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J. Brendan Ritchie

@jbrendanritchie.bsky.social

420 followers 510 following 75 posts

Cognitive neuroscientist studying vision and cognition. Recovering philosopher. Asst Prof in the Dept of Neuro at U Lethbridge/Iniskim. Views are my own. He/him

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J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · Apr 12

I am very happy to announce that this Fall I will be starting my position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge. I am finally returning home to Canada, and the Prairies that I love.

Aerial view of the University of Lethbridge. The modern campus buildings are tucked into the gaps between the coulees.

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Walker Bragman @walkerbragman.bsky.social · 1d

If I were actively trying to destroy the United States from within, going after and dismantling its public health would be like the first thing I’d do.

Just pointing that out.

This is beyond dangerous. It’s leaving us vulnerable in a way we can’t really fathom until it’s too late.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg @sherylnyt.bsky.social · 1d

BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:

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Ian L Morgan @ianlmorgan.bsky.social · 2d

My op-ed just came out discussing how NIH leadership is failing early career researchers and, importantly, how we can push back and take our future into our own hands.

NIH Leadership Is Failing Early Career Researchers

Halted training programs, funding chaos, and hiring freezes jeopardize advancement options for early career researchers.

www.the-scientist.com

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Alt NIH Bluesky 🧪 @altnih4science.bsky.social · 1d

The thing we have learned very clearly about Jay Bhattacharya in the last six months is:

He wants to be a podcaster.

He seems to have no interest in running NIH or learning about science. He’s the leader of #darkscicomm

Jonathan Howard @joho.bsky.social · 1d

Bhattacharya is busy tweeting from his personal account about how he was right about lockdowns.

This is where he seems to want to spend his time, rather than doing his day job.

t Jay Bhattacharya reposted
Coronavirus Plushie & @c_plushie
Follow
And this is how it was covered by @IngrahamAngle on this day, 5 Oct, 2020:
Top International Epidemiologists Launch
Petition for Focused Protections and an End to Lockdowns — Signed by Over 1,700 Medical Professionals
Thank you @MartinKulldorff@DrJBhattacharya and@SunetraGupta
• DR SUNETRA GUPTA LOXFORD UNIV EPIDEMIOLOGY PROFESSOR
FOX NEWS
EXPERTS: THOSE NOT VULNERABLE SHOULD RESUME LIFE
EXCLUSIVE
ANGLE

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 2d

This will be increasingly clear for US science too. The decades-long apolitical science enterprise, built on NIH and NSF, is gone.

We will have to think about how to rebuild.

Alan Elrod @aselrod.bsky.social · 3d

The America we used to live in—the America we want to think we live in—is gone.

We’ll have to build again.

We want to think that the repeated, widespread abuse of basic rights by DHS; the DOJ actions against former officials like James Comey and John Bolton; the presence of 2020 election deniers across congressional and executive branch leaders; the unconstitutional dismantling of federal agencies; the consolidation of old and new media under leadership favorable to Trump; the use of lawsuits and executive branch power to intimidate and silence critics; and the clear attempts to subvert the 2026 and 2028 elections; and Trump's constant insinuation that he might seek a third term do not all in fact mean
that we have crossed the threshold into a competitive authoritarian environment.
But we have. We have passed through the veil. Whatever becomes of American liberal democracy in the near or distant future, it will be a resurrection and not a continuation.

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Chaz Firestone @chazfirestone.bsky.social · 3d

This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis.

Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇

Screenshot of a paper abstract:

“Core knowledge” refers to a set of cognitive systems that underwrite early representations of the physical and social world, appear universally across cultures, and likely result from our genetic endowment. Although this framework is canonically considered as a hypothesis about early emerging conception — how we think and reason about the world — here we present an alternative view: that many such representations are inherently perceptual in nature. This “core perception” view explains an intriguing (and otherwise mysterious) aspect of core-knowledge processes and representations: that they also operate in adults, where they display key empirical signatures of perceptual processing. We first illustrate this overlap using recent work on “core physics”, the domain of core knowledge concerned with physical objects, representing properties such as persistence through time, cohesion, solidity, and causal interactions. We review evidence that adult vision incorporates exactly these representations of core physics, while also displaying empirical signatures of genuinely perceptual mechanisms, such as rapid and automatic operation on the basis of specific sensory inputs, informational encapsulation, and interaction with other perceptual processes. We further argue that the same pattern holds for other areas of core knowledge, including geometrical, numerical, and social domains. In light of this evidence, we conclude that many infant results appealing to precocious reasoning abilities are better explained by sophisticated perceptual mechanisms shared by infants and adults. Our core-perception view elevates the status of perception in accounting for the origins of conceptual knowledge, and generates a range of ready-to-test hypotheses in developmental psychology, vision science, and more.

