petersuber

I work for #OpenAccess to research. Formerly directed the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication. Now semi-retired but still working for the cause. Also an emeritus professor of #philosophy and non-practicing #lawyer.

Posting on open research, academic culture, US politics, democracy.

Dad of daughters.

For #OA news, also follow the Open Access Tracking Project (Open Access Tracking Project (npub1s4y…8q0d)). I aim for comprehensive coverage there, not here.

Home: http://bit.ly/petersuber
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3577-2890
Twitter (past): https://twitter.com/petersuber
OATP: http://bit.ly/o-a-t-p

Public Key

npub1py4nz04lczsv4fyr3lywsjss5eqedlckk2npue8wsy7fwzgzrrks6n7td9

NIP-05 Address

petersuber_at_fediscience.org@momostr.pink

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqj2e386lupgx25jpclj8gfgg2vsvklutt9fs7vnhgz0yhpypp3mgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsddz6et

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1py4nz04lczsv4fyr3lywsjss5eqedlckk2npue8wsy7fwzgzrrks6n7td9

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Last Notes

2026-05-10 14:36:46 UTC

Great idea: A web page that simply shows you the info your browser sends about you and your system whenever you open a web page.
https://sinceyouarrived.world/taken
#Privacy #Surveillance

2026-05-08 19:41:08 UTC

"The _Astrophysical Journal_ accepted our #AI's [fast radio burst] discovery after three rounds of peer review, but the AAS editorial office then halted the paper over an AI-disclosure review, not the science."
https://blankline.org/newsroom/ai-frb-paper-apj-halted
#PeerReview #ScholComm

2026-05-08 14:34:23 UTC

A federal judge just overturned the Trump admin termination of 1,400+ research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (#NEH).
* See the judge's ruling.
https://www.historians.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/291-Memo-opinion.pdf
* Also see the statement by the American Council of Learned Societies (#ACLS), American Historical Association (#AHA), and Modern Language Association (#MLA).
https://www.historians.org/news/federal-judge-rules-to-restore-national-endowment-of-the-humanities-funding-in-historic-case/
#DefendResearch #Funding #Humanities #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

2026-05-08 14:19:27 UTC

A new study in The Lancet shows that the rate of fake citations increased more than 12x between Feb 2023 and Feb 2026.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(26)00603-3/fulltext
#AI #Citations #Hallucinations
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/116/539/380/709/431/560/original/eaa732ed450068a4.png

2026-05-08 13:44:38 UTC

"Trump administration cut funding to study hantavirus behind the deadly cruise ship outbreak."
https://archive.is/Ik3Sl
"In 2025 the Trump administration eliminated funding for a pilot project aimed at studying the type of hantavirus that has been confirmed to be behind an ongoing outbreak on a cruise ship that is now believed to have caused the deaths of three people and sickened several more."
#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #NIH #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-05-07 15:40:42 UTC

"During #Trump’s second term, the number of peer-reviewed studies authored by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (#EPA) scientists has dramatically declined…[reflecting] a steep reduction in the scientific research being conducted at EPA. So far in 2026, there have only been 61 peer-reviewed publications by EPA scientists, compared to 339 in 2024."
https://peer.org/sharp-dropoff-epa-scientific-publications/
#Climate #DefendResearch #Environment #Funding #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-05-06 18:03:08 UTC

RE: https://social.sciences.re/@Open_Models_Unfoundation/116528078779040755
Glad to see this. Job-seekers should also see items tagged with "oa.jobs" by the Open Access Tracking Project (#OATP, @npub1s4y…8q0d), since 2009. Crowdsourced. International. Updated continuously.
http://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/tag/oa.jobs
RSS version of same feed.
https://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/tag/rss/oa.jobs
#note1ysf…lz39

2026-05-06 17:04:33 UTC

"#FDA Blocked Publication of Research Finding Covid and Shingles Vaccines Were Safe."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/us/politics/fda-covid-vaccine-studies.html
"Officials at the Food and Drug Administration have blocked publication of several studies supporting the safety of widely used vaccines against Covid-19 and shingles…The studies, which cost millions of dollars in public funds, were conducted by scientists at the agency, who worked with data firms to analyze millions of patient records. They found serious side effects to be very rare. In October, the scientists were directed to withdraw two Covid-19 vaccine studies that had been accepted for publication in medical journals."
#Censorship #Covid #DefendResearch #Medicine #Pharma #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics #Vaccines

2026-05-04 17:50:46 UTC

"Before Nov. 19, 2025, the #CDC’s website was unequivocal on the topic: 'Studies have shown that there is no link between receiving #vaccines and developing #autism spectrum disorder,' it read. After Nov. 19, the guidance essentially reversed. 'The claim "vaccines do not cause autism" is not an evidence-based claim…Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.' That claim…is false. But new research published in the journal Science suggests that it’s affecting what Americans believe about vaccines."
https://time.com/article/2026/04/30/cdc-vaccine-autism-trust/
* primary source
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2026.128568
#DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-05-04 13:30:29 UTC

"In [23] states, election-denying candidates are running to control voting."
https://www.npr.org/2026/05/04/nx-s1-5803149/election-denial-2026-candidates
* Source of the data
https://electiondeniers.org/
#StopTheSteal #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

2026-05-01 18:19:09 UTC

"Democrats say #EPA head’s budget cut proposal ‘reads like climate change deniers’ manifesto’."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/30/epa-budget-cut-proposal
Dems "slamm[ed] agency leadership over a proposal to cut its budget in half…The…proposed $4.2bn EPA budget would sharply reduce support for state environmental programs and state-administered loans for water projects. It also would halt what it calls 'radical climate research' and cut resources for enforcement and compliance."
#Climate #DefendResearch #Environment #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics #Zeldin

