Katie Frey, Ph.D.

There Were Still Old People When Life Expectancy Was 35. A demography myth that won't die

“Historically, no one lived past age 35”

"I’ve heard *so* many versions of this claim, including recently from a menopause doctor (implying menopause is not “natural” because noone lived long enough to go through it). Every time someone states this “fact,” a demographer loses a piece of their soul"

If you can't attend the rallies today for whatever reasons, something useful you can do is scour your local news outlets for coverage and share the coverage on social media and pump it out to all of your networks. Amplify what's happening locally so others in your communities are aware.

If you are attending a protest today, stay safe and know your rights ⬇️

Positive peripheral social partners: Relationship and social interaction evaluations across adulthood - Claire M. Growney, Tammy English, 2025 Older adults are theorized to prioritize relationships with close social partners who support their emotional goals. Throughout the lifespan, social partners of...

Newly Published:

Growney’s & English’s study explored how age and social closeness relate to how people view their relationships and interactions.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

#AcademicSky #Psychology #SocialPsychology #FamilySci #ResearchPublishing

Kent State closing LGBTQ+, women’s, and multicultural centers to comply with new state law The new law, which takes effect on June 27, prohibits diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts at Ohio’s public universities.

Don't be mad at Kent State. Be angry with the GOP. Ohio is becoming one of the most hate-filled, least tolerant states in the country. It's awful here.
www.cleveland19.com/2025/06/03/k...

Bidirectional Relationships Between Well-Being and Cognitive Function - Gabrielle N. Pfund, Bryan D. James, Emily C. Willroth, 2025 The current study examined bidirectional relationships between well-being and cognitive function using up to 10 annual assessments (M = 5.67, SD = 3.43) of diff...

🧠 A sense of purpose may help protect the ageing brain.

In a 10-year study, older adults with stronger purpose showed better thinking skills – and slower cognitive decline.

🔗 doi.org/10.1177/0956...

#SciComm #Ageing #BrainHealth 🧪

🎉 I am thrilled to launch the Dementia Journeys website - a new digital platform sharing powerful stories from carers, & exploring what better end-of-life dementia care looks like based on research from the UCL/KCL EMBED-Care programme
👉 www.dementia-journeys.com
#DementiaActionWeek 1/8

ABSTRACT Generative AI (GenAI) summarisers, tools that provide concise summaries of digital texts, are increasingly marketed to higher education students as time-saving aids for engaging with complex academic materials. As their prevalence grows, so does their potential impact on students’ reading practices and learning outcomes. Through an exploratory literature review, we demonstrate a significant gap in scholarly discussion and empirical research examining the extent and effects of AI summariser use among students. We explore the marketed promises of AI summarisers, hypothesise about their likely use cases, and consider concerns surrounding their impact on students’ engagement with academic texts. Our analysis is grounded in contemporary higher education literature on digital reading practices, scaffolded learning, and the development of critical thinking skills. This paper informs policy and practice by proposing a critical research agenda that addresses key questions about the prevalence, impact, and implications of GenAI summarisers in higher education. By stimulating scholarly discussion on this emerging technology, we aim to provide a foundation for evidence-based recommendations on the responsible integration of AI summarisers in academic settings, relevant to an international audience of educators, researchers, and policymakers in higher education.

This paper makes important point that we're not talking about impact of AI on reading enough. Marking work that's full of AI is demoralising but in some ways, the threat AI poses to comprehension is bigger than the threat to what students produce...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

#AcademicSky

🚨 “We just need to recognize that we’re all citizens of this country.” –– Politicians + citizens often stress a shared national identity when trying to bridge racial, partisan, or other group divides.

@stysyropoulos.bsky.social & I show why such “shared” identities are doomed to fail.

🧵1/9

Why women experience Alzheimer’s disease differently from men Sex and gender research could lead to better, more equitable treatments — if it is allowed to continue without political interference.

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

A line graph of estimated AIDS-related deaths from 2025 through 2040 in 55 PEPFAR-supported countries. The Y axis is estimated number of deaths and ranges from 200,000 to 2 million. The X axis is years and ranges from 2010 to 2040. There is a black line labeled “historical trend” from 2010 to 2025 showing a decrease in deaths from 1.2 million to ~420,000. Then in 2025 the black line splits into three scenarios: 1) a dashed green line showing deaths if USAID were to increase, 2) a dashed blue line showing deaths if USAID remained at 2024 levels, and 3) a dashed red line showing deaths if USAID stopped and was not replaced. In scenario 1 (funding increased) deaths continue to decrease from ~420,000 to 200,000. In scenario 2 (funding stays the same) deaths stay the same at 420,000. In scenario 3 (funding cut and not replaced) deaths increase from ~420,000 to 1.7 million.

