Kathryn Weber-Boer
LightNews LightNews
banner
kowb.bsky.social
Kathryn Weber-Boer
@kowb.bsky.social
770 followers 620 following 400 posts
Enjoys digging into data about science, a good principled argument, and human dignity. Super annoyed by disinformation and anything that hurts researchers or knowledge. Sometime archaeologist (I like animal bones...)
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
statsepi.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/john...
johnrgallagher.bsky.social John Gallagher @johnrgallagher.bsky.social · 16h
I interviewed 108 ML researchers. They had a lot to say about this!

Lessons learned from machine learning researchers about the terms “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning.”

compstudiesjournal.com/wp-content/u...
compstudiesjournal.com
November 23, 2025 at 2:55 AM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
statsepi.bsky.social
We tried to tell y'all to stop calling everything "AI" many years ago and you just wouldn't listen and now the poor machine learners must also suffer alongside the statisticians 😜
sharonk.bsky.social Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 29d
so I can explain this: it's not generative AI: it's usually deep learning models trained on meteorology tasks and it can be quite effective
starklyjd.bsky.social Darth J.D. @starklyjd.bsky.social · 29d
I know It would only annoy me, but if you are using weather balloons for data, where does the AI come in?

Because it sounds like they’re just doing meteorology and complicating it with AI.
October 24, 2025 at 4:23 PM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
altnps.bsky.social
Warning for North Carolina: Scams are increasing, and the confusion is being made worse by ICE agents failing to properly identify themselves and wearing masks. As a result, residents are becoming targets of immigration fraud.
November 23, 2025 at 2:59 AM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
reidolsen.bsky.social
I have found so many MDPI papers from the same authors that seem to include near carbon copies of data from their other papers that are in other journals, sometimes MDPI!
November 22, 2025 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
zachweinersmith.bsky.social
Bonus panel here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/stats-3
#smbc
November 18, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
publichealthguy1.bsky.social
if anyone remembers anything from the biden experience, it should be that electing blue no matter who isn't going to be enough to cut it in the fight against fascism. you need politicians suited for this moment. primarying them all is the most straightforward way to send that message
Primary Every Democrat
It’s exhausting to watch poll-tested, donor-beholden congressional Democrats continue to be too old, too cloistered, and too bumbling to do anything as the government burns.
newrepublic.com
November 19, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
premthakker.bsky.social
MoveOn, Indivisible, Our Revolution, and 6 Democrats have called on Chuck Schumer to step aside as leader.

So we asked all 40 Democratic senators who didn’t cave to Republicans if they still think Schumer is the right leader.

Here's what they said.

@andrewperez.bsky.social @swin24.bsky.social
Furious Liberals Call for Schumer to Step Aside, Senate Dems Mostly Quiet
After their shutdown surrender, liberal lawmakers are begging their base to unite behind them anyway – as Trumpland celebrates that their opposition is a bunch of 'p*ssies.'
zeteo.com
November 11, 2025 at 1:00 AM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
christopherjhale.bsky.social
BREAKING: At Pope Leo XIV’s urging, U.S. Catholic bishops just delivered the strongest rebuke of a sitting president in Church history — condemning Trump-Vance raids as “inhumane” and “dehumanizing” in a 216–5 vote.
NEW: At Pope Leo’s Urging, Bishops Issue Historic Rebuke of Trump’s Raids
Nearly all U.S. Catholic bishops united in Baltimore to denounce the Trump administration’s “inhumane” deportation campaign — a near-unanimous, unprecedented moral stand against a sitting president.
www.thelettersfromleo.com
November 13, 2025 at 3:21 AM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
nantanreikan.bsky.social
November 12, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
brendannyhan.bsky.social
A staggering statistic: "North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year." What are we doing?
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 12d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 12, 2025 at 1:58 PM
kowb.bsky.social
I am *so* protected 😅
katherinestiles.org Katherine Stiles @katherinestiles.org · 12d
Study of 86,000 participants across 27 European counties suggests that speaking multiple languages may halve the risk of accelerated brain ageing and help protect against cognitive decline.
Want a younger brain? Learn another language
A vast study suggests that being multilingual can slow down cognitive ageing.
www.nature.com
November 12, 2025 at 8:17 PM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
gis4schools.bsky.social
Still my favourite "What is GIS" video explainer. 60 seconds long, great animation and interesting narrative. Perfect as a class starter or refresher #geographyteacher #GIS
November 11, 2025 at 9:10 AM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
meredithnudo.blacksky.app
Haha yesss. Japanese copyright law doesn't fuck around.