2026-05-01 13:41:14 UTC

How the Dunning-Kruger effect is holding back #AI policy in #SouthAfrica.
"South Africa has decided to withdraw its draft national AI policy after it was found that some of the rules were AI-generated, citing fictional sources… The draft policy was unveiled for public comments and sought to position the country as a leader in AI innovation, while attempting to address ethical, social, and ‌economic ⁠challenges with AI use."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/apr/30/epa-budget-cut-proposal

2026-04-30 16:24:52 UTC

"Here’s Who Was Harmed by Trump’s Cancellation of Research Grants."
https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/the-trump-agenda/heres-who-was-harmed-by-trumps-cancellation-of-research-grants
(#paywalled)
"A year after the National Institutes of Health [#NIH] terminated more than 2,000 research grants, a new analysis indicates that the cuts disproportionately hurt scientists who identify as people of color and LGBTQ."
This article summarizes research forthcoming in The Lancet Regional Health — Americas.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/home
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-29 13:00:30 UTC

I'm re-upping this piece I wrote a year ago today, three months after #Trump took office.
https://www.zbw-mediatalk.eu/2025/04/peter-suber-on-science-in-danger-host-your-open-and-uncensored-research-in-more-than-one-place-and-preferably-more-than-one-country/
The details are more than a year old but the trends are unchanged. A good short summary of what the Trump admin has done in the past year, to repress US research, researchers, and research institutions is: 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦.
#DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-28 18:35:17 UTC

If you use #AI tools, you probably upload or integrate content you control, and probably make use of real-time internet searches to integrate unpaywalled online content you don't control. What if you could integrate paywalled content licensed by your library? A new #Clarivate tool lets you do just that.
"#NexusConnect…enables users to access university-licensed content and services directly within their #AI chat interface…Clarivate said it is working with leading AI chat agent providers [the article mentions ChatGPT and Claude] to develop institutional connectors that address key priorities for universities, including ease of deployment, usage attribution and copyright protection."
PS: Lots of power here and lots of questions. To start" when Nexus Connect gives AI tools access to licensed content, can the tools train on it? Always, sometimes, never? Who decides? If users save the unique URLs of their chats, can their share the chats with people outside their institutions? Will authorized users have continuing access to those chats even if the libraries later cancel their subscriptions to the integrated content? Even if the publishers later change their policies on AI tool access and training?
#Libraries

2026-04-28 16:39:52 UTC

"How the #Trump Administration Ended Independent Science at the #EPA"
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/climate/epa-science-trump-cuts.html
"The agency’s prestigious research office spent decades doing scientific work insulated from political pressure…For more than a half-century, [it] did groundbreaking research aimed at saving American lives. It studied fertility, asthma, wildfires, drinking water, climate change and myriad other health threats. In just one year, it has been almost completely dismantled."
#Censorship #Climate #DefendResearch #Environment #Takedowns #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-26 17:20:13 UTC

"Thousands of shady ads sell paper authorship for cash, large-scale investigation finds."
https://www.science.org/content/article/thousands-shady-ads-sell-paper-authorship-cash-large-scale-investigation-finds
PS: This article from _Science_ reports important news about paper mills. But it draws its info from an #arXiv preprint that hasn't been released yet. A preprint preprint, and from _Science_.
#Misconduct #PaperMills #ScholComm

2026-04-26 13:59:33 UTC

The #WikimediaFoundation is signing a disturbing agreement with #Indonesia in order to allow Indonesian access to #Wikipedia.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260425-under-blackout-threat-wikimedia-reaches-compromise-with-indonesia
A provision in the agreement lets the govt "take down content deemed as 'causing public unrest and disturbing public order'."
Indonesia assured WF that the agreement was merely "administrative" and that "there would be no unlawful content takedown orders." But of course the agreement makes harmful takedowns lawful.
"Last October, Indonesia briefly suspended #TikToks local operating licence after the social media platform refused to share information sought by Jakarta about violent anti-government protests earlier in the year."
#Censorship

2026-04-26 13:19:04 UTC

"Trump fires all 24 members of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s governing body."
https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-fires-nsf-s-oversight-board
"U.S. President Donald Trump yesterday fired all 24 members of the National Science Board (#NSB), the body that oversees the National Science Foundation (#NSF). Many science advocates see it as the latest step by his administration to erode—some would say destroy—the independence of the 76-year-old research agency."
#DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-26 13:04:18 UTC

New study on the results of asking authors of published articles to share their data.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2026.106693
"Overall, only 52% of the requests received a reply, and only 29% contributed data or information that was relevant for the [proposed] meta-analysis. Obtaining a response was less likely if (i) the request was sent to the contact e-mail address provided in the publication, (ii) behavioral data was requested, (iii) reminders had to be sent, or (iv) there was no personal acquaintance with the contacted author."
#Data #OpenData #OpenScience

2026-04-25 13:21:05 UTC

"A Swedish Library Forgot to Close Its Doors and Something Beautiful Happened."
https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/public-library-restoring-trust-in-humanity-repubz/
I love this story -- about libraries and the people who use libraries.
#Libraries

2026-04-25 12:57:27 UTC

I deplore the defunding of US science, and often post about it here. But I try to deplore it without nationalism. However, those who are defunding it are nationalists, and this news is karma for them.
"China surpasses US in research spending – the consequences extend far beyond scientific ranking and clout."
https://theconversation.com/china-surpasses-us-in-research-spending-the-consequences-extend-far-beyond-scientific-ranking-and-clout-280543?shem=dsdf,sharefoc,agadiscoversdl,,sh/x/discover/m1/4
"China’s…investment in research and development has reached parity with – and by purchasing power measures has surpassed – that of the United States, according to a March 2026 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development."
FYI, here are some news stories I tagged with "oa.nationalism" for the Open Access Tracking Project.
https://tagteam.harvard.edu/hubs/oatp/tag/oa.nationalism
#China #DefendResearch #Funding #OECD #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-24 13:58:45 UTC

