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Uku Vainik

@ukuvainik.bsky.social
777 followers 713 following 352 posts

Professor of behavioral genetics with my own twins. I mix behaviour and genetics at Tartu & McGill to understand obesity. I also mix global music as a DJ.

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Reposted by Uku Vainik
Theo Sanderson @theo.io · 18h
This essay (from 1990) is still the most useful piece I've ever read on how to write about science clearly. The "old-first, new-last" thing is the most important bit. www.americanscientist.org/blog/the-lon...
americanscientist.org
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SocArXiv @socarxiv.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
SocArXiv now has a limit of two papers per week. If authors submit more than that we assume they are LLM-generated and reject them all. Normal humans who need to upload a batch of papers, which sometimes happens, must make arrangements. Also today, ArXiv set a two papers per month limit.
blog.arxiv.org
Fair Moderation, Equitable Access, and AI: arXiv’s Updated Rate Limit Policy
arXiv, and the scientific community at large, are facing a watershed moment. Scholarly publishing is currently changing at a rapid pace, and we are seeing a…
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Prof. Tony Goldstone @tonygoldstone.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
News about the Novo study I presented @easdnews.bsky.social on effects of Cagrisema on eating behaviour and food cue reactivity in overweight/obesity www.novonordisk.com/content/nnco...
novonordisk.com
News Details
News Details
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Ken Paller @paller.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Did you know that your speed — in a simple task of quickly pressing a button every time you see a yellow square — is faster when you are exhaling or pausing then when you are inhaling? Dr. Erika Yamazaki figured this out, did all the work, and published on it this week www.cell.com/iscience/ful...
cell.com
Response speed is modulated by respiratory phase
Behavioral neuroscience; Cognitive neuroscience
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Tamar Haspel @tamarhaspel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
New trial of retatrutide (triple agonist, building on GLP-1s), shows 25% weight loss in the highst-dose group. 25%! Just a few years back, a trial with 10% weight loss would have been big news. These drugs are the biggest public health boon since antibiotics and vaccines.
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Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Hey friends, trying to find a reviewer who could provide a review on an empirical EMA paper focused on emotion regulation. I've had 31 declines so getting a little desperate and feel really bad for the authors. Let me know here or per email (firstnamesecondname@gmail.com)
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Great example of combining a low-N accurate child BMI GWAS with high-N inaccurate GWAS.
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Amanda J. Wright @ajwright.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Since our paper on the Changing How I Live Life (CHILL) Study is now out in Psychological Science (doi.org/10.1177/0956...), here's a LONG overdue post on the intervention work we've been doing the past few years! Have you ever wanted to change one of your personality traits?
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Bratislav Misic @misicbata.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
netneurotools: a trainee-oriented approach to network neuroscience | doi.org/10.1038/s415... Our lab’s internal toolkit for accomplishing everyday tasks in brain imaging @natprot.nature.com ⤵️
doi.org
netneurotools: a trainee-oriented approach to network neuroscience - Nature Protocols
This is a Perspective covering a Python toolbox for neuroscience research that enables users to fetch datasets, construct networks and null models, estimate graph metrics, fit statistical models and v...
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Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG) @ibg.colorado.edu · 23/09/2026
IBG at CU Boulder is hiring 2-3 tenure-track faculty (junior or senior) in statistical genetics, twin/family designs, and computational work. A chance to help shape IBG for decades. Starts fall 2027. More info: colorado.edu/ibg/. Apply by Oct 15. Please repost!
colorado.edu
Home
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 22/09/2026
So… we just found out that GPT sol can complete a complex online behavioral/cognitive study producing nearly indistinguishable behavior and subjective reports… right as we are about to launch. Is this doomsday for online cognitive testing?
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Kerli Ilves @kerliilv.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Saime ka Eesti meedias isiksuse GWASist ja käitumisgeneetikast natuke juttu puhuda 🎙️🍎📰 @ukuvainik.bsky.social
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Nick DeVito @ndevito1.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
🫠
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Started off great! Less than 4€ at ebooks.com www.ebooks.com/en-ee/book/2...
ebooks.com
eBooks.com: Buy Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Textbooks Online
eBooks.com is a leading retailer of ebooks, with a vast range of ebooks from academic, popular and professional publishers.
