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Emma Barratt

@ebarratt.bsky.social
1.9K followers 1.4K following 220 posts

Editor of the British Psychological Society's Research Digest. Previously Editor/astronaut botherer at the European Space Agency, Writer at SciShow, and more.

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Reposted by Emma Barratt
John Stott @jpsastro.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky
I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful.

Review process

As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking. 

This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review.  Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it.

Feedback on your application

Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage.  To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.
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Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Hey friends, trying to find a reviewer who could provide a review on an empirical EMA paper focused on emotion regulation. I've had 31 declines so getting a little desperate and feel really bad for the authors. Let me know here or per email (firstnamesecondname@gmail.com)
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Frances Ryan @francesryan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Do you know anyone looking to get into journalism? Maybe with a disability or chronic illness? I’m writing a free newsletter that gives tips & advice on breaking into journalism. Also, gossip. If you know anyone who might find it useful, please pass on! Subscribe: open.substack.com/pub/frances336
open.substack.com
Press Access | Frances Ryan | Substack
The things nobody tells disabled journalists about an industry that wasn’t built for us. Click to read Press Access, by Frances Ryan, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.
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ingmarvisser.bsky.social @ingmarvisser.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
New paper 🍼📄 ManyBabies 3 is out (open access, registered report in Developmental Science). 30 labs, 33 languages, 839 infants set out to replicate a textbook finding: 7-month-olds learn abstract rules from speech (@garymarcus.bsky.social et al., 1999). We didn’t find it. 🧵
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Andreas Brandmaier @brandmaier.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Ever looked at your graph and thought: this needs a more dramatic exit strategy? Make your R base plots self-destruct with style. If you must, download here: github.com/brandmaier/d... #RStats #DataVisualization #RProgramming #DataScience #OpenSource #AcademicHumor #noAI
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ABSW @absw.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
A statement from the chair and the board of the ABSW.  www.absw.org.uk/articles/sta...
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Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
New preprint! 🎉 I analysed 1660 papers from 4 psychology journals and found materials sharing went from 9% of papers in 2015 to 82% in 2025, and these materials *do* get downloaded — a median of 135 times each. BUT shared code is often hard to run. doi.org/10.31234/osf... Let's walk through it 🧵
Two-panel figure. Panel a is a flow diagram tracking 1,611 empirical psychology articles from publication year (545 in 2015, 552 in 2020, 514 in 2025) to repository-link type: 785 link an OSF project, 85 link another platform, and 741 link no repository. Of those with an OSF link, download counts were retrieved for 670 and not retrieved for 115. Panel b is a line chart of the share of empirical papers linking OSF across 2015, 2020 and 2025. The overall rate, shown as a dashed black line, rises from 9% to 57% to 82%. All four journals rise steeply and end close together: Psychological Science 92%, JESP 89%, JML 83%, Cognition 76%, with Psychological Science highest throughout.Three-panel figure. Panel a: ridgeline plot of downloads per file by material type on a log scale, with the percentage never downloaded labelled for each — archive 16% of 545 files, documents 20% of 2,970, code 12% of 3,471, other 17% of 1,646, data 21% of 10,051, media 35% of 2,120, images 35% of 4,102. Most files cluster between 1 and 10 downloads, with long right tails past 100. Panel b: ridgeline plot of downloads per paper by journal, log scale, with dashed median lines; Psychological Science is highest, then JESP, JML and Cognition. Panel c: stacked bars showing, for documents, data and code separately, the share of papers by download band (0, 1–10, 11–100, more than 100) in 2015, 2020 and 2025. The share exceeding 100 downloads falls sharply over time in all three types, from roughly two-thirds in 2015 to a quarter or less in 2025, as the 1–10 band grows.Four-panel figure. Panel a: statistical languages detected among 333 papers with retrievable code — R 88%, SPSS 12%, Stata 4%, SAS 1%. Panel b: code red flags among those 333 papers — 34% hard-code an absolute path, 40% reference a missing file — above documentation among 672 OSF-linked papers — 21% have a README, 30% are documented by README, description or wiki. Panel c: among 562 Elsevier papers with no repository link, 44% (245) host at least one journal supplementary file but only 14% (77) host data, code or an archive. Panel d: composition of those 448 hosted files — documents 52%, data 21%, media 9%, other 7%, archive 6%, code 3%, images 1%. The code panels are green, the journal-supplement panels blue.Coefficient plot (download predictors)

