Brónagh McCoy

Duration between rewards controls the rate of behavioral and dopaminergic learning - Nature Neuroscience Cue–reward learning rate scales proportionally with the time between rewards. Consequently, learning over a fixed duration is independent of the number of trials. This challenges trial-based dopamine ...

Very excited to post our paper led by @daburke.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... where we uncover a simple mathematical rule underlying how brains learn that a cue predicts a reward. 1/26

It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.

I Started Programming When I Was 7. I'm 50 Now, and the Thing I Loved Has Changed | James Randall I still love developing but the shifts that AI have brought are tectonic and are forcing me to re-evaluate my own relationship to building things

Nice blog by a programmer giving his experience of AI in its current form www.jamesdrandall.com/posts/the_th...

A variation: Scientists who claim they’re “not interested in causality” because they assume the term only applies to deterministic, law-like relationships that are unrealistic in their field. Instead, they’re interested in how “X drives Y”, the effects of X, the “extent to which X matters for Y”>

The Real Cost of the UK’s ‘Free AI Training for All’ is Democracy Researchers argue the UK's 'AI Skills Hub' should be re-thought with input from civil society groups and public interest organizations.

📢NEW OP-ED! Together with the brilliant @taniaduarte.bsky.social, @markwong.bsky.social, @suoman.bsky.social & @timdavies.org.uk we wrote for @techpolicypress.bsky.social why the new UK Government AI Skills Hub is undermining our democracy.

Our 🔑 points are->🧵
www.techpolicy.press/the-real-cos...

The lesson for all the students out there is that science is a community project. Most of us make individually small contributions to this project. Success is measured at the collective level. Many of our professional (and personal) dysfunctions could be fixed by more fully embracing this view.

Bayesian Workflow Bayesian statistics and statistical practice have evolved over the years, driven by advancements in theory, methods, and computational tools. This book explores the intricate workflows of applied Baye...

The publisher estimates the Bayesian Workflow book will ship in June www.routledge.com/Bayesian-Wor...

Do goal-directed actions minimize prediction error? Together with @haslagter.bsky.social and @fahrenfort.bsky.social I identified falsifiable predictions of active inference and reviewed the extent to which they are supported by empirical results. Read the preprint here: tinyurl.com/2by8k3h6

The Iowa Gambling Task is an extreme example of Jingle Fallacy and schmeasurement.

In 100 articles we found 244 different ways of scoring it, 177 were never reused. Correlations between them range -.99 to .99.

At the same time, we show meta-analyses combine these results as if they’re equivalent.

It's good to hear that the English government is investing in SEND training for teachers, but it matters enormously *what* they're being taught, and *who by*... and have they considered ensuring that kids learn about this stuff, too?

Here's one of my talks about this stuff:
youtu.be/kDVBkGEmvFw?...

Average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" plotted over time

I started reading up on the whole "loneliness pandemic" narrative because this seems like a literature where the age-period-cohort problem may be relevant (or maybe it isn't?).

Here's data from Australia (HILDA), average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" (SD of ca. 1.8).>

When psychologists mislead us From Piltdown Man to the Stanford prison experiment, many famous scientific discoveries have been exposed as hoaxes or distortions

"The rewards to 'discovering' a spectacular scientific finding [in psychology] are large; the rewards to debunking frauds or deflating exaggerated claims are small if not non-existent. If these are the rules of the game, we should not be surprised at the way the game is played."

Systems of Power Pathway Name the systems of power. The lens of power can really help us see what's going on.

“You cannot change a reality that you cannot name.”
—Kimberlé Crenshaw

Name the systems of power.

stimpunks.org/pathways/sys...

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.

My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

We Need to Talk About How We Talk About 'AI' | TechPolicy.Press We share a responsibility to create and use empowering metaphors rather than misleading language, write Emily M. Bender and Nanna Inie.

Anthropomorphizing language conceals the limitations of AI, promoting misplaced trust. @emilymbender.bsky.social & @nannainie.bsky.social suggest focusing on a system’s functionalities: instead of saying a model is “good at” something, say what it is “good for." www.techpolicy.press/we-need-to-t...

Feel like this fresh year needs some serious culture change?