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Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
New preprint! 🎉 I analysed 1660 papers from 4 psychology journals and found materials sharing went from 9% of papers in 2015 to 82% in 2025, and these materials *do* get downloaded — a median of 135 times each. BUT shared code is often hard to run. doi.org/10.31234/osf... Let's walk through it 🧵
Two-panel figure. Panel a is a flow diagram tracking 1,611 empirical psychology articles from publication year (545 in 2015, 552 in 2020, 514 in 2025) to repository-link type: 785 link an OSF project, 85 link another platform, and 741 link no repository. Of those with an OSF link, download counts were retrieved for 670 and not retrieved for 115. Panel b is a line chart of the share of empirical papers linking OSF across 2015, 2020 and 2025. The overall rate, shown as a dashed black line, rises from 9% to 57% to 82%. All four journals rise steeply and end close together: Psychological Science 92%, JESP 89%, JML 83%, Cognition 76%, with Psychological Science highest throughout.Three-panel figure. Panel a: ridgeline plot of downloads per file by material type on a log scale, with the percentage never downloaded labelled for each — archive 16% of 545 files, documents 20% of 2,970, code 12% of 3,471, other 17% of 1,646, data 21% of 10,051, media 35% of 2,120, images 35% of 4,102. Most files cluster between 1 and 10 downloads, with long right tails past 100. Panel b: ridgeline plot of downloads per paper by journal, log scale, with dashed median lines; Psychological Science is highest, then JESP, JML and Cognition. Panel c: stacked bars showing, for documents, data and code separately, the share of papers by download band (0, 1–10, 11–100, more than 100) in 2015, 2020 and 2025. The share exceeding 100 downloads falls sharply over time in all three types, from roughly two-thirds in 2015 to a quarter or less in 2025, as the 1–10 band grows.Four-panel figure. Panel a: statistical languages detected among 333 papers with retrievable code — R 88%, SPSS 12%, Stata 4%, SAS 1%. Panel b: code red flags among those 333 papers — 34% hard-code an absolute path, 40% reference a missing file — above documentation among 672 OSF-linked papers — 21% have a README, 30% are documented by README, description or wiki. Panel c: among 562 Elsevier papers with no repository link, 44% (245) host at least one journal supplementary file but only 14% (77) host data, code or an archive. Panel d: composition of those 448 hosted files — documents 52%, data 21%, media 9%, other 7%, archive 6%, code 3%, images 1%. The code panels are green, the journal-supplement panels blue.Coefficient plot (download predictors)

Dot-and-whisker plot of three standardised predictors of OSF download volume, each with a 95% confidence interval. Repository size (number of files) has the largest effect at about 0.76, citations about 0.38, and altmetric attention about 0.12. All three intervals sit entirely above zero, so each predicts more downloads, with repository size roughly twice the effect of citations and six times that of attention. X-axis: standardised effect, −0.2 to 1.0.
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
We also tried giving latent profile analyses a fair chance and concluded that it has limited utility journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
journals.sagepub.com
To Profile or Not to Profile: A Multiinformant Study of the Robustness and Utility of Personality-Based Profiles on a Large Biobank Sample - Helo Liis Soodla, Uku Vainik, René Mõttus, Kirsti Akkermann...
Person-centered personality profiles are widely used to examine latent covariation patterns in heterogeneous samples. However, their robustness across measureme...
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Love OG stats rap!
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estwell.bsky.social @estwell.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Join EstWell’s second research seminar of the academic year on 22 September, 11:00–12:00 (Zoom). Helo Liis Soodla and Lehar Lukjanov will present “See the person, not their problem or what happens to them”. More information: estwell.ut.ee/en/event/est...
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Cool project! It makes perfect sense that daydreaming is related to high openness and low conscientiousness
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Maggie Clapp Sullivan @mclapps.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Out today with @tedmond.bsky.social, our research briefing summarizing key takeaways from our Big Five GWAS! www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
Genetic associations with the Big Five personality traits probed in one million people
Links between genetic variants and personality differences are robust, complex and related to health, career and relationship outcomes.
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Kevin Hall @kevinh-phd.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Why do people with type 2 diabetes often lose less weight with GLP-1s? My first paper with AstraZeneca uses modeling to suggest that reduced urinary glucose excretion & energy expenditure offset negative energy balance, particularly with background SGLT2i therapy. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Andy Toone @lockfarm.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Amazon's market dominance has actually destroyed adjacent industries, as well as inflating prices across entire market segments and destroying our ability to comparison shop and effectively find the best product for our needs. Here's how:
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Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
There are about as many trees in Canada as stars in the milky way
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Ted Schwaba @tedmond.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Our big Big Five GWAS, out today! Personality Genomics is extremely hot in 2026.
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Tau-Mu Yi @taumuyi.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
#BioMed
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Jeffrey Barrett @jeffbarrett.eu · 02/09/2026
"we find minimal spousal assortment for personality in recent history" 🤣
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Larry Hunter @proflhunter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Genetics of personality is turning out to be an actual thing. Interesting how the associated genes don't support historic claims about personality associations with dopaminergic or serotonergic systems.
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Kerli Ilves @kerliilv.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The day is here! @michelnivard.bsky.social sums up the huge collaborative effort behind our personality genetics paper in this thread, finally out in Nature. I learned so much from this incredible team along the way. Sõge! 🧬🎭
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Jens Lund @lundjens.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Could Wegovy’s weight-lowering effect be caused by how the drug affects fuel metabolism? 1/16
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
I've been having GWAS-envy for so many years...no more! So so happy to see this out!
