Notices by Dan Goodman (neuralreckoning@neuromatch.social)

It would be great if UK and other European universities could consider waiving requirements for a completed master's degree for students who have been de-enrolled from Harvard. It's both a good thing to do and a great opportunity to pick up some top students who would otherwise have stayed in the US

@dandean same thing but for universities and grades.

I wrote a thing for @thetransmitter. The attack on scientific infrastructure happening in the US shows that relying on any one country is not a good option for science. We need to start supporting and building international, decentralised infrastructure for science.

https://www.thetransmitter.org/policy/science-must-step-away-from-nationally-managed-infrastructure/

#science

I remember saying in 2018 that it was a shame for those real scientists elected that year (including Peter Dayan) that it happened the same year the Royal Society killed its reputation by electing Elon Musk. The Royal Society can and should undo this disastrous mistake.

Please sign @StephenCurry open letter to the president of the Royal Society below.

https://forms.gle/miDciq35oxywMEWt5

Let's remember every single company and institution that's rolling back their DEI programmes right now without even being forced to do so. The fact that they're doing it so fast means they were just waiting for the opportunity. True colours shown. Google, Meta, HHMI 😢, ...

Not a surprise for the socialists out there of course, but a stark reminder for everyone else.

Don't fall for the line that this is somehow about Russian interference. This can only distract from paying attention to the enemies of democracy who have been working quietly within the US for decades: billionaire oligarchs buying politicians and media organisations.

#SilentSunday

@elduvelle this is a great question to ask! I don't think the answer is as gloomy as you might think though.

I think you're right that there's very little point reading billionaire owned news, nor the BBC which is too scared of the government not renewing its license.

However, there's a lot of point in following and (if you're able) financially supporting independent journalism, because it can inform your actions in small ways that add up. The more we support and spread the word about independent journalism the more these small effects add up and that can have an effect.

We came so close to a left wing government with Corbyn and a few more people reading independent news could have made the difference in the first election which was only a few thousand votes from victory.

I like Novara Media for what that's worth, but choose one that you're happy with as long as it's not advertiser funded or run as a side project by famous journalists who mostly write for billionaire owned news sources (their independence is fundamentally compromised).

https://novaramedia.com/

@elduvelle it's one of the things I wanted to do with neuromatch conference. I can't stop climate change but if I can help reduce a few hundred or thousand flights by academics that's much more significant than remembering to turn off the light switch when I'm not in the room. Well, neuromatch conference doesn't run any more but SNUFA is going strong and several people have told me that it's "the" spiking neural network conference now, so maybe I'm still saving some flights.

@elduvelle this is definitely a good way to help!

The problem with the Nobel prize is not just that they've again awarded not a single woman, although they should certainly be ashamed of themselves. The problem is our deference to these fossilised patriarchal elitist institutions, reflecting broader issues in scientific culture.

It's been depressing this week too see all the excitement and respect given to this prize. It shouldn't be a surprise to us that the bequest of a wealthy weapons manufacturer, managed by a monarchic institution, makes decisions that are out of touch with our values.

Scientists should be beacons of independent and critical thought, not have their heads turned by the interests of those with wealth or status.

@tmalsburg absolutely true. There is a career path here, although it's not ideal. Write up your software as a paper, put in the time to write high quality documentation and tutorials, organise in person tutorials at conferences, etc. Make your paper highly visible on the website where you download the software and get the documentation. If your software ends up widely used it will get citations, possibly a lot, even though not everyone who uses it will cite it. All my most cited papers are software ones.

@tmalsburg some will care, and some will be swayed by enough citations, but I agree this isn't a low risk path, or one that is as valued as it should be given the impact it has on science.

@jonny and that's why it's such a threat to those in power. It's explicitly singled out (along with things like radical Islamic beliefs) in the UK government's "anti extremism" PREVENT strategy, meaning as a person who works with students I'm officially supposed to report on any students I suspect of being susceptible to the influence of anarchism. Fortunately I'm not a student otherwise I might have to report myself.

Latest discovery about windows 11 is that if you have a shaky internet connection (I found this on a train) and you hit the windows key and start typing it doesn't search locally until the internet search is finished. So if I want to start a program by typing the first few letters of its name it just doesn't work. Had to choose between scrolling through the list of programs by name which has now been quite well hidden, or turning internet off. Extraordinarily stupid bit of design. No way to turn this off either that I could find.

"If you want to minimize the possibility of unexpected breakthroughs, tell [scientists] they will receive no resources at all unless they spend the bulk of their time competing against each other to convince you they already know what they are going to discover." - David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules.

Can anyone explain something about university finances to me? The finance people say that grant overheads don't actually cover the cost of research. I would take this to mean that each grant is a net financial loss to the university. So why do they want us to get more grants?

@jonny how can they be simultaneously so close to being right and also so far from being right?

"Brain Inspired" podcast interview with Mike Frank got me thinking about open science advocates for a "compliance" box checking approach, whereas he thinks we should do it to share the joy of discovery. I agree but would add: we should share our data to make it as easy as possible to prove us wrong. This ought to be part of the culture of science but instead we actively disincentivise it by an adversarial approach to publishing combined with extreme competition for jobs. That's the real problem we need to solve. #science #openscience

To UK academics (students and staff).

⚠ If you're offered work marking in the next months, please say no!

It's likely an attempt to break our marking and assessment boycott, our most effective industrial action to avoid threatened pay cuts.

Please boost if you have UK followers.

#ucu #ucurising #academicchatter