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Uku Vainik

@ukuvainik.bsky.social
782 followers 715 following 354 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
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 16h
If you signed away rights 35 years ago and want them back, check out the Authors Alliance, a nonprofit whose advisory board I volunteer for. We produced a tool that automates all the hardest parts of terminating your transfers and getting your rights back: www.authorsalliance.org/resources/te...
authorsalliance.org
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 35m
If no microfiber cloth around, then dishwashing liquid + warm water will do miracles. Use paper towel to _tap_ dry. Smearing with non nictofi can introduce scratches.
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Reposted by Uku Vainik
Sasha Gusev @sashagusevposts.bsky.social · 8h
I wrote about the recent symposium on Greg Clark's forthcoming book on genetics and social mobility. Clark uses large-scale lineage data to argue that social status in England can be entirely explained by genetic transmission. 🧵
theinfinitesimal.substack.com
Vibe heritability
The EJW symposium on Gregory Clark on genetics and social mobility
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eLife @elife.bsky.social · 13h
📅 We're exhibiting at #ASHG26 🧬 next week! Visit us at stand 1502 to chat about our publishing model and pick up some exclusive eLife goodies. See you in Montréal! @geneticssociety.bsky.social buff.ly/Hp9fBmG
buff.ly
eLife at ASHG 2026 | Montréal
Visit us at stand #1502 to learn more about publishing your pioneering genetics research with eLife.
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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 13h
Causal peeps: Somebody asked me whether I had readings to recommend on the role of causality in psychological theories -- for example, are all theories inherently causal or otherwise. Any ideas/pointers? They already found work by @mieronen.bsky.social and @bringmannlaura.bsky.social 👀
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Sven-Erik Volberg @volberg.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
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Neil Sehgal @nsehgal.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
🚨 New paper 🚨 Are your participants using AI to take your study? We conducted the first study directly observing AI assistance in online research, spanning 700K+ Prolific submissions. We found very rare, concentrated AI use, but gaps in safeguards. arxiv.org/abs/2610.09279
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UK Biobank @ukbiobank.ac.uk · 08/10/2026
DNA from UK Biobank participants and others has revealed 1,260 genetic markers for personality traits such as openness, neuroticism and extroversion 🧬 Read the full story: ow.ly/ryIP50ZVswg
ow.ly
Up to 16% of our personality is in our genes
Biggest study of its kind discovers more than 1,200 genetic markers linked to characteristics such as extroversion and agreeableness
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Cam Hostinar, Ph.D. @camhostinar.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I am pleased to announce the launch of our new diamond open access journal Psychology Across Development (accepting submissions starting today!). We are a lifespan developmental journal. (1/3) escholarship.org/uc/psycdev
escholarship.org
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Lukas Gunschera @lukasgunschera.com · 06/10/2026
Addiction has become the default framework for interpreting problematic social media use. It shapes how it is measured, discussed, regulated, and what support young people are offered. But does it match the experiences of young people who report feeling addicted to social media? 🧵(1/7)
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Baaia @baaia.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Väide on täitsa tõene. Thiel ja ta kaaskond just sellest räägivad. "Ta väidab, et tehnoloogiamaailmas leidub inimesi, kes ei võta inimkonna kadumist tragöödiana, vaid järgmise sammuna evolutsioonis. Üks tema tuttav olla öelnud: „Inimesed on asendatav liik.“" ekspress.delfi.ee/artikkel/120...
ekspress.delfi.ee
Eestlane, kes annetab aastas rohkem, kui enamik rikkaid terve eluga teenib
Jaan Tallinn (54) teenib tehisaruga miljardeid, kulutab tohutuid summasid maailma päästmisele ning nimetab ennast väljasuremise vastaseks.
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Michel Nivard @michelnivard.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Interesting piece on personality in the Washington Post, they talked to @tedmond.bsky.social and @tuckerdrob.bsky.social about changing personality, birth order, genetics effects… (but no @dingdingpeng.the100.ci cameo on birthorder!)
washingtonpost.com
Column | Birth order doesn’t predict your personality. Here’s what does.
New research is challenging assumptions about what determines our personality — and showing that you can change it.
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Abdel Abdellaoui @dr-appie.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
New collaboration between @sangerinstitute.bsky.social & @amsterdamumc.bsky.social in @natgenet.nature.com! Largest study to date on associations between DNA & intelligence. We reduce ascertainment bias & boost power by imputing missing scores in @ukbiobank.ac.uk www.nature.com/articles/s41... 👇🏽
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Estonia seeks to adopt Nutri-score. Many producers oppose Nutri-score on grounds it's not perfect capture of reality. At the same time, producers use a whole spectrum of their own food labels, which are likely suboptimal.
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Theo Sanderson @theo.io · 02/10/2026
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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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Nii võib ka mõelda jah. Eks tellijat tuleb harida, et ta saaks oma raha eest seda, mida soovib.
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Programm on jah mitmekesine. Paistab, et igaühele on välja valitud oma tõmbenumber. Ma arvan, et see iseloomustab ka teaduskommunikatsiooni väljakutseid.. kuid kui teaduskommi mitte teha, siis täidabki kogu ruumi kõik muu.
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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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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
25% of Estonian vocabulary stems from from low german, apparently also "trellid", which stems from "tralie". arhiiv.eki.ee/dict/ety/ind... Dutch also stems from there: en.pons.com/translate/du...
en.pons.com
TRALIES - Translation from Dutch into German | PONS
Look up the Dutch to German translation of TRALIES in the PONS online dictionary. Includes free vocabulary trainer, verb tables and pronunciation function.
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Uku Vainik @ukuvainik.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Estonian is "trellid" , prison bars
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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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