iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dan Handwerker

Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

“She asked the powers at NASA to let her add a safeguard to prevent that error in a real flight, and they laughed it off as too unlikely… When an astronaut did make that blooper during the Apollo 8 mission, it caused necessary navigational data to vanish, and they called Hamilton in to get it back.”

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I host. That time period also overlaps with an increase in families with 2 working parents. Hosting is easier when it's part of one parent's full time home-making job. It's much harder to host if the responsibility still falls on only one adult. Culture is definitely a factor.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I don't think every co-author should be named for a Nobel, but 3 is very artificial and there's a long history of politics defining which 3 the Nobel committee picks (or innovations that are never awarded because picking three is too contentious). I trust that journalists could profile 5-10 people.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

The trouble is all three awardees are extremely deserving & there are many more deserving. The ideal would be the Nobel committee says the max 3 rule is decades out-of-date & they remove it. The next best is when the winners use their increased prominence to highlight the work of other contributors.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Given preprint servers are used both for outputs that are worthy of formal peer review & briefer white papers or perspectives that are worth sharing, but are more preliminary, I can see the benefits of a relatively liberal threshold. 2/week feels like someone should self-publish on their own site.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Looking forward to seeing who is lucky enough to hire @joetzel.bsky.social

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Start with clearer definitions of what is valued. Much is already in academic job ads, promotion policies, & conversations about why X is a great professor, but those values are down-weighted over publication counts. Once values are clearer, quantitative & qualitative metrics may be possible. 3/3

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The contributions academics value are diff from the attributes that matter for career advancement. Alt-metrics are an attempt at identify these values but they tend to start with "what can we measure" instead of "what do we value" 2/3

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The following is about math, but is nice summation of the core issue. TL:DR Proofs are the currency for math career advancement, but are only a small part of what mathematicians do & care about. 1/3 davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-fall-o...

davidbessis.substack.com

The fall of the theorem economy

How AI could destroy mathematics and barely touch it

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The 1st attempt at recording gravity waves with aluminum cylinders is widely considered a failure with numerous failed replications. Still, it made many realize that something which was considered an untestable theory was measurable. This led to funding for LIGO. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber_bar

en.wikipedia.org

Weber bar - Wikipedia

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

My first thought to "I teach about Ariely's fraud" is which one(s) do you teach?

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I suspect most fraud starts small. I'm still skeptical that the bar is actually being raised. There is a certain level of trust that is central to science and there will be always ways for dishonesty. The only real bar to raise to have systems to catch fraud before someone has a decades-long career.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I heard an interview with Ariely about dentists. The results seemed surprising. I couldn't find a published study & then read follow-ups from the data source saying he didn't even have access to the data he claimed to have. The only thing that mildly shocks me is the lack of consequences for decades

wbur.org

Should You Be Suspicious Of Your Dentist Or NPR's Source?

NPR ran a story about peoples' irrational attachment to their dentist -- but it also included information that was bound to make one suspicious of his or her dentist. NPR relied on tenured professor w...

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

It's good to have changes that make fraud slightly harder to commit (though LLMs might make fraud easier). Still, there are always incentives that are more achievable through fraud, but most people don't commit fraud.

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Reposted by Dan Handwerker

Shawn Burgess @burgesslab.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Excellent opportunity for early stage clinician-scientists. You do some research at the NIH and leave with funding for 5 years after, like a K99/R00 for MD's but you get to do research at the largest research-only hospital in the world. IMO better if you love zebrafish 😘 www.nih.gov/research-tra...

nih.gov

Lasker Clinical Research Scholars

The Lasker Clinical Research Scholars Program is an historic “intramural-extramural” partnership to nurture the next generation of clinical researchers.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Substantial improvements in research interpretability & reproducibility are often hard. Sometimes the improvements are easy. (The underlying idea is older & easy, but convincing people is sometimes the hard part) I'm happy to have contributed to this easy and now widely accessible improvement.

