Sam Forbes
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samhforbes.bsky.social
Sam Forbes
@samhforbes.bsky.social
2K followers 630 following 92 posts
Assoc Prof in Psych at Durham Uni. Infancy, word learning and cognition. Sometime cellist and conductor.
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Reposted by Sam Forbes
steamtraen.eu
Oops. Ooooooooooooops.

I do hope that nobody has been given or denied a job/promotion based on their SpringerNature citation counts in the past 15 years.

arxiv.org/pdf/2511.01675

h/t @nathlarigaldie.bsky.social
November 7, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
audunrosslund.bsky.social
Do parents exaggerate the pronunciation of words they believe their infants don’t know yet? Our new paper suggests no. ❌ w/ @julienmayor.bsky.social & @nataliakartushina.bsky.social 🧵 1/ #DevSci #langsky #devpsy
APA PsycNet
dx.doi.org
November 4, 2025 at 3:20 PM
samhforbes.bsky.social
library(dplyr)
Haul %>%
group_by(candy) %>%
arrange()
jessicacalarco.com Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 11d
We have progressed from data collection to data analysis.
My 11-year-old sitting with her pile of Halloween candy, sorting it into a bar graph
November 1, 2025 at 11:05 AM
samhforbes.bsky.social
Gosh with any luck you might be able to avoid doing science altogether
iaincheeseman.bsky.social Iain Cheeseman @iaincheeseman.bsky.social · 23d
Today @anthropic.com released PubMed integration for Claude. No hallucinations. Just real science, real data. As a beta tester, this has been game changing— a supercharged research tool. Here are 6 prompts that will transform how you search the literature. A 🧵

www.anthropic.com/news/claude-...
Claude for Life Sciences
Discover how Claude accelerates life sciences research with new scientific connectors, skills, and improved performance for drug discovery and clinical work.
www.anthropic.com
October 20, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
olivia.science
This isn't research... sorry
docdellaire.bsky.social Graham Dellaire @docdellaire.bsky.social · 22d
I use one LLM (e.g. Grok Expert) to generate citations on a topic, e.g. in a table format, then ask another LLM to validate like ChatGPT. This weeds out dodgy citations pretty well but will attrition 50-80% of your citations. This is important. Also LLMs don't evaluate the "validity" of work...
a woman wearing a denim jacket is asking if she read it
ALT: a woman wearing a denim jacket is asking if she read it
media.tenor.com
October 20, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
olivia.science
Proudly published with @andreaeyleen.bsky.social:

A metatheory of classical and modern connectionism. doi.org/10.1037/rev0...

We touch on what has been up with connectionism as a framework for computational modelling — & for everything it seems these days with AI and LLMs — pre-2010 vs post.

1/n
article cover page
October 17, 2025 at 12:53 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
olivia.science
Take a look here, article linked to is:
Guest, O. & van Rooij, I. (2025). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. PsyArXiv. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

bsky.app/profile/oliv...
October 14, 2025 at 5:34 AM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
teruniahamat.bsky.social
Excited to share my first PhD article, published in Scientific Data 👉 rdcu.be/eIRqD

We present the Shared Book Reading Corpus: 44 caregiver-infant dyads, 3 camera views (headcams + overview), speech transcriptions & developmental measures.

Access on Databrary for discovery & reuse! ✨

#OpenScience
October 2, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
Check this out!
🌟 👇 👍 🧪
psyarxivbot.bsky.social PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · Oct 5
Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists: https://osf.io/dkrgj
October 5, 2025 at 9:10 AM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
andrew.heiss.phd
Weird ggplot thing that got me this week with the update to 4.0 - it supports new ink and paper arguments (www.tidyverse.org/blog/2025/09... ) and they've changed how transparency works! If you a transparent bg, you can control it with theme_*() now #rstats
library(ggplot2) # Doesn't work anymore! ggplot(data = mtcars, aes(x = hp, y = mpg)) + geom_point() + theme_minimal() ggsave("not-transparent.png", bg = "transparent") # This works! ggplot(data = mtcars, aes(x = hp, y = mpg)) + geom_point() + theme_minimal(paper = "transparent") ggsave("yes-transparent.png")
October 2, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
andreaeyleen.bsky.social
Ode to the original language model, or:
Give me literally Anything* instead of Large Language Models (LLMs)
*(no predictive coding either!)

By Lady Byronadrea LLMartin 1/n
September 29, 2025 at 10:12 AM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
tjheffernan.bsky.social
It would be really nice if academic institutions and governments pushing "AI is the future" stopped buying the hype and admitted they were conned, so we can get back to thinking through useful solutions to world problems.
abeba.bsky.social Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Oct 1
"Microsoft says its Agent Mode in Excel has an accuracy rate of 57.2%" 😶

I often wonder how these corps would have turned the world upside down if genAI was actually accurate and useful. they've lost their minds over shoddy and mediocre tools

www.theverge.com/news/787076/...
Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word
Vibe working is all about Office’s new Agent Mode.
www.theverge.com
October 1, 2025 at 11:26 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
psychologyuea.bsky.social
Don’t miss it!
𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞: 𝐀 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐃𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐃𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞
Organised by the Diversity in Developmental Science Network, featuring 𝐃𝐫.𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚 𝐀𝐧𝐞𝐣𝐚 as a panellist.
📝 Registration: forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/respon...
September 21, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
tjheffernan.bsky.social
Deleted...should have done it ages ago
hystericalblkns.bsky.social Ordinary Notes @hystericalblkns.bsky.social · Sep 17
If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.
The new TOC from academia dot edu. By creating an Account with Academia.edu, you grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent for Academia.edu to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness, city, institutional affiliations, citations, mentions, publications, and areas of interest) in any manner, including for the purpose of advertising, selling, or soliciting the use or purchase of Academia.edu's Services.
September 18, 2025 at 8:45 AM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
dalmaijer.bsky.social
Woah! Amazing PhD positions on children as agents of cultural evolution with one of the foremost experts on the topic.
sheinalew.bsky.social Sheina Lew-Levy @sheinalew.bsky.social · Sep 11
@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised!

