Simone Cuff

The way UK govt funds science is in the midst of a major transition, with creation of a much more direct link between government priorities & UKRI research funding.

My attempt to set in context the biggest upheaval in UK science funding policy since the 1980s:
softmachines.org?p=3252

A scruffy pony sketch on the front of an envelope.

Yes, drawing helps me think. It also helps me get through zoom seminars where I disagree with the people giving them. The gently scruffy nature of this pony means I was mildly miffed at some of the points made at today's talk.

How likely is ‘likely’? Does ‘likely’ have a higher probability than ‘probable’? I put together a quick quiz so you can see how you interpret probability phrases, then see how you compare with others: probability.kucharski.io

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Don't worry, you're overthinking it! Your post made me feel better about my year, which has been an awful lot of sowing for not a lot of reaping. So that is one person it has worked for. Good luck for 2026!

I went into science for exactly that. We were all out of geography so here was the last place left where you could truly explore. When I realised the reality of science in the modern world - valuable only if finding or making stuff to exploit - it was heartbreaking.

British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Volume 76, Issue 4 Table of Contents Editors' Choice Article: Semanticization Challenges the Episodic–Semantic Distinction By Sara Aronowitz Why the Weyl Tile Argument Is Wrong By Lu Chen Biochemical Functions By Francesca Bellazzi The Bohmian Approach to the Problems of Cosmological Quantum Fluctuations By Sheldon Goldstein, Ward Struyve, and Roderich Tumulka A Hybrid Theory of Induction By Adrià Segarra Bayesian Merging of Opinions and Algorithmic Randomness By Francesca Zaffora Blando Against Prohibition (or, When Using Ordinal Scales to Compare Groups Is OK) By Cristian Larroulet Philippi Are We in a Sixth Mass Extinction? The Challenges of Answering and Value of Asking By Federica Bocchi, Alisa Bokulich, Leticia Castillo Brache, Gloria Grand-Pierre, and Aja Watkins A Falsificationist Account of Artificial Neural Networks By Oliver Buchholz and Eric Raidl General-Purpose Institutional Decision-Making Heuristics: The Case of Decision-Making under Deep Uncertainty By David Thorstad The Typical Principle By Isaac Wilhelm

Santa has come early! New issue out now, full of festive treats for all the family. Biochemical functions and quantum fluctuations! Weyl tiles and ordinal scales! Mass extinctions, artificial neural networks and much more…Find it here:
www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/bjps/cur...

#philsci #philsky

Harrison teas. Really know their teas (including black teas), just a fabulous selection. Highly recommend their Darjeelings. www.harrisonteas.co.uk

Prof. Matthias Eberl @eberllab.bsky.social:
"A Microbial Horror Show — Devastating outbreaks of disease that shaped how we fight infections"

Public Lecture
Thursday 27th November, 7:00 pm UK time
@cumedicengage.bsky.social

👉🏼 tinyurl.com/microbial-ho...

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Given how hard it is to find reviewers there is a very real danger of this.

Just saw ChatGPT and its AI LLM ilk called stochastic parrots and it is just the most fabulously satisfying, accurate metaphor.

When you are being formal: LLM. When you are saying what you think: SP.

Transparent peer review to be extended to all of Nature’s research papers From today, all new submissions to Nature that are published will be accompanied by referees’ reports and author responses — to illuminate the process of producing rigorous science.

Pleased to see this extending further across the publishing ecosystem.

#ResearchIntegrity

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

To celebrate this (urp 🤢) exciting new journal series, we made a mini game!

Can YOU guess which journals are Discover, MDPI, or both? No cheating! There's even the challenge mode "APC Ladder."

Share your high score with the hashtag #ResearchIntegrity

pagoba.shinyapps.io/publi_guess/

FUN!! 🤮 6/n

Tech giant creates a green space only to be horrified that they are accidentally creating a valuable ecosystem rather than a token piece of bio-art.

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A female Western Gull was recorded riding 150km in a garbage truck from San Francisco to a compost facility in Central CA, probably to forage. TWICE. An innovator, an icon, a genius.

This is one of my favorite @waterbirdsociety.bsky.social papers I've ever handled as managing editor #ornithology

Here's our piece on the £86bn R&D budget

The govt calls it a “bumper funding package” worth more than £22.5bn a year by 2029–30

In reality it's a real-terms freeze, accounting for inflation, using OBR forecasts

But probably as good as the research sector could hope for

Dogs pollute water with pesticides even weeks after flea treatment When dogs given spot treatments for fleas go swimming, they release levels of pesticides dangerous to aquatic life for at least a month after the treatment

Our latest research shows spot-on flea treatments on dogs are released into water when dogs swim even 28 days after treatment - in contrast to the label which suggests dogs can safely swim 48 h after treatment.
www.newscientist.com/article/2482...

See also statistics and critical thinking.

But mainly because this not only has an excellent point, but because it is a damn good read.

🚨 We're recruiting! The Journal of Medical Microbiology is seeking two Editors for our Molecular and Microbial Epidemiology section. Help shape the future of microbiology research.
📅 Apply by 20 June 2025
🔗 microb.io/News

We have officially moved in.

Our Pop-Up Science Shop will be open to the public from 7th July until 3rd August 3025.

Find us in the St David's shopping centre in Cardiff near John Lewis, Zara and Apple.

Learn about the microbial world in, on and around us.

Including the black death.

An institute focussed on economic outcomes recommends economic outcomes as a metric of higher education.

This comes back to asking what universities are for. If they are for churning out finance graduates & CEOs then this makes sense. If they are as centres of learning then it is a false metric.

Yes, but the skeletons it was found in were geographically distant from one another as well, suggesting wide distribution by 1000 years ago rather than a newly emergent disease.

The nature of status-seeking in society (and by some elements in science especially) normally makes me despair. LLMs enabling that without effort even more so. This blog post suggests a refreshingly subversive take on both.

Mass mortality of Black-legged Kittiwakes, Norway, 2023: more than 15,000 birds dead, population reduction of 50%. genotype EA-2022-BB
👉 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Are you based in the U.S. 🇺🇸 or Canada 🇨🇦 and thinking of doing research in Europe?

ERC grants offer up to €4.5 million to support groundbreaking, investigator-driven frontier research in all fields.

Watch the dedicated info session for researchers in your region👉 youtu.be/92QYink1Lik

#ChooseEurope

Exciting job opportunities!

Two postdoc positions are available in the Fodor Lab at
@dunnschool.bsky.social to study influenza virus transcription, genome replication, nuclear export and assembly.

More info: my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

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