I started substacking (link in comments). Disclosing industry connections in academia is very important. And there are reasons these influences are importantly different from the other personal commitments that can bias science.

Did you know that NEJM’s AI subsidiary posts sponsored industry content that look like normal papers? I didn’t! @unityofvirtue.bsky.social explains at our lunchtime panel at the IBC conference in Seoul

Congrats to Chris Torsell for successfully defending his PhD! He tackled the problem of projectibility - how do we choose which learned lessons to project into the future - and showed how simple agents can solve problems philosophers have worried about. More here: www.christiantorsell.com

Was writing about how scientific imagery encodes ideas about who is normal and who is not. Thought I'd try this. Was hoping I'd be surprised

Well I've really taken a left turn while making slides for my talk., But I am pleased to share some more AI images of sexy Thomas Bayes

I was trying to get chat to make an image of Thomas Bayes as a saint (for my slides). It wouldn't stop giving me this anomalously sexy version of him. For your enjoyment the sainted Reverend Bae-yes

Congrats to LPSer Josiah Lopez-Wild who will be doing a postdcoc next year at University of Warwick! So well deserved. Josiah works on statistics, Bayesianism, and the theory of computation. More here! josiahlopezwild.com

Many congrats to LPSer Jessica Lauman Lairson who will do a postdoc at USalzburg next year! Jessica works on philosophy of science, and especially analogy in scientific discovery. More here: jessicalaumanlairson.com

Congrats to LPSer Chris Torsell who will do a postdoc at UToronto philosophy next year! Chris does great work in philosophy of science, PPE, and computational modeling, more here: www.christiantorsell.com

Absolutely delighted to share that my advisee @matthewcoates.bsky.social will be doing a postdoc at UPenn philosophy next year. Congrats Matthew! More on his work (and bird watching) here: matthewncoates.github.io

Anyone else get a creepy, personalized email from the "Journal of AI by AI"?

Some Bridgerton-loving Target customers are in for a surprise

Papers tied to tech looked at different topics, on average – tending to focus on user sharing of misinformation, and tending not to focus on the dynamics of platforms and their impacts 5

Editors handling social media papers often have industry ties. The more they handle, the greater the chance of connection. We found that 2/3 of papers had an author, an editor, or both connected to tech 4

Most authors aren’t connected to industry. But a small group, often tightly linked to tech, disproportionately publish in top venues. Authors with 6+ papers in our corpus are basically guaranteed to have industry ties 3

These papers are more impactful. On average they are cited twice as much, and receive twice as much attention online, in media, and in policy documents, as measured by altmetrics 2

Good news @lastpositivist.bsky.social - no seppuku required this year

For instance by disproportionately focusing on social media users as the central cause of harms like misinformation and polarization, rather than looking at platform choices related to algorithms or the business model. We call this selective “causal focus”

When tech funds academics, they pick who and which projects get funded – and tech disproportionately chooses researchers using methods and aims that tend to yield positive findings for their products

Even reasonable internal studies can be design-biased, i.e., make choices that quietly increase chances of positive findings - for example by using stringent tests to assess harms and more lax tests for benefits

What are these mechanisms? Tech companies do loads of internal research, some of which they never share or publish. There are basically no tech-sponsored papers finding harms from their products, plenty on benefits

Who today is influencing science a la Big Tobacco or Oil and Gas? In our new preprint we show how tech companies like Meta are capturing research on their product, using mechanisms that subtly (or not so subtly) shape what science gets produced

Thank you google AI

Congrats to all involved in the production of the massive Oxford Handbook of cultural evolution. You can read our paper The Cultural Evolution Of Science here: cailinoconnor.com/wp-content/u...

Congrats congrats to my student Ben Genta on finishing his dissertation! He worked with @laurennross.bsky.social and I on reasoning in the social sciences- more below!