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Dan Isbell

@danielrisbell.bsky.social
1K followers 622 following 1.5K posts

Associate Professor of Second Language Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, specializing in language assessment. Associate Editor at Language Learning journal (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/146…). Views own. isbell.github.io

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Demand for the JLPT is outstripping capacity to deliver exams, promoting the govt to encourage use of other tests. mnews.sbs.co.kr/english/arti...
mnews.sbs.co.kr
SBS 뉴스
대한민국 뉴스의 기준, 중심을 지키는 저널리즘 SBS 뉴스 - 시청자의 눈높이에 맞는, 더욱 품격 있는 뉴스를 제공합니다.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Without disagreeing, we often also lack the infrastructure/resources to meaningfully bring undergrads into humanities/soc sci research. In many disciplines we lack actual 'labs' with ongoing, large-team projects that trainees can join as well as money to pay them.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I will go out on a limb and say responding to trolling, particularly racist trolling, with some variation of "fuck off" is actually okay. Even if you're a professor.
chronicle.com
A Carnegie Mellon Professor’s Comments Were Explosive. Are They a Firing Offense?
Free-speech wars have become ever-present in academe. And Uju Anya, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, has experienced more than her share.
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Jan Vanhove @janhove.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
New blog post: "Cluster analysis: A skeptic’s guide". In which I ask a few questions that social scientists wishing to identify hidden classes in their data ought to address. janhove.github.io/posts/2026-0...
A two-dimensional scatterplot showing a three-cluster solution.

Caption: "Figure 2: A visualisation of a Latent Profile Analysis fit. Such visualisations may help readers appreciate that the clusters aren’t nicely separated and that the researchers’ notion of clusters may not correspond to their own."Table of contents:

Refresher: What is cluster analysis?
What are the clusters for?
What clusters, exactly?
Does the pipeline work?
What does the solution look like?
When running follow-up analyses, how is the uncertainty in the cluster assignments taken into account?
Was it worth it?
Conclusion
References
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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Shout out to the student journalists at The Daily Iowan for reporting on the travesty that is Iowa's Center for Intellectual Freedom. With quotes from me dailyiowan.com/2026/09/15/u...
dailyiowan.com
Uncertainty in leadership, curriculum surrounds UI Center for Intellectual Freedom
In the barren walls of his Calvin Hall office, where the Center for Intellectual Freedom resides, interim director and University of Iowa economics professor Luciano de Castro shuffles a stack of pape...
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Very good news. The proposed rule has had universities, from the top all the way down to individual departments, scrambling to figure out how to continue supporting international students. Good to be relieved of all that... for now.
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Matt Bors @mattbors.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
It was exactly ten years ago today, on my 33rd birthday, that I posted this comic online.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
A recurrent theme in this excellent story about China’s progress is that people there regard Trump as essential to their success, including his ability to drive scientific talent from the US www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
In Beijing, a think tank at Renmin University recently published an assessment titled
"Thank Trump," which wryly hailed his efforts to hasten the "twilight of an empire," by undermining America's alliances, civil service, scientific institutions, and democratic credibility. In the past two years, the international approval rating of the U.S. has dropped nearly forty points, according to a worldwide survey by the Alliance of Democracies; in multiple polls, China now rates higher than the U.S.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered on Sept 15, 2001 in Mesa, AZ (suburb of Phoenix). Those days and months that followed 9/11 were not a good time for this country. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_...
en.wikipedia.org
Murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi - Wikipedia
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Imagine looking at these PISA reading results and thinking "what if we keep all the screentime in schools, but have an AI assistant on all the screens?"
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
I grudgingly use LinkedIn because it is useful for connecting with people in my field and keeping up to date on relevant industry news. But man, sometimes the slop and spam on that website...
Spammy linked in message regarding selection for a Notable Men feature, which is totally needed because men lack visibility.

