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John McBride

@john-mcbride.bsky.social
297 followers 378 following 286 posts

Scientist studying the evolution of proteins and music (so far, separately). scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&… github.com/jomimc

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Kevin Marks @kevinmarks.com · 13/02/2024
Also
Screenshot of 2 tweets by Chris Marks:
Steven Pinker's books are like "people say that life is unjust and intolerable under neoliberal capitalism. But in fact, mean global consumption of fruit-by-the-foot is up 300x when compared to our 19th century counterparts"

But fruit by the foot didn't exist in the 1800s?

Steven Pinker: Not as we currently think of it, no. But if you consider fruit that had dropped from trees and was literally by people's feet, the picture starts to become much clearer
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John McBride @john-mcbride.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Heading now to Würzburg on the train. Good time to write up my talk on "Evolution and Ecology of Irish folk tunes". #ICCCM26 #musicscience 1/3
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Nicolas Audebert @nshaud.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
I'm burnt out of discussing "AI". I don't care for the press releases from big companies. I hate having to comment immediately. I dislike "hot takes". I'm worried we, as scientists, are losing touch with scientific values. We've become customers, salivating at ads marketed to investors. 1/15
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Henkjan Honing @musiccognition.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
anthropology.net
Monkeys Have Rhythm, a Study Said. The Data Disagrees.
A 2025 study said two macaques could synchronize to a beat. A rebuttal, and what newborn brains already do, say otherwise.
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Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
mathandai.org
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
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Seth Abramson @sethabramson.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
(🧵|🚨) BREAKING: *Three years* ago PROOF ran a long, well-sourced report confirming that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu *knew* from Middle Eastern “grand bargain” co-conspirators that the October 7 attack was coming before it came—and let Israelis die for political gain. Now Haaretz has confirmed it.
sethabramson.substack.com
As Israel Reels From Mass Deaths and a Seeming Intel Failure, Evidence Mounts of Negligence By Netanyahu—Or Maybe Something More Sinister
Israel has the world’s very best intel services, yet allegedly failed to foresee a massive invasion months in the making. Now media outlets are beginning to point a finger at Netanyahu—as is the IDF.
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Alexey Koshevoy @alexeykoshevoy.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Are you interested in lexical competition, agent-based modelling, strong inference and Ukrainian? Then this paper, just published in @pnasnexus.org, is for you. With @oliviermorin.bsky.social and @sobchuk.bsky.social, we asked a simple question: why do some words become more common than others?
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Graeme Gooday @graemegooday.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Great to see a Leeds colleague receiving this prestigious Royal Society Award.
Royal Society announcement of  2026 Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar medal for HPSAwarded of the W-B-M prize: Greg Radick
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Charles C Roseman @evoroseman.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
RE: freedom of speech, academic freedom, and race science. In this (long) thread, I’m going to 1) establish my bona fides on academic freedom and race science, 2) show why academic freedom and freedom of speech are different and… 1/34
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Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
