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Rebecca Sear

@rebeccasear.bsky.social
12K followers 4K following 3.6K posts

Director of the Centre for Culture and Evolution, Brunel University London @brunelcce.bsky.social www.rebeccasear.org

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 11h
“Unia, Belgium’s independent centre for equal opportunities, plans to file a complaint against Nathan Cofnas, a US researcher at Ghent University, over remarks it believes repeatedly breached the country’s anti-racism law” www.brusselstimes.com/2341250/unia...
brusselstimes.com
Unia to take 'race realist' researcher Nathan Cofnas to court
Unia said the US philosopher was spreading ideas in Belgium that rank people in a hierarchy on the basis of supposed scientific knowledge.
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Henry Carnell @hencarnell.bsky.social · 12h
New research: “AI-generated survey results consistently differ from human surveys“
pewresearch.org
How well synthetic samples replicate public opinion
Synthetic survey respondents tend to exaggerate differences between demographic subgroups and portray some responses as nearly universal.
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moin syed @syeducation.bsky.social · 13h
Gave a talk in my dept. on the OSF transition. I wrote up a rough script of the session, which could be of interest to others. I synthesize existing resources and provide my own perspectives. Comments and corrections welcome! zenodo.org/records/2306...
the header for a paper describing "Life after OSF" #metascience
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Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 19h
Primates take an unusually long to reach adulthood relative to their lifespan. Understanding why species vary so much in developmental rates is a key evolutionary question. This #RSOS study tracked behavioural and physical milestones in mountain and western #gorillas: doi.org/10.1098/rsos...
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Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 30/09/2026
Balancing current reproductive investment with survival and future fecundity is a central challenge for long-lived animals. Watch #ProcB author Chinatsu Nakajima talk about research that explores the underlying energetic mechanisms of carry-over effects: cassyni.com/events/TVPGw... #ecology
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Charles C Roseman @evoroseman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If you are in the greater Washington DC area on Friday 6 November and have an afternoon to spare, I’m giving a talk at George Mason University. I’d love to see you there. (baboon skull diagram from Theibault et al. 2026) 1/7
Poster for a talk by Charles Roseman entitled "Spencer's Long Shadow: Why we should abandon the extended evolutionary synthesis" featuring a diagram of baboon skulls from Thiebault et al. 2026, some clipart mice, and a picture of the speaker whose father came in second in an uglyman contest.
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"During the 19th century, having children was viewed as a woman’s central function & yet the pregnant body, & the birthing room, are almost absent from public conversation & written histories of the period. Confinement corrects this by exploring stories of pregnancy & motherhood across this period"
thehistorypress.co.uk
Confinement
‘An important, fascinating and frequently shocking read.’ – BERNARDINE EVARISTO, author of Girl, Woman, Other Covering a fascinating period of population growth, high infant mortality and deep social ...
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
From ‘girlboss’ to #stayathomegirlfriend: The romanticisation of domestic labour on TikTok "stay-at-home girlfriends unwittingly mimic the popular feminist doctrine of ‘empowerment’ & channel ‘girlboss’ culture through their work as influencers"
journals.sagepub.com
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
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Demographic Research @demresjournal.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This study using linked Belgian census and register data finds that increases in local house prices are negatively associated with first-birth hazards among young adults aged 18–34. www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...
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Zoë Goldsborough @zoegoldsborough.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Why care about weird animal behaviors? Just out as an advanced publication, my contribution to the next Frans de Waal special issue in Behaviour @degruyterbrill.bsky.social. Unusual behaviors are a recurring theme in my career, and I much enjoyed writing this perspective! doi.org/10.1163/1568...
doi.org
The science of the unusual: how rare observations reveal the diversity of animal behaviour