We got you covered! With @clarekelly.bsky.social @eikofried.bsky.social Anna van 't Veer

📝 rdcu.be/eXja4

AuDHD man will never see beloved possessions again after “tidying up” An AuDHD man has reportedly resigned himself to no longer ever seeing many of his most treasured belongings, or even remembering that they still exist, after moving them slightly out of his direct…

Gavin Monks, 48, is vaguely aware that before this morning he had hobbies, interests, and possessions, but has no idea what those could be, and even less idea where such possessions could ever be found.

Landscape format in painterly acrylics on canvas. A tree with a short grey trunk with a dark outline splits and twists into a thick network of branches of blues culminating in a bush-like appearance at its top of orange and blue and red. Behind is a very pale body of water with horizontal traces of yellow and very feint touches of green and blue. A headland of pale green and grey is along the left side. Sky is a pale cloudy mix of pinks and yellows with a lot of white. Tree is growing from small patch of rough lime grass at water's edge, with grey rocks and orange to right and blue and green reeds to left and along bottom edge. Signed top left in blue, Liam Daly

Here, have a #painting. "Savage Rowan" came out of a challenge from an artist friend of mine where we both painted the same scene. This was mine and it eventually went to a good home in Galway. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear

I've just read this and the other paper you linked, Masiero et al. 2025, this morning. They're exactly the type of thing I was wondering about, thank you! The journal paper covers so much. It's great to have all those references too. Would love to chat to you about this in the new year!

Thanks very much Fergus. I'll take a look through that exhibitor list and see what they're up to.

This should benefit everyone, particularly neurodivergent people who seem to be most impacted by it (due to e.g. weak central coherence, monotropism, intense world theory). Happy to chat more as experimental psychology researcher with small amount of physics and maths literacy from a previous life.

Where are the engineers, materials scientists, physicists who care about artificial lighting and noise reduction or dampening in different environments? Is anything being explored in terms of friendlier solutions that are sustainable and inexpensive? (1/2)

A Mental Health plan for Christmas

New podcast. An investigation of the emotion of shame as it applies over the festive period open.spotify.com/episode/0rW5...

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵

Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

a woman says we have to work together in front of a wentworth sign ALT: a woman says we have to work together in front of a wentworth sign

Passionate about women's mental health?

Interested in brain stimulation?

Excited by cutting edge neurotech?

Come do a PhD with me!

www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

(thread)

Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Forensic & Neurodevelopmental Sciences | King's College London

Postdoc position available on our team, to work on the OptiCaT project - evaluating the use and impact of a community care intervention on psychiatric hospital admission and other health outcomes in people with learning disability and autistic people (1/2)
www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/132727-...

We're looking for somebody to lead on the qualitative interview side of things, and help with a prospective cohort study already open across multiple NHS-sites. Chief investigators are Rory Sheehan and Afia Ali. Feel free to contact me if you're interested and want to know anything else (2/2)

Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Forensic & Neurodevelopmental Sciences | King's College London

Postdoc position available on our team, to work on the OptiCaT project - evaluating the use and impact of a community care intervention on psychiatric hospital admission and other health outcomes in people with learning disability and autistic people (1/2)
www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/132727-...

Landscape format mat board painted in loose very heavily textured acrylics creating broken effects all over. A blue bay comes in from the left. In the foreground is clumpy green grass with specks of blue, yellow, white and red, and black rocks. On far side of bay is a ridge of low hills, in pale olive and lilac with, low down, a cluster of turquoise trees holding a scattering of white cottages - little more than dots or tiny triangles of their gable ends. Nearer than them, on the right side an orange hill slopes down to lines of black and orange rocks in the water. Behind the hills are two pyramidal rounded peaked mountains in pale blue. Sky is paler blue with white blurry clouds. Signed top left in red, Liam Daly

A #painting from a series I did of a bay in the west of Ireland. "Bertraghboy Bay 5" came out of a day cycling in Connemara where I was on a high from the incessant beauty of it all as every bay and mountain came into view. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtAdventCalendar

Teach like a Luddite - Kappan Online Embracing new technologies that don’t advance teaching and learning is a mistake. Educators must ask questions — and resist when necessary.

Teach like a Luddite! In which I join @philnichols.bsky.social and @anterobot.bsky.social to argue for a Luddite praxis in education grounded in three elements: embracing strategic playfulness; developing localized tactics; and building networks of resistance. Read the article at Kappan: