Matt Williams
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matthewmatix.bsky.social
Matt Williams
@matthewmatix.bsky.social
1.7K followers 160 following 120 posts
Associate prof at Massey University. Interested in statistics, open science, meta-psychology, and conspiracy theories. https://mattwilliams.netlify.app/
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Reposted by Matt Williams
dsbarra.bsky.social
My time as Editor of AMPPS is coming to an end-- here are some parting thoughts. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... .
Taking Stock of Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science at the End of the Beginning - David A. Sbarra, 2025
journals.sagepub.com
November 26, 2025 at 7:10 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
marsdenfund.bsky.social
What prompts people to change their minds about conspiracy theories? Associate Professor Matt Williams and team from Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University set out to answer this curious question! 👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽

www.royalsociety.org.nz/research/new...
What prompts people to change their minds about conspiracy theories?
Conspiracies DO happen...
www.royalsociety.org.nz
November 26, 2025 at 1:26 AM
Reposted by Matt Williams
mdmarques.com
our dear leader @matthewmatix.bsky.social has posted on what the Antipodean Misinformation and Conspiracies Club has been up to over the past few years

www.royalsociety.org.nz/research/new...
November 26, 2025 at 12:09 AM
Reposted by Matt Williams
elisabethbik.bsky.social
JW: We developed a tool, INSPECT SR, which looks at various red flags, such as retractions, inconsistencies between preregistration and publication, image duplications, means vs SDs, outcome data, etc.
We do give training workshops.
bmjopen.bmj.com/content/14/3...
#IRICSydney
Example of INSPECT SR with a table asking several questions
November 17, 2025 at 10:40 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
brendannyhan.bsky.social
Experimental participants to us
November 12, 2025 at 2:08 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
hansonmark.bsky.social
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 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Matt Williams
hansonmark.bsky.social
More fundamentally, every active scientist has been brought up in a system where The Drain was already normalized.

This system hasn't always existed. For-profit publishers are a recent invention. Their value proposition has always been awful, and now they are actively eroding trust in science.

5/n
2. Stopping the drain Back in the 1950s, when for-profit journal publishing was just getting going, British scientific leaders predicted that ‘the moment commercial gain began to dominate this field, the welfare of the scientific community would suffer’ (1). They were right – and it is past time that we acted. The first step we must take is to recognize the seriousness of the problems that scientific publishing’s engagement with for-profit publishing have become.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Matt Williams
perfors.net
Getting nervous for the talk I'm about to give at a workshop about "using AI to drive impact" which features slides such as these.
Slide is titled: You don't need to use LLMs. Science is a process of collaborative meaning making, by which we try to understand the world Even if AI were perfect, we rely on it at our peril — it is not science if we (i.e., humanity as a whole) do not understand and cannot recapitulate all parts of it I very, very rarely use LLMs myself. You can give yourself permission not to. Don’t FOMO yourself into it Conclusion: Don't rely on something you don't understand and can't control If you must use LLMS: 1. Treat them like you would an intern: only use them for things you can easily and thoroughly check 2. Make your process as robust as possible 3. Be aware of your own (human) cognitive biases
November 6, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
mdmarques.com
@srhastraea.bsky.social is a humble & busy guy so the aussie will announce his successful #marsden

Unpacking how we choose who to trust for knowledge in complex, contentious issues with the potential for misinformation

@scicomguy.bsky.social @matthewmatix.bsky.social
@rachelprozac.bsky.social
Marsden Fund Awards 2025
Published on 6 Whiringa-ā-rangi November 2025 You can download an Excel spreadsheet of these results here: 2025-Marsden Fund Supplement The definitions of the 8 Marsden Fund panels can be found here...
www.royalsociety.org.nz
November 5, 2025 at 4:21 AM
Reposted by Matt Williams
lakens.bsky.social
Are you interested in thinking about which studies are worth replicating? Then you have 10 articles to dig into in Meta-Psychology, representing a very wide range of viewpoint on this topic, out now: open.lnu.se/index.php/me...
LnuOpen | Meta-Psychology
Original articles
open.lnu.se
October 30, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
bsiepe.bsky.social
We built the openESM database:
▶️60 openly available experience sampling datasets (16K+ participants, 740K+ obs.) in one place
▶️Harmonized (meta-)data, fully open-source software
▶️Filter & search all data, simply download via R/Python

Find out more:
🌐 openesmdata.org
📝 doi.org/10.31234/osf...
October 22, 2025 at 7:34 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
eddieclarke.bsky.social
Extremely pleased to see this work published! Thank you so much to my excellent collaborators @fmsmallfield.bsky.social @scicomguy.bsky.social @srhastraea.bsky.social @lingtax.bsky.social @mdmarques.com @matthewmatix.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Extremism at the center: Uncovering political diversity among midpoint responders on the left–right self‐placement item
The midpoint of the left-right self-placement item is hiding important political diversity, and may be conflating moderate responders with populists and other political sub-groups. Survey researchers...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 23, 2025 at 8:38 AM
Reposted by Matt Williams
dsbarra.bsky.social
Papers from July to Sept 2025 at AMPPS are killer. We don't have formal print issues, but we have this-- journals.sagepub.com/toc/ampa/8/3
Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science - Volume 8, Number 3
Table of contents for Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 8, 3
journals.sagepub.com
October 21, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
Separating the whack from the chaff in critiques of decision theory
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/10/17/s...
Separating the whack from the chaff in critiques of decision theory | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
October 17, 2025 at 8:38 PM
matthewmatix.bsky.social
The existential threat model suggests stress & anxiety can lead to belief in conspiracy theories. And prior studies have showed they are *correlated* with belief in CTs.