Abstract Behavioural biology often focuses on identifying general patterns, yet unusual or rare behaviours at both the population and individual level can provide insight into animal behaviour. Here, ...
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This was fun , especially liked the enthusiasm for science communication www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
bbc.co.uk
BBC Radio 4 - The Life Scientific, Gillian Forrester on gesturing gorillas, babbling babies and the origins of human language
Professor Gillian Forrester on how we became the walking, talking great apes we are today.
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Brendan Barrett @bjjbarrett.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I am part of a team guest editing a special issue of the American Journal of Primatology on "Digitization and use of legacy datasets in primatology” and we are seeking out submissions due on 1 September 2027. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal...
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Karen Benjamin Guzzo @karenguzzo.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Hey, demographers! If you've ever used @prbdata.bsky.social's World Data Sheet, consider making a donation so they can continue producing this valuable resource! Visit www.prb.org/donate/!
When the funding that made the World Population Data Sheet possible was abruptly cut last year, something meaningful happened: stories poured in from around the world—from teachers, researchers, and policymakers sharing what this resource meant to their work. Those stories became the foundation of a fundraising effort that secured this 2026 edition. 
If the Data Sheet has ever mattered to your work, here's a way to show it—and to help keep it alive. Donors who give $200 or more to PRB will receive a printed copy. Those who give at least $500 will also receive a copy of the inaugural 1962 edition. 
🔗  Visit prb.org/donate to learn more!*
*Under IRS guidelines, the estimated value of the printed 2026 and 1962 World Population Data Sheets is not substantial; therefore, the full amount of your contribution is deductible as a charitable contribution.
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Dan Hirschman @asociologist.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
"biology textbook authors describe plant reproduction through a set of habitually repeated stories that reliably draw on conventional gender stereotypes, reflecting those found in mainstream accounts of human reproduction. In doing so, they cast male plants and plant parts as active heroes..."
journals.sagepub.com
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
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Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
One reason I'm so upset about Henrich's report is that anthropology is THE main example used to justify the Vanderbilt report's wild claims of "deterioration in scholarly standards" throughout the humanities (see osf.io/ta6kg). And it turns out to be almost completely unfounded. What a travesty.
The report’s conclusions are somewhat unclear, since the title is vague and it contains no abstract or executive summary of conclusions. However, the following paragraph mostly summarizes the main conclusions:
“…there is serious scholarship in every field we have studied, and at their best, the humanities and the social sciences are as rigorous and as fruitful as they have ever been. Taken as a whole, however, our review of the disciplines paints a mixed picture. Every field we have studied shows some signs of the pathologies sketched above: a deterioration in scholarly standards fueled by the substitution of political criteria for properly scholarly criteria in the assessment of research and a more general repudiation of long-standing ideals of rigor and objectivity. In some fields (e.g., philosophy) the problems are largely confined to a single subfield focused on a charged topic. In others (e.g., history), while there are streams of scholarship in which standards have been politicized in problematic ways, they run alongside more dominant streams in which a wide range of views is tolerated, and appropriately scholarly standards are brought to bear. In the most extreme cases (e.g., anthropology), we see a widespread deterioration in scholarly standards grounded in a pervasive repudiation of ideals of objectivity together with a toxic intellectual climate in which reasonable dissent on politically charged topics is routinely suppressed and punished.”
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Will Gervais @willgervais.com · 29/09/2026
🚨NEW PREPRINT🚨 @aiyanakoka.bsky.social Meara Geraty and I revisited religious priming, breaking the causal claim into links that we robustly tested. Do God Primes Prime God? Converging Evidence Against the Efficacy of Experimental Religious Priming osf.io/preprints/ps... #PsychSciSky #metascience
Do God Primes Prime God? Convergint evidence against the efficacy of experimental religious priming.

WIll Gervais, MEara Geraty, Aiyana Willard

then the rest of the image is a screenshot of the table of contents.plot summarising bayes factor results testing:
Prime -> Religious concepts (overt primes yield positive evidence, scrambled sentence negative)

Prime -> prosociality: universaly evidence strongly favoring the null result across 4 primes and 2 operationalisations of prosociality

Prime -> suspicion: fairly universal evidence in favor of priming methods causing suspicion

Religious concepts -> $$$: four independent sets of evidence favoring the null
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Sheina Lew-Levy @sheinalew.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
🚨 Our new lab paper, led by @amandinevisine.bsky.social, examines exploration, group composition, and play activities among BaYaka children and teens living in a village context! Amandine is currently on fieldwork following up on this for her PhD 🎯 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
Congolese BaYaka children's learning and exploring in a village context
Childhood is a key period for acquiring and transmitting cultural knowledge and skill. Hunter-gatherer children, such as the Congolese BaYaka, learn a…
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Tradwives aren't going to solve the "fertility crisis": "norms about gender equality are positively related to fertility ideals. In societies with strong gender equality norms, women, the highly educated, and the young display comparatively higher fertility ideals"
link.springer.com
How Many Children in a Family? Fertility Ideals and Gender Equality Norms in 26 Societies - European Journal of Population
We examine the relationship between gender equality and fertility ideals, focusing on the role of societal norms about men’s participation in care and household work, known as the second half of the g...
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Ruth Mace @ruthmace.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Our Evolutionary Anthropology seminars start next Tuesday 6th with @kenjiitao.bsky.social on the evolution of kinship and demographic transition. NOTE new location: Engineering Bldg, Mallet Place (Room 1.20) 3.30-5pm followed by 🍷 in Anthropology. All welcome! www.ucl.ac.uk/social-histo...
ucl.ac.uk
Evolutionary Anthropology seminars
Exploring the evolutionary roots of human behaviour, biology, and culture through interdisciplinary research and debate.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 29/09/2026
Your daily reminder - the Norwegian Consumer Council has really, really solid work on how to be anti-enshittification www.forbrukerradet.no/breakingfree/
forbrukerradet.no
Breaking Free
In the new report Breaking Free: Pathways to a fair technological future, the Norwegian Consumer Council has delved into enshittification and how to resist it.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
'The Westminster government’s contribution to funding domestic undergraduates studying in England fell in real terms from £8.9 billion in 2012-13 to just £3.3bn in 2024-25, a drop of more than 60 per cent, an analysis has found.'
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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 29/09/2026
The Chronicle Against Higher Education gives the Vanderbilt report endless publicity while not running a single story on the World Humanities Report, which shows that the disciplines slandered in the Vanderbilt report are actually making vital contributions to the world. worldhumanitiesreport.org
worldhumanitiesreport.org
Home - The World Humanities Report
The World Humanities Report Demonstrating the vitality of the humanities throughout the world
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
“BaYaka children spent most of their time alone or in child-only groups, rather than with adults. They also spent a third of their time in play activities and another third in foraging and domestic tasks, suggesting that play and work are complementary flexible learning mechanisms”
sciencedirect.com
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Greg Priest @gregpriest.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
OTD in 1838, Charles Darwin read Malthus’s Principles of Population “for amusement.” The idea of a “war of nature” was venerable, but D realized that such a war would tend to remove deleterious variations from populations. Natural selection would necessarily follow. 🌱🐋🧪#HistSTM #philsci 📈📉#evolbio
Cartoon of Darwin holding a copy of the Origin, looking into a mirror and seeing as his reflection Malthus holding a copy off his Essay on the Principle of Population. By Tom Dunne for American Scientist.
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Dr Emily Emmott @ehemmott.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Maternity Cover role in Environmental Anthropology at UCL, within our Biological Anthropology section. We are a nice bunch - Apply by 7th October! www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...
ucl.ac.uk
UCL – University College London
UCL is consistently ranked as one of the top ten universities in the world (QS World University Rankings 2010-2022) and is No.2 in the UK for research power (Research Excellence Framework 2021).
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Alice Reid @amrcampop.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Interested in a PhD in historical demography/population studies at @camunicampop.bsky.social, @camunigeography.bsky.social, Cambridge University? We have 3 suggested topics (see thread): contact me to discuss, or to suggest your own idea. Apply by early December for funded places.
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Tim Waring @twaring.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
🚨 Applied Cultural Evolution Brownbag Series 🚨 Two inaugural discussions: Oct 7 What is (uniquely) applied cultural evolution? Caroline Graf, U. Zurich Dec 9 What can cultural evolution offer climate adaptation practitioners? Christine Lindell, World Vision Australia tinyurl.com/3st6zy79
A black and white image of a tattoo design featuring a human brain with wings pierced by two diagonal arrows over a flying banner that reads "Applied Cultural Evolutionists"
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Since we’re talking about the politicisation of science, another laughably bad “national IQ” paper has just been published in Evolutionary Psychological Science. This paper barely even pretends to be science yet is published by a mainstream publisher, with prominent academics on the editorial board
Screenshot of new paper 

Evolutionary Psychological Science > Article
Democratic Peace, Intelligent Belligerence: Evolutionary Psychological Foundations of Interstate Wars
Research | Published: 12 September 2026Section of text from new paper
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
A deep dive into one of the pieces of evidence provided in the anthropology section of the Vanderbilt report
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Jenn Dowd @drjenndowd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I was also pretty stunned by the wording of this NBER abstract 🫠. As @rcobooth.bsky.social lays out very nicely, there are many important questions to be explored here, but language, especially around reproductive choices, matters. substack.com/home/post/p-... #econsky #demography
substack.com
On prospective grandparents
(a tiresome thing from the internet this weekend, and some new stories)
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This is certainly a different opinion to the Vanderbilt report: “corporate libertarian donor networks, fossil-fuel companies & conservative think tanks intensified campaigns targeting university governance…embedding donor-aligned scholars, building research centers insulated from faculty oversight…”
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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
"the more we dug into Rubin’s claims and data, the more we realized that the assessments should not be kept confidential. The claims were too extreme, the institutions behind it were too prominent, and...media attention to the...project and to sociology’s supposed 'politicization' was too immense"
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Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I took the time to read this (and the appendices). Didn’t love it! But in the spirit of constructive engagement, a few take aways (and would love other anthropologists' thoughts as well)...
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Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Reading Henrich's sub-report only reinforces my initial conclusion regarding the Boghossian et al. summary report: it needs to be corrected or retracted (particularly given that Boghossian et al. quote evidence ultimately deleted from Henrich's sub-report). bsky.app/profile/patr...
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Lynda Boothroyd @drboothroyd.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This was also my take on the Vanderbilt State of Anthropology report. A mostly historical set of internecine wars, the bad handling of the Chagnon allegations, and a shift in balance across a subset of departments. Not quite what the umbrella report claimed to be epistemological rot.
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Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I've now read the full key sub-report on anthropology by Joe Henrich on which the Vanderbilt report's most explosive conclusions were based (the sub-report was just published, >3 months late). As I expected, it does not provide evidence of a "deterioration in scholarly standards" in the humanities.
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tagerai.bsky.social @tagerai.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
It’s interesting to think about this fake award on the same day that nature published the story on fake academic societies. Billionaires creating new awards for ideological capture and to launder their reputations is also a scam, but its not treated as such and gets a ‘Newsvertisement‘ in the WSJ
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026
This is another great, approachable explainer on “the rationalist wackos who have managed to take over much of the AI industry, and who now have tons of money and political power.” www.iankduncan.com/personal/202...
iankduncan.com
Sex, AI, and the Apocalypse - Ian Duncan
How a community devoted to thinking clearly incubated salvation stories, abusive experiments, race science, and an affection for autocracy, and why that history matters now that its alumni are asking ...
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Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes @lemoustier.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The problem isn't rogue #AI models, it's *negligent companies*. If a biomedical firm put their product in public water supply because they wanted to test it 'in the real world', they'd be treated as criminal at corporate & individual level. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
theguardian.com
OpenAI halts training of latest models as reports mount of AI agents going rogue
Decision follows disclosures that OpenAI agents searching government websites had acted in unexpected ways
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I like this very much. Scholar-activism isn’t a problem, as long as it is underpinned by scholarship. Activism without scholarship is the problem, especially if it claims to be scholarship not activism (looking at you race scientists)
