Arran Reader

Last week, RPN broke a string of stories on significant changes to funding across a number of research councils (see thread below)

This morning, UKRI chief executive is appearing at the Commons science committee, where he is being asked about them by MPs

Here are some key moments so far 🧵

AI is not a peer, so it can’t do peer review If we still believe that science is a vocation grounded in argument, curiosity and care, we can’t delegate judgement to machines, says Akhil Bhardwaj

'to treat peer review as a throughput problem is to misunderstand what is at stake. Review is not simply a production stage in the research pipeline; it is one of the few remaining spaces where the scientific community talks to itself.' 1/3

Learning the signatures of the human grasp using a scalable tactile glove - Nature Tactile patterns obtained from a scalable sensor-embedded glove and deep convolutional neural networks help to explain how the human hand can identify and grasp individual objects and estimate their w...

Can anyone recommend the best available tactile glove systems currently? We are looking for something like the below at a reasonable price ;-)
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#neuroskyence
#VisionScience
#PsychSciSky
#compneurosky

@stephanierossit.bsky.social

Poster showing a robot, saying: Does AI threaten research integrity? 30th January 2026 10:30-16:30 (Eleanor Rathbone Building 2.62 & online) Session 1 (11:00-12:00): The Metascience of Peer Review - Guest speaker: Tom Stafford Session 2 (13:00-14:30): Risks of Chatbots in Online Surveys - Guest speakers: Phoebe Wallman, Alexandra Lautarescu Session 3 (15:00-16:30): The Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia - Guest speakers: Olivia Guest, Iris van Rooij Sign up here: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/ukrn-liverpool/does-ai-threaten-research-integrity/2026-01-30/10:00/t-yzqrxyr

Interested in discussing how Artificial Intelligence can be helpful or hurtful to academia? 🤖

As a newly minted UKRN (@ukrepro.bsky.social) Local Network Lead, I'm co-organizing a hybrid event about this next Friday (30th January)

Join us at @livunipsyc.bsky.social or online via Teams!

Does anyone else find it baffling that people are actually outsourcing their academic writing like this?

View of the Motherland Monument in Kyiv from a window at sunset, highlighting warm hues on the landscape and silhouette of the statue.

New in the Journal of the British Academy: a Thematic Collection exploring the experiences and insights of Ukrainian Researchers at Risk in the UK.

This collection offers vital perspectives on resilience and innovation in Ukraine and beyond.

Read more: https://bit.ly/4pFe7u9

More than half of researchers now use AI for peer review — often against guidance A survey of 1,600 academics found that more than 50% have used artificial-intelligence tools while peer reviewing manuscripts.

Just decline the peer review invitation.

What are you people even doing?

Was a great pleasure to record this podcast with James - thanks for having me @psychologyuea.bsky.social

How do thermosensory signals contribute to bodily self-awareness?
Our review on this topic with @gerardosalvato.bsky.social has just been published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences!
Grateful for the collaborations, the shared curiosity, and the scientific community pushing this conversation forward.

The AI Race to Reboot Feudalism Let's be honest about why they gamble everything

Several stories are told of why the current AI race, despite being a bubble, needs to happen as fast and recklessly as it does, no matter the cost, harms or methods deployed.

Here I write about why they are really in such a hurry before the music stops:
www.protagonist-science.com/p/the-ai-rac...

So happy this paper is now out in @plosbiology.org! We investigated whether fluctuations in MEPs can be explained by phasic influences from internal bodily rhythms, and whether this might happen independently per organ system.
#interoception #neuroskyence

Nice to know that I'm in good company! I'd like to help out but also there are A LOT of questions in the survey...

“To sustain the latest iteration of the AI con, the industry relies on anthropomorphic sleight of hand – claiming that models “think,” “reason,” and “learn” to suggest cognitive abilities they demonstrably lack and may never develop.“

TMSMultiLab survey TMSMultiLab is a community of ~70 researchers using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). We aim to share methods code and data, to reach consensus & encourage best practice in TMS research methods...

To find out about how #TMS #BrainStim users collect, analyse & share their data, we've made a very brief TMS survey:

forms.gle/83Abpj5F8qzd...

It should take you less than 5 minutes & does not ask for any personal information.

We'll use the answers to plan our future work.

Please share!

🙏🙏🙏

⚡

Table 1 Core reasoning issues (first column), which we name after the relevant numbered section, are characterised using a plausible quote. In the second column are responses per row; also see the named section for further reading, context, and explanations. See paper for full details: ** Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

🌟 New preprint 🌟, by @olivia.science and me:

📝 Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025). *Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists*. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🧪

We're now up to 29 labs across 16 countries for our replication project! There is still room for more labs to join us. We are particularly seeking labs capable of testing native English speakers, though all labs are welcome to participate. For more information: rolfzwaan.substack.com/p/memory-mis...

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Ooh interesting - different methods of assessing TMS responses give quite different answers. Relevant for @tmsmultilab.bsky.social!

Different ways of ‘getting a grip’ Researchers uncover new evidence of how ancient human relatives in South Africa used their hands, revealing varying levels of dexterity and climbing ability

Different ways of ‘getting a grip’. How ancient human relatives in South Africa used their #hands reveals varying levels of dexterity & climbing ability. New study by a team led by Samar Syeda & @tracykivell.bsky.social. #hominins #evolution @amnh.org tinyurl.com/mwk5eb63 & doi.org/10.1126/scia...

Amazing opportunity alert!

At Reviewer Zero, we're passionate about helping early career researchers navigate the challenges of the peer review system. If you're an early career researcher in psych & neuro and feel stuck & need advice for a manuscript, check out this opportunity!

Informal poll: if you're testing emotion recognition in your lab using faces, do you think it necessary to also believe in 1:1 mapping of emotion & expression? Or do you think that's not a thing, but you're happy to test recognition as correct or not, nonetheless? #affectsci #neuroskyence

"Your AI can’t see gorillas!"
A few years ago we found that students are more likely to see the gorilla in their data if they are not also asked to test a specific hypothesis. In his blog Chiraag Gohel now shows that Chat-GPT can’t help you to find it either.
chiraaggohel.com/posts/llms-e...

INTRODUCTION

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines?

Jevin West (@jevinwest.bsky.social) and I have spent the last eight months developing the course on large language models (LLMs) that we think every college freshman needs to take.

thebullshitmachines.com

Does the culture you grow up in shape the way you see the world? In a new Psych Review paper, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I tackle this centuries-old question using the Müller-Lyer illusion as a case study. Come think through one of history's mysteries with us🧵(1/13):

Debunking the Myth of Excitatory and Inhibitory Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in Cognitive Neuroscience Research Abstract. Repetitive TMS (rTMS) is a powerful neuroscientific tool with the potential to noninvasively identify brain–behavior relationships in humans. Early work suggested that certain rTMS protocols...

Happy Theta Burst Day, everyone!

20 years old today 🥳 #TMS #BrainStim

a colleague sent this present for you all:

doi.org/10.1162/jocn...

Come and work with us and do a PhD with on a very exciting project #neurojobs

Thank you!

Brilliant! Please could you add me?

Cold hands, altered ownership? We link disturbed body ownership in stroke patients to reduced hand temperature and impaired thermoception. The right Insula & Parietal hubs are key players. We are excited to share our new findings
@naturecomms.bsky.social
▶️ rdcu.be/d5SDU