But do they *cause* belief in CTs? Find the answer here...

(Or apply Betteridge's law of headlines, if you're pressed for time)
October 17, 2025 at 1:30 AM
Reposted by Matt Williams
ianhussey.mmmdata.io
Results of the replication are in!

Chocolate is more desirable than poop:

Cohen's d_rm = 6.20, 95%CI [5.63, 6.78]

N = 486, two single item 1-7 Likert scales of desirability.

w/
@jamiecummins.bsky.social
ianhussey.mmmdata.io Ian Hussey @ianhussey.mmmdata.io · Oct 13
Make an effect size prediction!

@jamiecummins.bsky.social and I are replicating Balcetis & Dunning's (2010) "chocolate is more desirable than poop" (Cohen's d = 4.52)

Let us known in the replies what effect size you think we'll find. Details of the study in the thread below.
October 14, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
socio-steve.bsky.social
I think words are valuable when they describe some things but not others.
socio-steve.bsky.social Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · Oct 14
Neoliberalism has several sins but, "super high tariffs" and "nanny state scolding about nutritional value," are not among them.
October 14, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
jeremylabrecque.bsky.social
Should statistical software that estimates causal effects also tell you the causal assumptions under which that estimate can be interpreted as causal?

I don't know but my PhD student Maurice Korf has some thoughts (and software) to get the conversation going:

academic.oup.com/ije/article/...
Causal clarity in statistical software
Imagine running a simple regression in any statistical software of choice—but this time, you only get a point estimate of the regression coefficient. There
academic.oup.com
July 29, 2025 at 7:47 AM
Reposted by Matt Williams
psych.peercommunityin.org
PCI Psychology is open for submissions! Did you know that you can easily submit your recommended preprint to any of the 20+ PCI Psych friendly journals? See all friendly journals here: psych.peercommunityin.org/about/pci_fr...
#PsychSciSky #SciPub
October 13, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
ianhussey.mmmdata.io
My article "Data is not available upon request" was published in Meta-Psychology. Very happy to see this out!
open.lnu.se/index.php/me...
LnuOpen | Meta-Psychology
open.lnu.se
October 4, 2025 at 12:54 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
nickfoxnz.bsky.social
Excited for my doctoral research to be published, thanks to the support of @matthewmatix.bsky.social @srhastraea.bsky.social
Do Stress, Depression, and Anxiety Lead to Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories? - Nick D. Fox, Matt N. Williams, Stephen R. Hill, 2025
Previous research has found positive correlations between manifestations of psychological distress, such as anxiety, depression, and stress, and belief in consp...
doi.org
October 12, 2025 at 8:14 PM
matthewmatix.bsky.social
In which the authors of a 2023 Psych Science paper claim that the correlation between two constants is 1
October 10, 2025 at 1:34 AM
matthewmatix.bsky.social
I'm joining the brilliant @jkarl.bsky.social as co-EIC at Europe's Journal of Psychology. ejop.psychopen.eu/index.php/ejop

EJOP is a generalist psych journal, and applies a diamond open access model (no APC). I'd love to see more submissions with rigorous methods & well-calibrated conclusions!
Europe’s Journal of Psychology
Quarterly peer-reviewed open access journal of scientific psychology featuring original studies, research, critical contributions written by and intended for psychologists worldwide.
ejop.psychopen.eu
October 2, 2025 at 9:52 PM
matthewmatix.bsky.social
PhD holder who didn't collect any original data for my thesis checking in 🙋 The world isn't short of data to analyse!

(I did collect data for my Masters... pen-and-paper surveys from primary school kids... back in the olden days!)
dingdingpeng.the100.ci Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Oct 1
A lot of psych is already conducted with online convenience samples & ppl are probably excited about silicon samples bc it would allow them to crank out more studies for even less 💸

How about we reconsider the idea that sciencey science involves collecting own data.
www.science.org/content/arti...
AI-generated ‘participants’ can lead social science experiments astray, study finds
Data produced by “silicon samples” depends on researchers’ exact choice of models, prompts, and settings
www.science.org
October 1, 2025 at 9:47 PM
Reposted by Matt Williams
ianhussey.mmmdata.io
Some researchers don't discuss their future research plans for fear of being scooped.

Not me. I drop bad ideas for unscrupulous people to 'steal'.

- What are the neural correlates of Open Science practices?
- What is the role of habits in learning a new skill through repetitive practice?
a man in a leather jacket is looking up and saying `` big brain '' while standing in front of a building .
ALT: a man in a leather jacket is looking up and saying `` big brain '' while standing in front of a building .
media.tenor.com
September 23, 2025 at 11:48 PM