@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

NicoleCRust

@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social

Professor (UPenn). Brain researcher. Author (nonfiction). Advocate for community based progress & collective intelligence.

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yoginho, to random
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

Pattee's "How does a molecule become a message?" is a true gem of a paper.

In it, he has a great argument for the futility of big-data biology, & he complains (writing in 1969!) that biology is already overburdened with data that will never converge to an understanding of life.

yoginho,
@yoginho@spore.social avatar

... which means we are nowadays missing the point in biology more than ever before. We have more data, but less actual insight into the central question of life than Pattee had in the late 1960s. It's quite humbling. And astonishing how far a little bit of clever thinking ...

davidtoddmccarty, to random
@davidtoddmccarty@me.dm avatar

FOLLOW ME: You might not like everything I have to say but I’ll make you think. Of course, that might include thinking I’m an idiot. I write about politics, culture, writing, and quite a lot of random shit, but it’s almost always my original thoughts and insights. Funny, apoplectic, or morose. But honest.

Maybe I could ask you to boost so I may continue my effort to conquer the world.

#Follow #Writer #OldPeopleOfMastodon

lana, to random
@lana@mstdn.science avatar

Exceedingly cool results.
Somehow, wherever this small bat thrives, its presence also creates a niche for a bigger bat, which evolves from... the small bat. You get a string of islands with the simultaneous presence of the small bat and the big bat that re-evolves from it every time....

The phenomenon is so weird that people thought it was just 2 different species that colonized the islands in parallel. It's just one species with a recurring sub-branch.

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-species-sizes-rare-evolution-action.html

neuralreckoning, to random
@neuralreckoning@neuromatch.social avatar

Thread viewer for Mastodon. If you're looking for an easier way to navigate deep threads with many contributions, check out "mastodon thread viewer" (early beta for the moment).

https://thesamovar.github.io/masto-thread-view/

The way it works is you bookmark one of the view types on that page, and then when you're viewing a post from a mastodon thread in your browser, simply click your bookmark and it will open a new tab with the page you're currently viewing rendered as a thread (either tree or table view).

It's early days so there may be bugs, etc., but I think it's already useful. Please give feedback on bugs/feature requests either here or via issues at https://github.com/thesamovar/masto-thread-view.

neuralreckoning, to random
@neuralreckoning@neuromatch.social avatar

Early prototype of Mastodon thread viewer:

https://thesamovar.github.io/masto-thread-view/test.html

Just paste the URL of the thread into the box at the top and hit the "linear thread view" button below and it will give you a view of the thread with hierarchical replies sorted by how many engagements they got (reposts + favourites + replies).

It's very early days so it doesn't yet show any images, the design is not ideal, not optimised for mobile, etc. But I already find this useful for getting a feel of big threads.

My aim here is to give people a better way to navigate overwhelmingly large threads and to allow for a sort of archive of interesting threads. If we want to make Mastodon into a viable option for having scientific debates (e.g. alternative to peer review), we need some way to make them more accessible to outsiders and to surface the most interesting and relevant content.

So I'm particularly interested in hearing suggestions for features or other ideas on how to display threads in the context of long lasting discussions with some permanence to them.

At the moment it's just a very simple idea, but I have other ideas for how to display threads that are a bit wackier and I'll add these as extra buttons as and when I work on this. I'm also going to see how feasible it is to make this into a bookmarklet so you can just hit the 'render thread' bookmark in your browser and open a tab with this. Should be straightforward.

If you're interested, please feel free to post suggestions and issues either here or on github: https://github.com/thesamovar/masto-thread-view

May be of interest to @NicoleCRust @jonny

richardsever, to random
@richardsever@mas.to avatar

"today's hearing is setting a dangerous precedent that if Congress doesn't like what you publish you'll be hauled in before a congressional committee to answer for it...Congress should not be meddling in the peer review process"

House Select Committee calls @holden of Science https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBmWQJ4vdWA&t=1s 1/3

thetransmitter, to random
@thetransmitter@mastodon.social avatar

By insisting that every brain-behavior association study include hundreds or even thousands of participants, we risk stifling innovation. Smaller studies are essential to test new scanning paradigms.

