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xavier roberts-gaal

@xrg.bsky.social
158 followers 187 following 31 posts

three language models in a trench coat harvard psych, oai safety fellow (xavierrg.com)

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Reposted by xavier roberts-gaal
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 11/02/2026
I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
It must be very hard to publish null results
Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
If you work at the intersection of computational neuroscience and machine learning, consider applying for this postdoc position (January 2027 start date): academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15868 An opportunity to work with a great group of people across Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley.
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František Bartoš @fbartos.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
We just preprinted a huge meta-meta-analysis examining the effects of exercise on cognition, memory, and executive function In short - 2239 effect sizes - extreme between-study heterogeneity - extensive publication bias - some subgroup/exercise-specific effects More below (doi.org/10.31234/osf...)
doi.org
OSF
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Samuli Reijula @samulireijula.net · 28/11/2025
A funded PhD position in philosophy of science: AI in scientific problem solving. At @helsinki.fi @tint-philosophy.bsky.social #philsci jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...
jobs.helsinki.fi
Doctoral Researcher, Philosophy of science: AI in scientific problem solving
Doctoral Researcher, Philosophy of science: AI in scientific problem solving
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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
How and when and why do children use loopholes? Our research on this hits the Big Time*: (* Big time = SciShow, with Hank Greene) youtu.be/f7FhKywXRGk?... (original paper in question: srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...)
youtu.be
Lying and 6 Other Things Babies Learn Early
YouTube video by SciShow
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Tobias Gerstenberg @tobigerstenberg.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
🚨New Preprint: We develop a novel task that probes counterfactual thinking without using counterfactual language, and that teases apart genuine counterfactual thinking from related forms of thinking. Using this task, we find that the ability for counterfactual thinking emerges around 5 years of age.
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Scripps Research @scripps.edu · 10/10/2025
The NIH has awarded a $14.2M Director’s Transformative Research Award to a team led by Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist @ardemp.bskyverified.social, Prof. @liye-tsri.bsky.social and Assoc. Prof. @xinjin.bsky.social to map interoception and build the first atlas of this hidden sixth sense.
scripps.edu
Scripps Research-led team receives $14.2M NIH award to map the body’s “hidden sixth sense”
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Steve Rathje @steverathje.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
🚨 New preprint 🚨 Across 3 experiments (n = 3,285), we found that interacting with sycophantic (or overly agreeable) AI chatbots entrenched attitudes and led to inflated self-perceptions. Yet, people preferred sycophantic chatbots and viewed them as unbiased! osf.io/preprints/ps... Thread 🧵
Abstract and results summary
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Eric Mandelbaum @ericman.bsky.social · 23/09/2025
My friends @foddy.net and @gcuzzillo.bsky.social's game @babystepsgame.bsky.social came out today and it looks amazing. @foddy.net is an artist and philosopher in the truest sense of the words, who just happens to be using video games as his medium at the moment: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/23/a...
nytimes.com
When You Fall on Your Face, a Philosophical Designer Succeeds
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xavier roberts-gaal @xrg.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
love this really elegant paper spearheaded by Linas! one of the clearest instances of resource-rational social cognition i've seen worth a read!
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Haneul Jang @haneuljang.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