New >100-author preprint led by @zixuanjia.bsky.social @yutoozaki.bsky.social and @danya-pav.bsky.social is IMO our most important yet. TLDR: music is not "useless" "auditory cheesecake" - across 901 participants speaking 30 languages, singing bonds us together >1.5x more than speaking. osf.io/pv3m9
Drake meme:
Wrong: "Music is "auditory cheesecake...useless...compared with language" -S. Pinker
Right: "Music is "more effective for collective bonding than language" - P. Savage, P. Loui, B. Tarr, A. Schachner, L. Glowacki, S. Mithen, W. T. FitchSynchronised group singing enhances social bonding more than group conversation or recitation does: A Registered Report across 30 languages

Authors 
Zixuan Jia* , Yuto Ozaki* , Danya Pavlovich* , Jiawen Huang , Emmanouil Benetos , Uswatun Khasanah , Sasha Calhoun , Gakuto Chiba , Yoichi Kitayama , Shinya Fujii , Dhwani P. Sadaphal , W. Tecumseh Fitch , , Sebastian Vaida , Simion Echim , Tudor Popescu , Zhuozhuang (Nelson) Shi ,  Massimo Grassi , Lucrezia Guiotto Nai Fovino , Jan Hajič jr. , Petr Nuska , Barbora Štěpánková , Prapatsorn Tiratanti , , Joseph A. Bulbulia , Ye He , Yukun Li , Fang Liu , Giacomo Novembre , Chloé Coissac , , Flavia Arnese , Yannick Jadoul , , Andrea Ravignani , , , , Florence Ewomazino Nweke , Oladimeji Adedayo Olajide , Oluwatoyin Olokodana-James , Neda Mousavi , Pauline Larrouy-Maestri , Ulvhild Færøvik , , Astrid Lenvik , Marianna Ruiz Loria , Jeronimo Quintero-Martínez , Juan F. Ariza , , Juan David Leongómez , Anne Cabildo , , Christina Vanden Bosch der Nederlanden , , Polina Proutskova , Daniel Macholl , Jia Hoong Ong , Chloe Wider , Bahar Tunçgenç , Francesca Talamini , Lilly Leuschner , William Forde Thompson , Gemma Perry , Lee Wolff , Robert M. Ross , Adwoa Ampiah-Bonney , Shira Gabriel , Peter Q. Pfordresher , Hineatua Parkinson , Ferenc Honbolygó , Csaba Kertész , Yuri G. Pavlov , Alexandra Kosachenko , Dmitrii Tarasov , Wojtek Krzyżanowski , Piotr Podlipniak , Shahaboddin Dabaghi Varnosfaderani , Ann-Kathrin Beck , Inkuk Kim , Taeyun Jung , John M. McBride , , Teona Lomsadze , , Sara Ripley , Katerine Bilous , Laurel J. Trainor , Joshua S. Bamford , , Marc Thompson , Martin Hartmann , Bronwyn Tarr , Kai Yi (Kaye) Han , Aston K. McCullough , Psyche Loui , Ruwin Dias , Aitana Garcia-Arasco , Anouk Bellot , Katarzyna Pisanski , , Limor Raviv , , Remi van Casteren ,, Kristoffer Bæk Kortegaard , , Niels Chr. Hansen , , Dilyana Kurdova , , Zoya Mikova , Adwoa Arhine , Michael Ohene Okantah Jr. , Kofi Kudonu Labayili , Yiqing Ma , D…Figure 5. Pre- vs. post-experiment mean bonding scores from n=901 participants across 43 sites singing/conversing/reciting in groups of 5-10 individuals at a time (1,017 participants before planned exclusions; see Table S1). Social bonding score (y-axis) represents the mean of six self-report variables (scaled from 0-100): 1) “I feel I am on the same team with the other participants”; 2) “I am similar to the other participants’’; 3) ‘‘I trust the other participants”; 4) Inclusion of other in the self (IOS): ‘‘How close do you currently feel to all the other participants?”; 5) “I feel strong ties to the other participants”; 6) “I have a lot in common with the other participants”.Figure 10. Site-level mean bonding score differences across three conditions. Each row represents one experimental site, ordered by the magnitude of the bonding score change in the Singing condition, with the smallest change at the bottom and the largest at the top. Points represent site-level mean bonding score differences (Post- minus Pre-intervention) for each condition. The dashed vertical line indicates zero change. Site labels in green indicate Indo-European languages; labels in black indicate non-Indo-European languages. Sites with multiple locations within the same language are labeled with the location in brackets (e.g., “English [Auckland]”). See Figures S7-8 for alternative visualisations using raw differences in social bonding scores or effect sizes.
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Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Call for papers for the next ICMPC (Int. Conference on Music Perception & Cognition) is now up (due end Oct): www.jyu.fi/en/events/ic... I'm honoured to join the other fabulous keynote speakers (@tuomaseerola.bsky.social, Bahar Tunçgenç, and Robert Zatorre). Can't wait to see everyone in Finland!
