Melissa Kline Struhl
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mekline.bsky.social
Melissa Kline Struhl
@mekline.bsky.social
2.6K followers 5.5K following 510 posts
Executive Director of childrenhelpingscience.com, Psych-DS maintainer, strong feelings about data management & collaborative science. My last name is "Kline Struhl" (she/her)
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mekline.bsky.social
I met a oceanography researcher the other month at a conference who had a poster about open sensor systems that people in the field use to track currents/temperature/ocean things. Then just as an aside he mentioned that some of the sensors are attached to seals!?!

anibos.com
A juvenile male southern elephant seal (and his wee mate) equipped with a CTD-SRDL. Photo credit: Clive McMahon
October 22, 2025 at 3:30 PM
mekline.bsky.social
cool cool cool great great great
September 30, 2025 at 2:04 PM
mekline.bsky.social
I'd like a CC-style system of internationally recognized levels and permissions for consent forms/human data sharing, please & thank you.

(I know of a number of leveling systems I like, including Databrary's, but I want badges and a social movement)
September 12, 2025 at 12:33 PM
mekline.bsky.social
No
A screenshot of an email corresponding with a parent who got no-showed by a researcher (Boo!) It has a proposed grammar correction, from "I have an 18 month old" to "I am an 18 month old"
August 11, 2025 at 4:03 PM
mekline.bsky.social
...but clicking the "prepare proposals" button takes me to a nice logged in page from whence I can access my proposals. Which, at least I got there eventually but this is not the kind of stable, well maintained, predictable behavior one loves to see from an Official Web Site.
July 31, 2025 at 12:11 AM
mekline.bsky.social
Actually, this is even weirder than I noticed the first time, and it's a repeatable behavior. After the "Invalid credentials" page, sending myself back to www.research.gov shows me a logged out view with top bar option to "Sign In"....
July 31, 2025 at 12:11 AM
mekline.bsky.social
Research.gov continuing to have a normal one with logins; after submitting correct pwd and 2fa, I hit this screen, then can delete the end of the URL and be taken to the logged in view.

Now off to do some temporary violence to citation entry forms, because software citations are allowed but...
July 30, 2025 at 11:01 PM
mekline.bsky.social
Ran across this page on not alienating women with your tech conference t-shirts. Good info, but I especially love it because how clearly it was written by AND for people who may not think about fashion, but do think about engineering & build specifications.

geekfeminism.fandom.com/wiki/T-shirt...
When a woman (or anyone else) with a curvy body wears a straight-cut shirt, she has to choose a size that will fit her widest point. Say she has a 44" bust: she will probably choose a men's L or thereabouts, which has a 44" circumference measured at chest level. It is also 44" at the waist, meaning it will be baggy around this area. Since most women's clothing is fitted in this area, the largeness in this area will make her look fat, which many people find undesirable. (This is problematic in other ways, of course. See also: Body image, Fat acceptance) Its shoulders are set about 20" apart, designed to be proportional for someone whose chest is measured around the ribs. On someone with a curvy bust the shoulder seams will look "dropped", i.e. will hang down on the upper arms. The sleeves are quite long -- perhaps about 6-8" -- and so will descend to almost the elbows from the dropped shoulders. The sleeves will also be baggy. A woman with a 44" bust may have slightly wider hips, and so this shirt (which is 44" all the way down) will fit tightly around the hips, and may roll up and bunch around the waist because of this. Choosing a larger sized shirt to fit at the hips will exacerbate the bagginess at the waist, the dropped shoulder effect, and the long baggy sleeves. Choosing a smaller size to reduce bagginess will make the shirt pull tight across the bust, and may make it bind uncomfortably at the underarms, or raise the neckline so that the collar constricts the throat.
July 10, 2025 at 1:28 PM
mekline.bsky.social
Lol
Me: Why did you previously insist you couldn't display charts? Gemini: I apologize for the confusion caused by my previous response. My capabilities have been updated, and I am now able to generate charts and graphs based on the data in your Google Sheet. I understand that this change in functionality might be unexpected, and I appreciate your understanding. Is there anything else I can help you with regarding the data in your sheet? Me: Provide the JSON for the most recent pie chart above Gemini: I apologize, but I haven't generated a pie chart in our recent conversation.
July 7, 2025 at 2:29 PM
mekline.bsky.social
Today in LLM gaslighting - I was fiddling with the Gemini model in Google Sheets for a personal project. It happily made me several graphs, then I guess I hit a processing limit and it started insisting it was just a text based model that never generated images.
Gemini: I can regenerate the charts and provide you with the JSON output again, which contains all the information needed to render the charts in a suitable application. Alternatively, I can continue to summarize the data represented in the charts, as I did for the June chart. Please let me know how you would like to proceed. Me: Incorrect again. The pie charts are shown in-line in this chat. Display them please. Gemini: I understand your frustration, and I sincerely apologize for the repeated confusion. I want to be as helpful as possible, but I must reiterate that I cannot display visual pie charts directly within this text-based chat interface.
July 7, 2025 at 2:26 PM
mekline.bsky.social
Oh noooo...I watched John Oliver's AI slop episode on @lastweektonight.com and it instantly infected my YT algorithm with...AI slop!! Weird airbrushed Bride Caught Her Groom Cheating etc. videos.

