Randy Ellis
LightNews LightNews
randalljellis.bsky.social
Randy Ellis
@randalljellis.bsky.social
250 followers 740 following 14 posts
Postdoc at Harvard Medical School in the Department of Biomedical Informatics studying neurodegenerative disease and metascience.
randalljellis.github.io
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
randalljellis.bsky.social
Randy Ellis @randalljellis.bsky.social · 23d
I started a podcast! Metascience Matters features conversations with metascientists.

Two episodes are live:

Chirag Patel on Exposomics, and Vibration of Effects: youtu.be/RT2nypyb-iM?...

@floriannaudet.bsky.social on Clinical Trials, Registered Reports, and Psychiatry: youtu.be/fn4qtnc99Xo?...
Exposomics, Vibration-of-Effects, and the Future of AI in Health | Metascience Matters #1
YouTube video by Metascience Matters
youtu.be
Reposted by Randy Ellis
solomonkurz.bsky.social
Here's what a Cohen's d = 22 looks like. Totally normal. See it all the time in my own data...
February 13, 2026 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
ianhussey.mmmdata.io
Today in that-didn't-happen: Cohen's d = 22.

Williams et al. (2014) has 145 citations, putting it in top 1% of most cited psych articles.

It is a load-bearing publication in its area, despite having impossible results.

pubpeer.com/publications...
February 13, 2026 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
ryancbriggs.net
I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.
February 11, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
lakens.bsky.social
Without publication bias, we might not need many replications. With publication bias, 20% to 40% might be justified (but of course, extremely dependent on the assumptions in the simulations!). If the field is a mess, we need a lot of replication studies to clean up!
February 11, 2026 at 8:40 AM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
lakens.bsky.social
My colleague Krist Vaessen wrote a new book: “Neomania: How our obsession with innovation is failing science, and how to restore trust”. It's a great analysis how the drive for novelty hinders reliable scientific progress. Open Access, so read it here: books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp...
do.call
February 9, 2026 at 3:47 PM
randalljellis.bsky.social
Here's my conversation with Mu Yang on Metascience Matters: www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2EK...

We discussed her work as a scientific sleuth, academic incentives for positive data, individual cases she has pursued, and why she loves being a sleuth.

Also on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/16R6...
300+ retractions, image manipulation, and why science should be boring | Metascience Matters #3
YouTube video by Metascience Matters
www.youtube.com
February 8, 2026 at 7:10 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
coad.bsky.social
New submission format at SBE:
“Replications as Registered Reports”

link.springer.com/journal/1118...

You can get "in-principle acceptance" before data collection even begins; final paper gets published regardless the results, if the study is conducted rigorously.

#EconSky
January 29, 2026 at 5:54 AM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
markrubin.bsky.social
Call for metascience grants has a focus on three areas:

🔸️ The impact of artificial intelligence on scientific practice and the research landscape

🔸️ The effective design and leadership of research organisations

🔸️ Scientometrics approaches to understanding research excellence, efficiency and equity
francesjones.bsky.social Frances Jones @francesjones.bsky.social · 19d
Our funding insight articles are usually paywalled but we've made this ESRC/DSIT metascience opportunity profile free to read.

Get the right measure for metascience success - it's an interview with director of research Jen Gold. Check it out!
www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-funding-i...
Opportunity profile: Get the right measure for metascience success - Research Professional News
Metascience Research Grant proposals should be “very applied” in nature, scheme leader says
www.researchprofessionalnews.com
January 27, 2026 at 5:15 PM
randalljellis.bsky.social
I started a podcast! Metascience Matters features conversations with metascientists.

Two episodes are live:

Chirag Patel on Exposomics, and Vibration of Effects: youtu.be/RT2nypyb-iM?...

@floriannaudet.bsky.social on Clinical Trials, Registered Reports, and Psychiatry: youtu.be/fn4qtnc99Xo?...
Exposomics, Vibration-of-Effects, and the Future of AI in Health | Metascience Matters #1
YouTube video by Metascience Matters
youtu.be
January 23, 2026 at 12:49 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
This paper in Management Science has been cited more than 6,000 times. Wall Street execs, top govt officials, and even a former U.S. Vice President have all referenced it. It’s fatally flawed, and the scholarly community refuses to do anything about it.
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/01/22/a...
This paper in Management Science has been cited more than 6,000 times. Wall Street executives, top government officials, and even a former U.S. Vice President have all referenced it. It’s fatally fl...
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
January 22, 2026 at 2:31 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
rmcelreath.bsky.social
Statistical Rethinking 2026 Lecture B01 Multilevel Models is online. This is the first lecture of the "experienced" section, in which we start with multilevel models and venture into vast covariance spaces. Full lecture list still here: github.com/rmcelreath/s...
Statistical Rethinking 2026 - Lecture B01 - Multilevel Models
YouTube video by Richard McElreath
www.youtube.com
January 9, 2026 at 10:34 AM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
gershbrain.bsky.social
With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.