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Henrich provides his opinion in the Vanderbilt report; an opinion which happens to be useful for those wishing to weaken research and academia in the US. Others have different opinions 👇 but were not asked to contribute to the report. I wonder why?
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Os Keyes @okeyes.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Since we’re doing another round of “AI will destroy humanity” doom-hype, it’s a good time to announce a new paper myself and my postdoc advisor just had accepted by BioSocieties on just this. TL;DR: almost all the “AI can make bioweapons” literature comes ultimately from the Effective Altruists.
ironholds.org
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Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I just gave a talk on interdisciplinary yesterday that features a call for interdisciplinary people and not just diverse teams of disciplinary types. Today I read this essay with delight. Viva antedisciplinarity. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...
journals.plos.org
“Antedisciplinary” Science
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Interesting read, in which he acknowledges that one of the (few) examples used in the main Vanderbilt report as evidence for the hopeless politicisation of anthropology is, in fact, simply science working as it should www.chronicle.com/article/the-...
chronicle.com
The Harvard Anthropologist Who’s Skewering His Own Field
Joseph Henrich, an author of a divisive report about politicization in the humanities, says, “I knew it wasn’t going to make everyone happy.”
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
If you want hot takes about fertility decline, my money's on this one
The famous New Yorker cartoon by Tom Toro showing a man in a threadbare suit telling children sitting around a fire "yes, the planet got destroyed but for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders" edited to read
"yes fertility has collapsed, but for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders"
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
BBC's Today programme is currently contemporary fertility decline to the Black Death, and blaming women for the "disaster" because they're refusing to have kids with men under 6 feet tall <screams in demographer>
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
DoorDash spent $1.4M trying to stop Zohran Mamdani from becoming mayor. This week's historic $131.5M enforcement action against DoorDash for underpaying NYC delivery workers shows why. Yet another reminder that the only thing that can beat organized money is organized people.
theintercept.com
DoorDash Spent $1.4 Million Trying to Stop Mamdani From Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why.
In a wage-theft settlement, DoorDash now has to pay its workers around 100 times what it spent trying to beat Zohran Mam
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Kate Laskowski @katelaskowski.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Okay this is just wildly cool - they tracked human ice-fishers *and* the fish they're hunting. Even though humans can't see the fish *at all* the humans are still surprising good at zero-ing on their prey. Probably the most complete picture of predator AND prey movement together. 🤯🎣
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
SCOOP: Top researchers at Columbia, Stanford, and others thought they were elected to elite scientific societies alongside Nobel laureates. The catch? The organizations are a sham. I spent the last month diving deep into a massive academic scam spanning continents, for @nature.com
nature.com
Exclusive: Sham scientific societies are misleading star researchers
A Nature investigation reveals a network of organizations that have been building their ranks through deceptive practices.
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Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 25/09/2026
Great pronatalist poster from France circa 1930s, showing outcome of a century of "normal fertility" versus "insufficient fertility." At least 3 children per household are needed "for a country to thrive" from Andrew Gelman's visit here: www.carnavalet.paris.fr/expositions/..., on his blog today.
Two population pyramids, with French text. Google translate:

AFTER A CENTURY OF

AFTER A CENTURY OF

NORMAL FERTILITY

INSUFFICIENT FERTILITY

POPULATION DISTRIBUTION AMONG
DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS
At least, on average, 3 children per household are needed

JOIN THE NATIONAL ALLIANCE FOR INCREASING THE

for a country to thrive

FRENCH POPULATION 217, Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, PARIS
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