Notices by petersuber (petersuber@fediscience.org), page 3

Update. 2nd Helsinki Initiative Webinar on #Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication
https://www.helsinki-initiative.org/en/events/2nd-helsinki-initiative-webinar-multilingualism-scholarly-communication

Update. "GPT detectors frequently misclassify non-native English writing as #AI generated, raising concerns about fairness and robustness…GPT detectors could spuriously flag non-native authors’ content as AI #plagiarism, paving the way for undue harassment."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666389923001307

#LLMs #Multilingualism #MultilingualResearch

In September 2020 I started what became a long #Twitter thread on #MultilingualResearch.
https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1307774697531113474

Starting today, I'm stopping it on Twitter and continuing it on #Mastodon.

Here's a rollup of the complete Twitter thread.
https://resee.it/tweet/1307774697531113474

Here's a nearly complete archived version in the @waybackmachine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220908060944/https://twitter.com/petersuber/status/1307774697531113474

Watch this space for updates.

#Academia #Multilingualism
@academicchatter

🧵

Update. The cost of translating consent forms into other languages limits the participation of non-English speakers in clinical trials.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06382-0

Summary this study.
https://www.science.org/content/article/non-english-speakers-are-being-shut-out-clinical-trials

#Multilingualism #MultilingualResearch

Update. The Journal of Electronic Publishing (@JEPub) just issued a call for papers to appear in a special issue on #Multilingual publishing.
https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/jep/news/71/
(#paywalled)

The special issue will accept papers in accept papers in English, Spanish, or French.

#Multilingualism #MultilingualResearch #CFP

Here's a #Mastodon question that comes up a lot for me. I want to follow a friend, colleague, or organization. I look them up and find they have four Mastodon accounts. None has made any posts, followed any users, or attracted any followers. Should I follow all four? None? The one most recently created? If I follow one or more, and a different one becomes active, will I ever learn about it through my timelines?

#askfedi #fedihelp #feditips #mastotips

New study: For the past 20 years, the global cost of extreme weather events has been $143 billion/year.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1

#Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis

@OpenAlex (#OpenAlex) has a new, friendly user interface.
https://openalex.org/

PS: The new interface is wonderfully simple & should bring this powerful tool to more users. Next time you have a research question, try it before #GoogleScholar or your other stand-bys. Or try both & compare. OpenAlex searches titles, abstracts, & full-text; accepts keywords or #DOIs as input; offers 7 sort orders; & has unrivaled scope, indexing over 250m works from 250k sources. Plus it's #OpenSource.

#Search

"While the societal impact of [#AI / #LLM] models is rising, #transparency is on the decline. If this trend continues, [these] models could become just as opaque as #SocialMedia platforms and other previous technologies, replicating their failure modes…We design the Index around 100 transparency indicators…The top-scoring model scores only 54 out of 100. No major…developer is close to providing adequate transparency."
https://crfm.stanford.edu/fmti/

Summary
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/10/ai-technology-secrecy-transparency-index/675699/

New study: "Online #search to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing them."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06883-y

PS: The lesson isn't that we should stop using search engines to confirm or disconfirm questionable info. It's that 𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭. We must learn and teach it.

#Disinformation #Misinformation

#Florida district pulls many #Jewish and #Holocaust #books, including Saul Bellow’s ‘Herzog’ and [Rebecca Walker's] ‘Black, White and Jewish’
https://www.jta.org/2023/12/21/united-states/florida-district-pulls-many-jewish-and-holocaust-books-including-saul-bellows-herzog-and-black-white-and-jewish

Also removed: Sophie's Choice by William Styron and the complete plays of Lillian Hellman.

#BookBans #Censorship #Libraries

Good analysis from @pluralistic.
https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

"When switching costs are high, services can be changed in ways that you dislike without losing your business. The higher the switching costs, the more a company can abuse you, because it knows that…you’d have to endure worse if you left…[#Twitter & #Facebook] had been shaved down to the point where most of us were only a hair’s breadth away from quitting…Once things got just a little worse, advertisers & users started to quit."

Good points in a good article:
https://www.theverge.com/23990974/social-media-2023-fediverse-mastodon-threads-activitypub

"If we do this correctly…there won’t be a new titanic company to rival #Meta or a platform with…huge numbers like #Facebook. What we’ll get instead is something much bigger: an entirely new infrastructure for our online lives that no company or platform controls."

"In a #fediverse-dominated world, the way to win is not to achieve excellent lock-in & network effects. The only way to win is to build the best product."

#ActivityPub #Mastodon

From Mike McCue (@mike), CEO of @Flipboard: “I think you’ll probably have more than 150 million people in the #Fediverse by the end of the next year. You have millions of #Flipboard users, millions of #Threads users all joining this network. It’s not going to take very long before this becomes the largest social network.”
https://www.engadget.com/flipboard-is-moving-to-the-fediverse-170426320.html

#ActivityPub #Mastodon #SocialMedia

I love #Wikipedia (@wikipedia) as a reader but hate it as an author / contributor. This article explains why.
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/12/pgad385/7457939

PS: Imagine how much more effective W would be at informing users, documenting facts, and countering misinformation if it had a healthier editing culture.

Congratulations to the _Journal of Neuroscience_ for shifting to #OpenPeerReview.
https://www.jneurosci.org/content/43/48/8074

From #Oxfam:
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/richest-1-emit-much-planet-heating-pollution-two-thirds-humanity

"The richest 1% of the world’s population produced as much carbon pollution in 2019 [as] the five billion people who made up the poorest two-thirds…

The richest 1%…were responsible for…more than all car and road transport emissions. The richest 10% accounted for half (50%) of emissions…

Every year, the emissions of the richest 1% cancel out the carbon savings coming from nearly one million wind turbines."

#Climate #ClimateCrisis

Has anyone seen a study on why so many people who hate #Twitter / #X are still posting there?

We can all guess some of the reasons, like network effects, unhappiness with some of the alternatives, lack of time to try or test alternatives, and so on.

But I'd still like to see a study. Then we'd know better how to approach our friends and communities still posting to Twitter/X, still contributing to its network effects, still helping it do what they hate.

The Tulsa County #MomsForLiberty got pushback when they tried to remove the memoir of a sexual assault survivor from the HS library.
https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/request-to-pull-union-library-book-gets-chilly-reception-from-parents/article_44e5a0fe-824b-11ee-bc64-efb5b9a3184a.html

One parent: “You have the right to opt out & censor your child’s experience. You do not have the right to censor my child’s experience.”

Another: “A small, noisy group like Moms For Liberty is welcome to make decisions about what their own children read. They don’t get to make decisions for the 15,000 kids attending this district.”

#Books

"Facing pressure from right-wing ideologues, #Scholastic is facilitating the exclusion of #books that feature people of color and/or #LGBTQ characters. Scholastic has grouped many of these titles in a collection called "Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice" [& given] school officials…the option to exclude the entire set…Scholastic has…given schools a "bigot button" to exclude these books and mollify intolerant pressure groups."
https://popular.info/p/scholastics-bigot-button

#Censorship #Publishers