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Maxine Sherman

@maxinesherman.bsky.social
528 followers 242 following 37 posts

Lecturer at Sussex Uni studying metacognition & other things.

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Reposted by Maxine Sherman
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 27/09/2025
If you are an academic in the European Union, please consider signing: "to end bilateral agreements with Israeli institutions & for EU to uphold its own legal obligations and immediately end the EU-Israel Association agreement in view of Israel’s breach of Article 2." uppsaladeclaration.se/europe/
EUROPEAN DECLARATION OF CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION
No academia as usual during Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide in Palestine

Faculty and staff in European higher education and research call on their academic leaders to end bilateral agreements with Israeli institutions and companies complicit in grave violations of international law (jus cogens), including illegal occupation, segregation and apartheid, genocide and the violation of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people.
We call on the European Union to uphold its own legal obligations and immediately end the EU-Israel Association agreement in view of Israel’s breach of Article 2. Under the Agreement, the European Commission has granted over €2.12 billion in European research funding to Israeli institutions, including institutions complicit in grave violations of international law (notably the Israeli Ministry of Defence).
In the absence of principled action as outlined above, we declare our conscientious objection to collaboration with Israeli institutions and companies complicit in grave violations of international law and we pledge our support for the right of the Palestinian people to life, dignity, and self-determination.
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
Please consider sharing this with your followers @ucu.org.uk @jeremycorbyn.bsky.social @zarahsultana.bsky.social @pscupdates.bsky.social
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 28/09/2025
Abdelrahman Al Gherbawi is so close to being able to begin his postgraduate studies in Ireland - he has his visa, the university have waived his tuition. Now he needs to fundraise his living and evacuation costs. If you can, please help by donating here: #Gaza #Palestine chuffed.org/project/1514...
chuffed.org
Help Get Abdelrahman from Gaza to Ireland to Study
For the past four years, I have been working to secure a postgraduate study opportunity abroad. When the war on Gaza began two years ago, it shattered those efforts and dreams, and survival itself bec...
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Kobe Desender @kobedesender.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Introducing hMFC: A Bayesian hierarchical model of trial-to-trial fluctuations in decision criterion! Now out in @plos.org Comp Bio. led by Robin Vloeberghs with @anne-urai.bsky.social Scott Linderman Paper: desenderlab.com/wp-content/u... Thread ↓↓↓ #PsychSciSky #Neuroscience #Neuroskyence
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
For anyone who is not yet taking part, join the full cultural and academic boycott of Israel bdsmovement.net/get-involved...
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
Holy shit, they did it. They wrote the headline.
NYC Mass Shooting Was Nearly Impossible to Prevent, Experts Say
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Sad to hear that Margaret Boden, pioneer in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, has passed away. Just a few days ago, someone reactivated the post below. I warmly recommend watching the video. Thank you Margaret for founding and shaping our field. www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/re...
sussex.ac.uk
Obituary: Professor Maggie Boden
The University of Sussex mourns the loss of Professor Margaret (Maggie) Boden, a pioneering figure in cognitive science and artificial intelligence.
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 01/09/2024
Did you all know that Margaret Boden founded the first School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences in 1987. No? Well, now you do 😌 Btw, listen to this great talk by her. I'll be adding this to the resources from our 1st year students in Intro to AI. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPRA...
youtube.com
Professor Margaret Boden - Human-level AI: Is it Looming or Illusory?
YouTube video by CSER Cambridge
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
If you are UK academic please consider signing this open letter to Starmer, Cooper, Lammy and Falconer calling on them to do what France, Italy, Ireland and others have already done: defer the req for biometrics & enable the safe passage of students in Gaza to the UK docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
Open letter from UK university staff: Request for biometric deferral and safe evacuation of incoming Palestinian students and scholars from Gaza to UK Universities
More than 40 students currently trapped in Gaza with full scholarships to UK Universities are asking for a safe route to come and study. We, the academic community hoping to welcome these scholars, ca...
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Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
The “appalling scenes in Gaza” have been enabled by the arms, surveillance & diplomatic cover Keir Starmer’s Labour government have provided to a genocidal apartheid state. He still refuses to call it a genocide because he is complicit in it. Keir Starmer belongs in The Hague.
