Veli‐Matti Karhulahti

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 1h

A decade ago when streaming became mainstream I predicted choose-your-own-adventure videos would turn into a hit genre-- was totally wrong, now doubling down for short-form CYOA

magazine.weverse.io/article/view...

Weverse Magazine - Everything K-POP and More! - 위버스 매거진

magazine.weverse.io

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 3h

bsky.app/profile/mkar...

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 3h

exactly! the construct is formed so that anyone can cherry pick whatever they want (diet cola: not energy dense but has aspartame)-- hence, useless as a scientific concept unless further specified

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 3h

exactly! the construct is formed so that anyone can cherry pick whatever they want (diet cola: not energy dense but has aspartame)-- hence, useless as a scientific concept unless further specified

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 4h

some of the listed items sound like things that might genuinely be caused by processing which (as such) may reduce health value-- but it never stops shocking how work published in 'prestige' venues is able to confuse these basic issues

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 4h

It's a genuinely interesting question if such mechanisms exist and how they work in different contexts-- eg the listed energy density has nothing to do with processing, there are many dense non-processed foods (pure fat); likewise, many additives are added specifically bc of their health value

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 4h

looked up the lancet article-- not surprised to find a construct that's arbitrary, almost entirely unrelated to nutrition but defined as being "branded" & "maximising profits"

--> i'm all in for a critical analysis of the food industry but water is also branded and profitable, not unhealthy!

UPFs are branded,
commercial formulations made from cheap ingredients,
with little or no whole food, designed to compete with
the other three Nova groups and their preparation as
dishes and meals, and maximise corporate profits.

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 6h

I'm curious if someone who studies this can explain the mechanism for "processing -> negative health"?

-- never understood this over the last 20 years & wikipedia says processing is just a synonym for junk food in this context

Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 6h

Important point: this ISN'T about willpower. It is about our food environment. 👇

The ultra-processed foods problem is driven by commercial interests, not individual weakness. Here’s how to fix it theconversation.com/the-ultra-pr... by @philbakernz.bsky.social et al.

The ultra-processed foods problem is driven by commercial interests, not individual weakness. Here’s how to fix it

Without policy action and a coordinated global response, ultra-processed foods will continue to rise in human diets, harming health, economies. It’s time to act.

theconversation.com

Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 6h

Important point: this ISN'T about willpower. It is about our food environment. 👇

The ultra-processed foods problem is driven by commercial interests, not individual weakness. Here’s how to fix it theconversation.com/the-ultra-pr... by @philbakernz.bsky.social et al.

The ultra-processed foods problem is driven by commercial interests, not individual weakness. Here’s how to fix it

Without policy action and a coordinated global response, ultra-processed foods will continue to rise in human diets, harming health, economies. It’s time to act.

theconversation.com

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 2d

But who has the time for validity considerations when the deadlines are next month

Cameron Patrick @cameronpat.bsky.social · 2d

this is one of my favourite observations about sample size calculations. (afaik first articulated by Miettinen in 1985)

Cameron Patrick @cameronpat.bsky.social · 2d

this is one of my favourite observations about sample size calculations. (afaik first articulated by Miettinen in 1985)

"On the first, and pivotal, level the decision is a binary one—the
choice between zero and nonzero as the size. Validity considerations alone are often sufficient to imply that zero is the optimal size"

- O. S. Miettinen "Theoretical Epidemiology" (1985)

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 4d

Reminds how back in the days Riot publicly insisted that only 2% of their users express verbal toxicity-- turned out that to be classified "toxic" one had to be flagged by peers literally *hundreds* of times within a couple of days

When a player is reported hundreds of times over dozens of
matches, the reported player is brought to the Tribunal

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 4d

generally, based on many calculations i've seen over the years, a huge difference between publishers seems to come from ad & promotion costs-- which are surely important when competing in the prestige/visibility game under attention economy

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 4d

Yes but in this case preprint=article, running the journal round is optional (alas, most of us will keep doing it for a good while indeed -- then again, in-kind costs at PCI are difficult to compare to publishers who don't report donated time)

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 4d

At PCI the cost is 816€

peercommunityin.org/2025/01/08/2...