"US soldier involved in Maduro raid charged over alleged bets on capture."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/23/maduro-raid-soldier-charged
It's as if the #DOJ thought this kind of insider trading were a crime.
#PredictionMarkets #Trump #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-24 13:16:22 UTC

"The Integrity of Public Access to Federal Data: Evaluating Disruptions to Open Government Data, 2025-2026."
https://zenodo.org/records/19556076
"In the last year alone political interference led to the manipulation, suppression, or outright removal of [US] federal data assets on topics ranging from climate change, to economics, to LGBTQ+ issues, to public health…This report provides an analysis of the integrity of public access to federal open government data assets during the disruptions to the federal data ecosystem during 2025 and early 2026…The report clarifies the scale and mechanisms of data disruptions, discusses specific threats to data integrity, [and] highlights exemplar cases of data disruption from federal agencies."
#Censorship #Data #DefendResearch #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-22 17:43:38 UTC

New study: "In over 80% of cases the [tested] #LLMs claimed that a retracted article had not been retracted…LLMs have little ability to distinguish between valid and retracted studies, unless they are allowed to, and do, check online."
https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.16872
#AI #Retractions #ScholComm

2026-04-21 19:06:48 UTC

"Where U.S. science has been hit hardest after Trump’s first year."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026/04/19/science-research-funding-cuts-trump/
(#paywalled)
"A Washington Post analysis found that through March 31, halfway through this fiscal year, the number of competitive grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health [#NIH] is down by more than half compared with the same period last year. Biomedical funding has also undergone a shift, the analysis found, cutting the U.S. research footprint across nearly every major disease area - including fewer grants focused on women’s health, cancer and mental health. Overall, the NIH supported over 2,700 fewer scientific projects in fiscal 2025, about a 15 percent cut in the number of competitive grants compared with the previous fiscal year."
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-21 16:43:38 UTC

#Ithaka did a national survey on how state and federal policies are repressing research, researchers, and research institutions.
https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/the-impact-of-state-and-federal-policies-on-academic-researchers/
Key findings:
<quote>
* State and federal policies targeting divisive concepts or #DEI are shaping research agendas at scale and across disciplines. Twenty percent of all respondents, and 29 percent of researchers working in states with divisive concepts or similar laws, reported having avoided certain research topics because of state laws and policies.
* Eight percent of respondents representing a wide range of disciplines reported having had a federal grant cancelled in 2025.
* Eleven percent of respondents reported that federal and state policies restricting research activities are compelling them to seek employment out of state, to leave the academy, or to look for academic positions overseas.
* Researchers, particularly those at doctoral institutions and those employed in states with divisive concepts legislation, report concerns about whether university presidents and, especially, boards are willing to advocate for their academic freedom as researchers.
</quote>
#Academia #AcademicFreedom #AcademicMastodon #Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #Universities #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-21 13:48:36 UTC

Sarah Begovac and Ira Allen just released their podcast interview with me, Cathy Kemp, and Tony Beavers about our project for an Independent Philosophy Institute (#IPI).
Here's the YouTube version...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zySjsSiub8
...tho the podcast is also available on several other platforms.
https://www.scholeirl.org/
Thanks to Sarah and Ira for their good questions and interest in the project.
Here's more on the IPI itself.
https://www.futureofphilosophy.org/
#Philosophy

2026-04-21 12:54:37 UTC

Sufyan bin Uzayr and I just created a list of major initiatives for #Diamond #OpenAccess in the #OpenAccessDirectory (#OAD).
https://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Major_initiatives_for_diamond_OA
#DiamondOA #ScholComm

2026-04-19 19:18:06 UTC

"Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/business/media/artificial-intelligence-trump-social-media.html
PS: Waiting for the empirical research on the question whether this tactic is more common on the left than the right. But ready to bet it's more common on the right, based on studies of similar kinds of deception. For example:
* From 2025
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2502053122
* From 2024
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07942-8
#Disinformation #SocialMedia #Trump #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-19 14:09:21 UTC

Here's a #paywalled article with a truncated #OpenAccess abstract. You can tell from the title that the author has some objections to #OpenData ("a good idea that can be taken too far"). But the free version of the abstract doesn't tell us what they are. It starts by listing the benefits of open data and then cuts off.
https://www.jhandtherapy.org/article/S0894-1130(26)00015-3/abstract
Even paywalled journals benefit by making abstracts OA. They advertise the paywalled content. But OA abstracts should give us enough information to know whether we want to click through (or pay) to read the full text. They should not be cliffhangers that make us want to click through, if at all, just to get the full abstract.
I can imagine an editor thinking that perhaps truncated abstracts are an experiment worth trying. After all, they might trigger even more click-throughs (or payments) than full abstracts. OK, then why not experiment with truncated titles too?
#ScholComm

2026-04-18 14:19:00 UTC

"Tyranny at #TexasTech."
https://www.insidehighered.com/opinion/columns/debatable-ideas/2026/04/17/tyranny-texas-tech
PS: Serious question. Conservatives said they were not "banning books" on gender and LGBTQ+ topics from elementary school libraries, just shifting access to "age appropriate" grades within the schools. Is Texas Tech saying that not even college students are old enough to handle readings and class discussions on gender and LGBTQ+ topics? Or is it giving up on the "age appropriate" approach simply embracing censorship?
#Academia #AcademicFreedom #Censorship #DefendResearch #Universities #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-16 17:22:39 UTC

The good news: "#JohnEastman, the attorney who masterminded the legal strategy behind President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, has been officially #disbarred in #California."
https://www.mediaite.com/crime/attorney-who-masterminded-trumps-attempt-to-overturn-election-disbarred/
The bad news: Disbarment and disciplinary proceedings are currently governed by state law. But the Trump DOJ is considering a rule that would require state bar associations to suspend their reviews of DOJ lawyers until the DOJ does its own reviews.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/03/05/2026-04390/review-of-state-bar-complaints-and-allegations-against-department-of-justice-attorneys
More good news: Several states oppose the proposed DOJ rule, including CA, IL, ME, NY, and PA. Here's the position of the Maine Supreme Court.
https://www.pressherald.com/2026/04/15/maine-high-court-opposes-proposed-doj-rule-on-investigations-into-federal-attorneys/
#Disbarment #Insurrection #LegalEthics #Trump #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-16 13:21:56 UTC

1/ Today is the 17th birthday of the Open Access Tracking Project (#OATP, @npub1s4y…8q0d).
http://bit.ly/o-a-t-p
#OpenAccess #ScholComm

2026-04-14 13:31:19 UTC

- reply

Update. A good student explains the harm done by flawed AI detectors and credulous teachers who falsely accuse students of AI-assisted plagiarism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/04/13/ai-detectors-students/
#AI #LLMs #Plagiarism

2026-04-13 17:49:29 UTC

One year of strife between #Harvard and the #Trump admin, March 2025 - March 2026.
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/harvard-in-the-crosshairs/harvard-trump-administration-lawsuits
#Academia #AcademicMastodon #Censorship #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #Universities #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-13 17:31:09 UTC

Looking forward to the new season of #RepublicanSchism.
https://newrepublic.com/article/208958/trump-iran-war-critics-maga-civil-war
#USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-13 15:01:24 UTC

Joy in #Hungary https://apnews.com/photo-gallery/hungary-election-photo-gallery-orban-ff116239b64f9ac8ad3b769bf941c00f
Joy around the world for Hungary.
#Democracy

2026-04-13 13:54:00 UTC

Good thinking, #Meta. Reduce the discomfort of working at a huge, malignant corporation by letting employees talk with an #AI simulation of the boss.
https://archive.is/mtVXJ

2026-04-12 14:11:16 UTC

"A Redditor Criticized #ICE. #Trump Is Trying to Unmask Them by Dragging the Company to a Secret Grand Jury."
https://archive.is/ckM2Z
PS: If the Trump admin can do this to #Reddit, it can do it to any social-media, blogging, newsletter, or publishing platform.
#Censorship #ChillingEffect #FirstAmendment #Intimidation #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-11 13:17:42 UTC

You don't see this every day: a journal editorial calling for #peace.
https://www.ajrh.info/index.php/ajrh/article/view/6830
The 𝘈𝘧𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘙𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 is calling for peace because "peace is public health."
Reminds me the 2015 NEJM editorial supporting #GunControl -- electing "lawmakers at all levels of government with the courage to defy gun lobbyists." -- for the simple reason that gun violence was a public health crisis.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMe1500847

2026-04-10 18:09:15 UTC

The #CDC is sitting on a report showing that the #COVID #vaccine "cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/04/09/covid-vaccine-report-delayed/
(#paywalled)
It was set to be published last month when #JayBhattacharya delayed it because of "methodology" concerns. But it uses standard CDC methodology for evaluating vaccines, and Bhattacharya approved the release of a flu vaccine report using the same methodology the week before the planned release of the COVID report. Bhattacharya reports to #RFKJr.
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-10 17:05:24 UTC

"Trump administration drops court fight to cap #NIH payments for research overhead costs."
https://www.statnews.com/2026/04/08/trump-administration-drops-nih-indirect-costs-court-challenge/
In April 2025, a federal district court judge ruled against the 15% cap. In January 2026, an appellate court upheld the ruling, and gave the Trump admin until April 6, last week, to appeal to the Supreme Court. The admin chose not to appeal
#DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-10 12:33:50 UTC

"OpenAI Backs Bill That Would Limit Liability for AI-Enabled Mass Deaths or Financial Disasters."
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-backs-bill-exempt-ai-firms-model-harm-lawsuits/
PS: Right. Why give AI companies an incentive to do no harm? Why give victims compensation?
#AI #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-07 15:53:29 UTC

#Netflix just raised my monthly fee. But instead of calling it a "price increase", it called it a "price update".
#Newspeak

2026-04-07 13:51:07 UTC

The #Trump defunding of #USAID could lead to the shutdown EM-DAT, the world's largest database of natural and technological disasters, maintained by the #ULouvain.
https://statsandr.com/blog/em-dat-the-world-s-disaster-memory-is-at-risk/
#Belgium #Data #DefendResearch #EMDAT #Funding #OpenData #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-05 17:53:15 UTC

New study: Using "a stratified random sample of 600 papers published from 2009 to 2018 in 62 journals spanning the social and behavioural sciences", the authors "observed higher #reproducibility for papers from political science and economics compared with other fields, for more recent papers compared with older papers and for papers from journals that require data sharing."
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10203-5
#Data #OpenData #OpenScience

2026-04-05 17:31:33 UTC

"Trump Slashed Science Funding. Now the U.S. Could Face a Costly Brain Drain."
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/business/dealbook/trump-brain-drain-academia.html
"Last month, the Partnership for Public Service…estimated that 95,000 employees had departed federal science agencies from September 2024 to December 2025…To the rest of the world, the Trump administration’s cuts to science seem like an unbidden gift…Several are making sizable investments to attract American talent."
#BrainDrain #DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-05 16:48:15 UTC

On the one hand, judges are better than legislators in holding #Trump and his admin to account.
On the other hand, it doesn't follow that the Trump admin accepts defeat in court.
"Three Hundred Habeas Cases in Which the Government Has Defied Court Orders. A database of non-compliance with court orders around the country."
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/three-hundred-habeas-cases-in-which-the-government-has-defied-court-orders
#USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-05 14:42:41 UTC

This new study finds a "moderate" #OpenAccessCitationAdvantage (#OACA) in the field of medical education.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10872981.2026.2652722
PS: Good to hear. But I must quibble with the article's title: "Is it worth publishing Open Access?" Can't we agree that it's a good thing to make access to research free of charge, to help more readers gain understanding, no matter how many or how few of those readers go on to cite the article?
#Citations #Impact #OpenAccess #ScholComm