Since I get challenged on this a lot: U.S. and Japan are both Berne Convention signatories, meaning the copyright is recognized between countries. They CAN go after American companies. And they are. And I love it.

variety.com/2025/digital...
Trade Group Representing Studio Ghibli, Other Japanese Companies Tells OpenAI to Stop Using Their Content to Train Sora 2 Video Generator
Japanese content trade group CODA, whose members include Studio Ghibli, issued a letter to OpenAI demanding the AI company stop using their content to train Sora 2.
variety.com
November 7, 2025 at 2:37 PM
kowb.bsky.social
In "why I don't buy in-house estimates of energy expenditure". It's like trusting tobacco companies to report on lung cancer.
theguardian.com The Guardian @theguardian.com · 29d
Amazon strategised about keeping its datacentres’ full water use secret, leaked document shows
Amazon strategised about keeping its datacentres’ full water use secret, leaked document shows
Executives at world’s biggest datacenter owner grappled with disclosing information about water used to help power facilities Amazon strategised about keeping the public in the dark over the true extent of its datacentres’ water use, a leaked internal document reveals. The biggest owner of datacentres in the world, Amazon dwarfs competitors Microsoft and Google and is planning a huge increase in capacity as part of a push into artificial intelligence. The Seattle firm operates hundreds of active facilities, with many more in development despite concerns over how much water is being used to cool their vast arrays of circuitry. Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
October 25, 2025 at 11:48 AM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca
I recently reflected on the Royal Society Conference on the Future of Scientific Publishing and summarized my thoughts in an ISSP blog post: www.uottawa.ca/research-inn...
#OpenAccess #ScientificPublishing #AcademicSky
Why the Economics of Scientific Publishing Need Urgent Reform | Research and innovation
www.uottawa.ca
October 22, 2025 at 7:57 PM
kowb.bsky.social
I did say that! 😁
digital-science.com Digital Science @digital-science.com · Oct 22
Kathryn Weber-Boer @kowb.bsky.social:

“It shows how varied the quality of discussion around research can be, and how important it is to dig into the details when studying public attention to science.”

6/8
October 22, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
digital-science.com
Altmetric data in action: A new public dashboard highlights misinformation in #SocialMedia about #COVID19 & scientific research.

Using @altmetric.com data for 400 million+ X/Twitter posts, the UnMiSSeD dashboard has assigned a “misinformation score” to various elements in the X posts.

1/8
October 22, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
altmetric.com
PODCASTS

Altmetric now tracks podcasts mentioning research

In 2018 there were roughly 500,000 podcasts in existence. Just 3 years later that number was 2 million. Today it's around 4 million.

Amid all the Squarespace ads there's citations to research.

Let's go
1/7
Altmetric logo with podcast symbol in the middle
October 15, 2025 at 9:36 AM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
andytattersall.bsky.social
It's good to see the @altmetric.com Podcast tracking working well. I just searched for a podcast I hosted & recorded with my ex-Sheffield colleague Diana Papaioannou on a paper she lead on recording harms in randomised controlled trials, and hey presto! It's in the🍩
bmj.altmetric.com/details/1688...
Report for: Recommendations on recording harms in randomised controlled trials of behaviour change interventions
In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
bmj.altmetric.com
October 15, 2025 at 4:11 PM
kowb.bsky.social
So basically this is how the rest of the world figures out the visceral reaction data scientists have to "garbage in/garbage out"
skullmandible.bsky.social Cohen is a Ghost @skullmandible.bsky.social · Oct 11
"even if it's AI, it's at least true" hard to overstate the damage this stuff is doing to people's brains. we're gonna be cleaning the slop out of archives for decades
October 11, 2025 at 2:04 PM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
digital-science.com
📣 NEWS: Digital Science has made a series of recommendations for Australia’s research future in a report published today into the use of persistent identifiers #PIDs in research.

The report was commissioned by @ardc.edu.au.

🔗 See our announcement: ow.ly/GTSN50X8XjO
October 9, 2025 at 8:20 AM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
theguardian.com
Century-old papers saved from the bin reveal changes in Europe’s plant life
Century-old papers saved from the bin reveal changes in Europe’s plant life
Plant inventories dating back to 1884 and nearly thrown away enable unique time-lapse study of biodiversity in Swiss meadows
www.theguardian.com
October 9, 2025 at 4:35 AM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
digital-science.com
Digital Science CEO Dr Daniel Hook @dwh.bsky.social says: “We’re excited to see Professor Wang leveraging both Dimensions and Altmetric to deliver a high-quality “multifaceted impact analysis framework”.

@dimensions.ai @altmetric.com

4/10
October 8, 2025 at 11:22 AM
Reposted by Kathryn Weber-Boer
gvaughnjoy.bsky.social
Can we just admire Jane Fonda, please? She is a true patriot, inspiration, and role model.

"When I feel scared, I look to history. I wish there were a secret playbook with all the answers — but there never has been. The only thing that has ever worked — time and time again — is solidarity."
Text from the Variety article on the sub quoted piece: In a letter inviting her peers to join the re-established group, Fonda writes: "I'm 87 years old. I've seen war, repression, protest, and backlash. I've been celebrated, and I've been branded an enemy of the state. But I can tell you this: this is the most frightening moment of my life. When I feel scared, I look to history. I wish there were a secret playbook with all the answers — but there never has been. The only thing that has ever worked — time and time again — is solidarity: binding together, finding bravery in numbers too big to ignore, and standing up for one another."
October 1, 2025 at 7:04 PM