Elise Cutts

Collective contributions to polarization in political voting Politics around the world exhibits increasing polarization, demonstrated in part by rigid voting configurations in legislatures. The crux of polarization is separation along a unidimensional ideologic...

A new paper out on arxiv today: "Collective contributions to #polarization in #political #voting"

arxiv.org/abs/2508.02496

#physics #complexity 🧪🦋

A do-or-die moment for the scientific enterprise Reflecting on our paper “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly”

Today, our article "The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly" is finally published in PNAS. I hope that it proves to be a wake-up-call for the whole scientific community.

reeserichardson.blog/2025/08/04/a...

Plot that shows a one-in-X chance of an event occuring to someone or the planet over a human lifetime on x-axis and then the one in X chance of a fatality if that event occurs. Several events are plotted such as contracting rabies, influenze, being hit by a car, being attacked by a coyote or elephant, being struck by lighting, carbon monoxide poisinging and the Earth being struck by an impactor greater than 140m in diameter

Hahaha! This preprint! 🔭🧪

Chance of event happening to you or the planet, and if so, chance it will be lethal?

Turns out .... we are more likely to be hit by an impactor 140m and greater than:

- being struck by lightning
- getting killed by elephants and coyotes

arxiv.org/abs/2508.02418

Scientific fraud has become an ‘industry,’ alarming analysis finds Sophisticated global networks are infiltrating journals to publish fake papers

"of the 79 papers that one editor had handled at PLOS ONE, 49 have been retracted. Flagged editors handled 1.3% of papers... but nearly one-third of all retracted papers." 🧪

Is this good news, actually? Does it mean that exposing just the nodes in the fraud network would effectively hem fraud?

Where does complexity come from?

Is the 2nd law of thermodynamics enough to explain what looks like an arrow of increasing of complexity through time?

Mike has some very interesting thoughts about this, and you should listen to him yap about them. 🧪

Amazing!!

The saga continues.

These blog posts are enormously helpful if you're interested in wrapping your head around the wild and wacky stuff going on regarding 3I/ATLAS.

I wonder if this kind of thing will eventually fall under laws against desecrating the dead.

How hot can Earth get? Our planet's climate history holds clues Earth has survived huge temperature swings over eons of climate change. Humans might not be so lucky.

Anyways this was the article in question. Have a read.

I welcome your back of the envelope calculations showing how an entire field of science informed by literally hundreds of millions of years of paleoclimate records is, you know, just wrong.

www.sciencenews.org/article/clim...

Achievement unlocked: I got my first climate denier rant mail 🎉

The end was just -chef's kiss-

"Hopefully you will investigate and consider the actual science before your next article, parts of which I actually did like. In any event best wishes."

"parts of which I actually did like" — thanks? 😂

AI-detecting AI exists, but it isn't as good as one would hope as the story points out. And it's not like AI and the people who use it stand still. It's an arms race: train an AI-detecting AI and someone will train an AI-detecting AI evading AI, etc. etc.

"22.5% of computer science abstracts showed evidence of LLM modification, with electrical systems and engineering sciences coming in close second—compared with just 7.7% of math abstracts"

Math nerds, please never change.

One-fifth of computer science papers may include AI content A surge in AI-generated text has been detected in papers across many disciplines since the release of ChatGPT

"... likely signs of AI-written material based on a higher frequency of words such as “pivotal,” “intricate,” or “showcase,” which are normally rare in scientific writing."

Time to stop showcasing your pivotal intricate results.

I really should be more suspicious of Big Rock. I mean, just looked what they did to Sisyphus.

"I am the punctuation mark of human frailty.

I am the writer’s block, resolved mid-sentence.

I am the OG vibe shift."

The em dash who wrote this is *definitely* the big sister of @ellecordova.bsky.social's edgy en dash:

www.youtube.com/shorts/ky0YO...

Great story! Amazing that researchers can say anything at all about what's going on deep inside the Earth.

And for everyone going "not now, Earth" — relax, if the core really is leaking it has been leaking for a while already. We just hadn't noticed before. Turns out it is pretty damn hard to figure out anything at all about what's going on inside a planet.

Why is every good story about the Earth getting up to shenanigans by @squigglyvolcano.bsky.social?

I'm trying something new here. Reviewer, too is a new newsletter synthesizing the frontiers of complexity, astrobiology, and origins of life research — and an attempt at bridging journalism and scholarship. I hope you'll join me!

While I'm here, shameless plug: if you like 👽 aliens or 🦋 complexity, check out my Ghost newsletter Reviewer, too.

It's good I promise. Ignore the cover image of a guy mixing up something that looks like it's about to explode.

www.reviewertoo.com/im-trying-so...

I just launched my indie pub/newsletter about astrobiology and complexity science on Ghost.

I'm so glad I did! It's great, and I have the feeling it is just going to keep getting better.

I was nervous to miss out on Substack's network effect, but it doesn't seem like that's a problem anymore.

The spine gives the knee a run for its money, or it would if it had knees

Female American kestrel on a sign. San Diego

Pretty girl on a sign. American kestrel. 🌿🪶

What a cutie 💛

Santa is definitely woke. His whole deal is caring about whether you've been naughty or nice.

I love their names! I went with telescope cats for mine: Hubble and Chandra

I'm sorry it had to be done

An update about my book ‘Invisible Rainbows’ and the whole messy situation with Unbound/Boundless.

*hide, not refuse to hide (oh how I yearn for an edit button)

Yeah you're definitely right that there's no easy 1:1 replacement in the short term... and probably not in the long term in Europe at least, unless the funding really ramps up and stays up.

Just going on my gut, I suspect mid-career is probably the sweet spot, actually. A 40-45 y/o is young by academic standards but could already be a "superstar."

Whether or not there's a "sweet spot" actually, there are great people across all stages and I hope opportunities open at every level.