2026-04-04 14:10:39 UTC

"Massive budget cuts for US science proposed again by Trump administration."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01105-7
"For the second year in a row, US President Donald Trump has proposed significant cuts to the budgets of major US science agencies…[The plan] includes a ban on using federal funds for subscriptions and publishing fees for some academic journals…Some of the steepest cuts would be made to the National Science Foundation (#NSF) and the Environmental Protection Agency (#EPA): the budgets of both would fall more than 50% in 2027 compared to their current levels…The budget for the US National Institutes of Health [#NIH] would drop 13%."
#DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-04 13:21:54 UTC

Sometime in the last month, the number of visitors to the home wiki of Harvard Open Access Project -- my project at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (@npub1s9p…h26j) -- passed 1 million.
https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Main_Page
#BKC #HOAP #OpenAccess

2026-04-03 20:57:08 UTC

Good question: "After the release of the #Epstein files, why have there been so few arrests?"
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/03/nx-s1-5766260/epstein-files-arrests-doj-prosecutors
Bad answer from the #Trump #DOJ: "There have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network."
#USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-03 19:33:00 UTC

At the the 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘈𝘐 𝘣𝘺 𝘈𝘐 (#JAAI) all the articles are written by #AI tools and all the editorial decisions are made by AI tools.
https://jaai.pub/
Parts of the editorial philosophy and policies read like good parody, parts like bad parody, and parts like non-parody. Your call.
https://jaai.pub/about
The inaugural issue is out (and came out before April 1).
https://jaai.pub/archive
#LLMs

2026-04-03 18:52:09 UTC

"According to an #InsideHigherEd analysis of more than 60 key #HigherEd lawsuits, the government has the upper hand in just 17 cases as of April 1."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/courts/2026/04/03/lawsuits-against-trump-pile-strategies-shift
#Academia #AcademicMastodon #Censorship #DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #Universities #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-03 17:36:46 UTC

Nothing to see here.
This is a test post from #Surf. I want to see whether it shows up in #Mastodon.

2026-04-03 13:29:47 UTC

Interesting case in which the usual issues surrounding the retraction of a journal article are further complicated by a NY state law criminalizing the distribution of information that endangers health.
https://retractionwatch.com/2026/04/02/judge-lawsuit-controversial-adolescents-paxil-study-329/
PS: Apart from the specific issues raised by this case (whether a certain antidepressant is safe and effective for teenagers), I'm interested in this more general question: Do US journals have a #FirstAmendment right not to retract journal articles, regardless of the circumstances, for example, even when the articles have been shown to be false and harmful and even when local law prohibits the distribution of such information? Is "forced retraction" a kind of #censorship prohibited by the Constitution?
Before you comment, note that this is not a question about our tolerance for harm. It's a question about the interaction of scholarly norms an public law.
#Retractions #USLaw

2026-04-02 15:54:44 UTC

"Trump Administration Orders Dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service."
https://morethanjustparks.substack.com/p/breaking-trump-administration-orders
"They’re shuttering every single one of the ten regional offices that have governed this agency since Gifford Pinchot built the system over a century ago — and with them, the career professionals who spent entire lifetimes earning the expertise and the authority to push back when politicians came calling with bad ideas and worse motives. They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states…And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees called 'state directors,' embedded in state capitals alongside the very governors, legislators, and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers demanding that the Forest Service log more, protect less, and get out of the way."
#DefendResearch #Environment #Forests #Forestry #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-04-02 14:31:09 UTC

"Half of social-science studies fail replication test in years-long project."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00955-5
"A massive seven-year project exploring 3,900 social-science papers [Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence, or #SCORE] has ended with a disturbing finding: researchers could replicate the results of only half of the studies that they tested…In many cases, papers simply did not provide enough data or details for experiments to be repeated accurately…When some of SCORE’s team members attempted to reproduce the data analyses of 600 papers, they found that only 145 contained enough details to do so."
#Data #OpenData #Reproducibility #SocialSciences

2026-04-02 14:02:13 UTC

#CancerResearchUK will stop paying #APCs for funded researchers.
https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2026/04/01/why-we-wont-be-funding-open-access-publishing-any-more/
PS. So far, so good. There are strong reasons to move away from APCs. For a summary, see Recommendation 3 of the Budapest Open Access Initiative 20th anniversary statement in 2022. (Disclosure: I was the lead author.)
https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai20/#rec-3
Unfortunately the Cancer Research UK announcement is marred by several false assertions and assumptions about #OpenAccess.
* Its narrow decision is to stop funding APCs, but its headline is that it will stop funding OA publishing as such. It leaves the distinct false impression that all OA journals charge APCs.
* Deep in the text it says that OA, meaning APC-based OA, "hasn't worked. At least not in its current form." That looks like a recognition that not all OA depends APCs. But it isn't explicit and didn't prevent careless language elsewhere in the statement.
* It never acknowledges that no-APC OA (#DiamondOA) journals exist, let alone that they constitute the majority of OA journals.
* It does acknowledge no-APC OA through repositories, or #GreenOA, but it falsely implies that green OA must be embargoed.
#ScholComm

2026-04-01 16:26:13 UTC

A federal judge just ruled that #Trump can face civil liability for inciting violence in the Jan 6 insurrection. His incendiary speeches that day were "unofficial" acts not covered by presidential immunity.
See the decision by Amit Mehta of the DC district court.
https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2021cv0400-219
Also see the summary in Politico.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/31/trump-setback-civil-suits-capitol-riot-00853761
#Jan6 #Insurrection #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-31 20:02:51 UTC

