate www.researchgate.net/publication/...

The economy is on the precipice of recession. That’s the clear takeaway from last week’s economic data dump. Consumer spending has flatlined, construction and manufacturing are contracting, and employment is set to fall. And with inflation on the rise, it is tough for the Fed to come to the rescue. Unemployment remains low, but that’s only because labor force growth has gone sideways. The foreign-born workforce is shrinking, and labor force participation is declining. Telling is the economy-wide hiring freeze, particularly for recent graduates, and the decline in hours worked. It’s no mystery why the economy is struggling; blame increasing U.S. tariffs and highly restrictive immigration policy. The tariffs are cutting increasingly deeply into the profits of American companies and the purchasing power of American households. Fewer immigrant workers means a smaller economy. Any notion that the economic data misrepresents the reality of how the economy is performing is way off base. There are revisions to the data, even big revisions, but they universally say the economy is doing worse. That’s because it is. BTW, the DOGE cuts are a key factor in the revisions—not because BLS has cut staff, although that can’t help, but because the government often reports payrolls to BLS late. It didn’t matter when government employment was stable, but now that it’s declining, the cuts are picked up in the revisions.

Trump is panicking because the economic numbers are giving a recession vibe.
From the Chief Economist at Moody's.

Maker Girl and Professor Smarts - Walker Books Two kid heroes use brains and elbow grease to face off supervillains with hilarious powers in this all-new STEM graphic novel series from MIT Kids Press.Ever...

A little joy for a change ... this looks amazing fun: www.walker.co.uk/978152951937... for STEM education

Under Pressure, Psychology Accreditation Board Suspends Diversity Standards As the Trump administration threatens to strip accrediting bodies of their power, many are scrambling to purge diversity requirements.

Extremely disappointing & cowardly. The American Psychological Association is rescinding diversity requirements. Not due to any actual mandate from the federal government, but only because it may *someday* face pressure from the government www.nytimes.com/2025/03/27/h...

who did this

They never learn, I swear to Christ. The agreement is between several parties, Suella. It was negotiated by individuals whose moral & intellectual stature is beyond your fucking comprehension. You don't get to unilaterally rewrite it so it satisfies your pathological simple-mindedness.

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...

Research and Innovation Assistant at Nottingham Trent University Start your UK &amp; international job search for academic jobs, research jobs, science jobs and managerial jobs in leading universities and top...

RA post at NTU Psychology working on hazard perception in young tractor drivers - working with David Crundall (and me) www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNV058/r... on a Road Safety Trust funded project

At this point, I might as well --
Here's an infographic showing different ways to include age as a predictor. The top shows two extremes, just as a plain old numerical predictor (imposes linear trajectory) vs. categorical predictor (imposes nothing whatsoever). And then three solutions in between!

For MAGA, Ignorance is Strength Research cuts aren’t about shrinking government, they’re about killing science

"two first-rate economists, David Cutler and Ed Glaeser, have made a stab at estimating the impact of cuts at NIH. Their analysis suggests that these cuts might save $500 billion in federal spending over the next 25 years — while imposing more than $8 trillion in losses."

What's new in biology: summer 2025 The first gonorrhea vaccination program, contact lenses that see infrared light, the protein behind sweet tastes, a baby cured with gene therapy, and more

New post! Our summer edition of What's new in biology:

The first gonorrhea vaccination program, contact lenses that see infrared light, the protein behind sweet tastes, baby cured with gene therapy, gene-editing breakthroughs & new cholesterol drugs.

Written by me and @nikomccarty.bsky.social

To be fair one positive has come from this. I used to politely listen to scam callers before I said I wasn't interested. I am now able to hang up immediately (and have mostly trained myself out of saying sorry to to the caller - robot or real).

No Jane. You lied. You aren't sorry to have disturbed me. You aren't a local energy adviser. You aren't called Jane. You are a voice activated scam call. Also please tell Chris to stop calling with the same scam.

Today, lenacapavir was approved by the FDA as a twice yearly preventive shot!

Here's how we got here:

🧵 Yet another data point that theology is often downstream of whatever we personally happen to think about a topic. Extending previous studies, the authors show when you manipulate someone's views on an issue, it influences what they say God & Satan think about that issue. 1/
doi.org/10.1111/bjso...

They are going to struggle to keep or recruit top researchers if they can't publish in the journals that (for better or worse) define your career. Of course that might be the plan ...

RFK Jr. says he may bar scientists from publishing in top medical journals Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took aim at reputed journals such as the Lancet and said the agency will create “in-house” publications instead.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that he could bar government scientists from publishing in the world’s leading medical journals, instead proposing the creation of “in-house” publications by his agency.

The Free Speech Administration throwing down arguably the biggest sledgehammer against free thought and association in my lifetime.

This is totally insane

RFK Jr. to End 'Godsend' Narcan Program That Helped Reduce Overdose Deaths Despite His Past Heroin Addiction Despite overcoming heroin addiction himself, RFK Jr. is backing plans to cut a critical Narcan program that helped reduce overdose deaths.

RFK Jr. is ending the federal Narcan distribution program credited with the recent steep decline in overdose deaths. This despite his own past heroin addiction and his own brother dying of a drug overdose in 1984.

Extreme-Value Signal Detection Theory for RecognitionMemory: The Parametric Road Not Taken Signal Detection Theory has long served as a cornerstone of psychological research, particularly in recognition memory. Yet its conventional application hinges almost exclusively on the Gaussian…

Honey, we fixed Signal Detection Theory (SDT)! In this preprint, Constantin Meyer-Grant, David Kellen, Sam Harding, and I critically evaluate the (unequal-variance) Gaussian SDT model in recognition memory and pursue the Gumbel-min model as a principled alternative: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
🧵

Russia imposes sanctions on 15 UK MPs over ‘hostile statements’ Six members of House of Lords also targeted as Moscow accuses UK of trying to ‘demonise’ it amid Ukraine war

After returning from an aid trip to Ukraine, I'm deeply disappointed to have been excluded from Putin's sanctions against British MPs. If Putin would kindly let me know what I need to do to receive the great honour of being added to this esteemed list.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Getting lots of review and reference requests and reminders over the long bank holiday weekend. With all the AI advances how difficult would it be not to spam these when everybody is on leave ... (Also one reminder came 1 minute after the request ... is that a record?).

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die.

Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

Also, a woman was handcuffed at a subway station in NYC (Franklin Ave) when she intervened asking why a delivery man was asked to show work permit by undercover agents. There is a video of that.

Royal Society decides not to take disciplinary action against Elon Musk Exclusive: Fellows argue Musk has violated code of conduct but council believes investigation ‘could do more harm than good’

A failure to act is not an act of political neutrality.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...