Dot-and-whisker plot of three standardised predictors of OSF download volume, each with a 95% confidence interval. Repository size (number of files) has the largest effect at about 0.76, citations about 0.38, and altmetric attention about 0.12. All three intervals sit entirely above zero, so each predicts more downloads, with repository size roughly twice the effect of citations and six times that of attention. X-axis: standardised effect, −0.2 to 1.0.
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Nick Davis @njdavis.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Genuine question: How do you know you are in control of a dream, rather than just experiencing the illusion of control? We need a Libet task for dreams.
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MORPHSS @morphss.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
'The word traceability, in place of reproducibility, [...] refers to the extent to which the decisions made by the researcher are transparently documented, allowing readers to see how conclusions were reached' @maddipow.bsky.social in new paper 'Can open science speak qualitative?' ⬇️
doi.org
Can open science speak qualitative? Rearticulating open science vocabulary for qualitative research
‘Open research’ (or ‘open science’) has substantially reshaped conversations surrounding rigor, transparency, and accountability, yet its vocabulary remains largely rooted in quantitative, positivi...
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Ruben C. Arslan @ruben.the100.ci · 11/09/2026
An interesting thing is happening to me at the moment. I have a standing bug bounty policy for my first authored scientific work. That means, I've committed to pay people who report bugs in my code, up to 750€ for severe errors. Since GPT-6 Astra came out, I'm now getting several bug reports daily.
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The Psychologist @psychmag.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Have you seen how much we've published this week? All available to explore via www.bps.org.uk/psychologist
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Wiley Brain and Psychology @wileybrainpsych.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Ready to shape where therapy research meets clinical practice? 🧠 @bpsofficial.bsky.social is looking for an Editor-in-Chief for Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. Team or solo applications welcome. Apply ASAP: bit.ly/3SrRWMm
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Konstantina Kilteni @kkilteni.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Thrilled to see our paper @nathumbehav.nature.com, led by the brilliant (Bsky-less) PhD student Ziliang Xiong from @erc.europa.eu project #TicklishHuman! We asked: -Is human ticklishness shared across cultures? -Can we explain where on the body we are ticklish? 🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Human ticklishness is a widespread, culturally shared and bodily organized sensory experience - Nature Human Behaviour
Ticklishness is a familiar but poorly understood experience. Xiong and Kilteni show that ticklishness is culturally shared and follows a distinct bodily topography. They evaluate different theories on...
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Josef O'Shea @josefoshea.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Would like some Actual Good News about the environment ?
corkbeo.ie
Joy as Irish bird feared gone forever returns to Cork
Return of the corncrake gives hope for other native species
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Thoughtful piece: “as a field, we seem to have given up on our representation issue. We know about it, we say we care about it, but the decisions we make (from what demographic data to collect to what papers to publish) suggests to me that we've become apathetic about it all”
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Dr Madeleine Pownall @maddipow.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
"Metascience needs psychology and we need to be better at communicating this need. Understanding how researchers actually develop and change may be one of the most missing pieces in understanding how science itself changes." www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...
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Emma Barratt @ebarratt.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Just spotted this on my travels, and I cannot express how excited this research makes me: www.nasa.gov/reference/b-... Great to see it linked to PMOS (PCOS), too.
nasa.gov
B-Complex - NASA
Formal project title: B-Complex: A Nutraceutical SANS Countermeasure
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Long Covid Kids @longcovidkids.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
🧡 Keep an eye out between 5 and 6pm this evening! Some of our members and our Chair of Trustees will be featured on Channel 5 News. We're advised this is when the report is expected to air. If you can, please help us spread the word by liking, commenting on posts. 🙏 for your support.
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British Psychological Society @bpsofficial.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
We're excited to launch Postgraduate Quarterly, a publication created by & for the postgraduate psych community. It brings together research, reflections, & insights from across the postgraduate journey, while championing the voices shaping the future. 👉 explore.bps.org.uk/content/bpspgq
BPS Postgraduate Quarterly Cover Volume 1 Spring 2026. BPS peer reviewed member periodical
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Emma Barratt @ebarratt.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I'm on the hunt for papers to cover on Research Digest again. Psychologists, if you've got a recent paper you'd like us to consider, drop a link!
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Alison Stenning @alisonstenning.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Oh, and still almost no *national* media and political coverage… The Tyneside coastal communities, who have been doing back-breaking work round the clock to clear as many nurdles as possible, won’t get answers and a proper clean-up till this spill gets more attention. Read through thread for more.