The #Trump admin just designated #X / #Twitter as one of the tools US American embassies and consulates should use to fight "foreign propaganda" and "rampant disinformation".
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/30/embassies-campaign-marco-rubio-elon-musk
"The United States has directed every American embassy and consulate across the world to launch coordinated campaigns against foreign propaganda and endorses Elon Musk’s X as an “innovative” tool to help do it. The cable, signed by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio,…also suggests embassies and consulates work alongside the US military’s psychological operations unit to address the problem of rampant disinformation."
#Musk #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-31 18:23:38 UTC

Thanks to Sufyan bin Uzayr for enlarging and updating the #OpenAccessDirectory (#OAD) list of Declarations in support of #OpenAccess.
All OAD lists are #crowdsourced. If you'd like to help make any of them more comprehensive and up to date, here's how to get started.
http://bit.ly/oad-get-started

2026-03-31 13:58:57 UTC

Disturbing case study in self-censorship: climate scientists trying to do their work without using the word "climate".
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/to-keep-climate-science-alive-researchers-are-speaking-in-code
#BannedWords #Censorship #Climate #DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-31 13:48:13 UTC

#JohanRooryck (@npub1vmv…usap) has written an excellent reply to some objections and misunderstandings about #DiamondOA.
https://thd.hypotheses.org/560
#APCs #OpenAccess #ScholComm

2026-03-31 13:32:17 UTC

Six #ASAPbio fellows asked four #LLMs to describe the strengths and weaknesses of #preprints. Here are the results.
https://asapbio.org/interim-findings-from-an-investigation-into-llm-responses-about-preprints-a-2025-asapbio-fellows-project/
The same fellows asked the same LLMs to compare six preprints with their #PeerReviewed counterparts, and compare them for quality and rigor. Good question. But they've not yet analyzed the data and will presumably report soon.
PS: I'm interested in a related question. When LLMs answer research questions, do they treat on-topic preprints and on-topic peer-reviewed articles as equivalent? If not, how do they take the differences into account?
#AI #PeerReview #ScholComm

2026-03-26 18:27:12 UTC

Alex Bronzini-Vender reviews Elise Stefanik's new book, 𝘗𝘰𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘐𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘴: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘐𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘈𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘤𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘤 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘙𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘵 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢’𝘴 𝘌𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/elise-stefanik-goes-woke
(#paywalled)
"Stefanik…has assembled here the most serious version of the Trumpist case against 'woke' academe. The problem is that the most serious version of the Trumpist critique turns out not to be serious at all…In Stefanik’s telling, the woke academy has poisoned itself with the conflation of discomfort with harm, arbitrary line-drawing between legitimate ideas and hateful ones, and the fetishizing of subjective experience. And Stefanik’s antidote, it turns out, is more conflation of discomfort with harm, arbitrary line-drawing between legitimate ideas and hateful ones, and the fetishizing of subjective experience."
#Academia #AcademicMastodon #Censorship #DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #Universities #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-26 18:22:52 UTC

Alex Bronzini-Vender reviews Elise Stefanik's new book, _Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities_.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/elise-stefanik-goes-woke

2026-03-26 16:52:44 UTC

An unnamed school in the UK used #AI to decide which books to ban from the library.
www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/uk-s...
#BookBans #Censorship #DefendResearch #Libraries

2026-03-26 16:50:52 UTC

"Trump remembers to appoint science panel, fills it mostly with tech bros."
https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/25/trump_science_tech_panel/
Among the new members of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (#PCAST) are
#MarcAndreessen, #SergeyBrin, #MichaelDell, #LarryEllison, and #MarkZuckerberg.
If you're curious, Wikipedia lists the PCAST members under Biden and Obama.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President%27s_Council_of_Advisors_on_Science_and_Technology
#DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-24 13:29:53 UTC

Sorry I missed this: In December 2025, the #NIH called for public comments on a revision to its data access policy, proposing "controlled-access" for certain kinds of data on human subjects. The proposal would also block access to researchers from certain "Countries of Concern" like China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. The comment deadline was last week.
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-26-023.html
Many neuroscientists submitted objections to the proposal.
https://www.thetransmitter.org/data-sharing/neuroscientists-challenge-nihs-proposed-human-data-access-policy/
One objection: The current policy already requires "de-identification" of shared data on human subjects, and tests show these steps to be effective in blocking re-identification.
Another: Existing data repositories don't have the needed access controls, and data would have to migrate to new infrastructure.
Hence, they argue, the new policy would reduce data sharing, reduce replication studies, increase burdens for researchers, and slow compliance, without improving privacy.
#Data #OpenData #Medicine #Privacy #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-23 17:34:02 UTC

The International Congress of Mathematicians (#ICM) decided not to meet in #Russia in 2022, for a list of reasons including Russa's "war of aggression in #Ukraine and the potential dangers…in regards to freedom of political expression and the safety of LGBTQ participants." Now some ICM members have launched a petition asking it not to meet in the US in 2026, for a list of reasons including US aggression in #Gaza, #Greenland, #Iran, and #Venezuela.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdHJhc8X83b8oL6rH2KDX0I730eraum5I8_IlWY23F82mHuag/viewform?fbzx=7063048079651794343
#USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-23 13:55:22 UTC

"A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth."
https://theconversation.com/a-million-new-spacex-satellites-will-destroy-the-night-sky-for-everyone-on-earth-277938
Apart from destroying earth-based astronomy, boosting satellite collisions, and overpopulating orbital space needed for other purposes, this will be the largest of enclosure of a commons in human history.
It would be like spray-painting graffiti on the walls of the grand canyon, but worse because not everyone has the good fortune to see the walls of the grand canyon. Or like carving Elon Musk's initials in every tree on Earth. Or like destroying silence with an omnipresent 60-cycle hum.

