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Rebecca Sear, is a British anthropologist and academic, who specialises in evolutionary anthropology, demography and human behavioural ecology. Since 2024,… more

H-index: 43
Psychology 45%
Sociology 15%
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by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Post-reproductive lifespan in wild mountain gorillas: "Almost one third of females in our study population (7/25) were “postreproductive” according to a commonly used criterion & lived more than a decade past their age of last reproduction, representing at least a fourth of their adult lifespan"
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
www.pnas.org
6 10

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

appdemography.bsky.social
Our article on historical demography of #PuertoRico is out!
In times of economic transformations/instability, birth patterns in PR are disrupted 🇵🇷.

Thanks @hathitrust.bsky.social for making these data accessible and to @pennstateuniv.bsky.social!

coauthored with Wilmarí De Jesús.
Season of birth in Puerto Rico: Rethinking changes in patterns using 90 years of births occurring under US occupation
This article examines birth seasonality in Puerto Rico and explores whether patterns shift during periods of economic transformation. We compiled monthly birth counts for approximately 5.64 million...
www.tandfonline.com
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Reposted by Rebecca Sear

alicemeadows.bsky.social
"The story of diamond #OA is still being written. Its rise reflects a powerful shift toward scholarly communication as a public good.. But... ideals alone cannot sustain journals." Great post on @scholarlykitchen.bsky.social by my fellow chef Maryam Sayab scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2025/10/15/d...
Diamond Dreams, Unequal Realities: The Promise and Pitfalls of No-APC Open Access - The Scholarly Kitchen
Diamond Open Access promises equity, but sustainability challenges remain. Discover the hidden costs, global gaps, and paths toward lasting open publishing.
scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org
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by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
In Sweden, PhD students have similar rates of psychiatric medication use to a matched sample before starting their PhD; psychiatric medication use increases sharply during the PhD, but then drops after graduation

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The impact of PhD studies on mental health—a longitudinal population study
Recent self-reported and cross-sectional survey evidence documents high levels of mental health problems among PhD students. We study the relationship…
www.sciencedirect.com
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by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
"a narrow focus on gross fertility measures provides a potentially misleading picture of demographic change. Our analysis of 236 countries from 1950-2023 reveals that when mortality is incorporated through net reproduction measures, our understanding of global fertility changes dramatically"
The role of mortality in fertility transition studies - N-IUSSP
Vegard Skirbekk and Thomas Spoorenberg* advocate the combined use of fertility and mortality information, or net reproduction, when discussing fertility levels and trends, both in developing and in de...
www.niussp.org
5 10

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

sevans.bsky.social
Interesting qualitative study of generative AI use by students that shows that variation in their awareness of how much they rely on it explains their ability to either (a) use it to learn versus (b) developing dependency. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
How university students work on assessment tasks with generative artificial intelligence: matters of Judgement
Despite concerns about students’ use of generative AI (GenAI) in assessment, the technology has become embedded into students’ everyday assessment practices. It is unclear how students are making j...
www.tandfonline.com
3 3

by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
“In January 2020 Vallance convened a Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies…The absence of any independent public health scientist, primary care expert, social scientist with expertise in inequalities or community mobilisation is striking. A culture of biomedicine not public health was dominant”
7. The UK culture and strategy in January 2020
Plans for the wrong virus
open.substack.com
2 2 5

by Rebecca Sear — Reposted by Lesley A. Hall

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley Lennon, is a far-right political activist and now claims to be financially supported by Elon Musk

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Tommy Robinson says Elon Musk is paying his legal costs as trial begins
Far-right activist is accused of refusing to comply with counter-terrorism police request at Channel tunnel
www.theguardian.com
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Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Simon J. Greenhill, Kostas Kampourakis , and 2 more

ent3c.bsky.social
In 2018, Charles Murray challenged me to a bet: "We will understand IQ genetically—I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks—but we’ll know basically what’s going on." It's now 2025, and I claim a win. I write about it in The Atlantic.
Your Genes Are Simply Not Enough to Explain How Smart You Are
Seven years ago, I took a bet with Charles Murray about whether we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence by now.
www.theatlantic.com
10 120 310

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

jsmartin.bsky.social
New paper out now in Evolution, co-led with Dave Westneat!

Using long-term data on house sparrows, we find that quantity-quality tradeoffs near a local fitness ridge favor more or less canalized clutch size distributions in response to environmental variability.

academic.oup.com/evolut/advan...
Measuring selection on reaction norms: Lack’s principle and plasticity in clutch size
We applied a novel multivariate analysis to measure linear and nonlinear selection on components of a complex reaction norm that was expected to be shaped
academic.oup.com
1 18 37

Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Lesley A. Hall, Will M. Gervais

brunelcce.bsky.social
🧵 1/ Excellent and impactful work from CCE second in command @loraadair.bsky.social published in the New Metro over the weekend about Outcry Witness

It’s an anonymous website where sexual-assault survivors can safely tell their stories.