I am also guessing this is a weird matchmaking/dating service.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Nice article on fostering bi/multilingualism among children in the Japan Times: #lingsky www.japantimes.co.jp/community/20...
japantimes.co.jp
How to navigate parenthood in a multilingual home
Language experts have advice for parents that should be reassuring in its simplicity: read, make friends and have fun.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
New Pew survey on attitudes toward additional language study in the US: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...
pewresearch.org
What do Americans think about language learning in U.S. schools?
Four-in-ten Americans say it is extremely or very important for children growing up in the U.S. to learn a language other than English.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Was not expecting this in the middle of a Hanroro (rock/pop musician whose songs are frequently featured in K-Dramas) playlist. Brain was very confused hearing Korean from the start with that melody, but this is very good.
youtu.be
[Special Clip] 한로로 (HANRORO)_ 잔혹한 천사의 테제 : J-POP REMAKE Vol.2
YouTube video by 동네친구 강나미 [Kangnami]
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Trevon Logan @trevondlogan.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I can’t wait for the 18 part series in the Atlantic about “The Crisis at Business Schools” which will detail of every instance of academic fraud at the nation’s top business schools, the coverups, lack of accountability, and their implications for business ethics and academic standards at B schools.
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Dan Greene @dmgreene.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
What's the ratio of op-eds about Claudine Gay paraphrasing someone vs op-eds about Ariely just straight up fabricating data
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
The best part of starting a new academic year is the pile-on of recurring mandatory training deadlines. All at the same time.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I was quoted in a new Popular Science article on language learning apps (alongside Luke Plonsky and Gillian Lord, who bring much more expertise to the topic!): www.popsci.com/science/do-l... #lingsky
popsci.com
Can apps really make you fluent in another language?
A green owl can nudge you to practice, but it doesn't replace talking to a person.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Sad news for #linguistics. Lots of post-grad earnings pressure from (and soon to be on, from federal govt) universities is influencing programs and curricula, with language and linguistics getting pinched at many institutions. (ling/lang refugees welcome here at the University of Hawaiʻi)
ntdaily.com
‘My program’s going to sh-t’: Linguistics students move forward knowing major is being ‘phased out’
A small program at the university, the linguistics department has taken pride in documenting endangered languages and preparing the next generation to research language.
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Emma Monk @monkemma.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
One of the first "outrageous" claims I saw as Jason Arday's media hounding unfolded was that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days! Wow! What a thing to claim! And the newspapers all suggested there was no evidence he actually did it. Well, they clearly didn't look very hard 🙄 🧵 1/26
Photo after Jason's final marathon taken from his archived blog showing Jason surrounded by supporters in orange charity t-shirts
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I Travel Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 23/08/2026
Rolling out “academic freedom” as a rallying cry now, after the CRT panic led to a bunch of Black scholars and theory to be literally banned from classrooms, shit is too rich lol
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Me, a US-based academic: I don’t care what any scholar believes, we all need to stand up publicly whenever someone’s academic freedom is threatened Me, continuing: also, the first time this has happened, motivating me to sign my first ever open letter, is in late 2026, to a race scientist, in Ghent
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Fascinating article following the publication of a new book on Hawaii's English Standard School era. Will have to get a copy of the book. This is going to be one of my go-to examples of injustice in language testing, in terms of both test content and use. www.civilbeat.org/2026/08/denb...
Yamane said she was dismayed to find out recently that the haole students at Kaunoa were admitted to the school without having to take any kind of a test like she did.