My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.
January 9, 2026 at 1:27 AM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
spinespresso.bsky.social
The rarest of sights - a big glossy journal publishing negative replications! Yes, we had to bundle 4 replications into one article AND we had to wait 2 (!!) years in peer review, but here we are:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Data sharing helps avoid “smoking gun” claims of topological milestones
Manipulating the topology of electronic bands can realize new states of matter, with possible implications for information technology. A central question is how to tell whether a topological regime ha...
www.science.org
January 8, 2026 at 7:21 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
edouardmachery.bsky.social
Important. Remember you can’t take science at face value: publication bias is everywhere.
December 29, 2025 at 10:37 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
rmcelreath.bsky.social
When I take train journeys, I sometimes write things. Things that I probably shouldn't publish
# Bayesians are to frequentists as vegetarians are to murderers I have close friends who do not eat meat, for moral reasons. It's not that they find meat disgusting. In fact, they find it delicious. Instead they regard meat as murder. And yet we continue to be friends. I myself do not think meat is murder. I regard it in fact as an ordinary and normative part of human society. It's so commonplace. How could it be murder? This sort of moral incompatibility is commonplace. Vegetarians and vegans have to put up with assholes like me all the time. They are surrounded.
December 16, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
bayesianboy.bsky.social
To anyone who may have been present at my talk today in which I intimated that you can just, you know, do this: you can just, you know, do this.
December 11, 2025 at 11:58 PM
randalljellis.bsky.social
Registered reports now
deevybee.bsky.social Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · Nov 30
Great talk - so interesting to hear that condensed matter physics has similar issues to other sciences, with people selectively presenting data and failing to share raw data. #Reproducibility
November 30, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
lakens.bsky.social
For many social dilemma's in Science (e.g. the slow uptake of diamond open access journals) stronger top down management is necessary. It won't just happen. If scientists will not create this management themselves, someone is going to create it for us.
November 24, 2025 at 5:47 AM
randalljellis.bsky.social
For comparison, the profits of four publishers (2.64B) amount to 5.58% of the FY2024 NIH budget. Revenues (7.36B) are *15.52%*. I agree with the authors' perspective that funders, governments, and universities should lead efforts to change this. All journals should be diamond open-access.
hansonmark.bsky.social 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.
November 13, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
hansonmark.bsky.social
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.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
drugmonkey.bsky.social
This may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
What if NIH had been 40% smaller?
Replaying history with less NIH funding shows widespread impacts on drug-linked research
www.science.org
September 25, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
lmu-osc.bsky.social
🔍Find out about the replicability crisis across fields & open research initiatives you can implement in your own work!
Attend the “Replicability Crisis” lecture by Prof. Dr. Felix Schönbrodt (@nicebread.bsky.social) on Mon 15 Sept, 9:45-10:45.
👉Register here: www.pretix.osc.lmu.de/lmu-osc/OSSS...
Promotional poster for the LMU Open Science Center Summer School 2025 Public Lecture. The poster features a photo of speaker Prof. Dr. Felix Schönbrodt. The text states the lecture focuses on the replicability crisis and open research initiatives, time and date of lecture being 9:45-10:45 CEST on September 15 2025, and instructions to register online. Logos of LMU Open Science Center, LMU, and Universitätsbibliothek München are displayed at the bottom.
September 8, 2025 at 10:08 AM
randalljellis.bsky.social
This was an absolutely brilliant talk.

SV: “Journal prestige is here to stay, but we shouldn’t give it away for free.”
elisabethbik.bsky.social Elisabeth Bik @elisabethbik.bsky.social · Sep 4
Last talk: Simine Vazire @simine.com, with 'Journal Prestige Can and Should Be Earned'
SV: I wear many hats. As Editor in Chief of Psychological Science I would love my journal name to mean anything, but on the other hand, should we value one journal over another?
#PRC10
Speaker with opening slide
September 5, 2025 at 1:39 AM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
joft.bsky.social
This is what I've been saying since 2023 (image below)

"prediction: use of "AI" [...] will come to be broadly associated with cheating, deception, lack of respect for other people, and low quality work that cannot be trusted in important settings"
September 2, 2025 at 8:31 AM
Reposted by Randy Ellis
davidimiller.bsky.social
🧪 And House appropriators say: no cuts to NIH budget!

House subcommittee version just came out (link below). Holds NIH flat at $48 billion.

To be clear: this is far from over. But a good sign that science still matters across both sides of aisle.

YOUR VOICE MATTERS!!
September 1, 2025 at 10:37 PM