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J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · 2d

Really curious what the breakdown will be in the commentaries for agree vs disagree wrt to whether someone does dev research or not. Like I've never found the cog gloss of core knowledge very compelling, but I also don't do dev work.

Reposted by J. Brendan Ritchie

Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 3d

Check out this lovely new paper by the inimitable @emilya-izzeddin.bsky.social ! We examine how humans use natural image statistics to judge similarity.

Emily A-Izzeddin @emilya-izzeddin.bsky.social · 4d

The final bit of work from my PhD just got published at JOV! We looked at similarity judgements made for naturalistic image patches, and whether these are predicted by simple image statistics… (spoiler: yep!)

Link to paper: doi.org/10.1167/jov....

1/11

Low-level features predict perceived similarity for naturalistic images | JOV | ARVO Journals

doi.org

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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 10d

Now Jeanne Marrazzo, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has been fired by #RFKJr in retaliation. This administration is corrupt. Matthew Memoli: remember this man's name, MAGA grifter who scored $500M for his research. www.statnews.com/2025/09/04/n...

Two former top NIH officials say they were forced out in retaliation for objecting to grant terminations

Whistleblower complaints by two former top NIH officials offer their inside accounts of the Trump administration’s targeting of vaccine science.

www.statnews.com

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Jonathan W. Gray @elmcitytree.blacksky.app · 7d

James Baldwin to Angela Davis in 1970, discussing white Americans:

Or, to put it another way, as long as white Americans take refuge in their whiteness— for so long as they are unable to walk out of this most monstrous of traps-they will allow millions of people to be slaughtered in their name, and will be manipulated into and surrender themselves to what they will think of-and justify—as a racial war. They will never, so long as their whiteness puts so sinister a distance between themselves and their own experience and the experience of others, feel themselves sufficiently human, sufficiently worthwhile, to become responsible for themselves, their leaders, their country, their children, or their fate. They will perish (as we once put it in our black church) in their sins—that is, in their delusions. And this is happening, needless to say, already, all around us.

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Sam Nastase @samnastase.bsky.social · 10d

I'm recruiting PhD students to join my new lab in Fall 2026! The Shared Minds Lab at @usc.edu will combine deep learning and ecological human neuroscience to better understand how we communicate our thoughts from one brain to another.

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Lucina Uddin @lucinauddin.bsky.social · 12d

www.thetransmitter.org/funding/nih-...

NIH awarded 37 percent fewer neuroscience-related grants in 2025 than in past years

But the agency has spent nearly its entire budget for this fiscal year, which ends tomorrow.

www.thetransmitter.org

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Alt NIH Bluesky 🧪 @altnih4science.bsky.social · 13d

Accurate take on Bhattacharya from Reddit:

“Look, this guy is a lightweight, at best. Any of the brilliant, productive, long-time physician researchers in NIH intramural would share this with you if they could do so safely and without attribution. To say he is in over his head is obvious...”
1/ 🧪

Look, this guy is a lightweight, at best. Any of the brilliant, productive, long time physician researchers in NIH intramural would share this with you if they could do so safely and without attribution. He is not going to grow into this position. He has peaked in his growth cycle and in this career with this Presidential appointment. To say he is in over his head is obvious. He will avoid situations where he cannot control the players at the table, cause he would have never been invited to sit at the table before given this position. Likely he would not even have been allowed to sit at the circle around the table, as that was always for senior staff. (Anyone familiar with IC directors meetings or SD (scientific directors) meetings will
know what this means.