💙New paper!💙 How is knowledge transmitted across generations in a foraging society? With @danielredhead.bsky.social we found: In BaYaka foragers, long-term skills pass in smaller, sparser networks, while short-term food info circulates broadly & reciprocally academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
academic.oup.com
Transmission networks of long-term and short-term knowledge in a foraging society
Abstract. Cultural transmission across generations is key to cumulative cultural evolution. While several mechanisms—such as vertical, horizontal, and obli
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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
out now in Open Mind: "People Evaluate Agents Based on the Algorithms That Drive Their Behavior" by Bigelow & me Paper: direct.mit.edu/opmi/article... OSF: osf.io/yzbrq/?view_...
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Samantha Joel @datingdecisions.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
In a new paper, my colleagues and I set out to demonstrate how method biases can create spurious findings in relationship science, by using a seemingly meaningless scale (e.g., "My relationship has very good Saturn") to predict relationship outcomes. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com
Pseudo Effects: How Method Biases Can Produce Spurious Findings About Close Relationships - Samantha Joel, John K. Sakaluk, James J. Kim, Devinder Khera, Helena Yuchen Qin, Sarah C. E. Stanton, 2025
Research on interpersonal relationships frequently relies on accurate self-reporting across various relationship facets (e.g., conflict, trust, appreciation). Y...
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PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
No Evidence of Experimenter Demand Effects in Three Online Psychology Experiments: osf.io/g6xhf
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xavier roberts-gaal @xrg.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
We often hear from reviewers: "what about demand effects?" So we developed a method to eliminate them. Something weird happened during testing: We couldn’t detect demand effects in the first place! (1/8)
Summary of design and results from our three studies. (A: Design) Each study used a similar experimental design, measuring both positive and negative demand in an online experiment, with three commonly-used task types (dictator game, vignette, intervention). Our experiments had ns ≈ 250 per cell. (B: Results) Observed demand effects were statistically indistinguishable from zero. The plot shows means and 95% confidence intervals for standardized mean differences derived from frequentist analyses of each experiment and an inverse variance-weighted fixed-effect estimator pooling all experiments (solid bars). Prior measurements of experimenter demand from a previous dictator game experiment (de Quidt et al., 2018; standardized mean difference from regression coefficient) and a meta-analysis primarily including small-sample, in-person studies (Coles et al., 2025; Hedge’s g statistic) are also shown for comparison (striped bars). The main text includes Bayesian analyses that quantify our uncertainty.
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Mark Shuquan Chen @markschen.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
My website is official 🙌 Excited to share that I am interested in reviewing applications for Harvard’s Clinical Science PhD program this fall as I look for the first student to join my lab! I appreciate it if you can share with your network :) psychology.fas.harvard.edu/people/mark-...
psychology.fas.harvard.edu
Mark Chen | Department of Psychology
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Alex Wiegmann @alexwiegmann.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
🔥Exciting news in experimental philosophy🔥 Very happy to announce that there will be soon a new journal named “Experimental Philosophy”. It will be open access, free of charge for authors and follow all Open Science principles. Editors and Editorial Board below. More information coming soon...
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xavier roberts-gaal @xrg.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
the functional form of moral judgment is (sometimes) the nash bargaining solution new preprint👇
figure 2 from our preprint, reporting the results from two experiments 

