Jevin D. West

Industry Influence in High-Profile Social Media Research To what extent is social media research independent from industry influence? Leveraging openly available data, we show that half of the research published in top journals has disclosable ties to indus...

Who is the Big Tobacco of today?
In new work, we find 50% of high profile social media papers are connected to big tech through funding, collaboration and employment. Most connections aren't disclosed. @jbakcoleman.bsky.social @jevinwest.bsky.social @carlbergstrom.com 1
arxiv.org/abs/2601.11507

Some coverage of our new findings, with perspectives and thoughts from @shelbygrossman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @naomioreskes.bsky.social, and @profsanderlinden.bsky.social

Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry, preprint claims Industry-linked studies were also more likely to focus on particular topics, suggesting these ties may be skewing the field

One of the issues that has come up again and again in my reporting on misinformation and social media is the massive influence social media companies have on research in the field.

Last night a preprint dropped that tries to get at this with some numbers. My piece in @science.org (and 🧪🧵 coming):

Disinformation Summer Institute (DSI) - Disinformation Summer Institute Disinformation Disinformation is false or misleading information created and spread to advance policy, political, economic or ideological goals. It is sometimes used by industries, governments, and ot...

Applications are open for the second annual Disinformation Summer Institute. This is a 4-day, intensive summer institute intended primarily for early career researchers. It will be held at IslandWood. Beautiful place! Applications short and due February 15th, 2026. More info: disinfoinstitute.org

Superhuman intelligence.

It’s really hard to defend industry academic collaborations with meta as earnest, if they’re internally burying evidence of harm.

www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Three schematic diagrams. The first illustrates selective publishing of internal resection, the second selective causal focus, and the third selective access and funding for researchers.

1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv.

There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.

UW launches Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment. Led by Associate Professor Hala Annabi. University of Washington Information School. Hala Annabi is pictured smiling in front of a rhododendron plant.

The Canopy Neurodiversity Foundation awarded a $15 million grant to the UW Information School to support the launch of the UW Institute for Neurodiversity and Employment. ischool.uw.edu/news/2025/10...

We are hiring tenure track faculty this year:

apply.interfolio.com/171020

AI-generated scientific hypotheses lag human ones when put to the test Machines still face hurdles in identifying fresh research paths, study suggests

The idea that AI-as-scientist will replace human researchers, or augment their creativity and productivity, is drawing attention. But how soon? @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

Duke School of Medicine plans salary cuts for tenured faculty who do not meet grant expectations Set to go in effect in 2026, the proposed policy would apply to the School’s basic sciences units. These units rely heavily on grants from the National Institutes of Health, which have been increasing...

Research for grants rather than grants for research.

This kind of policy, especially with additional cuts to federal funding, will create perverse incentives that will have consequences on the actual science that this whole system is supposed to support.

www.dukechronicle.com/article/2025...

NIH is already feeling the effects of LLMs.

A new policy was posted yesterday that limits the number of proposals that can be submitted by any one investigator.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

US judge blocks slashing of universities' federal funding from National Science Foundation A federal judge on Friday prevented the National Science Foundation from sharply cutting research funding provided to universities in the latest legal setback to efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to slash government support of research at major academic institutions.

www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

Judge orders Trump admin. to restore hundreds of terminated NIH grants "I've never seen government racial discrimination like this," the judge said.

www.axios.com/local/boston...

The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist The Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors.

Into the “golden age of science that is transparent, rigorous, and trustworthy”…

www.notus.org/health-scien...

h/t @shahanmemon.bsky.social

Evidence shows AI systems are already too much like humans. Will that be a problem? On the internet, nobody knows you’re a chatbot.

Evidence shows AI systems are already too much like humans. Will that be a problem?
theconversation.com/evidence-sho...

The benefits and dangers of anthropomorphic conversational agents | PNAS A growing body of research suggests that the recent generation of large language model (LLMs) excel, and in many cases outpace humans, at writing p...

Given concerns of anthropomorphic seduction, should we lean into human-like abilities of LLMs or should we look to dehumanize them?

Sandra Peter, Kai Riemer, and I write about the benefits and dangers of anthropomorphic conversational agents in @pnas.org.

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

FDA plans to roll out AI agency-wide for reviews in June The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced plans to implement AI tools throughout the agency to assist in conducting scientific reviews following the successful completion of a pilot program ...

What could go wrong?

www.raps.org/news-and-art...

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions Changes seen as a response to presidential directives on what research to fund

Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

The University of Washington has stopped processing all NSF grants on or after May 5th due to the uncertainty of the new 15% indirect rate. This is devastating, especially for junior faculty and early-career researchers.

How many other universities will follow suite?

Policy Notice: Implementation of Standard 15% Indirect Cost Rate

It's official. 15% ICR on NSF grants.

My favorite line: "Reducing administrative burdens for awardee institutions."

Say the opposite of what is true... the communication strategy of our time: www.nsf.gov/policies/doc...

AI is ‘beating’ humans at empathy and creativity. But these games are rigged | MJ Crockett Research pitting people against AI systems gives AI an edge by asking us to perform in machine-like ways

My new piece in @theguardian.com

Techno-optimism is human pessimism.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Federal Judge Extends TRO Against NIH Cap On Indirect Cost Payments Federal Judge Angel Kelly has extended her temporary hold on NIH's plan to cap its payment of indirect research grant costs to 15%.

Federal judge extends TRO against NIH cap.

www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

Elon Musk’s Business Empire Scores Benefits Under Trump Shake-Up Government investigations into Mr. Musk’s companies are stalling amid President Trump’s firings and Biden administration resignations.

Musk has received $13B in government contracts over the last 5 yrs. With all his fuss about the $9B/yr in overhead to the more than 2,500 universities conducting lifesaving research, I am curious when he is going to turn DOGE on his own contracts and ‘efficiencies’.

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/u...

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?

Looking forward to feedback.

thebullshitmachines.com

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Chancellor Robert Jones to step down Robert Jones plans to step down as University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chancellor and vice president of the University of Illinois System at the end of the current academic year, bringing what wil...

Robert Jones, former Chancellor at the University of Illinois, will be the new President here at the University of Washington. news.uillinois.edu/view/7815/71...

Disinformation Summer Institute (DSI) - Disinformation Summer Institute Disinformation Disinformation is false or misleading information created and spread to advance policy, political, economic or ideological goals. It is sometimes used by industries, governments, and ot...

Applications are open for the inaugural Disinformation Summer Institute. This 3-day, intensive summer institute is intended for graduate students, post-docs, assistant professors or early career researchers seeking to better understand and address disinformation. More info: disinfoinstitute.org

🚨 I recently came across a weird case of #AI in #preprints, with implications for burdening #SciComm with AI-mediated #PredatoryPublishing

What did I find? Issues with the article, questionable behavior by the author, indexing problems, and AI's potential for streamlining predatory publishing.

🧵

TrueMedia Fighting AI-based disinformation in political campaigns by identifying manipulated media.

TrueMedia.org: new non-partisan, non-profit effort to detect manipulated media geekwire.com/2024/new-ai-...

Introducing Gemini — Google’s newest and most capable AI model. Watch Google DeepMind Research Scientist Sebastian Nowozin and Software Engineer Taylor Apple... Gemini: Unlocking insights in scientific literature

Silicon Valley hype oozes from this video (eg, ‘understanding of science’, ‘reasoning capabilities’, ‘reads 200k papers’) but the re-graphing tool is pretty nice. If it can do that consistently and reliably, worth trying out. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPiO...