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Oli Pescott

@sacrevert.bsky.social
32 followers 40 following 5 posts

Blah blah blah blah, love me if you want to.

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Reposted by Oli Pescott
Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Noise/useless science rather than AI slop is a current challenge: "If medical schools and universities don't want the literature to be overwhelmed with garbage, they should stop giving every applicant ... an incentive to publish a lot of crap." www.medpagetoday.com/special-repo...
medpagetoday.com
Is AI Flooding Medical Journals With 'Meaningless' Research?
'It's not fraudulent, and it's not really slop,' one expert says
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Royal Society Publishing @royalsocietypublishing.org · 20/09/2026
In order to understand early modern science, images are no less significant than words. A new #NotesandRecords special issue examines a wide range of images, from true-to-life drawings to carefully conceived schematics: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsnr/issue/8... #HistSci #HistSTM
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"any answer to 'is AI good for science' that neatly fits into a single yes or no is unserious...here is an invitation to join the real discussion" Thoughtful piece by @blekhman.bsky.social on a subject that provokes knee-jerk responses for and against. blekhman.substack.com/p/the-ai-dis...
blekhman.substack.com
The AI Discourse in Academia is Toxic. It Doesn’t have to be.
You are allowed to have a nuanced opinion about AI
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
It's also worth reading the postscript about Bsky. Some won't agree, but after fleeing the unpleasantness of what twitter became, this community should be concerned it's created an echo chamber in which any departure from a line is attacked (reasonable discussion =/ tolerating bigotry/misinfo).
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NBN Trust: National Biodiversity Network Trust @nbntrust.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
We're recruiting for two roles: • Head of Data & Digital • Trustee to the Board – Chair of the Finance & Audit Committee. nbn.org.uk/tag/job-vaca... The Head of Data & Digital role is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund and thanks to National Lottery players.
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Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channel statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/09/17/s...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
Scientific citations as an overwhelmed communication channel | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
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Oli Pescott @sacrevert.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
"The underlying problem is not with AI, but with the institutions and incentives that define modern science" - David Oks, How citations ruined science davidoks.blog/p/how-citati...
davidoks.blog
How citations ruined science
The making and breaking of scientific life
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Cowleyforniadreaming @holybollards.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
The first tenant has been announced at Oxford North.
Snoopy lying on the red Oxford North building
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
"~15% of journal articles in biology have an associated preprint, the rate is >95% with the ASAP initiative" sparcopen.org/impact-story... Zero reason all funders shouldn't also mandate this #PlanU journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
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Rob Boyd @robboyd.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
What makes a multispecies abundance indicator "wrong", and what can be done to fix it? Read our new paper in Ecography to find out! @sacrevert.bsky.social @spakey.bsky.social @susanjarvis.bsky.social, Gary Powney and Xiao-Li Meng @uniexecec.bsky.social @ukceh.bsky.social doi.org/10.1002/ecog...
doi.org
How to reduce sampling error in species population monitoring: from theory to methods
Progress towards national and international targets to halt and reverse declines in species' abundances will be assessed using multispecies indicators (MSIs). A distinction must be drawn between two ...
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Galling, @galling.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
We have just hit 500 followers, thanks to all of you. Please spread the word and keep the posts coming.
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Martin Harvey @kitenet.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
This is the account for British Plant Gall Society - definitely worth a follow if you like plants, invertebrates, fungi or the interactions between them
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Methods in Ecology and Evolution @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
📖Published📖 This new review article proposes several main steps towards increasing the use of Risk of Bias (RoB) assessment in ecology and evolutionary biology and highlights the important role of the synthesis community, but also of journals and funders 🌍 🧪 Read here 👇
buff.ly
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Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 31/07/2026
"Details, in their singularity and idiosyncrasy, point to the capaciousness of human experience." New today in the Society's journal 'Transactions': Joe Moran 'On Detail in Historical Writing': bit.ly/44UMi8C Now available OA @joemoransblog.bsky.social @massobsarchive.bsky.social #Skystorians 1/2
Opening page of the Transactions article 'On Detail in Historical Writing' by Joe Moran. 

Full abstract: "This Comment considers the role of detail in historical writing, inflected through my own experience of writing ‘trade’ books for a general rather than specialist readership. I argue for the value of the detail that is slightly recalcitrant, that is more than just flesh on the bones of an argument or evidence marshalled to make a point. Detail is itself a kind of argument and thus, since beauty and elegance in writing derive from economy, a way of making a point without belabouring it. The gratuitous fact can be seductive, suggesting that the world has a randomness and overabundance that can't easily be rounded up into a dataset. Details, in their singularity and idiosyncrasy, point to the capaciousness of human experience. They correct our tendency to fixate on one story, to focus on the eventful at the expense of the marginal, and to invent a false unity of experience that erases social differences. With their obdurate specificity, they can shatter our presumptions about the past. I explore these ideas with reference to modern literature (Flaubert, Chekhov), the Mass-Observation archive and examples from my own work in contemporary cultural history and family history."
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Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Why quantitative understanding of effect sizes matters, even if all you care about is the presence of the effect statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/08/01/h...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
Why quantitative understanding of effect sizes matters, even if all you care about is the presence of the effect | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
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Butterfly Conservation Suffolk @bc-suffolk.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Suffolk Branch is run entirely by volunteers. If we do not have enough volunteers to fulfil various roles then the Branch will cease to exist after 35 years. We now have vacancies in two key roles Branch Chair & Transect Co-ordinator Please see suffolkbutterflies.org.uk for details
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Rob Boyd @robboyd.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Why DAGs aren't just for causal inference and should often represent the observation process Check out our new paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.co... @r-cooke.bsky.social, Gary Powney and @sacrevert.bsky.social @ukceh.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social
sciencedirect.com
Why your DAG should probably incorporate sampling and measurement processes
Insect scientists are starting to use Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) to display assumptions about causal relationships between variables that exist be…
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Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
He fit the same statistical models with three different software and got much different estimates. It’s another dimension of the multiverse. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/07/27/5...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
He fit the same statistical models with three different software and got much different estimates. It’s another dimension of the multiverse. | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Scie...
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Rob Boyd @robboyd.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
What has a greater effect on the number of butterfly records across Devon and Cornwall: habitat or public access? Our new paper, led by Mingrui Li, addresses this question dx.doi.org/10.1111/ddi.... @jonbennie.bsky.social @davidroybrc.bsky.social @richardfoxbc.bsky.social @uniexecec.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Causal Analysis Reveals That Public Access to Land Can Shape Our View of Species' Geographic Distributions
Aim Citizen science data are widely used to study species' distributions. Using butterfly observations from South-West England, we sought to better understand what shapes the spatial footprint of re...
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SORTEE @sortee.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
In this tenth instalment of the #ECRAsks series, Oakleigh Wilson spoke with Joel Pick about the replication crisis in ecology & evolutionary biology research and how we could tackle it. Check out their conversation on the #SORTEE blog: sortee.org/blog/2026/07...
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Alejandro Sandoval-Lentisco @asandovall.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
How often are multiverse analyses implemented, not just cited/discussed? How are they implemented? 🧵 New preprint on the uptake and implementation of multiverse-style analyses 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Uptake and Implementation of Multiverse-style Analyses Across 613 Studies
Empirical conclusions can depend on the many individual choices researchers make when analyzing data. Multiverse-style analyses address this by computing results across a set of specifications rather ...
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
This looks useful. A typical meta-analysis in ecology mixes experiments with observational studies, mixes coefficients with different controls and therefore different causal meanings. I would not normally say "hey the folks in medicine are doing it right, imitate them" but in this case maybe
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Valentin Amrhein @vamrhein.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
Power is not the ‘probability of obtaining a statistically significant result.’ It is this probability only if the true effect is equal to the alternative hypothesis used for power calculation and if all model assumptions are correct. Giving less power to statistical power doi.org/10.1177/0023...
doi.org
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
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Valentin Amrhein @vamrhein.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
"a ‚significant' p-value between 0.01 and 0.05 should be interpreted with the expectation that the effect is exaggerated by more than 50% (median 1.56) and that an exact replication has about a one-in-three chance of also being significant." evidenceinthewild.com/p-value-look...
evidenceinthewild.com
The P-Value Got a Lecture. It Needed a Lookup Table.
Ten years after the ASA told us to stop misusing p-values, we're still arguing about thresholds. Erik van Zwet and colleagues did something different: they asked 23,000 clinical trials what a p-value ...
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Oliver Wilson @olijwilson.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
I'm very excited to share that I've written about my latest study for @theconversation.com! We rolled back the centuries to uncover the history of one of Brazil's most iconic and threatened ecosystems, and what we found was a surprise... theconversation.com/brazils-high...
theconversation.com
Brazil’s highland forest has been shaped by climate change and Indigenous people for 6,000 years
Prehistoric pollen records show that forest dynamics were driven by more than just broad-scale climatic changes.
