Matt N Williams | Lightnews

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/

Videos

Psychology 36%

Sociology 17%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Matt Williams @matthewmatix.bsky.social · 10d

Yikes. Even if they do realise, and describe it as such.... how many editors saying "wtf no" would it take before the data source named in the manuscript switches from AI to undergrad students or Prolific workers?

Matt Williams @matthewmatix.bsky.social · 14d

Congratulations John!! This is awesome news. Very well deserved!!

Matt Williams @matthewmatix.bsky.social · 17d

The motivation for calculations like these isn't to get p values for their own sake. It's to identify p values in journal articles that are inconsistent with other info provided in the articles. That in turn can signal mistakes in the analysis or writing, or fraud.

Reposted by Matt N Williams

mat marques, ph.d. @mdmarques.com · 18d

years ago I took some interest in the notion of precarity–the subjective experience of permanent insecurity rising from objective material strain–causing conspiracy belief. along with my undergraduate students (over 2 yrs), and my antipodean collaborators we tested this theory
osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

Reposted by Matt N Williams, Greg Linden

Dr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 21d

Did you guess "that paper does not actually exist"?

Did you also guess that NOT A SINGLE PAPER IN THEIR REFERENCES APPEARS TO EXIST? (Though I confess I only thoroughly checked for half of them, including databases for the journals.)

REFERENCES
Brown, L., & Taylor, M. (2021). Artificial companionship and social withdrawal: Psychological implications of AI interaction. Journal of Social Psychology, 58(3), 245-267.
Chen, R., & Zhou, H. (2023). AI companionship and emotional reciprocity: The illusion of meaningful relationships. AI & Society, 38(2), 112-130.
Harris, J. (2022). The ethics of AI companionship: Emotional support or social isolation? Ethics and Technology Review, 45(4), 310-328.
Johnson, P., & Miller, D. (2023). Digital isolation and AI-driven interactions: Understanding the long-term impact on human relationships. Journal of Digital Psychology, 67(1), 78-95.
Jones, T., Smith, R., & Kim, S. (2023). The social presence of AI: Examining human responses to artificial companions. Human-Computer Interaction Journal, 29(1), 1-22.
Kim, Y., & Park, S. (2021). AI mental health chatbots: A supportive tool or a replacement for human therapy? Psychological Technology Journal, 19(2), 134-152.
Nguyen, L., Patel, A., & Wong, C. (2022). AI and social interaction: Bridging or widening the gap? Digital Communication Studies, 52(5), 267-285.
Smith, A., & Lee, B. (2022). AI companionship: Comforting presence or psychological risk? Journal of Human-AI Interaction, 36(2), 200-222.
Williams, D., Carter, E., & Green, P. (2020). Maslow’s hierarchy and AI: Can artificial companionship fulfill human social needs? Journal of Psychological Studies, 48(3), 145-162.

Reposted by Matt N Williams

Grumpy @grumpyyetamusin.bsky.social · 23d

www.vegetablegardeningnews.com/nz-bans-home...

Nz Bans Home Vegetable Gardens — Vegetable Gardening News

New Zealand has recently implemented a controversial ban on home vegetable gardens, sparking a national debate on the implications for its citizens. This

www.vegetablegardeningnews.com

Matt Williams @matthewmatix.bsky.social · 23d

I haven't so far, but it's a good idea. I'll look into it!

Matt Williams @matthewmatix.bsky.social · 23d

100%. As an editor I've seen some eye-watering examples lately. And if you ask for open data before considering the paper further, the authors pull the 'Homer disappearing into the hedge' trick...

Reposted by Ian Hussey, Matt N Williams

Martin Plöderl @ploederl.bsky.social · 23d

Currently busy with updating a systematic review and have the impression that the flood of "clinical studies" from certain countries is intensifying - results too good to be true: enduring effects (usually uncommon), no drop-out, perfectly balanced sample sizes etc.

Matt Williams @matthewmatix.bsky.social · 25d

Do you find the peer review at Frontiers too demanding? The standards too rigorous? The frontiers too... plural? Introducing: Frontier in Medical and Health Research!

Reposted by Gordon Hodson, Efrén O. Pérez, Matt N Williams

mark brandt @mjbsp.bsky.social · 29d

Stop submitting AI slop to journals and preprint servers

This is anti-social behavior. It is making life harder for everyone involved except for the person submitting the slop

SocArXiv @socarxiv.bsky.social · 29d

In light of record submission rates and a large volume of AI-generated slop, SocArXiv recently implemented a policy requiring ORCIDs linked in the OSF profile of submitting authors, and narrowing our focus to social science subjects. Today we are taking two more steps:
/1

Matt Williams @matthewmatix.bsky.social · Nov 26

Thank you for your excellent work as editor, David. AMPPS is such a great asset for the field.

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, David A. Ellis, Ian Hussey , and 1 more Dorothy Bishop, David A. Ellis, Ian Hussey, Matt N Williams

David A. Sbarra @dsbarra.bsky.social · Nov 26

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

Reposted by Steve Peers, Matt N Williams

Marsden Fund @marsdenfund.bsky.social · Nov 26

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

Reposted by Matt N Williams

mat marques, ph.d. @mdmarques.com · Nov 26

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...

Reposted by Matt N Williams

Michael Philipp @mphilipp.bsky.social · Nov 19

Recruiting a PhD student to join us at Univ Canterbury (Christchurch, NZ) to study how people perceive animal minds & how those perceptions shape moral concern, behaviour, & policy. Scholarship info:
www.canterbury.ac.nz/research/abo...

Rolling review starts Dec 2025 • Flexible Feb–July 2026 start

Reposted by Matt N Williams

Elisabeth Bik @elisabethbik.bsky.social · Nov 17

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

Matt Williams @matthewmatix.bsky.social · Nov 13

What more information could they possibly need to warrant a retraction? A signed confession presented in triplicate?

Reposted by Gordon Pennycook, Linda J. Skitka, Sebastian Karcher , and 1 more Gordon Pennycook, Linda J. Skitka, Sebastian Karcher, Matt N Williams

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Nov 12

Experimental participants to us

Reposted by Matt N Williams, José Pina-Sánchez

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Nov 11

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.

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Colin F. Camerer, Ben C. Sheldon , and 36 more Dorothy Bishop, Colin F. Camerer, Ben C. Sheldon, Juli G. Pausas, Dan Brockington, David M. Schultz, Sam Harper, Robert Böhm, Brendan Nyhan, Garry Peterson, Ross Woods, Euan G. Ritchie, Alistair Munro, Howard I. Browman, Rebecca Sear, Paul E. Johnson, Benjamin Braun, Ian Hussey, Jonathan Hopkin, Paolo Crosetto, Veli‐Matti Karhulahti, Jean Bonnet, Jacob T. Levy, Margot C. Finn, Étienne Ollion, Matt N Williams, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, Patrick Präg, Urška Demšar, Rense Corten, Juanjo Medina, Julie Novkov, Matti Vuorre, Tom Louwerse, Prokla Redaktion, Frédéric Delsuc, José Pina-Sánchez, Catherine M. Hulshof, Alba Anadon‐Rosell

Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · Nov 11

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.

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop, Colin F. Camerer , and 4 more Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop, Colin F. Camerer, Ingo Rohlfing, Paolo Crosetto, Matt N Williams, Jill A. Jacobson

Casper Albers 🟥 @casperalbers.nl · Nov 11

Doing non-causal inference (and being explicit about it), yet using a causal word as second word in the title.

If you pay Nature € 10.690, they will publish this in Nature Ageing.

I can tell you what I think of that for free.

www.nature.com/articles/s43...

screenshot from the paper, stating that no causal claims (like they did in the title) should be made.

Reposted by Andrew Livingstone, Matt N Williams

Andrew Perfors @perfors.net · Nov 6

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

Reposted by Matt N Williams, John R. Kerr

mat marques, ph.d. @mdmarques.com · Nov 5

@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

Matt Williams @matthewmatix.bsky.social · Nov 2

"This pattern seems difficult to explain as the result of a natural process, as does the correlation between white blood cell count and patient ID number of 0.45."

Oh dear

Reposted by Matt N Williams, Johannes Breuer

Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · Oct 30

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

Reposted by Matt N Williams, Nathan P. Kalmoe, John R. Kerr , and 1 more Matt N Williams, Nathan P. Kalmoe, John R. Kerr, Southern Africa

Eddie Clarke @eddieclarke.bsky.social · Oct 23

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

Matt Williams @matthewmatix.bsky.social · Oct 22

I don't think this scenario is explicitly covered in the moderation case list but it sounds like a plausible use case so you might as well give it a try?

Reposted by David Chester, Andrew K Przybylski, Patrick S. Forscher , and 5 more David Chester, Andrew K Przybylski, Patrick S. Forscher, Matt N Williams, Jill A. Jacobson, Matti Vuorre, Gemma C. Sharp, Jan R. Boehnke

Björn Siepe @bsiepe.bsky.social · Oct 22

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...

Reposted by Matt N Williams, James E. Bartlett

David A. Sbarra @dsbarra.bsky.social · Oct 21

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

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