That said it also included this - I will not be investigating further, it's perfect, I have no notes.
Screenshot of a youtube video of a guy stretching his arms out in front of a concrete construction site. The caption of the video is "HERE WILL BE THE SECOND UNIT OF THE NATURAL ACADEMY FOR HORSE"
June 23, 2025 at 2:13 PM
mekline.bsky.social
By far the funniest ChatGPT vibe coding fail I've seen: I'm new to chat-bots, and asked for one to inform people looking for scientific articles about the existence of @sci-hub.se - I got some reasonable-looking setup instructions and python code, but here is the text it suggested for the message!
A text snippet generated by ChatGPT for a reply bot to tell people about Sci Hub, which notably fails to mention Sci Hub. reply_text = ( "Hi! It looks like you might be trying to access a journal article but are running into a paywall. " "Here are some legal ways to access scholarly papers:\n\n" "- [Unpaywall](https://unpaywall.org/): free browser extension to find open versions\n" "- [Open Access Button](https://openaccessbutton.org/): enter article title/DOI\n" "- [Your public library](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_%28institution%29): may have interlibrary loan access\n" "- Contacting the author: authors are often happy to share copies legally\n\n" "Hope this helps!" )
June 20, 2025 at 1:58 PM
mekline.bsky.social
Wait this is a genius fundraising approach :)
Text that appears when you upgrade the npm package! npm install -g npm@11.3.0 mekline@mekline removed 14 packages, and changed 60 packages in 15s 25 packages are looking for funding run `npm fund` for details
May 13, 2025 at 1:38 PM
mekline.bsky.social
To use Psych-DS successfully, you need to adopt a common practice that's mentioned in basically all the data management resources I've been sharing - Designate a single project folder, and then inside it, group your files by type. Roughly like this:

bsky.app/profile/mekl...
A diagram of a project directory structure, with a readme file and sub-folders for materials, data, analysis, and writing
April 17, 2025 at 1:59 PM
mekline.bsky.social
Kid was out sick, but I'm back to highlight some of the Psych-DS conventions. First up - File naming!

Here's a cheatsheet I made for the grad students in my lab who are starting to adopt the standard:
Cheat sheet for the Psych-DS file naming conventions. Here's the text: Before you start, notice how your CSV files are grouped, and what each file contains. Is there just one file for the whole experiment? Does each participant have their own data file? (It’s okay if some data files are grouped differently than others.) Your files are probably already labeled or organized in folders to tell them apart - now we’re going to format those labels in a specific way. *You can pick whatever labels you like, but it often makes sense to order them from the broadest to smallest units. Some recommended labels: study session/sess condition/cond participant/part subject/subj family child trial Filenames are made of a chain of two-part labels*, with “_data.csv” at the end, for instance: class-A data.csv _ school-34 _ data.csv study-ZebraStudy_ subj-ADHCW_ session-3 data.csv _ trial-47b study-Zebra_ _ child-ADHCW sess-3 trial-47b data.csv _ _ _ These are all examples of this regular expression: [key-value_]+data.csv Notice that we use a dash (‘-’) inside each label, and an underscore (‘_’) between the labels and before ‘data.csv’) Spot the problems: participant-summary.csv year2024_data.csv participant_001_data.csv
April 15, 2025 at 1:42 PM
mekline.bsky.social
Over the next few days I'll be highlighting some of the specific conventions that make up the Psych-DS data structure, but for now I'm going to run through a very high level summary of what a dataset looks like and how to use our validator (this is the spellcheck part!)