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Body Eyes and Movement (BEAM) Lab @beamlab.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
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Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
New website is live, including a new blog post :). I respond to the call by @psychscience.bsky.social asking how we can improve APS conferences. eiko-fried.com/blog/in-pers...
eiko-fried.com
In-person conferences in 2026: yay or nay? | Eiko Fried
Some ideas on improving conferences so they are worth the financial, time, and ecological investments.
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BPS Research Digest @researchdigest.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
A recent preprint organises known sensory experiences in a fresh way – and leads researchers into the unexplored: www.bps.org.uk/research-dig...
bps.org.uk
New framework broadens the search for unstudied sensory experiences | BPS
A recent preprint organises known sensory experiences in a fresh way – and leads researchers into the unexplored.
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pineurosci.bsky.social @pineurosci.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
New work on the effects of psychedelics on hierarchical cortical propagations out in PNAS! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Counter to our expectations, psychedelics attenuated bottom-up propagations into the Default Mode Network across substances and species. Thread below:
pnas.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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kim_harding ✅ @kim-harding.mastodon.scot.ap.brid.gy · 22/06/2026
Make science more reliable: study people as they go about their lives www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-… Researchers have long discussed the replication crisis. Now it’s time to tackle another problem in the behavioural sciences: generalizability.
nature.com
Make science more reliable: study people as they go about their lives
Researchers have long discussed the replication crisis. Now it’s time to tackle another problem in the behavioural sciences: generalizability.
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PsychoPy @psychopy.org · 22/06/2026
🎉 PsychoPy 2026.2.0 is now available for testing! We'd love your help testing it out. Please report any bugs or issues on the forum so we can squash them early and deliver smooth bug-fix releases ahead of teaching term and lab computer deployments. discourse.psychopy.org/t/psychopy-2...
discourse.psychopy.org
PsychoPy 2026.2.0 release!
Hi Everyone! We’re excited to share that PsychoPy version 2026.2.0 is now available for testing!  🎉 Please do download it, give it a test, and report an issues you encounter on the forum here.…
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Ed Hawkins @edhawkins.org · 23/06/2026
Happy birthday to the heatwave of 1976 which began today 50 years ago, peaking at 35.9°C. If a comparable heatwave happened in the current climate it would be 3-4°C hotter, peaking at 38-39°C. And the actual forecast is for temperatures of 38-39°C in the next few days with a red heatwave warning.
The summer of 1976 translated into a warmer climate.
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Lynda Boothroyd @drboothroyd.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
If you do research on body image, body perception, appearance psychology or related topics in social or health sciences, please do get involved with Perspectives in Body Image. It was an amazing conference with ppl from so many countries last year. Can't wait to see everyone's work in 2027.
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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
A timely piece on scientific overload reportearth.substack.com/p/how-mega-s...
reportearth.substack.com
How ‘mega-science’ helps explain the plight of science communicators right now
How do we communicate about -- or as journalists, cover -- 3.5 million scientific studies per year?
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Running an experiment to study racial discrimination? Going to use names to signal race? Here's a new tool! This helps you to choose the names you want to use based on: 1.) the strength of the racial signal you want to send 2.) whether you want to hold other factors (e.g., class) constant
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Juliet E McKenna @julietemckenna.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Some good news amid the ongoing awful everything else. 'medics in London have successfully used the technique to effectively cure five NHS patients with severe lupus aged between 19 and 50' www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
theguardian.com
Lupus patients in England in remission after pioneering NHS trial of GM therapy
Doctors say therapy that genetically modifies person’s T-cells could offer cure for chronic autoimmune disease
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Poppy Cooper @poppycooper.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Does it matter which day of your #menstrualcycle you get #vaccinated? 💉 My first PhD paper, just published in #npj Women's Health, suggests it might. 🧵
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Jeremy Labrecque @jeremylabrecque.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
As a course assignment, I had students rewrite the discussion section from an actual paper (using track changes) and incorporate information from a DAG and bias analyses they ran. Some of these are among the best discussion sections I've ever seen!
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Today I'm posting a new blog about an astonishing scientific own goal. Hundreds of papers have reported using a totally wrong antibody to investigate the tumor suppressor p16. This mistake has happened because scientists have muddled the names of two proteins. forbetterscience.com/2026/06/02/m...
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Adrian Daub @adriandaub.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