we measure moral judgments about dividing money between two parties and manipulate the degree of asymmetry in the outside options each party has

we find that moral judgments track predictions from rational bargaining models like the nash bargaining solution and the kalai-smorodinsky solution in a negotiation context

by contrast, in a donation context, moral intuitions completely reverse, instead tracking redistributive and egalitarian principles

preprint link: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/3uqks_v1
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Justin Caouette @drjustincaouette.bsky.social · 18/01/2024
Does Moral Valence Influence the Construal of Alternative Possibilities?
researchgate.net
(PDF) Does Moral Valence Influence the Construal of Alternative Possibilities?
PDF | It is often thought that an agent may be held morally responsible for bringing about a negative outcome only if they could have done otherwise.... | Find, read and cite all the research you need...
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simine vazire @simine.com · 18/01/2024
Part 2 of the Freakonomics series on fraud in academic research is out. With the same people as part 1 (@briannosek.bsky.social @joesimmons.bsky.social @urisohn.bsky.social Leif Nelson, me, and Max Bazerman), plus Ivan Oransky. freakonomics.com/podcast/can-...
freakonomics.com
Can Academic Fraud Be Stopped? - Freakonomics
Can Academic Fraud Be Stopped? - Freakonomics
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Stellbound: Stellraiser II @antlervel.vet · 20/12/2023
Inspiring words from this NASA official
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Andrew Lampinen @lampinen.bsky.social · 10/12/2023
How far can we trust representation analyses or mechanistic interpretations? Our new work, led by Dan Friedman shows that analyses based on simplifying the model or its representations can be misleading about how the model will behave out of distribution! arxiv.org/abs/2312.03656
Principle components analysis of network representations, showing organized clusters colored by properties of the data
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Steve Haroz @steveharoz.com · 28/11/2023
Great open access textbook on experiment design! (h/t @mcxfrank.bsky.social) experimentology.io
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hakwan lau @hakwan.bsky.social · 25/11/2023
Scientists paid large publishers over $1 billion in four years to have their studies published with open access well done, folks english.elpais.com/science-tech...
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Edouard Machery @edouardmachery.bsky.social · 21/11/2023
CALL FOR PAPERS: SPP 2024 The Society for Philosophy and Psychology (SPP) invites submissions of papers to be presented at its 50th Annual Meeting to be held June 19-June 22, 2024 at Purdue University (local organizer: Corey Maley).
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Iyad Rahwan | إياد رهوان @iyadrahwan.bsky.social · 20/11/2023
Our perspective paper "Machine Culture" is out in Nature Human Behavior. Free access version: rdcu.be/drzoS
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 20/11/2023
this is a bloody great name for a climate report www.unep.org/resources/em...
Broken Record
Temperatures hit new highs, yet world fails to cut emissions (again)
UN
environment programme
。
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Celia Heyes @celiaheyes.bsky.social · 17/11/2023
Discussion Forum on my "Rethinking Norm Psychology", edited by @dryan149.bsky.social. 14 great commentaries by @duhe.bsky.social @evanwestra.bsky.social @kristinandrews.bsky.social @thepsychologist.bsky.social Molly Crockett, Kim Sterelny...#neuroskyence #philsky journals.sagepub.com/topic/collec...
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Fiery Cushman @fierycushman.bsky.social · 18/11/2023
Delighted to share this new preprint lead by Arthur Le Pargneux. When somebody needs to "take one for the team" (pull a late night, walk an extra mile, trudge through mud), do people think that moral responsibility falls upon whoever has the weakest bargaining position? osf.io/preprints/ps... 1/2
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Wouter Kool @wouterkool.bsky.social · 11/11/2023
If you are at #SfN23, go check out the awesome work that Ata Karagoz @atabk.bsky.social is doing with me and Zach Reagh @zreagh.bsky.social! He uses behavioral (!) and neural RSA to measure the construction of cognitive maps for planning.
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Micah G. Allen @micahgallen.com · 09/11/2023
ICYMI: @steveharoz.com recently made a very nice little feed that curates the most liked psyarix and bioarxiv-neuro preprints over the past week. It is a great way to find new preprints. 🧠🟦 #psychology bsky.app/profile/did:...
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 06/11/2023
An intergroup contact intervention in Nigeria improved intergroup attitudes, fostered more intergroup contact, and decreased feelings of insecurity in these communities, not only for those who directly participated, but also for the wider community! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
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Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 05/11/2023
If you know any undergrads who would like to do something very adventurous next summer (experiments on learning in single cell organisms), have them get in touch with me.
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Brian Nosek @briannosek.bsky.social · 03/11/2023