ICMPC - ESCOM 2027 Conference
The joint 19th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition (ICMPC) and 13th triennial European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM) Conference in Helsinki, Finland and Online

Keynote Speakers
Prof. Tuomas Eerola
Dr Patrick Savage
Dr. Bahar Tunçgenç
Prof. Robert Zatorre
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 23/08/2026
As Maya Angelou said, when people show you who they are, believe them. I'd rather have a klan member clearly articulating his views of how I should be eliminated than these garbage people dressing up their racism in intellectualism. You can fuck all the way off.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Lots of names on this list I don't recognize, but all the ones I do are like "Ah, OK". As I understand it, there are clear violations of contract in Cofnas's actions. The question is more: why didn't the univ notice this sooner?
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 23/08/2026
here is the thing. if you tell me that you believe that race is a biological category and that it is a guide to the objective superiority and inferiority of groups of people, i am not calling you a racist to *insult* you, i am calling you a racist because it best describes your beliefs.
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Chris Person @papapishu.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Sorry chatbot lovers but the waning of Boolean operators in most search functions on websites has made my life actively worse. You can't find anything, you can only have things suggested to you.
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Gregory Kohn @kohngregory.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
In the wake of Arday's death, Nathan Cofnas (who led the X mob against him) states his motivation. Beyond whistleblowing, he states that after a 'revolution' removes professors like Arday, it will open opportunities for him to become 'head of the department of eugenics and race science at Harvard'.
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Dermot Lynott @dermotlynott.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Time to start the new superstition that Mayo can only win the All Ireland while wearing white #GAA
Mayo players wearing white jerseys holding the Sam Maguire trophy aloft. Goalie is there wearing a red jersey holding
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
oh nice to see this thread resurrected. dual (and more) life cycle organisms are so common. those of us who study vertebrates are studying some of the most boring animals ever to evolve on this earth
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John McBride @john-mcbride.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Has anyone noticed that data on Zenodo is downloaded at an absurdly high rate? I deposited data a few days ago. I haven't made any post about it. I can only assume that the 16 downloads are NOT humans trying replicate or extend the work. Who is harvesting data from Zenodo??? Any blog posts on this?
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Felicity Hannah @felicityhannah.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
My son just told me is favourite sentence is: “I didn’t say we should kill him” because if you emphasise each different word it changes the entire meaning
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Artjoms Šeļa @artjomshl.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
our new paper with @plechac.bsky.social puts thousands of poems across languages in one shared space of poetic form! we use sequence alignment on rhyme schemes to investigate 'fixed forms' and all things between: not only 'sonnets', but 'sonnet-like' things. doi.org/10.1371/jour...
a clustered umap of the formal space of poetry defined by sequence alignment distances between rhyme schemes in 6 languages. below: the same space, but colored only by poems that bear 'fixed forms' labels in Czech and Russian corpora.
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Chris Conroy @conroyforreal.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Every time this goes around I’m stunned that there are still people who’ve never seen it, this performance is to drag what the Mona Lisa is to paintings, but maybe you’ve never seen the Mona Lisa, so today is the day you shall behold it
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Finn Brennan @finnbrennan.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
The great thing about the World Cup if you are Irish, is that you get to passionately support a different team every couple of days.
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Anjiolina Nakaya @anjiolina.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
What's with articles on "how scientists will adapt" and "AI inevitability in science" these days? Speed and volume are not ends in themselves. If we prioritize efficiency over curiosity, we risk optimizing for what AI can do rather than what science is for.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
My latest piece for @quantamagazine.bsky.social might stir the pot somewhat. It takes on the contentious notion that biological organisms can be considered to possess agency. www.quantamagazine.org/is-life-just...
quantamagazine.org
Is Life Just Different? | Quanta Magazine
The idea of ‘biological agency’ — that life devises its own goals and behaves accordingly — complicates our understanding of what it means to be alive. But does it serve a scientific purpose?