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
A new paper fails to replicate Ariely (a) You can see the perfect results from Ariely & Wertenbroch on the role of deadlines in mitigating procrastination (b & c) The new results do not replicate: changes in the deadlines had no effect on performance. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
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Data Colada @datacolada.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Colada[139] Artificial Deadlines Part 2 Evidence of fraud in the 25 year old gradesheet behind the key finding in an influential paper on deadlines and procrastination. datacolada.org/139
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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
78. Underworld: www.erikigelstrom.com/articles/cau...
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Cannot wait for them to replicate the most notorious heist of 2010s 🍁🍁🍁 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_C...
en.wikipedia.org
Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist - Wikipedia
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Ulrike Franke @rikefranke.eu · 21/08/2026
Interesting especially about Europe having less AI making it a risk diversifier.
giftarticle.ft.com
Europe, the secret outperformer
Its cash generation, broader earnings and lower tech concentration deserve more respect
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Leonid Schneider @forbetterscience.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
For Europeans who get upset when their train is delayed.
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Excellent initiative! I started morning runs at @estwell.bsky.social annual meeting last year and as of this year, it's a tradition!
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Melissa & Chris Bruntlett @modacitylife.com · 19/08/2026
In Montréal, what started as an emergency pandemic response has evolved into the continent’s most ambitious car-free scheme. Across 9.3 kilometres of 11 commercial arteries in seven boroughs, entire corridors have been handed back to pedestrians, helping some 2,100 businesses thrive in the process.🧵
People of all ages and abilities walk, sit, and dine along a pedestrianised street in Montreal. It is lined with trees, planter boxes, terraces, and benches.
People of all ages and abilities walk, sit, and dine along a pedestrianised street in Montreal. It is lined with trees, planter boxes, terraces, and benches.
People of all ages and abilities walk, sit, and dine along a pedestrianised street in Montreal. It is lined with trees, planter boxes, terraces, and benches.
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Really happy to see binge eating GWAS finally out! Such a big step for eating behaviour research!
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Pietro Biroli @pietrobiroli.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I call this a win www.wsj.com/business/pac...
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Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 18/08/2026
I'm not smart enough to figure out what is wrong with this study, but I am smart enough to know that popular streaming album releases increasing traffic fatalities by 15% in one day is an implausibly large effect.
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Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
New blogpost deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/08/acce... inspired by recent depressing experience as a peer reviewer. AI-generated #fraud is getting very hard to detect. #peerreview
deevybee.blogspot.com
Acceleration of the arms race between fraudsters and honest researchers
I was recently asked to review a paper that piqued my curiosity. From the abstract it sounded as if it was a secondary analysis of a datas...
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Tamar Haspel @tamarhaspel.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Here we have another observational study looking at alcohol consumption & mortality. The findings? Moderate wine drinking is associated with LOWER risk, while moderate beer/spirits drinking is associated with HIGHER risk. Think about that ... www.foxnews.com/health/beer-...
foxnews.com
Beer, wine or liquor? Massive study reveals which was linked to lower death risk
Heavy alcohol use raised death risk by 24%, but wine at low levels was linked to lower mortality than beer or spirits in a UK Biobank study.
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Russ Poldrack @russpoldrack.org · 11/08/2026
Many of you will have seen the recent post about changes at OSF. If you'd like to learn more about how to use other services (particularly Zenodo) to share data and code, see my book chapter on resource sharing. bettercode-book.org/book-sharing...
bettercode-book.org
12  Sharing Research Objects – Better Code, Better Science
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
It finally happened to me - I was invited to review my own paper!
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 11/08/2026
1. We've gotten so used to Trump's declarations that it's easy to focus on the substance of this executive order (which is utter nonsense) rather than the fact he's making it at all. To my knowledge it's unprecedented for a president to issue direct clinical guidance from the White House podium.
whitehouse.gov
Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
I cannot wait for my copy to arrive! 🤓
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Sholto David @sholtodavid.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Some interesting cheating in a 2026 Nature paper. Similar areas in this fluorescence measurement are unexpected, these tend to be quite noisy. Source data confirms sections have been copied and pasted 👇
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Paul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · 08/08/2026
"Ultimately, PAW Patrol echoes core tenets of neoliberalism and encourages complicity in a global capitalist system that (re)produces inequalities and causes environmental harms." What a way to end an abstract...
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Andrea Howard @drandreahoward.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
HEY. The Economist is ripping off a sociological analysis of Paw Patrol from five years ago. You think we don’t remember obscure academic writing that made the rounds on Twitter?? WE REMEMBER.
journals.sagepub.com
“Whenever there’s trouble, just yelp for help”: Crime, conservation, and corporatization in Paw Patrol - Liam Kennedy, 2021
With few exceptions, cultural criminologists have yet to investigate how crime, criminalized individuals, and punishment are depicted in children’s television p...
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