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Reposted by Dan Handwerker

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 27/08/2026

Psychological Science special issue call 📣 Ever had your research denigrated bc it's "only descriptive", "what's the mechanism though?" and "but what are the theoretical implications?" Now has come your time to shine. Send your best descriptive work! www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

Psychological Science invites submissions that advance psychological science through careful description of psychological phenomena. Psychological research often focuses on explaining and predicting phenomena before we have a sufficiently detailed understanding of them. It can be difficult to build strong theories on incomplete empirical foundations of the phenomena themselves. Careful descriptive research helps establish shared empirical reference points developed around well-characterized phenomena. As such, descriptive research contributes to psychological science both by improving our understanding of the phenomena themselves and by providing a stronger foundation for future theory-building, explanation, and prediction.

We are interested in manuscripts that:

Deepen our understanding of psychological phenomena, including what they look like, how they vary, and how they unfold;
Draw on a variety of sources of evidence and methods, including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches; research conducted in naturalistic settings; intensive, longitudinal, or small-sample designs; and open or large-scale datasets;
Provide necessary context for interpreting what is being described, including who is represented in the data, the settings and circumstances in which phenomena occur, and the broader social contexts in which they are situated; and/or
Make a substantive contribution to psychological science through the quality, depth, or significance of the description provided.
The deadline for submitting regular manuscripts is April 15, 2027. Registered Reports will also be considered. The deadline for submitting Stage 1 Registered Reports is November 15, 2026. Authors should indicate in the “Comments to Editor” box during submission that the manuscript is intended for the “Descriptive Research in Psychological Science” special issue.

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Reposted by Dan Handwerker

Martin Hebart @martinhebart.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I have been meaning to write a post about a preprint that I'm pretty excited about: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... In neuroscience we often assume that we can learn something general about “the brain” using different species. But is this true? Do monkeys even see the world the way we do?

On the left, an image of a rhesus macaque looking towards its left, and on the right, an AI-generated zoomed-out rendering of a human in the same pose. Both are looking.

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Reposted by Dan Handwerker

Ashley Juavinett, PhD @ashleyjuavinett.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

dear #neuroskyence -- as some of you know i write a column over at @thetransmitter.bsky.social called "how to teach" which breaks down ~recent but seminal neuro papers for educators and self-guided learners and i'd love your input on what papers to cover! www.thetransmitter.org/how-to-teach...

thetransmitter.org

How to teach this paper

This column by Ashley Juavinett guides educators and self-learners through recent seminal neuroscience papers.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

"Our code builds on Funk et al.; additional scripts will be made available upon request" looks bad when compared to "The reanalysis code for this publication is publicly available at"

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Wow. I just read the original authors' reply at the end of the Matters Arising pdf. While they may have some legit points, not a single figure in their reply is directly comparable to their original pub and it seems like they are showing some decline but an order-of-magnitude lower than the original

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I skew towards keeping mistakes in the scientific literature because identifying & correcting mistakes is part of healthy scientific discourse, but a core finding that rests on clearly wrong data (papers that had references, but were logged as not having references) feels retraction-worthy.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

This has stuck with me for years as a nice explanation for how the great writing of "Enders Game" is used to make Ender an innocent and justified serial killer. johnjosephkessel.wixsite.com/kessel-websi...

johnjosephkessel.wixsite.com

Creating the Innocent Killer | kessel-website

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

This part is sadly not surprising, but worth highlighting, "OSF’s high SEO... & low barrier to share [made it attractive to spammers], & not just fake science spammers. Spammers set up thousands of accounts... for sharing pirated movies, advertising health supplements, & anything & everything else."

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Reposted by Dan Handwerker

Susan Wardle @susanwardle.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Recruiting grad students for Fall 2027!

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

The thing I've been thinking about for a while is analyses that rely on pairwise correlation values are very sensitive to motion & other non-neural factors. Metrics that are robust to <0.5mm FD would address most population/motion interactions. The obvious Q is what metrics are more robust?