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
The betas look about right to me. For example, for the pilot data +1 imagery corresponds to ~42ms drop in RT, which matches the slope in the figure
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
This is the most appalling sophistry. I don't even know where to start, but here are some of my personal highlights: 1. "AI-shaming" is classist because AI allows everyone to "pass" as part of the bourgeoisie, which would be a good thing that Marx would like
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
4. Being beholden to Big-Tech empowers the people. Also, Big Tech and its beneficiaries are definitely not part of the privileged class and it is definitely in my interest to be replaced by AI.
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
3. Appropriately feeling bad for passing off AI-generated content as your own is a "mental condition"
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
2. Author claims this quote supports the view that "AI-shaming" is racist when the quote is obviously articulating the view that AI itself is racist
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
This is the most appalling sophistry. I don't even know where to start, but here are some of my personal highlights: 1. "AI-shaming" is classist because AI allows everyone to "pass" as part of the bourgeoisie, which would be a good thing that Marx would like
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Anil Seth @anilseth.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
It's a thrill to see this project, led by @neuromorphicboki.bsky.social, see the light of day. It's led me to rethink how emergence and consciousness relate, and it's been an honour and pleasure to work on it with Boki and team (@thomasandrillon.bsky.social, Lionel Barnett, Olivia Carter).👇🏽
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
Depends on what you mean by "many", I guess. But very few Israelis refuse to serve and the number that burned their draft papers recently was very small. +972 said 10. Perhaps it's more, but it's still the tiny minority
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
Unfortunately polling doesnt support this. There's support for mass expulsion/ethnic cleansing & the genocidal statement "there are no innocents in Gaza". Older polling showed Israelis felt the gov action in Gaza was "about right". Much of the anger relates to other things, eg the Israeli hostages
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Emma Kennedy @emmakeddev.bsky.social · 20/07/2025
This is disgraceful. Students in Gaza accepted to many universities (not just Cambridge or Oxford!) being blocked by the UK Home Office's unreasonable and inflexible demands. www.thetimes.com/world/middle...
thetimes.com
Living in Gaza, accepted to Cambridge — blocked by Home Office
Young Palestinians overcome unimaginable challenges just to apply to university, only for the British government to make unfeasible visa demands
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Blake Richards @tyrellturing.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
1/3) This may be a very important paper, it suggests that there are no prediction error encoding neurons in sensory areas of cortex: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... I personally am a big fan of the idea that cortical regions (allo and neo) are doing sequence prediction. But... 🧠📈 🧪
biorxiv.org
Sensory responses of visual cortical neurons are not prediction errors
Predictive coding is theorized to be a ubiquitous cortical process to explain sensory responses. It asserts that the brain continuously predicts sensory information and imposes those predictions on lo...
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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
The "reproducibility crisis" in science constantly makes headlines. Repro efforts are often limited. What if you could assess reproducibility of an entire field? That's what @brunolemaitre.bsky.social et al. have done. Fly immunity is highly replicable & offers lessons for #metascience A 🧵 1/n
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 27/06/2025
Hello & HAPPY FRIDAY, as promised an open letter by my lovely colleagues and myself. Everybody, feel free to sign this even if you are not NL-based and ‼️ share ‼️ (anonymous signature is poss): Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia openletter.earth/open-letter-...
Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia
Our demands, see link
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Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Every person aboard the Madleen is a hero. The genocidal Israeli state's attack on unarmed activists aboard a UK-flagged vessel delivering aid to Gaza is a flagrant breach of international law. The UK must sanction Israel, end all arms & surveillance, & expel its ambassador.
Madleen freedom flotilla crewPhoto of the crew holding their hands up after being intercepted and attacked by the genocidal Israeli navy — and kidnapped
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Debbie Rua @debbierua.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
#madleen #flotilla #gaza #greta
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Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition @freedomflotilla.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Take one minute: go to bit.ly/IsraelOnNotice and send a letter to the Israeli government, UN officials, and diplomatic missions demanding that Israel abide by international law and refrain from attacking, sabotaging or otherwise interfering with the #Madleen and her mission.