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Brad Scott @trichocolea.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Excited to see @eayers0.bsky.social talking about a moss specimen (and more Entangled Organisms) from William Mitten's herbarium #ESHS-HSS
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Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Are our ecological conclusions built on shaky foundations? Our latest paper in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social highlights that Risk of Bias (RoB) assessment, crucial for ensuring the internal validity of research, is almost never used in #systematicreviews in eco & evo 📉 🔗 doi.org/10.1111/2041...
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Julia Koricheva @juliakoricheva.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Our new #OA paper on importance of risk of bias assessment for ecology and evolutionary biology is out in @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social. It was great to be part of this project brilliantly led by @anticac.bsky.social besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
"a universal approach to quality assurance of research is no longer appropriate...we propose a layered approach...mov[ing] away from the norm all research must be peer-reviewed [to] a combination of trust markers, peer engagement, and evidence synthesis" researchonresearch.org/the-future-o...
researchonresearch.org
The Future of Peer Review
A major new RoRI report reveals that peer review is at a breaking point and outlines an ambitious blueprint for system-wide reform
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
"the first validated, large-scale framework for judging the quality of life science papers independently of venue, identity, and prestige...Blinded domain-expert professors sided with score three times more often than with journal rank" the-one-percent.qedscience.com 1/n
the-one-percent.qedscience.com
QED — The most compelling preprints of 2025
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Christabel Cooper @christabelcoops.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Extraordinary credit to Sadiq Khan for pushing through this deeply controversial policy. This is what can happen when politicians are prepared to stick to their principles.
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Parody Nigel Farage @parodypm.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
Unfortunately I can't make the debate on second jobs as I'm in America for a speaking engagement before coming back to promote gold bullion then doing my GB News show and squeezing in a few Cameo recordings before bed.
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Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Treating AI review like the contentious policy design problem it is statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/06/24/t...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
Treating AI review like the contentious policy design problem it is | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
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Larry Houston @larrytoons54.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
It's that simple.
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James Fraser @fraserlab.com · 11/07/2025
We have the power! talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10... No, it’s not The Incentives—it’s you – [citation needed]
talyarkoni.org
No, it’s not The Incentives—it’s you
There’s a narrative I find kind of troubling, but that unfortunately seems to be growing more common in science. The core idea is that the mere existence of perverse incentives is a valid and…
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Brandon Stell @brandonstell.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
Grateful for the invitation from the Royal Society — and heartening to see the growing momentum, evident throughout the meeting, behind separating evaluation from publication.
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PubPeer @pubpeer.com · 29/09/2025
Congrats to anonymous commenter Gymnothorax javanicus, winner of the August PubPeer Award for a comment on a 2025 @natneuro.nature.com paper. To claim the $1000 prize, log in with the same account and add a follow-up comment with contact info (that won't be published by moderators).
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Einstein Foundation Berlin @einsteinberlin.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
The #EinsteinFoundationAward hosts a plenary showcasing winners advancing transparency, reproducibility & responsible science. Timothy Errington @cos.io, @brandonstell.bsky.social @pubpeer.com & @elisabethbik.bsky.social share insights on open science, post-publication peer review & error detection.
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Vojtěch Abraham @vojtechabraham.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Our 1:1100 3D pollen collection now includes about 80 models @olijwilson.bsky.social @cubioimaginghub.bsky.social. They’re made from transparent gel for softness, plastic filament for affordability, or powder. The transport box is getting small!
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SORTEE @sortee.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
🌟 Have you come across a project making science more open, reproducible, or accessible in ecology & evolutionary biology? Nominating it for a 2026 SORTEE Commendation Award is a great way to recognise the people behind it! Submit a nomination here: sortee.org/awards/ #openscience
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Brad Scott @trichocolea.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
A slow walk in some wet Alder woods near where I live. Care is essential, as some of the bogs are very deep and wet, with iron-rich water everywhere @ashdownforest.bsky.social 1/2
The wet woodland about a mile south of Forest Row. The orange iron-rich stream appears to be only a few feet wide but along this stretch there is impassable wet mud and Sphagnum bog alongside it. Where the sun filters through you can find various small insects among the bog plants
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David Edgerton @davidedgerton.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Had a great conversation with Phil Bell on his podcast on how to think historically about AI and 'technology' more generally @kingschostm.bsky.social @kingshistory.bsky.social genfutures.substack.com/p/david-edge...
genfutures.substack.com
David Edgerton on Historical Analogies, Technology, and AI
Do we need a material turn?