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 20d

The New York Times piece today about US science is terrible and wrong—in many ways.

I could write a whole article about this, but as one example:

“To close observers, the original crisis began well before any of this…”
No. I’m a close observer of science, and this is incorrect.

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The Breakdown AB @thebreakdownab.bsky.social · 23d

“Danielle Smith has directed officials to invoke the Charter’s notwithstanding clause in amending three laws that affect transgender people”

Danielle Smith is going to revoke people’s Charter Rights.

Thats where we are.

#abpoli #ableg #cdnpoli

lethbridgeherald.com/news/nationa...

Alberta to use notwithstanding clause on its three transgender laws: memo

EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has directed officials to invoke the Charter's notwithstanding clause in amending three laws that affect

lethbridgeherald.com

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Bill Comeau 🇨🇦 @bill-comeau.bsky.social · 23d

Canada needs to extend this analysis. In the meantime, pay attention to WF smoke warnings and advisories.
"Cumulative excess deaths from smoke PM2.5 could reach 1.9 million between 2026-2055. We find evidence for mortality impacts of smoke PM2.5 that last up to three years after exposure."

Harvey J. Miller @mobileharv.bsky.social · 23d

If the planet continues to warm at its current rate, exposure to wildfire smoke will kill an estimated 70,000 Americans each year by 2050, according to new research.

Wildfire Smoke Will Kill Thousands More by 2050, Study Finds

www.nytimes.com

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The Tyee @thetyee.ca · Sep 9

A new report details how right-wing forces are weaponizing the concept of “parental rights” to push culture-war narratives aimed at undermining public education in Alberta. @readtheorchard.org writes. #abpoli

The Right-Wing Plan to Take Over Alberta Education | The Tyee

A new report zeroes in on the forces aiming to win control of school boards in next month’s elections.

thetyee.ca

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Ian L Morgan @ianlmorgan.bsky.social · Sep 7

Today, I tried to get my COVID vaccine and was denied. Even after showing the pharmacist @govwesmoore.bsky.social 's statement that Maryland law says all Marylanders should have access to the COVID vaccine, I was still denied. They said they had to follow the box. This is RFK's fault. RFK must go.

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J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · Sep 7

Um, what? The risk of LC goes up with every infection and there's never been a widely available vaccine that provides long term immunity to new variants. Please don't use your platform to spread this kinda misinformation.

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J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · Sep 3

#neurojobs

J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · Sep 2

Let's be colleagues! Dept of Neuro at U of Lethbridge (Canada) is hiring a TT faculty: "with demonstrated excellence in research on brain function across the life span in nonhuman animals, employing a systems-level approach and utilizing state-of-the-art methods." uleth.peopleadmin.ca/postings/8586

Faculty of Arts & Science - Assistant Professor (Neuroscience)

The Department of Neuroscience at the University of Lethbridge invites applications for a tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor. We are seeking a neuroscientist with demonstrated ex...

uleth.peopleadmin.ca

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Christopher Wiggins @cwnewser.bsky.social · Aug 29

“The CDC you knew is over,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis told me today. “Unless someone takes radical action, there is nothing there that can be salvaged.”

www.advocate.com/politics/dem...

RFK Jr.’s damage to the CDC is ‘past the point of no return,’ Dr. Demetre Daskalakis warns

“The CDC you knew is over,” the infectious diseases doctor told The Advocate. “Unless someone takes radical action, there is nothing there that can be salvaged.”

www.advocate.com

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J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · Aug 29

In this respect a lot of existing work is already pushing us in the right direction. But we believe that at this point we need to move beyond the framework of category-selectivity while continuing to build on its hard-won insights. 18/18

J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · Aug 29

We also think that a great deal of the methodological developments in cognitive neuroscience are very well-suited to studying how visual cortex codes for behavioral relevance. 17/18

J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · Aug 29

We suggest the same sort of model fits our emphasis on behavioral relevance, if the dimensions are derived from how we process complex environments during natural behavior rather than similarity judgments. 16/18

J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · Aug 29

In their work using the THINGS initiative data, they suggest that visual cortex relies on widely distributed but locally sparse coding for many different visual dimensions. 15/18

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