2024 PCI’s finances and article costs - Peer Community In

PCI Recommenders manage the evaluation of articles in the same way as associate editors do at journals.

peercommunityin.org

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 6d

Got fed up with that a few years ago and life has been so much better since-- today, there are so many good diamond options that the only thing potentially keeping one in the broken system is severe evaluation pressure

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 10d

Sometimes it feels science isn't that hard after all, all one needs to do is think hard for 5 seconds

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 14d

I'm aware of pilots/plans where applicants have an option to submit their plan as stage 1 draft, this makes sense imo (raise awareness etc) but nuance is so important in such changes

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 14d

This is such a key hermeneutic for older texts, there's always stuff going on behind the scenes, the thing that's being built on

Jaakko Stenros @jaakkostenros.bsky.social · 14d

Often they are also shadow boxing with the previous paradigm, that can remain unnamed, since "everyone knows it", even if from today's point of view it is completely forgotten. Context matters.

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 14d

Do you know if there's an English version available or coming out?

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 14d

meanwhile, hoping the funders' own publication portals and diamond venues solve the ACP issue (as some already do to some degree)

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 14d

I don't know anyone who has worked deeply with RRs (authors/editors/reviewers) who'd support something like this for so many reasons-- a friendly reminder that RRs are a tool for certain scenarios, definitely underused, and like any other tool, to be used wisely

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 15d

If funders wanted to make a huge positive impact on scientific practice, they would mandate that all publications appear first as registered reports, that APCs are only paid for RRs, and that grant applications only require preliminary data for RR sample size determination / power analysis.

Jaakko Stenros @jaakkostenros.bsky.social · 14d

Often they are also shadow boxing with the previous paradigm, that can remain unnamed, since "everyone knows it", even if from today's point of view it is completely forgotten. Context matters.

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 15d

We likewise found a steep increase in failed controls (0.1>2.3>12.8>22.7) the more severely ppl replied to a single-item tech problems question-- this could be intentional bad responding too but nonetheless critical to be aware of

(0.1%>2.3%>12.8%>22.7%) failed first control, corresponding to having problems "never", "sometimes", "often", "almost always"

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 15d

Many EU/US ppl say they must keep submitting to these publishers bc it'd be unfair for co-author students not to-- fair enough sometimes, but if one is a student in a major uni and/or working for a known lab, they've already got a top 1% global advantage without prestige publishing, they'll be ok

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 16d

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.

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 15d

If funders wanted to make a huge positive impact on scientific practice, they would mandate that all publications appear first as registered reports, that APCs are only paid for RRs, and that grant applications only require preliminary data for RR sample size determination / power analysis.

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 16d

i understand it's difficult to run large data collections like this (especially in HBSC) but that's exactly what's wrong today: brute force large datasets with whatever measures & then think later if any of the investment was worth anything

doi.org

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 16d

funnily enough, the paper says the scale (IGDS) is one of the "better functioning measurements" and cites our paper-- in our paper we actually found only 1 of 9 symptoms measured in a content valid way 🫠 (also curious how translation across 12 languages took place)

IGDS has been considered one of the better-functioning
measurements, with satisfactory reliability and validity when
compared to other measures (Anthony, Mills, & Nower,
2023; Karhulahti, Martoncik, & Adamkovic, 2023

7 symptoms partial, 1 symptom missing, 1 symptom fully content valid

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 16d

it can be interesting to add multiple items even when they don't signal problems (especially if we take networks seriously) but the 2013 symptom list, sketched in dsm-5 appendix, is way outdated and never worked tbh

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 16d

New WHO-collaborated (HBSC) study, n=44k, finds that boys who never play games have the same amount of gaming disorder symptoms vs those who play daily-- it's 2025, what are we doing? measurement?

Average number of symptoms is 3 in boys both (almost) every day and (almost) never groups. In girls the (almost) never group has 1 symptom on average.

Veli-Matti Karhulahti @mkarhulahti.bsky.social · 16d

a) avoid Finnish food
b) many nice museums, Villa Gyllenberg & Didrichsen worth a visit for the island space alone
c) best coffee: Päiväkahvibaari 1 (vallila)
d) library Oodi
e) saunas, Sompasauna 24/7 is classic (recently moved tho, not sure how good the new location is)

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