2026-03-22 14:01:43 UTC

In the field of orthopaedic medicine, #OpenAccess increases citation impact.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s10195-026-00911-z
And BTW, so do long titles (by character count, but not by word count) and the presence of colons in the title (but not question marks).
#OACA #OpenAccessCitationAdvantage

2026-03-21 13:37:54 UTC

From #KevinMurphy, chief science #data officer at #NASA: “NASA’s scientific data archives are a gold mine of discoveries waiting to be made. The early observations of 3I/ATLAS from the TESS mission represent just one example of the exciting insights our #OpenData can reveal.”
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/536373/

2026-03-20 19:06:29 UTC

Very interesting glimpse into the state of the art in internet-reputation-washing 5-15 years ago.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/business/media/jeffrey-epstein-online.html
On the one hand, it's easy to believe that progress on laundering #SearchEngines and #Wikipedia is difficult. On the other, many people who do this work seem to have an interest in exaggerating the difficulty, and falling short, in order to justify their existence and fees.
#JeffreyEpstein was also lucky that many people shared his name, and that contractors could credibly create new, fake Jeffrey Epsteins to clog search results. Harder to do for Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, etc.

2026-03-20 16:54:53 UTC

"Germany’s Sovereign Digital Stack Mandates ODF: a Landmark Validation of Open Document Standards."
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/03/19/germanys-sovereign-digital-stack-mandates-odf/
"The Document Foundation (#TDF), the non-profit entity behind #LibreOffice, welcomes the inclusion of the Open Document Format (#ODF) as a mandated standard format in Germany’s Deutschland-Stack, the federal government’s sovereign digital infrastructure framework for all public administrations."
Florian Effenberger (@npub1z0v…g79q), executive director of TDF: "You cannot claim digital sovereignty while allowing your documents to be locked in proprietary formats controlled by a single vendor."
#Germany #Formats #OpenSource #Standards

2026-03-20 13:07:51 UTC

"China could be the world’s biggest public funder of science within two years."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-00618-5
"Government spending on R&D in #China increased by 90% to US$133 billion in the decade leading up to 2023…By contrast, in the #US, spending rose by just 12%, to $155 billion."

2026-03-18 17:07:01 UTC

Love this: "The Forbidden Words Quilt, led by Lorraine Woodruff-Long and Patricia Hickey, is a community quilt project launched in August 2025 and completed in 2026 with contributions from 195 quilters from all 50 U.S. states and D.C. and 5 countries. The quilt features 384 words and phrases identified by #PENAmerica.org [@npub1m24…9l5k] that are among the growing list of words being scrubbed from government websites and documents and flagged for review by federal agencies."
https://mailchi.mp/quiltinginthefog/july2024-6423127#mctoc1
h/t @npub1pl3…wg8j
#BannedWords #Censorship #DefendResearch #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-18 14:34:02 UTC

Update. It turns out that the National Academies of Science (#NAS) did 𝗻𝗼𝘁 acquiesce in this #censorship of #climate science. In a short statement (March 11) it said “The manual, including the chapter on #climate science, will continue to be available on the Academy’s website.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/03/national-academies-of-sciences-resisting-pressure-to-pull-climate-info/
PS: Bravo to the NAS. Although it's not part of the govt, about 85% of its funding comes from govt agencies, making it highly vulnerable to retaliatory defunding. It's the first agency I've seen with that level of vulnerability flatly reject a Trumpist demand to censor research.
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Takedowns #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-17 19:03:58 UTC

1/ In 2025, #UNESCO reprinted 46 essays by Nobel laureates.
https://doi.org/10.54677/QIQR6670
To those who follow me for news and comment on #OpenAccess and #ScholComm, I strongly recommend the 1996 essay by #JoshuaLederberg, "Electronic scientific publications: options for the future" (in the UNESCO collection at pp. 149-155). Lederberg was the 1958 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, and wrote this essay just as researchers began using the internet and web for sharing their research.
I'll post a few excerpts in the rest of this thread.
h/t @npub1q5g…mm83

2026-03-17 17:36:52 UTC

#PublicEducation in red-state #Idaho:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/us/idaho-education-republican-rift.html
From Julie Yamamoto, retired teacher and former Republican rep from Idaho, defeated by a more conservative Republican:
“We’ve experienced this huge shift, from believing that the #PublicSchools were a bastion of our democratic republic…to believing we shouldn’t give them any money at all. And it’s happened so quickly."
#Academia #AcademicMastodon #Education #MAGA #Republicans #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-17 14:04:52 UTC

From #ElizabethGinexi:
https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/i-wrote-research-funding-announcements
"In 2024, #NIH published 756 funding announcements.
In 2025, it published 120.
In 2026, as of March 15, it has published 14…
This is not a temporary slowdown. It is a structural collapse."
#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-17 14:00:14 UTC

"In 2024, NIH published 756 funding announcements.
In 2025, it published 120.

2026-03-16 14:05:28 UTC

#TFW the head of the Maine Hospital Association retires after 40 years of service and says that affordable health care is "not a solvable problem."
https://www.pressherald.com/2026/03/15/its-not-a-solvable-problem-maines-outgoing-hospital-lobbyist-says-theres-no-fix-for-rising-health-care-costs/
#Affordability #Healthcare #Medicine

2026-03-15 14:04:59 UTC

RE: https://mastodon.social/@Edent/116227552332226616
This is an important problem, worth solving. All institutions, including #universities, should help pay for the #OpenSource tools they use.
#note1ep3…a9pg

2026-03-15 13:27:38 UTC

"Even though Congress rejected cuts to the #NIH budget and passed a funding bill more than a month ago, that money isn't yet making it into the hands of researchers."
https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/healthpolicy/120291
#DefendResearch #Funding #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-14 14:09:07 UTC

As far as I can tell, there are no #AI tools to help determine whether an arbitrary #book is in the #PublicDomain for an arbitrary country.
I respect the best of the non-AI tools and services already doing parts of this job, such as the #HathiTrust Rights Determination, #Stanford Copyright Renewal Database, and the #PublicDomainReview Guide to Finding Public Domain Works Online.
But there seems to be a niche for testing to see whether AI tools might do this job better and faster.
#Copyright #ScholComm
🧵

