John Kennedy

@micefearboggis.bsky.social

3.3K followers 3.3K following 2K posts

Occasional climate scientist, diagram monkey, probabilistic historian, science anti-communicator. All views and opinions are my own. This is not, sadly, a promise of novelty: it’s a disclaimer. He/him. https://www.jkclimate.fr/ .. more

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Environmental science 43%

Geography 15%

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Reposted by John Kennedy, Jonathan Birch

Kevin Zollman @kevinzollman.com · 1d

One thing you learn studying scientific social norms is how different norms are across the sciences and how often scientists think every field shares their norms.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 1d

Why do we do what we do the way we do what we do?

I mean, what *is* astrophysics?

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/w...

Why do we do what we do the way we do what we do?

In a narrow sense, LLMs are superhuman. They operate at computerish speeds and can now churn out text in seconds or minutes, that a human would take hours to write, if they could write it all. Thus…

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks Tim. I like to be inclusive.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 1d

It replaces a very difficult and complex question - what is the value/correctness/import of this piece of work considered as part of the wider field of understanding? - with a simpler, binary one - has it been peer reviewed?

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 1d

I think if we were creating scientific systems today from scratch, peer review of manuscripts would not be the obvious first option.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 1d

It's a common suggestion. My objection to it is that - looked at in a certain way - it just incentivizes people to write lots of superficial reviews, which doesn't much help a situation which has been created by similar kinds of incentives.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 1d

Papers are indeed very old fashioned things.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 1d

Is the problem the lack of time to review or the sheer mass of publications or something else?

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 1d

I think greater diversity of academic roles would be interesting

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d

It's developed in other places too. I do feel like the sense of obligation is still there, but it's fighting against so many other demands that all it does is make people feel bad.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d

Yes. I guess, I feel that if people are stretched thin, adding more rewards doesn't make more time, it just encourages them to stretch themselves even thinner.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d

Absolutely. I feel like the proposed solutions to the peer review problem are just more of what got us into this situation in the first place.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d

Yes! That is a brilliant exchange. You can see the roots of lots of the arguments that are still used today.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d

I don't have anything very smart to say here other than trying to fix peer review by making it yet another metric to max out feels like it is just going to break things in a whole new set of ways.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d

Peer review gets a lot of kudos, but often it's the feedback we get direct from people we know and trust before a paper is even submitted that feels like it has the most significant impact on our work. These people usually show up in the acknowledgements, where they get almost no recognition at all.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d

The only reason I have to review this kind of paper is that it's the kind of thing one is supposed to do. I think that work done to improve individual papers is important - so I do it - but a system that works by strangers making demands on each other's time is almost bound to fail.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d

If I'm asked to review a paper, the request generally comes from someone I don't know and the paper will, more often than not, be by someone I don't know on a topic related to my niche interests but sufficiently distant from them to have little practical applicability in my day to day work.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d

I've written many dozens of reviews at this point, but only once has an editor actually taken the time to say "hi". I've received the occasional auto-generated certificate issued by journals, but it's not the same and just reinforces the depersonalisation of the whole process.

Reposted by Peter Thorne, Gavin A. Schmidt

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 2d

Reading articles like this, it occurs to me that the more we try to fix problems caused by replacing social norms and relationships with financial incentives, by replacing social norms and relationships with financial incentives, the worse things will get.

theconversation.com/the-peer-rev...

The peer review system is breaking down. Here’s how we can fix it

Peer review is so integral to the scholarly system that research would grind to a halt without it.

theconversation.com

Reposted by John Kennedy

Mare Pan @paarsec.com · 3d

Some Octane Render SSS + iridescence this time. Once again the Ramose Murex model from threeD scans threedscans.com/shell/ramose...

A complex iridescent and gold-plated seashell, it has translucence SSS through showing pink and teal shades. It's very colorful.

Reposted by Peter Thorne

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 3d

It looks like you’re writing an IPCC assessment report?

Some notes on a case study of an AI-assisted assessment.

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2026/02/15/i...

It looks like you’re writing an IPCC assessment report?

The climate science literature is big and getting bigger. Data volumes are increasing. Assessment reports like the IPCC assessment reports, which synthesise that literature, are also big and gettin…

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 4d

By and large superheroes are only necessary to deal with the mess caused by superheroes.

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 4d

Peering into the future:

"The rocket boots might well propel our protagonist majestically skywards, but they might also hurtle him into the side of a mountain at the speed of sound."

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2026/02/14/p...

Peering into the future

In films1, the hero/genius issues commands to a disembodied computer voice which then effortlessly manufactures a pair of rocket boots. Donning the boots, the hero – without practice – …

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 4d

Peering into the future

On peer review, LLMs, and the difficulty of vaticination.

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com/2026/02/14/p...

Peering into the future

In films1, the hero/genius issues commands to a disembodied computer voice which then effortlessly manufactures a pair of rocket boots. Donning the boots, the hero – without practice – …

diagrammonkey.wordpress.com

Reposted by Peter Thorne

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 4d

Yet more climate dashboards on the Climate Dashboard Dashboard, your source for all the climate change sources you'll ever need.

Now with extra: IGCC, Climate Brink, UNEP and WMO

jjk-code-otter.github.io/dashboard-da...

The Climate Dashboard Dashboard

jjk-code-otter.github.io

Reposted by John Kennedy, Peter Thorne, Gavin A. Schmidt , and 1 more John Kennedy, Peter Thorne, Gavin A. Schmidt, Peter Jacobs

Elizabeth Kent @lizk40.bsky.social · 5d

The paper describing the new DCENT-I dataset of monthly global surface temperature since 1850 is just published.

rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

DCENT‐I: A Globally Infilled Extension of the Dynamically Consistent ENsemble of Temperature Dataset

DCENT-I infills data gaps in DCENT, producing spatially coherent temperature fields (top) and a slightly higher GMST warming estimate (bottom). Top: December 1877 temperature anomalies (°C; 1961–1990...

rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

John Kennedy @micefearboggis.bsky.social · 5d

I see predictive text as a challenge: if it predicts what my next word was going to be, then I am going to pick another one and another one and another one until it gives in or starts suggesting nonsense. I'm going to rewrite that whole sentence if I need to.