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
The first preprint from Clémence Compain's PhD 🎉 She showed that on a low-stakes numerosity task, people can reduce their decision bias on instruction and do so non-trivially, in a manner distinct from simply "trying harder". Well done Clémence! with @anilseth.bsky.social
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Peter Lush @peterlush.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
A Stage 1 registered report with Zoltan Dienes: "Reversing the Rubber Hand Illusion with demand characteristics and phenomenological control." A test of whether PC can reverse typical RHI effects, with stronger illusion responses for asynchronous than synchronous conditions. osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Prof. Emily Nordmann @emilynordmann.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
This paper makes important point that we're not talking about impact of AI on reading enough. Marking work that's full of AI is demoralising but in some ways, the threat AI poses to comprehension is bigger than the threat to what students produce... www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... #AcademicSky
ABSTRACT
Generative AI (GenAI) summarisers, tools that provide concise summaries of digital texts, are increasingly marketed to higher education students as time-saving aids for engaging with complex academic materials. As their prevalence grows, so does their potential impact on students’ reading practices and learning outcomes. Through an exploratory literature review, we demonstrate a significant gap in scholarly discussion and empirical research examining the extent and effects of AI summariser use among students. We explore the marketed promises of AI summarisers, hypothesise about their likely use cases, and consider concerns surrounding their impact on students’ engagement with academic texts. Our analysis is grounded in contemporary higher education literature on digital reading practices, scaffolded learning, and the development of critical thinking skills. This paper informs policy and practice by proposing a critical research agenda that addresses key questions about the prevalence, impact, and implications of GenAI summarisers in higher education. By stimulating scholarly discussion on this emerging technology, we aim to provide a foundation for evidence-based recommendations on the responsible integration of AI summarisers in academic settings, relevant to an international audience of educators, researchers, and policymakers in higher education.
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 16/08/2024
🚨Our paper `Reclaiming AI as a theoretical tool for cognitive science' is now forthcoming in the journal Computational Brain & Behaviour. (Preprint: osf.io/preprints/ps...) Below a thread summary 🧵1/n #metatheory #AGI #AIhype #cogsci #theoreticalpsych #criticalAIliteracy
The idea that human cognition is, or can be understood as, a form of computation is a useful conceptual tool for cognitive science. It was a foundational assumption during the birth of cognitive science as a multidisciplinary field, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) as one of its contributing fields. One conception of Al in this context is as a provider of computational tools (frameworks, concepts, formalisms, models, proofs, simulations, etc.) that support theory building in cognitive science. The contemporary field of Al, however, has taken the theoretical possibility of explaining human cognition as a form of computation to imply the practical feasibility of realising human(-like or -level) cognition in factual computational systems; and, the field frames this realisation as a short-term inevitability. Yet, as we formally prove herein, creating systems with human(-like or -level) cognition is intrinsically computationally intractable.
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
So well deserved! Congratulations 🎊
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Einstein Foundation Berlin @einsteinberlin.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
🏆 Research integrity consultant and image forensics expert @elisabethbik.bsky.social has uncovered fraudulent data in over 7,600 scientific papers and exposed the practices of ‘paper mills’ that produce counterfeit scientific articles. She is honoured with the €200K Individual Award. Congrats!
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Jonathan Cook @jonathan-cook.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Israel refused to move to phase two of the ceasefire, violating the agreement it signed up to. Israel kept killing Palestinians throughout phase one, never actually ceasing its fire. And now it's right back in its comfort zone: genocide. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cz...
bbc.co.uk
More than 400 killed by Israeli air strikes on Gaza, Hamas-run ministry says, Hamas-run ministry says - live updates
The strikes across the Gaza Strip end two months of relative calm since a ceasefire began on 19 January.
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Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Today, mothers and fathers in Gaza are mourning their children because governments across the world did not deem their lives worthy of protection.
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Matthew Apps @brainapps.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
Please repost this PhD opportunity in my group working on cognitive computational and decision neuroscience.
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
I'm not reading this as an attack on professional services staff at all - I complete agree they're essential. Personally I read this as an attack on the layers upon layers of upper management whose actual contributions to the smooth running of the university are unclear.
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Masud Husain @masudhusain.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Great choice!