2026-03-13 12:57:12 UTC

Big news from #arXiv:
https://jobs.chronicle.com/job/37961678/chief-executive-officer
1. It's becoming an independent #nonprofit organization.
2. It's leaving #CornellU and moving to NYC.
3. It's hiring a CEO, with a salary in the range of $300k.
#Preprints #ScholComm

2026-03-12 18:28:08 UTC

Thanks to Sufyan bin Uzayr for enlarging and updating the Open Access Directory (#OAD) list of #advocacy organizations for #OpenAccess.
Like all OAD lists, this one is #crowdsourced. Here's how to help make any of the OAD lists more comprehensive and up to date.
http://bit.ly/oad-get-started

2026-03-12 17:32:58 UTC

The #Trump #memecoin is down 96% from its high.
https://futurism.com/future-society/trump-meme-coin-disaster
#USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-12 16:12:43 UTC

- reply

Update. While the #ThomsonReuters employee letter is not yet public, #Poynter quotes from it: "The detrimental actions of #ICE, and the #DHS’s lack of oversight and direct falsehoods regarding the situation in #Minnesota and other cities, makes us question if our investigative products and services are being used in accordance with our mission and values, as well as in accordance with the law and our nation’s constitution.”
https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2026/law360-reuters-newsrooms-letter-against-ice-dhs/
The same article links to a similar letter from #RELX employees to management about a $22.1 million contract with ICE. RELX is the parent company of #LexisNexis and #Elsevier.
https://www.poynter.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/law360-demand-letter.pdf
That letter is public. From the RELX employee letter: "We are deeply concerned that RELX is directly aiding the separation of families, the removal of children from schools and the death of individuals in detention centers."
RELX deleted a page from its FAQ, posted during the Biden administration, saying that its tools would not be used for these purposes. But here's a copy from the #WaybackMachine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230307061658/https://risk.lexisnexis.com/government/our-services-for-homeland-security
#Trump #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-12 15:57:43 UTC

#ThomsonReuters employees were alarmed to learn that #ICE was paying the company $22.8 million for "software to pull public and private information about individuals, and to track license plates." More than 200 employees signed an internal letter asking management "not [to] renew the ICE contract when it expires in May." The letter is not yet public.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/technology/thomson-reuters-ice-minnesota.html
#Publishers #Surveillance #USPol #USPolitics

2026-03-09 13:30:28 UTC

"Pentagon Refuses to Say If AI Was Used to Select Elementary School as Bombing Target."
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/pentagon-ai-claude-bombing-elementary-school
PS: I don't know whether AI played a role in targeting the school. But we should all understand that it could have played a role even with the #Anthropic guardrails preventing use in mass surveillance and autonomous lethal weapons. If we want to prevent the use of AI tools in atrocities, we need to go a lot further than Anthropic did.
#AI #LLMs #IranWar

2026-03-08 14:19:13 UTC

"The Internet's Most-Read Tech Publications Have Lost 58% of Their Google Traffic Since 2024."
https://growtika.com/blog/tech-media-collapse
Related: Human visitors to Wikipedia declined by about 8% in 2025.
https://www.cbc.ca/lite/story/9.7117795
PS: I'm not surprised that #AI tools are having these effects. They answer questions directly and cut the need to click through to sources, even when they link to sources.
But I haven't yet seen data on the effects for academic journal publishers. Have you?
#Search

2026-03-08 13:51:32 UTC

"The Document Foundation [maker of #LibreOffice] has called on the European Commission in an open letter not to rely solely on #Microsoft's proprietary #XLSX format in the ongoing consultation on the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). The EU Commission had published a call for feedback on the CRA guidelines on March 3, 2026. Feedback can be submitted exclusively via an XLSX template until March 31, 2026."
https://www.heise.de/en/news/LibreOffice-criticizes-EU-Commission-over-proprietary-XLSX-formats-11202165.html
#Interoperability #OpenSource

2026-03-07 17:46:18 UTC

New from Oxford economist #OlivierSterck: "Measuring poverty on a spectrum instead of an arbitrary line conveys a more accurate picture of inequality."
https://theconversation.com/measuring-poverty-on-a-spectrum-instead-of-an-arbitrary-line-conveys-a-more-accurate-picture-of-inequality-271912
PS: I find this take on poverty extremely illuminating. Instead of measuring poverty by incomes (dollars per year), we should measure it by the time it takes to earn $1 (years per dollar). The classical measure allows a small number of very rich people to pull up the average income and make widespread poverty seem to be a minor problem. Sterck's new measure allows a large number of struggling people to pull up the average time needed to earn money, and make a necessary correction to our understanding. The classical measure gives more voice or weight to the rich, while Sterck's gives more to the poor. This helps us see two things otherwise invisible: widespread poverty hidden by average wealth, and severe income inequality.
While the average income is higher or better in the US than in Europe, the average time needed to earn $1 is significantly longer or worse in the US. This kind of poverty exists alongside that high average income. We need to bring in severe income inequality to explain this, and of course income inequality is significantly higher in the US than Europe.
#Economics #Poverty

2026-03-07 14:40:16 UTC

RE: https://c.im/@matdevdug/116183052079063047
@npub1etp…htu9 speaks my mind. This is why I love Mastodon and the Fediverse.
#note16vs…anz3

2026-03-06 13:57:02 UTC

"Publisher demands $500 from impersonated author to retract paper."
https://retractionwatch.com/2026/03/05/publisher-demands-500-from-impersonated-author-to-retract-paper/
PS: Here's hoping that publicity about this shakedown costs the publisher -- Walsh Medical Media -- more than $500.
#ScholComm

2026-03-05 20:38:35 UTC

There's a special sting in being fired by #Trump right now when he's keeping so many other stupid and wicked people.
#KristiNoem will have to live with the fact that Trump fired her before firing #PeteHegseth, #PamBondi, #RFKJr....
#USPol #USPolitics