Gwen Murai, 86, attended Riverside, the English standard elementary school in Hilo. She joked with me about the pre-admission screening of non-white children: “The person giving the test, might ask you to say the word ‘pink’ and if you said “peeenk’ you were out.”
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 18/08/2026
<Pitchbot voice> "We wanted to understand what academia can learn from Jason Arday's rise and fall. So we asked someone who hates academia, is no longer a professor, and has never worked in a research university to weigh the questions his story left behind"
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
GenAI can behave oddly when asking for multilingual stuff to happen. Here I'm using English to prompt Gemini to translate some Korean text to Japanese, and Gemini's reply starts, rather inexplicably, with French. Really curious why this happens.
a prompt in English asking to translate some korean text to japanese. The response starts in French and then shows the japanese translation.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Crushed it this morning! #Lingule #1584 "ʻanoʻi": 1/6 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🏆 lingule.xyz
lingule.xyz
Lingule
A fun little language game
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Ooh, another cool language game. Gonna add this to my daily rotation/play with students before class starts. I also highly recommend www.collocateswordgame.com (English is the target language)
collocateswordgame.com
Collocates — Daily Word Game
Guess the most frequent collocates of a given keyword. A new puzzle every day!
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
From reading this thread, I learned that O'Connell is a journalist. Brain is absolutely cooked by propaganda. No wonder UK (and US) media ran hundreds of Arday stories. The whole affair is a much bigger indictment of the press rather than Cambridge or higher ed more broadly.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that. 1/
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Well all's not well but I'm told that it'll all be quite nice You'll be drowned in boots like mafia but your feet will still float like Christ's Well I'll be damned They were right I'm drowning upside down My feet afloat like Christ's! (Modest Mouse, "Styrofoam Boots/It's All Nice on Ice, Alright")
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Kate Lingley 龍梅若 @klingley.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Buddhism in the wild (photo by Jerry Feldman, Target Honolulu)
View of an end-cap display at Target, with a sign above it saying “Must have!” The shelves are empty.
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Why I Left Academia Writing personal essays is easier than teaching, grant-writing, or getting research articles published. But nobody told me that in grad school my latest for the Chronicle
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Retractions, fraud, plagiarism, and abusive behavior by academics (including those in prestigious institutions) largely goes unnoticed by news media when it can't be linked to either (a) a discipline in the crosshairs of conservatives or (b) DEI. 1/n
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Brian Nosek @briannosek.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Over the next several months, we will phase out some popular OSF features. These changes do not affect current public content, which remains safe and accessible. We have prepared support material to help users adapt. I am very sorry for the disruption to your work. Please read this post for details.
cos.io
OSF Changes | Center for Open Science
We are preparing substantial changes to OSF that will reduce its functionality, focus OSF on its unique strengths, and move toward an integrated model with complementary services. As part of that shif...
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
AI search results are driving me nuts. Two slightly different google queries related to Spearman's rho and Thorndike's case 2 correction give conflicting results, and the AI-linked sources do not address the issue directly; answers kind of just mash text from multiple sources (inc. a racist's blog)
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Very glad to see @kmcmanus.bsky.social and Luke Plonsky put AAAL's feet to the fire a bit in their new editorial introducing two new Open Science-inspired article types. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
The racist backlash to Chris Nolan’s Odyssey is a kind of stolen valor, an attempt by the right to claim credit for achievements they had nothing to do with in order to justify racial hierarchy in the present. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
theatlantic.com
The Fear of Black Greeks
White people don’t own the accomplishments of ancient Greece.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Pretty wild story - A professor in Korea was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail for making his grad students write a paper (and collect/fabricate data?) for his daughter's college application (alternative path for "special talent"). I'll see if I can find a reputable English version..
w3.kwnews.co.kr
제자들 논문으로 딸 서울대 치전원 보낸 성균관대 약대 교수 징역 3년 6개월 확정
자신의 딸을 치의학전문대학원(치전원)에 입학시키기 위해 제자들을 이용한 대학 교수에 징역 3년 6개월의 실형이 확정됐다. 22일 법조계에 따르면 대법원 1부(주심 천대엽 대법관)는 업무방해 등 혐의로 기소된 전 성균관대 약대 교수 이모(67)씨에게 이같이 선고한 원심을
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Very glad to see this study come out - we investigated the degree to which how people speak on TOEFL tasks is similar to how they speak in non-test academic tasks. Generally, we find strong similarities in terms of subjective quality (communicative effectiveness), fluency, and accuracy.
journals.sagepub.com
Investigating the Real-World Relevance of an Academic English Speaking Test: Extrapolating Subjective Evaluations and Linguistic Performance Characteristics - Daniel R. Isbell, Dustin Crowther, Jieun ...
To support use of tests in academic contexts, it is critical to demonstrate that test scores and test performances are associated with performance in academic s...
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Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · 24/07/2026
The claim “RFK Jr. does not fuck chickens” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that RFK Jr. fucks chickens.
KEY POINTS
• The claim 'vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based
claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Linguistic accommodation, oftentimes occurring without deliberate effort, is a widely attested phenomenon and likely plays a role in additional dialect acquisition.
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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 30/10/2025
When I worked in WaPo Opinions in 2017-2018, senior editors specifically told junior editors not to factcheck Marc Thiessen and other MAGA columnists, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to publish anything by them at all, and “we need them for intellectual diversity.”
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Sarah T Roberts, PhD @ubiquity75.xyz · 22/07/2026
A reminder that UC _faculty_ and Faculty Associations — not the universities themselves nor their administrators — are waging this battle in court, demonstrating great bravery and moral clarity.
apnews.com
White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants
Federal agencies that terminated more than a thousand research grants at the University of California last year admitted that they used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COV...
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
New colleague just moved into her office today, so now I am officially not the youngest/newest in the department (after 6 years on the job...)!
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Why wasn't RFK Jr the dean of medicine at Johns Hopkins? Liberal bias in academia! See more insights like this in a 10k word Atlantic piece.
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
At his next presser, a reporter should ask him what he meant when he drew his firearm and said "I'm not going to be a Charlie Kirk". He will most likely point out the misquote, at which point the follow-up should be "What's the difference?"
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Dr Madeleine Pownall @maddipow.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
New paper! Values such as openness, transparency, collaboration, clarity about conflict of interests have been promoted by women for *decades*, and now we have reframed this around the branding of 'open science' that we start to take them seriously. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com
Women as the First Open Scientists: Five Stories of the Neglected Contributions of Women in (Social) Science Reform History - Madeleine Pownall, 2026
Recent years have seen growing emphasis on “Open Science,” a movement to enhance research transparency, robustness, and accountability. Prompted by concerns ove...
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Chris Steller @chrissteller.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Someone just sent me this photo from Chicago, unbelieveable
Album cover photo of the Marina apartments in Chicago for Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot CD
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
One of my better attempts at collocateswordgame.com : verbs that come before the noun "text"
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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Good to see folks pushing back against pay-to-publish models. “In our field, it doesn’t make sense to pay for OA, since our papers are available on arXiv for free and the arXiv version is always very close to the journal version.” Robin Ryder, resigning AE at Statistics and Computing
retractionwatch.com
‘The exploitation still remains’: Stats journal associate editors resign over $3,000 publishing charge
Eighteen associate editors of the journal Statistics and Computing have announced they will resign after Springer Nature announced the journal would require a fee to publish.  In a July 8 stat…
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