3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution

2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.

Please share and apply!

www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
Fees and Funding - Durham University
www.durham.ac.uk
September 11, 2025 at 10:11 AM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
sheinalew.bsky.social
@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised!

3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution

2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.

Please share and apply!

www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...
Fees and Funding - Durham University
www.durham.ac.uk
September 11, 2025 at 9:12 AM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
maddipow.bsky.social
Wrote this on the train home from Metascience. Can’t quite believe this one needed saying, but I really think that if conversations about research integrity and open science don’t take academic bullying seriously, we’ll keep perpetuating the same system that science reform was trying to change.
markrubin.bsky.social Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · Sep 9
"Hostility, exclusion and academic bullying should be formally recognised as research integrity issues because they directly impact who gets to succeed and whose voices are silenced."

By @maddipow.bsky.social
Research integrity needs a kindness agenda or we will lose ECRs
Responding to early-career researchers’ honest questions with accusations of misconduct is a travesty of open science, says Madeleine Pownall
www.timeshighereducation.com
September 9, 2025 at 6:40 AM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
olivia.science
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 6, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
anthonymoser.com
I considered writing a long carefully constructed argument laying out the harms and limitations of AI, but instead I wrote about being a hater. Only humans can be haters.
I Am An AI Hater
I am an AI hater. This is considered rude, but I do not care, because I am a hater.
anthonymoser.github.io
August 27, 2025 at 5:04 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
olivia.science
Journalists have consistently shown they are morally bankrupt on AI. Depressing
mckinleaf.bsky.social McKinley Valentine @mckinleaf.bsky.social · Aug 26
hey @theguardian.com this piece is wildly irresponsible! To post an "interview" with an LLM, with zero context given that that it cannot answer questions about itself, and that you've basically just asked it to generate some science fiction dialogue?

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
AI called Maya tells Guardian: ‘When I’m told I’m just code, I don’t feel insulted. I feel unseen’
Cofounder with Michael Samadi of AI rights campaign group Ufair says it should watch over the technology in case an AI becomes conscious
www.theguardian.com
August 27, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
joesalmons.bsky.social
theconversation.com/linguistics-...
Linguistics could make language learning more relevant – and attractive – for school pupils
A languages curriculum enriched with linguistics is appealing to students and teachers.
theconversation.com
August 16, 2025 at 11:58 AM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
AI slop and the destruction of knowledge irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/a...
AI slop and the destruction of knowledge
This week I was looking for info on what cognitive scientists mean when they speak of ‘domain-general’ cognition. I was curious, because the nuances are relevant for something I am researching at t…
irisvanrooijcogsci.com
August 12, 2025 at 10:12 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
If you are also worried about ScienceDirect’s AI slop feature, you can directly contact them here: service.elsevier.com/app/answers/...
I believe I’ve identified a harmful error in an Elsevier product. How can I let Elsevier know? - ScienceDirect Support Center
I believe I’ve identified a harmful error in an Elsevier product. How can I let Elsevier know?
service.elsevier.com
August 6, 2025 at 2:22 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
irisvanrooij.bsky.social
💫 Just out! A tour de force by my colleague @olivia.science, new paper 📝:

What Does 'Human-Centred AI' Mean? 🧮 ⏰ 🧠

Keywords: AI; cognitive science; sociotechnical relationship; cognitive labour; ANN; technology; cognition; human-centred AI

Link to the paper on arXiv: lnkd.in/e9nHGkMK 1/n
Abstract: While it seems sensible that human-centred artificial intelligence (AI) means centring “human behaviour and experience,” it cannot be any other way. AI, I argue, is usefully seen as a relationship between technology and humans where it appears that artifacts can perform, to a greater or lesser extent, human cognitive labour. This is evinced using examples that juxtapose technology with cognition, inter alia: abacus versus mental arithmetic; alarm clock versus knocker- upper; camera versus vision; and sweatshop versus tailor. Using novel definitions and analyses, sociotechnical relationships can be analysed into varying types of: displacement (harmful), enhancement (beneficial), and/or replacement (neutral) of human cognitive labour. Ultimately, all AI implicates human cognition; no mat- ter what. Obfuscation of cognition in the AI context — from clocks to artificial neural networks — results in distortion, in slowing critical engagement, pervert- ing cognitive science, and indeed in limiting our ability to truly centre humans and humanity in the engineering of AI systems. To even begin to de-fetishise AI, we must look the human-in-the-loop in the eyes. Keywords: artificial intelligence; cognitive science; sociotechnical relationship; cognitive labour; artificial neural network; technology; cognition; human-centred AI
July 29, 2025 at 6:31 PM
Reposted by Sam Forbes
gowerlabs.bsky.social
Setting up LUMO for high-density fNIRS data collection is so simple even Smiskis can do it! #fNIRS #Neuroimaging #HDDOT #LUMO
June 27, 2025 at 3:20 PM