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

With the Lacks example, no one knew they could make an immortal cell line so it's questionable if any consent would have been good enough without hindsight. Researchers VERY belatedly reached out to the Lacks family for consent after it was clear how they cells' uses went far beyond any past consent

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Unsatisfying answer: If donors say, "If I knew you were going to do X with my cells, I would not have consented" then X should be explicitly stated. Hard to guess. May be inherently retrospective. If donors are complaining when finding how cells are used, that's a sign to change future consents.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Lacks did sign a consent form. The problem was that it wasn't informed consent (i.e.there was no attempt make sure she read & understood the form) and the form did not explain types of research planned. One can argue for very broad consents, but the Q about what uses need to be explicit is the same.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Great interview of @emilyjacobs.bsky.social & @laurapritschet.bsky.social. Masterclass of science communication. Instead of a clean story of cognitive+hormone relationships (to highlight their own work) they push a narrative & share their excitement about how much we don't know & could still learn.

radiolab.org

This is Your Brain on Hormones

We don’t have hormones, hormones have us.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

The 2026 fMRI Summer Course with @fmri-today.bsky.social has begun and the recordings and slides are shared here: fmrif.nimh.nih.gov/SummerCourse

fmrif.nimh.nih.gov

FMRIF Summer Course

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Your last point on mentoring for the trainees good seems more about mentor ambition more than the trainee. I tell postbac trainees explicitly that, if they do the work expected of them & end up going into a completely different career, they are a successful trainee.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

You state current problem, but idealize the past. Some people wrote great Fortran code, but for every scientific program that runs decades later, dozens that are incomprehensible or disconnected from key parts. Pre-digital was more convivial only for those with time & $ to build their own stuff.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

The paper says code+data shared on request. This really seems like the type of pub where open sharing of the code would be particularly useful.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

There are other & better visualizations of this, but, when I saw this video years ago, my main thought was how amazing & weird the tongue is. youtu.be/M2OdAp7MJAI?...

youtu.be

the diva and the emcee

YouTube video by Krishna Nayak

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Reposted by Dan Handwerker

Rodrigo Braga @rodbraga.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Please RT - We are looking for someone who wants to establish and lead a cutting-edge neuroimaging center at Northwestern, working closely with multiple labs, including my own, in neuroscience research broadly construed. If you are curious, dm me and I'm happy to answer questions

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

So much interesting work at #OHBM2026. With simultaneous sessions on "within person studies" & another full of within person studies on the menstrual cycle, it would be fun to have a follow-up round table where the two groups talk to each other.

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Reposted by Dan Handwerker

Paul Taylor @afni-pt.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Newest contribution to the AFNI Codex (Code Examples), linking papers and scripts/cmds that were used. Thanks to the amazing @storrisi.bsky.social & LL Chao for this latest work. We hope this and others help users with ideas and examples for their own projects: afni.nimh.nih.gov/pub/dist/doc...

afni.nimh.nih.gov

14.2. FMRI Codex — AFNI, SUMA and FATCAT: v25.2.00

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Some issues will online Q&A at #OHBM2026. At ed course we figured out moderators only have access on laptops, not phones. And only some browsers work. Chrome works. Firefox doesn't. @ohbmofficial.bsky.social

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

About to start my travel to #OHBM2026 Excited to help organize a full day ed course on multi-echo fMRI. Schedule is here: me-ica.github.io/ohbm-2026-mu... @enekourunuela.com @drjuliamoser.bsky.social @dowdlelt.bsky.social @ohbmofficial.bsky.social

me-ica.github.io

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Postdoc and data scientist openings with an amazing team.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Command line program can be used to search and create json files to help build a custom website for just your content-of-interest. github.com/ME-ICA/ohbm-... 2/2

github.com

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Reposted by Dan Handwerker

Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Wonderful news! Journal of Research on Research is launched. "if you are a researcher who researches any aspect of research, then this is the journal and community for you." Worth reading the whole editorial for a transparent and thoughtful account of this amazing community-driven effort.

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Would cognitive scientists read the article differently if the word "consciousness" was replaced with "perception"? Perception is also highly subjective, but we don't consider subjectiveness a roadblock to third-person observations. 2/2

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

A huge part of science - particularly the "hard" problems - are attempts to have third-person observers quantify things that resist quantification. A large portion of scientific work & advances are in not fully observable/quantifiable gray areas. 1/2

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Dan Handwerker @danielhandwerker.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Stuart Kelman was the type of person who, when two grad students asked him to fly across the country to officiate their wedding, he replied that it's a good excuse for him to visit his mother in Connecticut.

Rabbi Stuart Kelman officiating a wedding. R. Kelman is in the center with the bridge on the left and the groom on the right.

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