New economics reproducibility project is seeking collaborators to conduct reproduction and robustness tests of published development economics findings. Contributors earn 2500 euros and co-authorship on the overall project paper. Details: www.rwi-essen.de/fileadmin/us...
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Dan Quintana @dsquintana.bsky.social · 03/11/2023
Our new R package makes it easy to report the percentage of effect sizes that a given effect is larger than for a given research field. So instead of reporting a 'medium' effect, you can say something like, "we found an effect that was larger than 42% of effect sizes reported in the field"
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Andrew Shtulman @andrewshtulman.bsky.social · 02/11/2023
Learning to Imagine: The Science of Discovering New Possibilities (www.amazon.com/Learning-Ima...) is coming out Nov. 14!   To celebrate, I will be posting an image and caption from each chapter over the next several days. Here’s the table of contents to start things off.
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Ben Balas @bjbalas.bsky.social · 30/10/2023
If you're getting ready to teach Sensation & Perception, check out my teaching website for Hands-On Vision Science - you'll find instructions for lots of in-class experiments & demos, links to useful online widgets, and a free textbook! #PsychSciSky #VisionScience. sites.google.com/view/hands-o...
sites.google.com
Hands-on Vision Science
About the site
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Roman Feiman @romanfeiman.bsky.social · 24/10/2023
A good time of year to repost: Every year I read a lot of grad school applications from accomplished people that don't give me the info I'm looking for. It feels like a major hidden curriculum thing. So here's (my opinion on) how to write a great Statement of Purpose/Research for a PhD program. 1/
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Emily Liquin @emilyliquin.bsky.social · 16/10/2023
Hi Bluesky! I’m recruiting PhD students to help launch the Exploration, Learning, and Mind Lab at U of New Hampshire Psych in Fall 2024! Check out our lab website at liquinlab.github.io for more info, and feel free to get in touch if you’re interested in applying! #CogSci #DevPsych #PsychSciSky
liquinlab.github.io
ELM Lab @ UNH
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Alex Mesoudi @alexmesoudi.com · 16/10/2023
Also check out a tutorial I made for simulation models of cultural evolution in R, all free on github: github.com/amesoudi/cul... and as a bookdown version with outputs: bookdown.org/amesoudi/ABM...
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Benedek Kurdi @benedek.bsky.social · 16/10/2023
Solid evidence now exists to show that implicit bias responds to a variety of outputs (including propositional ones) and is capable of long-term change. In this commentary with @ericman.bsky.social, we consider the implications of these findings for our science and for society: rdcu.be/doFRI.
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Adam Morris @thatadammorris.bsky.social · 13/10/2023
A common view in behavioral science is that people cannot introspect directly on the mental processes underlying their choices. Here, in a new preprint, we provide evidence that they can. osf.io/preprints/ps... Work with Ryan Carlson, Hedy Kober, and @mjcrockett.bsky.social
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Ida Momennejad @neuroai.bsky.social · 14/10/2023
As my first post, delighted to share our #neurips2023 paper: Evaluating Cognitive Maps & Planning in LLMs with CogEval We test cognitive maps & planning in 8 LLMs. Failures like hallucinating invalid paths & falling in loops suggest no emergent zero-shot planning. 1/n 🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2309.15129
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Brian Nosek @briannosek.bsky.social · 04/10/2023
Open data sharing is a good thing; Protecting participant privacy is a good thing. Sometimes these two good things are in conflict. Our new preprint introduces a decision-making framework and open source tools to help share as openly as possible and as closed as necessary. osf.io/preprints/me...
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xavier roberts-gaal @xrg.bsky.social · 03/10/2023
Announcing NeurIPS 2023 Workshop! AI Meets Moral Philosophy And Moral Psychology (MP2). EXTENDED submission deadline: Oct 6th (just three days!) aipsychphil.github.io Posting here on behalf of twitter.com/sydneymlevine Site on the other place: twitter.com/mp2_neurips2...
aipsychphil.github.io
MP2: AI meets Moral Philosophy and Moral Psychology
An Interdisciplinary Dialogue about Computational Ethics at NeurIPs 2023
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Edouard Machery @edouardmachery.bsky.social · 02/10/2023
I think the dust has settled on this matter but still nice to have a bit more
link.springer.com
The influence of philosophical training on the evaluation of philosophical cases: a controlled longi...
According to the expertise defense, practitioners of the method of cases need not worry about findings that ordinary people’s philosophical intuitions depend on epistemically irrelevant factors. Thi...
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xavier roberts-gaal @xrg.bsky.social · 27/09/2023
as a large language model created by openai, i cannot write a "hello, world" post for your bluesky profile.
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