University administrators two years ago: we can’t allow social justice movements to change the university as we know it University administrators today: in order to accommodate the new probabilistic bullshit generator no one likes we must change everything about the university
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BPS Research Digest @researchdigest.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
New research finds coming back to Earth after floating in space leads astronauts’ brains to predict that items will rise, rather than float, if they drop them: www.bps.org.uk/research-dig...
bps.org.uk
Returning astronauts expect dropped objects to rise | BPS
New research finds that coming back to Earth after floating in space leads astronauts’ brains to predict that items will rise, rather than float, if they drop them.
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Tim Behrens @behrenstimb.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
This is the May cover of NN but it has already been debunked on biorxiv www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Such a clear statement about the ridiculous pace of publishing (not just NN).
biorxiv.org
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BPS Research Digest @researchdigest.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
🧠 This could be yet another reason exercise is vital for brain health: New research in mice finds that exercise may help keep the brain healthy by mechanically assisting cerebrospinal fluid circulation. www.bps.org.uk/research-dig...
bps.org.uk
A body in motion puts the brain in motion, too | BPS
New research in mice finds that exercise may help keep the brain healthy by mechanically assisting cerebrospinal fluid circulation.
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PsyPost @psypost.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Scientists reveal the brain’s surprisingly active role in building exercise endurance
psypost.org
Scientists reveal the brain’s surprisingly active role in building exercise endurance
New research published in Neuron reveals that physical endurance depends heavily on the brain. Scientists discovered that specific neurons activate immediately after exercise to coordinate muscle adaptation.
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Simeon Schmauß @stim3on.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
The Artemis II Orion capsule separating from the European Service module (now from two angles) 4K resolution: youtu.be/_QelA8UonoQ
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Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
I fear Labour people risk falling into an ecological fallacy visible from space when reacting to these results. Here is what is very clear in results so far: Labour are losing *seats* to Reform, but... Labour are losing *votes* to the Greens Greens split the vote, Ref comes thru middle
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
A student who sets out to write a research paper will now encounter chatbots who will offer to do their work in their word document, in their learning management system, in their email, in their web browser, and in certain library database interfaces.
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The Psychologist @psychmag.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Why consciousness science needs to look beyond the brain – and what practitioners can do right now. Stephen Hartshorn and Michael O'Brien argue that ‘the body is not the background’… With author-narrated audio for @bpsofficial.bsky.social members. www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...
bps.org.uk
Why consciousness science needs to look beyond the brain – and what practitioners can do right now | BPS
Stephen Hartshorn and Michael O'Brien argue that ‘the body is not the background’…
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The Psychologist @psychmag.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
A new entry into our top three 'Most read of 2026'… our @researchdigest.bsky.social on a new study from Daniella Wain and colleagues including @brettheasman.bsky.social www.bps.org.uk/research-dig...
bps.org.uk
New study highlights the day-to-day importance of autistic flow | BPS
Work by Daniella Wain and colleagues details a non-pathologising view of flow states in autistic individuals, and how they maintain wellbeing
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It's ME(Jaime) @exceedhergrasp1.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
We're embarking on a new project to create guidelines for Emergency Department care for people with #MECFS and #LongCOVID. If you are able to support the project, that would be wonderful; if you aren't able just now, I hope you'll share. millionsmissing.funraise.org/fundraiser/m...
millionsmissing.funraise.org
#MillionsMissing 2026
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Clinically Vulnerable Families 💙💜💗 @cvcev.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
A success story, yes. But for whom?" The UK Covid Inquiry just called the vaccines & therapeutics rollout a triumph. Meanwhile: → 5M antivirals binned → UK denied immunocompromised people suitable protection → u5s never offered a vaccine www.clinicallyvulnerable.org/post/covid-i...
clinicallyvulnerable.org
Covid Inquiry Module 4, vaccines and therapeutics report: "A success story, yes. But for whom?"
Opinion | 22 April 2026By Lara Wong, Founder and CEO, Clinically Vulnerable FamiliesWhen I set up Clinically Vulnerable Families in August 2020, I had no idea it would eventually lead me to give evi...
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The Psychologist @psychmag.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
The Psychologist homepage looking fine today… www.bps.org.uk/psychologist
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Yashar Ali 🐘 @yasharali.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
Absolutely incredible. NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman, who commanded Artemis II, took this footage from the far side of the Moon with his iPhone. Watch with sound on.
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