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 01/03/2025
Tired but happy to say this is out w @andreaeyleen.bsky.social: Are Neurocognitive Representations 'Small Cakes'? philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24834/ We analyse cog neuro theories showing how vicious regress, e.g. the homunculus fallacy, is (sadly) alive and well — and importantly how to avoid it. 1/
In order to understand cognition, we often recruit analogies as building blocks of theories to aid us in this quest. One such attempt, originating in folklore and alchemy, is the homunculus: a miniature human who resides in the skull and performs cognition. Perhaps surprisingly, this appears indistinguishable from the implicit proposal of many neurocognitive theories, including that of the 'cognitive map,' which proposes a representational substrate for episodic memories and navigational capacities. In such 'small cakes' cases, neurocognitive representations are assumed to be meaningful and about the world, though it is wholly unclear who is reading them, how they are interpreted, and how they come to mean what they do. We analyze the 'small cakes' problem in neurocognitive theories (including, but not limited to, the cognitive map) and find that such an approach a) causes infinite regress in the explanatory chain, requiring a human-in-the-loop to resolve, and b) results in a computationally inert account of representation, providing neither a function nor a mechanism. We caution against a 'small cakes' theoretical practice across computational cognitive modelling, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, wherein the scientist inserts their (or other humans') cognition into models because otherwise the models neither perform as advertised, nor mean what they are purported to, without said 'cake insertion.' We argue that the solution is to tease apart explanandum and explanans for a given scientific investigation, with an eye towards avoiding van Rooij's (formal) or Ryle's (informal) infinite regresses.

Figure 1 in https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24834/Box 1 in https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24834/Box 2 in https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/24834/
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Peace & Justice Project @peaceandjustice.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Israeli forces in the illegally-occupied West Bank have stepped up their assaults on Palestinian communities and vital humanitarian organisations. All governments must condemn these attacks and the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and end arms sales to Israel.
newarab.com
Israeli forces raid UNRWA schools in West Bank, East Jerusalem
Security forces raided several schools in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday after Netanyahu ordered the enforcement of law banning the UN agency from Palestine.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 09/02/2025
Microsoft's own research confirms something that was already pretty obvious: relying on a text generating machine to come up with answers erodes critical thinking, and is a method favoured by those who never liked doing critical thinking in the first place advait.org/files/lee_20...
advait.org
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Krish D. Singh @magnetokrishio.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
We are very excited to announce the open release of a new 170 participant dataset: Linked MEG, TMS, multimodal 3T MRI, 7T MRI, Connectom MRI, cognitive /questionnaire data. Immense effort from a fabulous CUBRIC team. Paper by Carolyn McNabb et al: doi.org/10.1038/s415...
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Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
This Registered Report masterpiece just dropped at BMC Biology, brilliantly led by a great team with the help of 300+ analysts & reviewers Same question, same data: go figure! tl;dr: Substantial heterogeneity among results comes from differences among analytical choices 🔗 doi.org/10.1186/s129...
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D. I. Burin @diburina.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
Curso online "This course series will give an introduction to open and reproducible research practices and guides on how to implement them in your own research practice and make them more visible to the research community" www.ub.uio.no/english/cour...
ub.uio.no
Open and reproducible research - University of Oslo Library
More and more researchers and students across disciplines are implementing open research practices, preregistering their hypotheses, methods, and analysis plans, sharing research materials, data and a...
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BladeoftheSun @bladeofthes.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
Perhaps we can blame Donald Trump for the Ethnic Cleansing and show support for the Palestinians, rather than blaming people who didn't vote for Kamala Harris and ignoring the Palestinians completely?
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
You'd need to take it out from their library. If you go to search.library.uvic.ca and search for "Communicative functions of facial displays in conversation" it pops up. Uni libraries always hold PhDs from their students - hopefully they can lend it to you/your library can borrow it on your behalf
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
They absolutely are road blocks, by design. That's the whole point - to stop, or at least slow down, people like Musk. Absolutely agree - more road blocks please!
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
I think it's ok to just say what happened. The prereg didn't set a min sample size and the stopping rule was satisfied at N=12. 12 is low, & on a reviewer's request you set a minimum of 18 & collected more data. I've still never done an RR - really want to, I usually forget something in my preregs!
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Personally I'd agree to increase the N. It sounds like it's somewhat surprising that the effect is coming out so strong, and perhaps had a minimum sample size been set it would have been higher than 12 anyway? In any case, for the most part more data is better :)
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Maxine Sherman @maxinesherman.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Zoltan Dienes has some great ones: www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy... osf.io/preprints/ps...
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