George Richardson

Researchers have been developing new metascience project ideas in the MS Labs at #metascience2025.

Maria Aleksandrova developed her idea yesterday and then spent 24 hours interviewing researchers and funders at the conference to make her pitch in the final session today. Heroic effort! 🚀

@dashunwang.bsky.social "my team has been playing around with the science of science"

Understatement of #metascience2025?

The results?

You'll have to go and find out!

I will say it has given me some optimism around the role of AI as *one* tool in science for overcoming bottleneck tasks that are graced with good data but large combinatorial solution spaces to navigate, even if I remain sceptical of it in other ways.

We collect over 5 million publications, clinical articles, patents and protein structures that build on AF2 and other high impact structural biology papers published since 2018.

We track whether AF2 adoption is associated with higher productivity, more novel protein structures and applied research.

What is the impact of AI om science is a big question at #metascience2025

Extend your curiosity by finding my colleague @ampudia.bsky.social at tonight's poster session with an excellent study of AlphaFold2's impact on science.

Here's a sneak preview... 🧵

A slide showing information about the Academic Society The Chinese Association for Science of Science and S8T Policy Research (CASSSP) in a presentation by Lin Zhang. Content: Academic Society - Founded in 1982 - Theory of Science of Science studies - Scientometrics and Informetrics Key Research Institutes - Institute for Science of Science (Shanghai, Bejing. Tianjin) - Chinese Academy of Science and Technology fo Development A Institutes of Science and Development, CAS - Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China Core Chinese Journals - Studies in Science of Science Science Research - Management and Management of S&T 2024 Annual Conference of CASSP (Attracted over 1,600 participants)

A talk from Lin Zhang with a slide showing charts detailing the growth in China's science activity, funding and outputs in comparison to the US and UK.

Easy to feel you're at the centre of a growing universe at the 4th #metascience2025 with >800 attendees.

CASSSP (Chinese Association of Science of Science and Science & Technology Policy) had its 21st conference in 2024 with 1600 attendees. All serving one rapidly growing national ecosystem

At #metascience2025 for day 2

Come find me if you're interested in:
- tracking the impact of funding on the direction of science
- AI in science
- open source code and science

Fwiw I dont think giving researchers credit for ideas in the form of citation counts is actually a great idea. The is more of a provocation to help us think about how we make the dark matter visible, rather than have it languish in funders' archives.

Q at #metascience2025 - Funders create a lot of value just by putting out calls and soliciting great ideas from researchers. How can we capitalise on that?

Reminds me of 'research dark matter' and another approach I thought about for capturing it academic-idea-exchange.replit.app

Post from x.com by the 10 Downing Street UK Pri.e Minister account announcing a new Universal theme park coming to the UK as part of the government's 'Plan for Change'

Shame you'll be too early for this

Hey Nicole. Congratulations. This sounds great! I've sent you an email. Myself and colleagues would love to have a chat about the metascience angle.

Anyway, sign up, give it a go and let me know what you think through the feedback button.

It's only going to be live for a few weeks ⏳

academic-idea-exchange.replit.app

Well... kind of. I've jumped on the vibe coding bandwagon to bring you this prototype app "This One for Free" - a platform to share and discover research ideas.

Think of it as more of a metascience provocation in the name of making the 'dark matter' of hidden research ideas more visible.

What if researchers could share ideas they might never do, but still get credit for them? What if they could trawl the ideas to discover your what other researchers in their field thought was most impactful?

That's possible with a new research idea sharing platform academic-idea-exchange.replit.app

Still think regularly about the talk on coastal plastic pollution I once attended where the speaker was French and said "bitch clean ups" about 50 times and I struggled to hold it together

Scientists hail ‘avalanche of discoveries’ from Euclid space telescope Data from European Space Agency’s mission has allowed researchers to create detailed catalogue of 380,000 galaxies

Planning to embed all 380k of these little galaxy images, put them through UMAP, then sit back and let the insights wash over me www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

Snippet from the Guardian, quoting Labour MP and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood from a BBC radio interview. The snippet reads: "Asked if it was right to target the welfare budget when looking for savings, she replied: “This is the Labour party. The clue is in the name. We believe in work. We know that there are many people who are currently receiving state support for being out of work who want to be in work. We know that we have too many of our young people currently out of work, not in education, employment or training.”"

TIL the "Labour" in Labour Party actually means making people work. I thought it was something to do with representing labour unions and the working class.

Thanks to Shabana Mahmood for the illuminating history lesson.

That's fair. I don't think the biggest problem is really individuals voicing grievances (shame the article focuses on that). But extensions like the valourisation of lived experience play out at movement level, are held up by a wide range of people, and narrow what is seen as possible or desirable.

But the latter feels significant to me. Liberal identity politics can be clumsily used on the left, diverting useful energy, hindering more collective politics, and creating unhealthy spaces and discourse. Not an issue in every left/progressive space, but most of us will have experienced it.

I think reading these arguments as "this is why the right is winning" vs "this is why the left isn't" matters.

The former seems weaker - 'woke' politics might push a small % people rightwards, but the right weaponises anything that can be used to divide. If it wasn't this it'd be something else.

Keir Starmer at a lectern saying, "There's a famous slogan in the United Kingdom"

you are currently 11th in the queue

Tbh gotta respect the ideological commitment compared to the current dudes

@graceblakeley.bsky.social points out importantly in Vulture Capitalism, it's not about states vs markets. It's about using the state for capital accumulation.

This move will be about attacking things that hinder profit for Bezos, while he simultaneously pursues gov interventions that benefit him.

My bet is that most productivity gains will be where specific AIs contribute to producing tangible products by helping design better and more efficient materials, industrial processes and functionality. Not convinced gains from LLMs on knowledge work and services will be revolutionary or net useful.

The actual liberal blindspot is thinking the only 2 options are to endorse positions that get fascists rubbing their hands with glee or to write off entire segments of the population as irredeemable

Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem really really brought this home to me. The size of space, the extent of time and the almost inevitable impermanence of anything you do. Liberating, inspiring and humbling all at once.

A letter from Southwark Council with updated changes to Berkeley Group's redevelopment proposal for the Aylesham Centre including a reduction in affordable homes from 270 (35% by habitable room) to 77 (12% by habitable room).

Berkeley is cutting affordable housing from 35% to 12% in its redevelopment of Peckham's Ayleham site. Shocking no one and angering 1000s.

In 2023 there were 12,000 households on Southwark's social housing waiting list.

A picture of competitors in the Gurning World Championships held at the UK's Egremont Crab Fair

An image of a face yoga advert with a woman exercising her face into a face yoga pose

Cannot stand cultural appropriation

A man whose worth is associated with his job and who experiences a life of superficial interactions. He plays by the rules and yet his reward is being disposable.

Takes you from mundane horror to anger all in a few straightforward verses.

YouTube video by AllModConsTheJam The Jam - Setting Sons - Smithers-Jones

The Jam's Smithers-Jones is a top B-side.

Most of the the band's social commentary was penned by frontman Paul Weller, but Bruce Foxton succinctly sums up the everyday experience of being working class in this tune. Still relevant today.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=H85z...