Richard Shaw
richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw
@richardshaw.bsky.social

Researcher @ University of Glasgow, UK. Epidemiologist interested in mental-health and wellbeing, health inequalities, administrative data, education.

Trying to learn Italian and Spanish.

Public Health 35%
Psychology 21%
I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail
Bluesky Map
Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.
bluesky-map.theo.io

There are a lot more competencies related to grant writing than there are to research integrity, team work or public engagement.

Maybe UK science is ahead in some important areas?

An increasing trend in the UK is for major data resources to host their own conferences. e.g. UK Biobank, ADRUK and now CLS. In a world of diminishing funding for conferences I am wondering where this will leave conferences led by academic societies?

A University campus in Southend is the exactly the kind of place we need to defend to challenge regional inequalities and the rise of populism.
When people talk about the idea that some universities must go under, there’s a certain tendency to behave as if these smaller local campuses are negligible- regrettable casualties perhaps but not ‘real’ universities. This report does a great job of illustrating why that’s wrong.
Everything in this report reflects on what we value, for communities, for peripheral places, for young people, for education, for the future - and it looks like we’ve got it all wrong.
When people talk about the idea that some universities must go under, there’s a certain tendency to behave as if these smaller local campuses are negligible- regrettable casualties perhaps but not ‘real’ universities. This report does a great job of illustrating why that’s wrong.

Being middle age I see that most of today's politicians concerns are entirely predictable negative consequences of their own parties' policies from previous decades.

In the early 2000s New Labour deliberately undermined BBC online presence to favour the commercial sector. It's hardly surprising that US tech companies dominate when the UK's own government consistently under mined the UK's then best provider. www.theguardian.com/media/2001/j...
Scrap BBC Online says Labour MP
5pm BBC Online should be scrapped or transformed into an advertising-funded service, a leading Labour MP said today. By Amy Vickers. Jan 30: BBC admits ad-funded website plan More BBC stories
www.theguardian.com

This is the kind of chaos I would expect arising in the research ecosystem from a far right populist government. The kind of government that is enthral to tech bro charlatans and promoting superficial patriotism and performative cruelty towards towards marginalised groups.
'The leaders of four large-scale physics infrastructure projects have been told that they have “not been prioritised” for funding, throwing British participation in major international science facilities into question, Research Professional News can reveal.' 1/3
UKRI shelves physics infrastructure projects worth £280m.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...

Reposted by Richard Shaw

'The leaders of four large-scale physics infrastructure projects have been told that they have “not been prioritised” for funding, throwing British participation in major international science facilities into question, Research Professional News can reveal.' 1/3

40% of the population probably won't even vote therefore proportion of electorate voting Tory or Reform is therefore less 30%.

Current Tory and Labour leaderships have rendered large segments of population politically homeless and it is difficult to fix with the current electoral system.

Your original question was one of semantics, it's a giant rabbit hole whose answers lie in the qualitative domain.

Complex systems models, and causal loop diagrams in particular, makes a lot more sense when you realise that they are tool for qualitative researchers. Trying to interpret them from a quantitative perspective doesn't end well.
📣 The next Scottish UKHLS (@usociety.bsky.social) User Group Meeting will be on the 24th of April 1500-1630 Online @uoe-sps.bsky.social

To receive the meeting invite sign up to the mailing list here: edin.ac/48nQsc2
edin.ac

Given the way in which the MRC has closed (or is closing) its units I think the leadership is an utter disgrace, and if there are problems elsewhere there is probably a need for independent investigation.
I'm seeing relatively little chatter or outcry about what is happening at the MRC, the UK's biomedical research funder.

Before Christmas MRC paused the acceptance of many of its grants, including the standard applicant-led research grant. There has been no public information on what is happening 🧵

If AI actually worked surely sentiment analysis could bock or moderate harmful content automatically?

Reposted by Richard Shaw

As a parent, I find social media terrifying and want to keep my child off it as long as possible. However the calls for a ban for under 16s continue a long pattern of seeking to shrink young people's presence in the public realm rather than tackling other issues.

I think the Labour party leadership are simply showing us who they truly are, and we are still to some degree trying to hope it is a strategic mistake.
Parties whose controlling faction hang out with Russian oligarchs, despots and criminal billionaires generally target right wing voters.

Yes, I also know promotion criteria are deeply problematic at the moment, but that is partly because promotion criteria in Universities are heavily constrained by needing to promote people who game the system to attract grant funding.

Fund Universities properly directly. While there is a need to ensure Profs are sanity checked, peer review could surely do that.
Surely promotion criteria requiring decades of experience could evaluate a Profs capability as researcher and then give them appropriate to maintain a research team?

Aren't grants based on the person just called fellowships? and when it's a group of people it called unit or centre funding?

Reposted by Richard Shaw

Carney in Davos:

Reposted by Richard Shaw

Two weeks ago I started:

- 🇳🇴 Vivaldi > Chrome 🇺🇸
- 🇨🇭 ProtonMail > Gmail 🇺🇸
- 🇨🇭 ProtonDrive > Dropbox 🇺🇸
- 🇬🇧 Anytime Player > American Podcast apps 🇺🇸
- 🇫🇷 Deezer > Spotify (basically 🇺🇸)
- 🇬🇧 CityMapper > Google Maps 🇺🇸

It was easy. Most have a "import all settings and pick up where you left off" function

Perhaps the question we need to ask is:
What's the point of all these papers is nobody has time to read them?

Generations of UK people's understanding of WWII and military alliances has been formed by Hollywood action movies of the 60s and 70s e.g. The Great Escape & Where Eagles Dare ,regularly shown on TV in the 70s and 80s. Where the most heroic and coolest roles were always given to American actors.

Reposted by Richard Shaw

The omissions from community are quite important in defining it. Admin data seems mostly to be incorporated only via linkage to surveys.

It is also notable that UK Biobank and the "Big Data" crowd tend not to fit despite being longitudinal data.

In UK it is partly defined by usage of medium to large surveys that tend to place a reasonable emphasise on methodological rigour and open science practices enforced by the ESRC. e.g. depositing in the UK data archive.

The problem is that research funding does a poor job at discriminating between expertise and a Fordist model of research production. We need data and expertise in longitudinal study design and theory, but funding reward setting up production lines.

Well to start with from a UK perspective there is @closer-uk.bsky.social @popres-uk.bsky.social @sllshome.bsky.social . There is a legitimate need for organisations to share knowledge about running studies, and lifecourse theory has it's place.