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Thom Scott-Phillips @thomscottphillips.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
In the spirit of self-promotion, here again is a summary of the best work I've done to date, containing the sort of insight and advance that I went into science to deliver ** Linguistic intuitions are about communicativeness, not grammaticalness ** thomscottphillips.substack.com/p/how-i-stoo...
thomscottphillips.substack.com
How I stood on the shoulders of giants
A few years ago I experienced a rare privilege. I saw and and understood a truth about the nature of reality that no-one else had ever seen before.
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Yogi Jaeger @yoginho.spore.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/06/2026
RE: spore.social/@yoginho/1166800806546… Offend in every way: a spontaneous little rant about honesty, integrity, and civility in academic (and social-media) discourse. www.johannesjaeger.eu/blog/offend-i… Or: read it in thread form ... 👇 #academia #civility […]
spore.social
Original post on spore.social
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John McBride @john-mcbride.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
shocking stuff... I was ready for a light bit of eugenics, but that was a bit too much for me
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Gustavo A. Ballen @gaballench.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
And finally it was published! Massive thanks to my coauthors, the editor and reviewers, and the institutions that supported our research. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...
journals.plos.org
What did the dove sing to Pope Gregory? Ancestral melody reconstruction in Gregorian chant using Bayesian phylogenetics
An attractive goal in the study of Gregorian chant melodies is reconstructing unobserved melodies as they may have been transmitted along their history, especially as early chant notation does not cap...
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tal boger @talboger.bsky.social · 26/05/2026
Complexity is ubiquitous in the world around us. But different stimuli are complex for different reasons. Does the mind nevertheless represent a ‘unified’ notion of complexity across domains? In @nathumbehav.nature.com, @chazfirestone.bsky.social & I show the answer is: yes! osf.io/preprints/ps...
Complex and simple stimuli across a variety of domains. Even though these stimuli are complex for different reasons, we suggest the mind unifies them by their complexity. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/p9xe3_v1
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Henkjan Honing @musiccognition.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Zeng et al. (2026, Science) reported an intriguing study of rhythmic pattern discrimination in bumble bees (Bombus terrestris). Yet the claim that ‘[they] form robust abstract rhythm representations’ may be premature. See doi.org/10.31234/osf....
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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Psychology not special, this is just terminology, I think? The way we describe is framework > theory > model - so framework is most general set of ideas. Model is most specific instantiation.
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Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
What is a psychological theory? Here's our take on this tricky and controversial question in this week's Experimentology chapter summary. Many things called "theories" in psychology aren't actually theories — they're frameworks. 🧵 experimentology.io
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Phil Corlett @philcorlett.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Can there also be bans for citing papers as supporting a claim when they, in fact, show the exact opposite of the claim?
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irishtune.info @irishtune.info · 05/05/2026
irishtune.id is live! Identify the Irish tune in a live performance or uploaded recording. Is it the best automated Irish tune identification in the world? You be the judge: share your feedback and comments here or using the irishtune.info feedback form.
irishtune.id
my.irishtune.info - Personalized Irish Traditional Music Tune Index
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Robin Blythe @rbly.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
I have no idea what causal inference means anymore. It's a grab-bag ranging from "we drew a DAG" to "we have identified Universal Truth and your puny RCT is no match for our IPW." Thinking clearly about your data, model and limitations isn't "causal", it's the bare minimum. #statsky #rstats #episky
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manvir singh @manvir.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Psilocybin mushrooms are found worldwide, yet I have long argued (based on direct evidence) that traditional use is confined to Mesoamerica. I was wrong! In a new paper led by @eselster.bsky.social, we document Indigenous psilocybin mushroom use—potentially very old—in highland southern Africa.
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Liam Carson @liamcarson.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
The fuel protests in Ireland are a Trojan Horse that aim to bring fascism to Ireland. We are witnessing the birth of an Irish version MAGA. The more you look, the more obvious it is that many of the key spokesmen (and they are all men) are dangerous anti-immigrant far right agitators.Wake up.