By Emily S. Finn

https://www.thetransmitter.org/future-of-fmri/to-improve-big-data-we-need-small-scale-human-imaging-studies/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20240415-to-improve

jonny,
@jonny@neuromatch.social avatar

@thetransmitter
Tough argument to make, nicely done. I feel similarly about big institutes and standardized collabs - super valuable but shouldnt be the only thing. The trick is to make those smaller studies cumulative. Since we do know that underpowered studies have a high risk of both false positives and negatives, how to avoid the usual boom-bust cycle of blockbuster nature paper -> hundreds of quietly failed replications, etc.

So being in defense of smaller studies necessarily needs a positive vision for infrastructures to communicate, tweak, share, reimplement those experimental paradigms, as well as put them in relation to one another so we get a landscape of attempts at similar phenomena rather than the wash of disconnected papers and full file drawers thats currently the norm. I have always been surprised at the lack of tooling for in-scanner behavior. Big magnet is tricky and constrains materials and designs, but it seems odd to me that we'll spend a bazillion dollars on scanner time and participant recruitment but comparatively little on tooling for having them do interesting things once theyre in there - let alone tooling that allows for flexible experiment design, adaptation to dissimilar hardware, etc.

annaleen, to random
@annaleen@wandering.shop avatar

A science fiction obsession led me to psychological war. I spent the past three years researching and writing a book about the history of psychological warfare in the United States, and it's coming out in early June. Not all the gems I discovered could be crammed into the final manuscript, and I've been dying to share what I found in the archives ... check out my latest newsletter to see some amazing treasures from a history that's rarely told.
https://buttondown.email/thehypothesis/archive/how-a-science-fiction-obsession-led-me-to/

sls, to random
@sls@neuromatch.social avatar

me: "Measure it! Get the data!"

David Hubel: "Those who think 'Science is Measurement' should search Darwin's works for numbers and equations."

jonny, to random
@jonny@neuromatch.social avatar

so tired of hearing about the moon, like big deal I can stand in front of stuff too

eliocamp, to random
@eliocamp@mastodon.social avatar

I've been thinking about that Sabine Hossenfelder video* that is doing the rounds and I have to say that I mostly don't like it. It raises real issues with how the incentives are laid out in science, yes, but the whole framing is (sometimes explicitly) that that is all academia is and there's nothing of value. Besides, these are not new issues and a lot of people have been talking about these points in a much more productive way.

1/n

axoaxonic, to random
@axoaxonic@synapse.cafe avatar

A lot of people are posting a video by Sabine Hossenfelder right now, and I'm not going to comment on the video or the points and discussion, but I wanted to post this video detailing her problematic views on trans issues, how she promoted (in a biased-centrist way) the harmful, TERF-associated, and unfounded view that gender affirming care for trans kids is a social contagion leading to "rapid onset of gender dysphoria," while making claims that transitioning before puberty is harmful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6Kau7bO3Fw Also there's a line where she offhand belittles people who say early gender affirming care saves lives

"Whether or not she meant to, she repeatedly used a misleading rhetorical device to elevate transphobic talking points to the same level as scientific evidence, and she did that in front of a very large audience"

helenajambor, to datascience
@helenajambor@mastodon.social avatar

Everyone, drop what you are doing - SPURIOUS CORRELATION now has a companion site, SPURIOUS SCHOLAR - that WRITES AN ACADEMIC PAPER based on the spurious correlation! Because "if p < 0.05, why not publish?" 😂

https://tylervigen.com/spurious-scholar

publishing

Al academic paper (Because p < 0.01) - "The Elijah Wood Effect: A Cinematic Correlation to Orderly Occupation in Oklahoma" Reminder: This paper is Al-generated. Not reall Show prompt used to generate this paper

brembs, to random
@brembs@mastodon.social avatar

Compare what experts like @alexh

https://alexholcombe.wordpress.com/2024/03/28/gates-foundation-and-me-mandate-preprints-support-peer-review-services-outside-of-big-publishers/

or @Luke_Drury

https://council.science/current/blog/the-open-access-rising-tide-gates-foundation-ends-support-to-article-processing-charges/

think of the new Gates' policy ending the support of journal-based academic publishing, with a news-type article in an academic journal:

https://www.science.org/content/article/bold-bid-avoid-open-access-fees-gates-foundation-says-grantees-must-post-preprints

That comparison should tell you all you need to know about which organizations are on the side of scholarship, and which are its adversaries.

