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• Post #4216985

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@brembs/116958174981764381 Combined with the disaster that contest models are in the grant situation and we can see how badly the scientific infrastructure is screwed up. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000065 This is why we can't have nice things. 😢

• Post #4216984

  So, given that the scientific publishing model is a mess (chasing impact factor, predatory publishers, working down the sequence of journals rather than up) and that the grant model is a mess (writing effectively the same grant a half dozen times to pass the contest model rather than actually doing science), how do we do good science anyway? Assuming that we can't actually change the infrastructure (I've tried!), how do we succeed, getting the resources we need, continuing our o...

• Post #4216983

  Question for #NeuroMethods. (And maybe @elduvelle_neuro 's zulip?) Does anyone know if there is a way in Kilosort (preferably v<2.5) to tell KS to ignore stimulus artifact times (perhaps does it work to nan-out those times - I could write a function to remove those times)? We are finding that it is very hard to cut spikes on data with electrical stimulation. thx!

• Post #2902518

  An absolutely fascinating article on the self-destruction of the American Hegemony and the implications for software technology around the world. Found from @pluralistic 's recent blog post. (Which is always worth reading.) https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/the-old-world-of-tech-is-dying/

• Post #2119346

  RE: https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/116520974949321360 Oh man, I feel seen.

• Post #2082228

  A tremendous amount of the scientific infrastructure is based on volunteerism and the assumption that the basics of survival have been met. I'm thinking of all of the infrastructure that makes the process actually work --- reviewing for journals, reviewing for promotion at other institutions, presenting talks, helping students, faculty governance, doing more than the absolute minimum in teaching, helping with collaborations on projects, etc. As the grant-getting situation gets more dif...

• Post #1855059

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@CStamp/116474651802077473 An important PSA on surveillance pricing. Also worth tagging to @pluralistic

• Post #1855058

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/116477298787105629 We are approaching Lysenkoism level crises. Some parts of the US scientific apparatus are already there. (CDC, for example.) But the whole apparatus is teetering on the edge of disaster. I'm waiting for the consequences to hit beyond the scientific community. And it will. (Probably with vaccines as the first crash, but there's more coming.) Really, we are the canary in the coal mine.

• Post #1847647

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@thetransmitter/116476879384094089 A very important essay. But the tag line from the publisher misses the whole point of the essay. Prediction without understanding doesn't generalize and misses the great contribution that science makes. Prediction without understanding did NOT sustain physics for millenia - if you needed to launch your rock into an enemy's castle, you didn't talk to the physicists because they didn't *understand*. It...

• Post #1698739

  My university just changed the rules for the syllabus for our classes to include a "workload statement" so that the students can know how much time they'll have to spend working on the class. Didn't the syllabus used to just be "what you should expect to learn in this class"? When did it change into a legal contract about what work you have to do? Does anyone else's uni do this? PS. The old rules already required legal statements ab...

• Post #1409900

  RE: https://wandering.shop/@Catvalente/116375945485000722 💯 The worst part is that there is in fact a technical term for what the network is doing even under the hypothesis that it is a model (of some aspects) of neural function: pareidolia. Hallucination is a different mechanism.

• Post #1409899

  We're still doing science! New preprint dropped: *Hippocampal representations differentiate reactive and anticipatory responses during foraging under threat* (Damphousse et al. bioRxiv). *** Fleeing from a predator is represented fundamentally differently than retreat from anxiety about that predator. On our "run the gauntlet" version of the "robogator" task, the dorsal hippocampus represents the attack (behind it as it flees) more during retreat fr...

• Post #1120947

  @Andrewpapale@fediscience.org @elduvelle_neuro Yes, ADR would agree with @elduvelle_neuro 's position. but I note that the paper DOES apply this to object locations, which is new. The issue is that science is not an Age of Empires game. These major labs (particularly once you get a Nobel or get named to the National Academy or whatever) should be post-ambitious. They have already won the ambition game. This means that they have the freedom to take risks and just go play. Give...

• Post #706568

  Computers didn't use to suck. Now, everything is DRM and secured and simple things (like printing out a form!) take hours of trying things to convince the printer that it still has ink and to convince Adobe PDF that I have the right to print it (it's "secured") and then when things don't print, it's a f***ing nightmare to ensure that you haven't left an important document on some server's random f***ing hard drive. Ordering thi...