No names, no pressure. Just a record in their own words 🗣️🛡️
Home - Healing starts when people bear witness
Outcry Witness is the platform where survivors of sexual violence keep an anonymous record of their experience, always under their control.
outcrywitness.com
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by Rebecca Sear — Reposted by Lesley A. Hall

rebeccasear.bsky.social
"Two major publishers have begun to automatically reject the vast majority of papers based on public health data sets, following revelations that unscrupulous actors use these data sets to churn out nonsense scientific papers."

www.science.org/content/arti...
Journals and publishers crack down on research from open health data sets
PLOS, Frontiers, and others announce policies trying to stem the tide of suspect research
www.science.org
1 8 20

by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
“Ageing is not just about numbers. It is about lived experiences, social structures, and the values that define how we care for one another.”

menarah.org/beyond-demog...
Beyond Demography: Understanding the Complex Realities of Ageing in the MENA Region - Menarah
Keynote presented at the British Society for Population Studies Annual Conference, Swansea University, September 2025 The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is undergoing one of the world’s fa...
menarah.org
2 7

Reposted by Rebecca Sear, David W. Lawson

ehbea.bsky.social
🚨 AWARD ANNOUNCEMENT 🚨

EHEBA is calling for the Service to the Community Award 🙌

Do not hesitate to nominate someone that you know has contributed in the strengthening of our community beyond their research!

Deadline: December 19th, 2025

Here is the form👇

docs.google.com/document/d/1...
2026 service noimination form.doc
2026 EHBEA Services to the Community award Nomination Form Please submit this application form by e-mail to the EHBEA Secretary [email protected] Next Deadline: 5pm (GMT), 19th DECEMBER 20...
docs.google.com
9 6

by Ilya Kashnitsky — Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Philip N. Cohen, Sebastian Karcher , and 2 more

ikashnitsky.phd
I wrapped up my scattered comments on IHME into a blog post

🔗 ikashnitsky.phd/2025/ihme-bibl

tl;dr: avoid getting unwarranted co-authorship recognition and do apply some sort of contribution-weighted thinking when evaluating someone's publication record based on bare numbers
Beyond Fraud: How IHME Distorts Academic Metrics
Dr. Ilya Kashnitsky is a demographer @ Statistics Denmark.
ikashnitsky.phd
2 6 26

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

21group.bsky.social
Cambridge don Nathan Cofnas cleared of racism

Dr Cofnas stated that in a meritocracy ‘number of black professors would approach 0 per cent’

Lawful ... but also lacking substantiation or evidence, revealing absence of any sound research methodology

varsity.co.uk/news/30360
Uni clears don accused of ‘abhorrent racism’
The University's internal investigation launched last year has dismissed all complaints against Nathan Cofnas, and found his ideas 'represented lawful free speech'
varsity.co.uk
4 6

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

psychoschmitt.bsky.social
"funds to support work related to global psychology and address the needs of underserved populations facing documented barriers to care, including but not limited to communities disproportionately affected by social, economic, or geographic disadvantage" www.apa.org/about/awards...
www.apa.org
1 4

by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Loved Philippa Gregory's historical fiction as a teenager, did not know she'd written a non-fiction book "telling stories of the soldiers, highwaywomen, pirates, miners and ship owners, international traders, social campaigners & ‘female husbands’ who did much to build the fabric of our society"
4 16

by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Thank you! Just ordered the Philippa Gregory book
3

by Rebecca Sear — Reposted by Rosemary A. Joyce, Lesley A. Hall, Margot C. Finn , and 1 more

rebeccasear.bsky.social
“the manosphere generates its own untested and speculative evolutionary hypotheses, or “just-so stories”, about men, women, and society…

..we reflect on implications for evolutionary scholars and for the field as a whole, in terms of ethics and public image”

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
A Hundred and Two Just-So Stories: Exploring the Lay Evolutionary Hypotheses of the Manosphere | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core
A Hundred and Two Just-So Stories: Exploring the Lay Evolutionary Hypotheses of the Manosphere
www.cambridge.org
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by Rebecca Sear — Reposted by Lesley A. Hall, Sara M. Butler, Katherine Brickell , and 1 more

rebeccasear.bsky.social
“More than half of the work done by women in the period between the 16th and 18th centuries took place outside of the home, and around half of all housework and three-quarters of care work was conducted professionally for other households” [England]

phys.org/news/2025-10...
A woman's place was not in the home: Challenging the assumptions about women's work in early modern history
New research has revealed that women played a fundamental role in the development of England's national economy before 1700.
phys.org
5 170 390

by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
“casual work among women and men in Australia and fixed-term contracts among women in Germany are associated with a lower likelihood of first birth than permanent employment”

read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...
Temporary Employment and First Births: A Path Analysis of the Underlying Mechanisms Using Australian and German Panel Data
Abstract. In many countries, temporary work (including fixed-term and casual employment contracts) is negatively associated with fertility. Yet, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain poor...
read.dukeupress.edu
1 6

Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Jonathan A. Eisen, Nicola J. Cooper , and 10 more

trishgreenhalgh.bsky.social
Well done Shafaq Aftab. When a reviewer stole her work and published it under his own name, she fought for a YEAR to get the journal to retract the paper. Just wondering why it took Wiley a YEAR to do this. 🧪 #academicsky

retractionwatch.com/2025/10/03/w...
Wiley retracts study stolen by reviewer, following Retraction Watch coverage
A Wiley journal has retracted a paper more than a year after a researcher reported the work was hers and had been stolen by a reviewer for another journal. As we reported in July, Shafaq Aftab, now…
retractionwatch.com
16 190 490

by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
UK “Universities have collectively announced more than 12,000 job cuts in the last year, new analysis from the University and College Union (UCU) suggests”

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Thousands more university jobs cut as financial crisis deepens
University workers will vote on national strike action this month over a 1.4% pay offer made in the summer.
www.bbc.co.uk
4 10

by Rebecca Sear — Reposted by Lesley A. Hall

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Should AI developers use copyrighted works to train models without permission or compensation?

“current debates privilege the interests of Big Tech exploiting online data for profit, neglecting policies that could ensure technology innovation & creative labour both contribute to the public good”
A capitalist contest: the AI industry v. the creative industries
This paper examines whether artificial intelligence industry developers of large language models should be permitted to use copyrighted works to train their models without permission and compensation ...
journal.thebritishacademy.ac.uk
7 1 11

by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
Discussion about free speech in universities with the UK “free speech tsar” which, concerningly, doesn’t once mention academic freedom (except to conflate it with free speech).

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Political Thinking with Nick Robinson - Free Speech Tsar: Arif Ahmed on how to avoid the 'abyss' of political violence - BBC Sounds
How do you protect and police freedom of speech on campus and in society?
www.bbc.co.uk
6

Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Paul E. Smaldino, Alex Mesoudi

culturalevolsoc.bsky.social
We're pleased to announce and congratulate the winners of the Advancing Cultural Evolution Course Design Awards! This competition recognises leading educators in the field of cultural evolution and their existing efforts to advance its teaching.

We have 7 winners and 2 runners up (listed below):
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by Rebecca Sear

rebeccasear.bsky.social
The EHBEA2026 conference website is now live 👇 Deadline for abstract submission: 15 December
ehbea2026.bsky.social
EHBEA 2026 @ehbea2026.bsky.social · 5d
🚨𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗵𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗮𝘀𝘁𝘀!
www.ehbea2026.com is now live for our 2026 European Human Behaviour & Evolution Association (EHBEA) conference in Leiden (NL🇳🇱) Check for 𝗮𝗯𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻, first 𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 & the [𝗔𝗜]𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸!
🗓️ 14–17 Apr 2026 | CBEN pre-conf 14 Apr
📍Pesthuis
#EHBEA2026
Overview | EHBEA2026
www.ehbea2026.com
9 10

Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Ruth Mace, Alberto Acerbi , and 1 more

ehbea2026.bsky.social
🚨𝗔𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗵𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗮𝘀𝘁𝘀!
www.ehbea2026.com is now live for our 2026 European Human Behaviour & Evolution Association (EHBEA) conference in Leiden (NL🇳🇱) Check for 𝗮𝗯𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻, first 𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 & the [𝗔𝗜]𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸!
🗓️ 14–17 Apr 2026 | CBEN pre-conf 14 Apr
📍Pesthuis
#EHBEA2026
Overview | EHBEA2026
www.ehbea2026.com
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by Will M. Gervais — Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Will M. Gervais

willgervais.com
Teaching a fun science & critical thinking course this semester.

Trying out THAMES as a handy mnemonic for what to look for in evaluating science papers & such (obvs not all are as relevant for every paper)...
THAMES mnemonic for reading science: T Theory •What BIG IDEA is the focus? H Hypothesis •What SMALLER IDEA is actually getting tested? A Assumptions & Alternatives •What needs to be true to connect T:H? •What else could explain results/predictions? M Methods: Measures & Manipulations •Were methodological tools validated? •Evidence that we’re measuring/manip what’s claimed? E Evidence & Ethics •Are claims calibrated to EVIDENCE? Is EVIDENCE appropriate? •ETHICALLY sound in practice/intent/implication/application? S Sampling Statistical Model •Who was studied? Who are claims about? •Do stat results match verbal ideas?
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References

Fields & subjects

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