BayesForDays, to random
@BayesForDays@lingo.lol avatar

it's only not creepy when rich people bury dead people in their yards

adredish, to science
@adredish@neuromatch.social avatar

For the one-year anniversary of the audiobook version of CHANGING HOW WE CHOOSE (The new science of morality) audiobooks is having a sale until 30/April.

https://www.audiobooks.com/promotions/promotedBook/646609/changing-how-we-choose-the-new-science-of-morality?refId=128804

jonny, to random
@jonny@neuromatch.social avatar

🫸 "user"

  • passive
  • patronizing, othering
  • hierarchical divide vs. "developer"
  • I want to talk to the manager

👉 "operator"

  • active
  • sick af
  • agentic decider of own destiny
  • telephony and The Matrix vibes

👍 "co-operator"

  • mutually active
  • equal participant among many
  • highlights the social reality of all action
  • imagines a p2p future with other people in it
achterbrain, to Neuroscience
@achterbrain@mastodon.social avatar

🚨 Submissions for are now open at http://ccneuro.org!

Join us in Boston for a super fun conference full of AI + Neuro + CogSci -- cross-disciplinary & single discipline submissions all welcome 🧠🤖

CCN really is a great conference & I am excited to help organise it as part of the ECR committee!

NicoleCRust, to random
@NicoleCRust@neuromatch.social avatar

Did you ever feel that the universe was screaming at you to not do (or do) something? If so, did you listen?

kh_sivesind,

@NicoleCRust
The painter Edvard Munch wrote in his diary:
“ I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scream

gregeganSF, (edited ) to random
@gregeganSF@mathstodon.xyz avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    sfmatheson, to Neuroscience
    @sfmatheson@fediscience.org avatar

    This is gold:

    "Being scientific is hard for human brains, but as an adversarial collaboration on a massive scale, science is our only method for collectively separating how we want things to be from how they are."

    https://www.thetransmitter.org/fmri/breaking-down-the-winners-curse-lessons-from-brain-wide-association-studies/




    klauspforr, to random German
    @klauspforr@sciences.social avatar

    Almost unbelievable. There is neurological condition which makes people see faces look like demons https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-extremely-rare-neurological-condition-makes-faces-appear-distorted-or-like-a-demon-180984015/

    benjamingeer,
    @benjamingeer@zirk.us avatar

    @klauspforr This is especially intriguing: "Faces only look distorted to Sharrah when he sees people in person—when he looks at faces in photographs or on computer screens, they appear completely normal." I wonder how this works: feedback from higher-level knowledge (I'm looking at someone in person rather than on a screen) affecting low-level image processing?

    cc @NicoleCRust

    thetransmitter, to random
    @thetransmitter@mastodon.social avatar

    We found an issue with a specific type of brain imaging study and tried to share it with the field. Then the backlash began.

    By @nicodosenbach and Scott Marek

    https://www.thetransmitter.org/fmri/breaking-down-the-winners-curse-lessons-from-brain-wide-association-studies/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=org-social&utm_campaign=20240325-lessons-from-brain-studies

    SRDas, to science
    @SRDas@mastodon.online avatar

    I don't talk about the /work stuff I'm doing, just sheepish really (even if it is pretty cool). But here's a nice article that previews the @CarnegieMellon Cloud Lab that will soon go online here in with oversight by the Emerald Cloud Lab. I'm quoted a bit but I like this article mainly because I got the query from a student & it's in the student run paper: the Tartan.

    CMU Cloud Lab to bring remote science into mainstream

    https://the-tartan.org/2024/02/19/cmu-cloud-lab-to-bring-remote-science-into-mainstream/

    SRDas,
    @SRDas@mastodon.online avatar

    As the CMU Cloud lab starts up, I'm excited by the possibilities. I got pulled in to contribute to a podcast episode along with a colleague in computational biology, Andreas Pfenning. No advance prep really - it came together at the last minute. We talked about

    [20 min episode]
    https://ai.cmu.edu/episode-5-automated-science

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