Pat Savage

Revisiting the human sociobiology debate What have we learned 50 years on?

🚨 New, short article by myself, Clark Barrett and @kevinlala.bsky.social on the legacy of Wilson's 'Sociobiology: The New Synthesis', which was published 50 years ago.

@science.org #ehbea #histbiol #evobio #psyscisky

Revisiting the human sociobiology debate |Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We are pleased to announce our newly elected committee members of the Cultural Evolution Society:

Minhua Yan @minhuayan.bsky.social
Helena Miton @helenamiton.bsky.social
Wataru Toyokawa @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social &
Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social

Welcome and congratulations!!

And now my watch begins

Congrats to a great team and thanks in advance for your service! (And thanks to previous members stepping down)

Didn’t want to believe this was true. It’s true.

Rebecca Black interviewed on Apple Music

Today it is Friday

Very appropriate (NZ) day to schedule an interview with Rebecca Black on Apple Music

Re-sharing since I only got one suggestion besides my own 3: surely there are more than 4 good cultural evolution papers out there?

bsky.app/profile/carl...

Lovely to hear, thank you!

Editorial entitled "Writing is thinking: On the value of human-generated scientific writing in the age of large-language models"

Writing is thinking
www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Not yet, thankfully! Some do use it for grammar, translation help, etc. which seems reasonable (especially since many aren’t native English speakers), but haven’t seen any of the hallucinations and lies that bug me the most about some of these AI-generated undergrad assignments.

Note on active participation and genAI ...Although the majority of grades were S [A+] or A as usual, I was disappointed to see that I had to fail over 1/3 of the class. This is a far worse failure rate than I’ve ever seen before in any of my classes. ... But I’m most worried about those of you who are NOT abusing these technologies but may end up being unfairly punished because your classmates are. So I have three pieces of advice for you: 1) Please follow instructions and participate actively in all classes! 2) Even if [the university] doesn’t require it, I think you’d be well-served to always include an AI declaration going forward, even if only to make clear when you do NOT use genAI. If you do use it, that’s probably OK as long as it is in reasonable ways that complement, rather than replace, your own thinking (see [the university’s] policy and the section in my preprint on AI that we read during the first week of class). Thanks to the one student who did submit an AI declaration acknowledging using AI for tidying up grammar etc.! 3) Perhaps most importantly: tell your classmates who are wasting all of our time by not participating in class and abusing AI technologies that they are not only hurting themselves, but hurting other students and faculty too....

And here's a note I recently sent to students after grading many clearly AI-generated assignments (I've never had to send anything like this to students before)

Note on active participation and genAI ...Although the majority of grades were S [A+] or A as usual, I was disappointed to see that I had to fail over 1/3 of the class. This is a far worse failure rate than I’ve ever seen before in any of my classes. ... But I’m most worried about those of you who are NOT abusing these technologies but may end up being unfairly punished because your classmates are. So I have three pieces of advice for you: 1) Please follow instructions and participate actively in all classes! 2) Even if [the university] doesn’t require it, I think you’d be well-served to always include an AI declaration going forward, even if only to make clear when you do NOT use genAI. If you do use it, that’s probably OK as long as it is in reasonable ways that complement, rather than replace, your own thinking (see [the university’s] policy and the section in my preprint on AI that we read during the first week of class). Thanks to the one student who did submit an AI declaration acknowledging using AI for tidying up grammar etc.! 3) Perhaps most importantly: tell your classmates who are wasting all of our time by not participating in class and abusing AI technologies that they are not only hurting themselves, but hurting other students and faculty too....

And here's a note I recently sent to students after grading many clearly AI-generated assignments (I've never had to send anything like this to students before)

University students feel ‘anxious, confused and distrustful’ about AI in the classroom and among their peers Whether students and faculty are actively using AI or not, it is having significant interpersonal, emotional effects on learning and trust in the classroom.

theconversation.com/university-s...

As Trump Attacks Universities, Some Are Agreeing to Negotiate

www.nytimes.com/article/trum...

bsky.app/profile/jdto...

Good stuff New Zealand government. The attack on basic science continues.
"...a further $15 million reduction to the Marsden Fund... amounting to a 29% cut over the 3 years from 2026/27"

Barraged in the past few days by emails, meetings, and notices about funding cuts, AI, and fraud on massive scales while also grading student assignments showing huge increase in genAI usage. Feels like a complete existential crisis for research and higher education.

Majority of Govt's $231m tech institute funded through research funding cuts 'It will be a cornerstone of our plan to grow a high-tech, high-value economy.'

"The Government says it wants kickstart our economy with investment in science, meanwhile chopping science off at the knees and hoping no one will notice"
Majority of $231m spend on Advanced Technology Institute funded through planned research funding cuts www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/...

Lil Nas X

Special thanks to Lil Nas X 🫡

We still have a few spots available in this study on Thursday! Come hang out, have a waiata and a kōrero at the University of Auckland

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...

(This is an in-person experiment at the Waipapa Taumata Rau / University of Auckland city campus)

In person, sorry!

We still have a few openings for Danya's fun experiment on Thursday morning!
You don't have to whakapapa Māori - just need to be willing and able to sing "Tūtira Mai Ngā Iwi" and share your pepehā. A good chance to practice pepehā/waiata and get paid $30!

Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon | Pushkin Industries Experience Malcolm Gladwell’s new Paul Simon audiobook, Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. This unique artistic portrait features hours of intimate conversations and music.

Just finished - incredible the way music and other audio recordings are integrated in. This is the future of books about music!
(www.pushkin.fm/audiobooks/m...)

Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon | Pushkin Industries Experience Malcolm Gladwell’s new Paul Simon audiobook, Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. This unique artistic portrait features hours of intimate conversations and music.

Just finished - incredible the way music and other audio recordings are integrated in. This is the future of books about music!
(www.pushkin.fm/audiobooks/m...)

I love @peercommunityin.bsky.social because it gives the best of both worlds. Peer review is free, public, and relatively quick (especially if you use PCI-RR's scheduled review). It's then up to the authors whether to publish diamond OA or pay APCs to publish in more prestigious journals.

New publishing models will only work if authors embrace them Complaints about the broken academic publishing system have been around for years and are getting louder. A common theme is that with the r...

Here's a quick blogpost about alternative publishing models. You can bring a horse to water, and indeed wave the bucket temptingly under its nose, but it is likely to gallop off elsewhere. deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/07/new-...
@ec.europa.eu @wellcometrust.bsky.social

Excited to share our new research revealing automatic categorization of rhythm in human brain activity!
Led by @francescabarbero.bsky.social, @tomaslenc.bsky.social and the Rhythm and Brains Lab, in collaboration with @norijacoby.bsky.social, Rainer Polak and @manuelvarlet.bsky.social

Thanks, and no forgiveness needed - I explicitly asked people to nominate some of their own work!