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Brad Scott @trichocolea.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Nice to see the latest print issue of BJHS arrive in the post. It includes my article on 'A family moss craze: learning, reading and skill development in a botanical and domestic network', and lots of other interesting work doi.org/10.1017/S000... @bshsnews.bsky.social @bbsbryology.bsky.social
The first page of the article 'A family moss craze: learning, reading and skill development in a botanical and domestic network in early nineteenth-century England and Wales'. Its abstract reads: Between 1814 and 1826 four members of the family of Jane Talbot and her cousin William Henry Fox Talbot had an active and varied interest in the study of mosses, which included the collecting, drawing and naming of specimens. This article explores the textures of their developing practice of learning natural history, and considers their activities within the framework of the circulation of knowledge, their reading and skill development, and the networks that supported them. Their social status and connections provided access to the expertise of numerous British botanists, including Lewis Weston Dillwyn, William Jackson Hooker, and James Dalton, placing the family as a locus of knowledge (re)production and transmission. This work illustrates the pedagogical practices of an elite group as they engaged with botany in a domestic setting, and makes suggestions as to their motivations and stimulations, as well as the conditions that maintained or diminished their interest. At a time when mosses were little-studied even by professed botanists, it demonstrates how a family group including many young women filled their leisure pursuits with these small plants, and reveals how an extended family with no previous expertise in formal botany could be actors in early nineteenth-century knowledge exchange.The other contents of volume 59, issue 1 of the British Journal of the History of Science: (1) Manon C. Williams, Diagnosing the dead: post-mortem examinations and medical ship culture in the Royal Navy ; (2) Joyce Dixon, Capturing colour on HMS Beagle: Charles Darwin and Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours (1821) ; (3) 
Ellen Packham, To write or not to write: the literary strategies of British civil engineers in the late eighteenth century ; (4) 
John Lidwell-Durnin, Prognosis and scientific imagination in the work of Jane Webb Loudon (1800–1858); and (5) Christian Henkel, Johann Christoph Sturm’s eclectic scientific method and his indebtedness to Francis BaconOne of the supplementary materials relating to the moss craze article. This is a network diagram of the books and people connected to muscology and natural history in the period from 1808 to 1825, as revealed in the correspondence of Henry Talbot, and highlights the members of the extended family who were involved in the study of nature
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Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
Survey Statistics: double-plus robustness statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/05/26/s...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
Survey Statistics: double-plus robustness | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
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Field Studies Council @fieldstudiesc.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
We're excited to announce that applications for our 2026 Young Darwin Scholarship are open! This unique opportunity offers 16-25-year-olds a 90% subsidised, Darwin-inspired scholarship, combining environmental education and ongoing support. Apply now 👉 buff.ly/sDcR3AM #YoungDarwinScholarship
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Duerden Cormack @duerden.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Judging by this small patch at RSPB Hope Farm, you can appreciate how Shepherd's-needle was once a serious arable weed! #WildflowerHour
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Janel Comeau 🍁 @verybadllama.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
make sure you choose a password that contains capital letters, numbers, and special symbols so that someday the data broker who purchases your info can go "ooh good password" after your login details are inevitably leaked in a data breach you can do nothing to prevent
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Methods in Ecology and Evolution @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
🏅 Shortlisted for the 2025 Robert May prize! 🏅 In his blog post, @robboyd.bsky.social talks about his paper 'Using causal diagrams and superpopulation models to correct geographic biases in biodiversity monitoring data' 🌍 🧪 Read the blog and find the full article 👇 buff.ly/a7UROJJ
methodsblog.com
Robin Boyd: Using causal diagrams and superpopulation models to correct geographic biases in biodiversity monitoring data
Throughout March, we are featuring articles shortlisted for the 2025 Robert May Prize. The Robert May Prize is awarded by the British Ecological Society each year for the best paper in Methods in E…
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Richard Fox @richardfoxbc.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Fantastic that our paper using @ukbms.bsky.social data led by @robboyd.bsky.social @ukceh.bsky.social has been shortlisted for the best paper of the year prize! @savebutterflies.bsky.social
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Rob Boyd @robboyd.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
New paper on adaptive sampling for ecological monitoring published in @oikosjournal.bsky.social nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/.... Premise is to aim for proportional allocation across strata. Success depends on choice of stratifying variables. Oli Pescott’s brainchild
nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
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