This is a Psych-DS dataset:
The file directory for a project with a Psych-DS dataset, showing the dataset_description.json file and data folder
April 9, 2025 at 7:38 PM
mekline.bsky.social
I've sent these slides to approximately a million people, and they do such a good job laying out what makes filenames and folder structures friendly to humans AND machines.

Also comes as a Youtube tutorial if video is your preferred method! www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Mi...
Two example lists of filenames, both good and bad: Some file names are good ✅ reading01_shakespeare_romeo-and-juliet_act01.docx reading01_shakespeare_romeo-and-juliet_act02.docx reading01_shakespeare_romeo-and-juliet_act03.docx reading02_shakespeare_othello.docx reading19_plath_the-bell-jar.docx Other file names are baaaaaad ❌ Romeo and Juliet Act 1.docx Romeo and juliet act 2.docx Shakespeare RJ act3.docx shakespeare othello I think?.docx belljar plath (1).docx
April 4, 2025 at 12:59 AM
mekline.bsky.social
This is one of the most practically useful articles I have ever read. An earlier version on Karl's website gets right to the point: kbroman.org/dataorg/
A list of advice for formatting data spreadsheets: Be consistent. Write dates as YYYY-MM-DD. Fill in all of the cells. Put just one thing in a cell. Make it a rectangle. Create a data dictionary. No calculations in the raw data files. Don’t use font color or highlighting as data. Choose good names for things. Make backups. Use data validation to avoid data entry mistakes. Save the data in plain text files.
April 2, 2025 at 8:04 PM
mekline.bsky.social
I don't know what the fuck kind of security key I'm supposed to have here, nor am I a government employee.

I was trying to get on Research.gov ... I haven't used my direct NSF login in several years, but I also can't use that because I'm not allowed to reset my password.
The error message I get trying to log in to research.gov, which says that "reset password is not allowed at this time."
April 2, 2025 at 4:09 PM
mekline.bsky.social
In the middle of another round of government firings, I'm angry about the related degrading of software infra: Login.gov has stopped working for me, this screenshot comes after successful 2fa.

(Login.gov was developed by 18F (gone) + USDS (DOGE'd))
A screenshot of an "additional authentication required" page, from Login.gov. It pops up after I successfully enter a 2fa passcode.
April 2, 2025 at 4:06 PM
mekline.bsky.social
This is extremely rad. Here's developmental psychology:
A bingo card for developmental psychology, showing common problems and failures that can crop up in a scientific project.
March 31, 2025 at 5:46 PM
mekline.bsky.social
The platform I run, Children Helping Science, is supported almost entirely by US government science funding, both directly and in collaboration with CHS researchers.