A Lancet preprint estimates that if US funding is cut and not replaced, from 2025-2040 there will be 15.2 mil add'l AIDS deaths, 2.2 mil add'l TB deaths, 7.9 mil add'l child deaths from other causes, and 40-55 mil add'l unplanned pregnancies.

@altusaid.altgov.info

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

AARP v. Trump | American Civil Liberties Union Emergency lawsuit filed in federal court to again halt removals under the Alien Enemies Act for people within that court’s judicial district.

3. ACLU emergency motion presenting new evidence that mass removals from Bluebonnet to El Salvador may occur TODAY www.aclu.org/cases/aarp-v...

Cognitive Biases Associated With Specific and Generalized Beliefs in Conspiracy Theory We hypothesized that certain cognitive biases associated with delusional ideation might be associated with a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories. These biases were assessed using the Cognitive...

Cognitive Biases Associated With Beliefs in Conspiracy Theory onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

"...particularly anomalous perception, jumping to conclusions, intentionalizing, threatening event, and emotional reasoning, were correlated with beliefs ... beliefs in conspiracies."

Agency for older adults, people with disabilities to be shuttered under HHS cuts In 2022, the Administration for Community Living provided more than 261 million meals to older adults, assistance such as respite care to more than 1.5 million family caregivers, and independent-livin...

remember what i said about RFK Jr. being a eugenicist first and foremost? www.marketwatch.com/story/agency...

Conor Lamb quote tweeting Fetterman Fetterman shares a screencap of Axios article with headline "AOC: We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us" Fetter man tweets "Fight 'harder'-a stunt that would have harmed millions and plunged us into chaos. We kept our government open." Lamb tweets: "You are collaborating with - rather than fighting - people who: -destroyed union rights at Philly airport; -singled out a huge employer in our state (Penn) for a $175m cut; -announced closure of mine safety offices and even one for Flight 93 memories. Just this week."

AOC quote tweets the Lamb tweet "I was wrong about you and I'm sorry" crying emoji "Where do I submit my Conor Lamb apology form"

I'm dying

“The first people a dictator puts in jail after a coup are the writers, the teachers, the librarians —because these people are dangerous. They have enough vocabulary to recognize injustice and to speak out loudly about it. Let us have the courage to go on being dangerous people.”

—Madeleine L’Engle

NEW 🧵 Is human intelligence starting to decline?

Recent results from major international tests show that the average person’s capacity to process information, use reasoning and solve novel problems has been falling since around the mid 2010s

What should we make of this?

www.ft.com/content/a801...

Might save a life.

Every time I read a story like this I recommit to be louder and more defiant.

Am I the only one who saw Adrien Brody throw his used gum at his partner who then had to pick it up off the floor?? #Oscars

"No Other Land," the Palestinian-Israeli made film showing the destruction of the occupied West Bank's Masafer Yatta by Israeli soldiers, just won the Oscar for Best Documentary.

It can't get a distributor in the US.

Which tells you everything about censorship in the US.

My nearly 80-year-old mom called our family doctor’s office this morning to book an appointment and they told her to book it online. This is not ok. Many seniors do not use the internet due to factors such as cost, lack of digital literacy and not seeing a need for internet access.

Fictional villains: my motivation involves a complex backstory around lost love and a deep yearning to be understood

Real life villains: being cruel makes me feel like a big strong man

The overlooked cause of dementia that doctors can prevent We are advised to cut risk of dementia through exercise and eating healthy – but are never warned to try to avoid an episode of delirium while in hospital, although it is linked with a three-fold high...

Delirium is an underrecognised risk factor for future dementia...sometimes preventable, and perhaps treatable if we prioritise research in this area @amaclullich.bsky.social @proflizsampson.bsky.social @gerisoc.bsky.social inews.co.uk/news/health/...

Weird how not a single one of the newspapers and magazines that have been breathlessly churning out "cancel culture" thinkpieces for the past four years have managed to use the word "censorship" at all to describe the most rapid and comprehensive campaign of mass-censorship in recent US history.

Not the banner you want seeing over this article from … checks notes … 8 days ago

They tried this in 2016. There was a big mobilization by scientific societies and us calling representatives, and they stopped. Call your senators. Call them every day. On every issue. Some of them actually care about science because America first or whatever. Use it to protect your trainees.

So how’s it going so far?

My heart is breaking. The world seems so ugly and I just don't feel strong enough to fight it right now.