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Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
The authors have now responded to our critique. Basically, they say that because humans don't always agree on the same beat, the two macaques don't have to agree with humans, or with each other, or even with themselves, to count as evidence of beat synchronization. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
it is common for listeners to synchronize to the backbeat (weak beats) instead of the downbeat (strong beats), e.g. in Henry Mancini’s “Pink Panther” theme song. If two listeners (or two parts of the same listener’s body) were found to be moving in antiphase while remaining internally consistent, would it really be true that only one is “truly tapping to the subjective beat” while the other is merely “reacting to some salient rhythmic feature”?
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
The paper's framing: Human violent conflict has been explained by different theories in different places and times, including cultural identities. Chimps have violence but don't have cultural identity, so maybe cultural identity isn't so important to human conflict! Illogical Darwinist slop.
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Itai Yanai @itaiyanai.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
Expert's Dilemma: the more specialized you become, the less open you are to creative solutions from other fields. But the more you explore other fields, the more you risk losing credibility in your home field. (Night Science recap, Day 3)
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John McBride @john-mcbride.bsky.social · 28/03/2026
Sitting back sipping my tea, as a python coder, watching a fight break out amongst R users that I unwittingly fueled. Let the violence commence!
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Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
My first book, "Comparative musicology", is now fully published by Oxford U. Press: 
 -digital (free! academic.oup.com/book/62353) 
 -print (US$45; global.oup.com/academic/pro...)
 -short Nature summary (free! rdcu.be/e5gLE).

 Here's a thread with chapter summaries and reviews (1/11)
Front cover of my book, titled "Comparative musicology: Evolution, universals, and the science of the world's music" (published in print today by Oxford University Press)
1st of my 4-page essay published in Nature today titled "Music is not a universal language - but it can bring us together when words fail"
Picture caption: "Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (centre) performed in Spanish at the half-time show of the 2026 American Football Super Bowl LX."Praise for COMPARATIVE MUSICOLOGY (2026, Oxford University Press):
“meticulously crafted by one of the foremost scholars in the field…a landmark contribution to the science of music” - Psyche Loui, 2025-2026 President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition
“a strong statement of multidisciplinary inclusivity and collaborative research…bringing together culture bearers, ethnomusicologists and scientists from around the world” – Svanibor Pettan, 2021-2025 President of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance
“This engaging and humane book by a leading researcher in comparative musicology is an ideal entry point for students and scholars” -Aniruddh D. Patel, author of Music, Language, and the Brain
“a conceptual breakthrough, a work of exceptional clarity and insight.” – William F. Thompson, author of The Science and Psychology of Music
“inviting to the specialist and non specialist, this innovative text… [demonstrates] how scientific and humanistic approaches can combine to plumb the mysteries of music.“ – Anna Lomax Wood, author of “Songs of Earth”
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mhoeschele.bsky.social @mhoeschele.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
I have a new PhD position available on any topic related to musicality or animal communication that aligns well with our current research programs. Deadline March 31: oeaw.ac.at/jobs?jh=795a... For more info about my Musicality and Bioacoustics group: oeaw.ac.at/en/ari/resea...
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Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Just emailed the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand explaining that I had to decline their kind invitation to publish an invited article due to Wiley's PCI-hostile policy. Have other @peercommunityin.bsky.social supporters been doing this? Would be nice to coordinate.
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Peter Cook @pfcook.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
🧠🧪🧵1/37 Our new paper on how pinniped (seal and sea lion) brains evolved to unlock vocal plasticity is this week's @science.org cover. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
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Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 11/03/2026
New paper showing that much of the apparent success of protein language models in predicting mutational effects is a mirage: These models mostly memorize sites. 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Retraction Watch @retractionwatch.com · 10/03/2026
We're thrilled to announce the Ctrl-Z Award, a US$2,500 prize for researchers “who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record." Covered by @nature.com today; read more here: centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/03/10/a...
nature.com
Keep calm and be transparent: advice from scientists who retracted their papers
Retractions correct the scientific record, but they have stigma attached to them. Some in the research community want that to change.
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