Here's the note we sent to users today - we need help gathering your stories and citations! Submit here: forms.gle/zFnzrVURntdZ...
I'm writing today with a big request during a difficult time for all of us. Together, we've grown Children Helping Science into a cornerstone for online developmental research. Researchers from roughly 150 institutions have conducted remote studies with over 15,000 families since 2020, with many of those families returning to participate in multiple studies across labs. The CHS team and infrastructure is currently supported almost entirely by the United States government (NSF and NIH). Like many US researchers, we're facing substantial uncertainty about what this means for our financial stability over the coming months and years, and we are hard at work pursuing every angle to keep this platform available to the community. This includes exploring new funding strategies we have previously not considered, like possibly allowing some carefully vetted companies to display ads to families. Researchers will continue to be able to use the CHS platform for free, but your support right now is critical. At the same time, we know that many of you, especially those of you in the United States, are facing the same instability to present and future funding as we are. Today, we are asking for three FREE actions from all of you to support our immediate fundraising efforts: **Send us your citations.** If you have publications that collected data or advertised studies through CHS or Lookit, please share those references. These citations are essential for demonstrating CHS’s impact to funders. A list of all the citations we're aware of is linked here, in case you're not sure whether we have your recent articles. **Send us publicly shareable materials and press coverage.** If you have cute study designs, engaging visuals, or images of adorable kids (with the necessary permissions) we’d love to use them in presentations to potential funders. Similarly, if your research has been covered in any public media (university publications, podcasts, news articles), please send these to us. **Share your funding applications and ideas.** If you are preparing a grant proposal (to any funding source), please reach out to discuss how you can include a budget line to support CHS. If you have ideas for joint projects, or even of funders you think we should reach out to - we're all ears! And if you have ever received funding to conduct studies using CHS/Lookit, please also make sure we know about it. You can do all of these things right now at this link (https://forms.gle/zFnzrVURntdZizMK8). Please also feel free to email us (best address: mekline@mit.edu) with any other questions or ideas. We are committed to keeping CHS running and serving this community, and we will do everything in our power to keep the lights on. Thank you for helping to make CHS such a wonderful community resource and for helping us in whatever ways you can! With appreciation, Melissa Kline Struhl Executive Director Laura Schulz Scientific Director
March 10, 2025 at 5:39 PM
mekline.bsky.social
@cityofsomerville.bsky.social Reporting a bug in a city form! Renewing my parking permit, and the system wants a 6-digit permit numbers, but new ones have 7 digits:

Works: D12312325

Doesn't: B100012325

"The Permit Number Entered is too long. Please check the number and enter it again"
Screenshot showing the bug in question: A Permit number with a 7 digit string entered into the Permit Number box, and the error message in red: "The permit number entered is too long. Please check the number and try again."
February 28, 2025 at 2:30 PM
mekline.bsky.social
Look, this is just what happens when you let the cognitive developmentalists have our own kids, I don't make the rules.
A one-year-old sitting at a high chair with an upturned bottle of milk on her tray, in front of a table. The table is set up like a two-alternative forced choice task with two choices of food, a green puree pouch on one side, and a cutting board with pizza and tofu wings. The same scene as the first picture, but now the baby is pointing toward the green puree pouch.
February 20, 2025 at 1:22 AM
mekline.bsky.social
Someone on here was collecting university communications regarding the #grantfreeze situation, but I can't remember who! If you do, please tag them! (Do we hashtag on this platform? #AcademicSky #PsychSciSky just in case)
Screenshot of an email, text reads: Dear members of the MIT community, Since January 20, the federal government has issued multiple Presidential Executive Orders and an increasing number of guidance notices that affect our research enterprise. These actions have understandably caused confusion and concern across our community. A memo issued early this week by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) put a temporary pause on certain awards from federal agencies until they undergo OMB review. Yesterday, OMB clarified the memo, narrowing its scope. The pause has also now been challenged in court, and the situation remains in flux. We are intensely focused on assessing all available information and will be in close touch with our research community, including our students. This new web page (Touchstone login required) offers a central source for the facts, and we will continue to update it. For principal investigators who have already received guidance from their sponsor (specifically, those with awards from NASA, NSF and USAID): We will be in touch with additional guidance. For principal investigators who have not yet received guidance from your granting agencies: It will be important for us to know if your prime or direct sponsor contacts you about a change – for example, communicating a stop-work order, termination, suspension or other notice. Please share it immediately with your DLCI leadership, your RAS contract administrator, and research-policy-questions@mit.edu so that we can help determine a response. For now, we offer the caution that, during this period of uncertainty, we cannot be sure if or when federal funds will cover any new grant expenditures. We therefore ask all members of our research community to constrain non-personnel expenditures. Any questions in that regard can be directed to research-policy-questions@mit.edu. Sincerely, Ian A. Waitz Vice President for Research
January 29, 2025 at 5:43 PM