Alex Weber @weberam2@qoto.org

Latest data confirm abysmal track record of so-called "transformative agreements":
"39 titles (4%) had flipped to full #openaccess "
"552 titles (56%) failed to meet their #OA growth targets "

https://www.coalition-s.org/blog/transformative-journals-analysis-from-the-2023-reports/

Everybody should follow PlanS's example and stop these agreements immediately!

One particularly cool discovery from the new Harvard-Google brain images:

Some brain cells are arranged in mirror-image pairs, for reasons not yet well understood.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk4858 #science #brain #mind #neuroscience #tech

Behold "Pnogstrom", a fun and wild new updating of Pong

mesmerizing

I thought I'd play it for a few minutes, didn't stop for half an hour

Item #1 in my latest "Linkfest" newsletter: https://buttondown.email/clivethompson/archive/linkfest-21-wooden-satellites-post-binary-fonts/

Follow the whole thread of @brembs here: https://mastodon.social/@brembs/112586300096993602 Publishing fake science in "prestigious" journals is far more dangerous than uploading it to public repositories or academia.edu and the like, because of the halo effect associated with the (bad) habit of linking these journals with science rather than with the so-called "prestige", which is just reputation (earned, unearned, or just imposed by bureaucratic research evaluation). #OpenScience

Fact check gem of the day: On Karl Popper's contribution to neurotransmission

In the early 1950s, neuroscientists were arguing about whether neurons communicate with one another via electricity (sparks) or chemical neurotransmissions (soups). It was known as "The War of the Soups and the Sparks" (Big reveal: It's mostly soups).

The experiment that put the debate to rest (at least for the spinal cord) was performed in 1950 by John Eccles and colleagues. In that experiment, they demonstrated that their own hypothesis (sparks) was wrong.

What inspired them to do a "disproving" experiment as opposed to the type that would gather support for their favorite theory? In 1944, Eccles met Karl Popper, and they began corresponding. Per one historian,

"The association with Popper made Eccles reformulate his experimental questions in accord with Popper’s philosophy that apparent ‘‘authentication” is no proof at all. It is only the clear-cut ‘‘falsification” of a theory that carried intellectual weight."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18617413/

The five Fs of preprinting 💡

We’re giving you the rundown on preprints, how they benefit you and your research community, and bonus tools to help you keep up with the preprint literature.
https://elifesciences.org/inside-elife/85d36b45?utm_source=mastofdon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic

Two new biology themed wood puzzles from Nervous System! They feature artwork by scientist/artist David S. Goodsell, whose intricate watercolor paintings explore the molecular landscapes of cells https://n-e-r-v-o-u-s.com/blog/?p=9537

Sorry to see that Daniel Dennett has died. I was just thinking about him the other day and how he was the only member of that “new atheist” group to not turn out to be a total jerk. I knew him from way before that as I was doing a lot of reading in philosophy of mind in my early undergrad days in the ‘80s. I think I read Brainstorms right after G.E.B.

https://dailynous.com/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-death-1942-2024/

Incredibly sad to hear of Daniel Dennett's passing. He was an astonishing thinker whose groundbreaking ideas guided me (and numerous others) towards a much more scientific and sane world.

Thank you for your intuition pumps, memes, unwavering pursuit of truth, and service to human thinking in general.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/19/books/daniel-dennett-dead.html

A while back, I heard a comedian describe an anecdote where they asked their possibly autistic friend if they were "on the spectrum", and the friend responded "we're all on the spectrum - that's why it's a spectrum". The punchline being something like "it was completely accurate but also the most on-the-spectrum answer someone could give".

I like the idea of it and have trouble finding a more accurate or illustrative example. Is it problematic when delivered with care?

@jerlich

Good to see the Journal of Neuroscience move on to open peer review. 6 months in, would be interesting to know the opt-out rate for authors and for reviewers.

Regarding publication costs, indeed the ~$6000 seems excessive; it’s 3x the cost of publishing in eLife, for example.

#ScientificPublishing

I've been following @e_urq of Assigned Media for a long time, but this article is particularly brilliant.

The Pope declaring some people "less worthy of dignity" is deeply horrifying. Evan's response is deeply orienting, the way truth is when you hear it.

"When I lectured the police on moral injury...I was drawing on whatever I had inside me to assert my worth in a situation designed to deprive me of my dignity"

#transrightsarehumanrights
#transgender #dignity

https://www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-news/transgender-dignity-responding-pope-francis

Also… Oxford Open Neuroscience💫 publishes reviews alongside the papers- check out the supplement 👀 #neuroscience

Ho lee shit.
The AP has found that the number of deaths caused by the police in the US is SIGNIFICANTLY higher than thought because they're not always reported as being "officer-involved."

❝
The investigation found that between 2012 and 2021, more than a thousand people died after police use physical force that was not intended to be lethal. That includes batons, stun guns, physical restraints, and chemical agents. The oldest victim was 95 and the youngest 15.

Only 28 of the officers were charged.

The Police role was only cited in about half of the cases, meaning that many more Americans have died at the hands of the police than was previously known.
❞

Watch the PBS segment here
https://youtu.be/5rrMUfbGVlM?feature=shared

#PoliceBrutality #PoliceDontKeepUsSafe #FuckThePolice #DefundDisarmDismantle

Wondering about the current state of affairs of data science and data management in neuroscience collaborations? Wondering where your tax dollars go? Well, wonder no more! Edgar Walker, Guoqiang Yu and myself collected some data! And opinions :-) https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.03.20.585936v1