Veli-Matti Karhulahti
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mkarhulahti.bsky.social
Veli-Matti Karhulahti
@mkarhulahti.bsky.social
330 followers 140 following 620 posts
science, gaming, art (senior researcher at university of jyväskylä)
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mkarhulahti.bsky.social
Reminds how back in the days Riot publicly insisted that only 2% of their users express verbal toxicity-- turned out that to be classified "toxic" one had to be flagged by peers literally *hundreds* of times within a couple of days
When a player is reported hundreds of times over dozens of matches, the reported player is brought to the Tribunal
November 23, 2025 at 8:51 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
This is such a key hermeneutic for older texts, there's always stuff going on behind the scenes, the thing that's being built on
jaakkostenros.bsky.social Jaakko Stenros @jaakkostenros.bsky.social · 11d
Often they are also shadow boxing with the previous paradigm, that can remain unnamed, since "everyone knows it", even if from today's point of view it is completely forgotten. Context matters.
November 13, 2025 at 9:09 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
I don't know anyone who has worked deeply with RRs (authors/editors/reviewers) who'd support something like this for so many reasons-- a friendly reminder that RRs are a tool for certain scenarios, definitely underused, and like any other tool, to be used wisely
gershbrain.bsky.social Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 12d
If funders wanted to make a huge positive impact on scientific practice, they would mandate that all publications appear first as registered reports, that APCs are only paid for RRs, and that grant applications only require preliminary data for RR sample size determination / power analysis.
November 13, 2025 at 8:15 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
Many EU/US ppl say they must keep submitting to these publishers bc it'd be unfair for co-author students not to-- fair enough sometimes, but if one is a student in a major uni and/or working for a known lab, they've already got a top 1% global advantage without prestige publishing, they'll be ok
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 13d
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 12, 2025 at 1:42 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
New WHO-collaborated (HBSC) study, n=44k, finds that boys who never play games have the same amount of gaming disorder symptoms vs those who play daily-- it's 2025, what are we doing? measurement?
Average number of symptoms is 3 in boys both (almost) every day and (almost) never groups. In girls the (almost) never group has 1 symptom on average.
November 11, 2025 at 9:52 PM
Reposted by Veli-Matti Karhulahti
jpolonen.bsky.social
📢 Register for the 5th Helsinki Initiative webinar (8 December) on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication with presentations by @tatsuya-amano.bsky.social, @karenstroobants.bsky.social and Andre Brasil!

More information and registration: www.helsinki-initiative.org/en/events/5t...
November 3, 2025 at 1:09 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
One of my all-time fav rants on this topic-- especially love this figure demonstrating how expert clinicians fail to agree on major depression diagnosis most of the time (57%) based on DSM5 field trials
In more than 50% cases experts don't agree on correct diagnosis
November 1, 2025 at 7:20 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
The reason why this is interesting & maybe even promising is: it isn't simply "less human scrutiny" but but a shift from reviewer trust to editor trust--
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 23d
In a future publishing system, qed + editor could certainly replace "reviewers+editor" somewhat. Editors could still call in expert reviewers when they feel it's needed.

But replacing "2 reviewers + 1 editor" with "1 reviewer + qed + 1 editor" would probably give similar results.

10/n
November 1, 2025 at 1:49 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
Having a reward like this is ok to increase visibility of alternatives but it also struggles to address the real problem: the system remains broken bc contracts (=lives) of many ppl globally depend on publishing in metrics journals, they don't have a choice
alexh.bsky.social Alex Holcombe @alexh.bsky.social · 23d
A >$10,000 award that will be given to multiple individuals who "communicate their work with radical transparency, making it easy for others to use, test, and build on their ideas" outside of journals, in an ongoing project.

We also need awards to the many communities (not individuals) already
pracheeac.bsky.social Prachee Avasthi @pracheeac.bsky.social · 24d
Deadline today!!!
November 1, 2025 at 11:18 AM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
Many ppl think of registered reports as a tool for bias control (for good historic reasons) but ime this is the truly useful part of RRs: get feedback on the *design* before it's too late

--not specific to h-testing but applies to any kind of data, method, or study in general
grimalkina.bsky.social Cat Hicks @grimalkina.bsky.social · 29d
The reality is a lot of parts of a research project are determined in the *design,* not in the analysis.

That's why serious projects have lit reviews and unserious projects have "our stakeholders liked these words"
October 27, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Reposted by Veli-Matti Karhulahti
mooseallain.bsky.social
My most popular cartoon by a long chalk is also oddly niche, in that it mostly appeals to a generation who remember the song it refers to and enjoy the nostalgia for their youth. I can draw one for you if you like.

www.worldofmoose.com/collections/...
Cartoon: simple black and white line drawing. A couple in a living room. The man is sitting in an armchair reading a newspaper, head turned slightly towards his wife who is standing at the window, tugging at the curtain and saying "I see the Renegade Master's back once again with the ill behaviour".
October 25, 2025 at 10:38 AM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
The good kind of provocative perspective worth reading by HCI/games tech folks too but want to add one thing, which is hinted there but could be even more explicit: the role of publishers in this actor network
carlbergstrom.com Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Oct 24
1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv.

There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.
Three schematic diagrams. The first illustrates selective publishing of internal resection, the second selective causal focus, and the third selective access and funding for researchers.
October 24, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Reposted by Veli-Matti Karhulahti
matti.vuorre.com
I am hiring PhD candidates to study the psychology of attention & technology use at @tilburg-university.bsky.social.

We're looking for motivated & curious scholars with expertise in cognitive psychology and statistics, and offer a friendly work environment with great terms & benefits.

tiu.nu/22989
An aerial photograph of the Tilburg University campus.
October 23, 2025 at 3:04 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
This book probably made some kind of world record for peer review / publication time-- abstracts sketched in 2016 (first full chapter dl 2017) so the process took 10 good years
jaakkostenros.bsky.social Jaakko Stenros @jaakkostenros.bsky.social · Oct 23
Now it is official! The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Games is now, like, actually, surely, coming out! (This has been in the pipeline since 2018.) I have a piece here on this brand new thing called 'magic circle'. Everyone will be talking about it.
The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Games
Playing games is a basic human activity, and games raise a great number of fascinating philosophical questions. What, exactly, are we doing when we play a game? What is the value of games for human li...
www.routledge.com
October 23, 2025 at 7:24 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
This is a brilliant slide & captures a core dynamic of information transfer in science not only for methods but also domain knowledge, theory, and everything else --gap from cutting edge to ZPD will always remain huge; core work in a field will always happen in-between
October 22, 2025 at 7:21 PM
Reposted by Veli-Matti Karhulahti
leonxiao.com
Notwithstanding, please do make your concerns heard; respond by the end of this week (24 October 2025): ec.europa.eu/info/law/bet...
European Commission - Have your say
European Commission - Have your say
ec.europa.eu
October 22, 2025 at 8:00 AM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
There's a trend to add equivalence tests to all planned hypotheses -- never seen these considered for alpha even tho it's an extra test for the literally same hypothesis (happy to learn why if a sensible reason for it exists)
October 19, 2025 at 11:51 AM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
Every chapter in this philosophy of psychiatry monument is pure joy & gold-- today it was @ent3c.bsky.social 's reply to Borsboom, and it resonates not only with psychopathology but also what's happening in social sciences more widely

academic.oup.com/book/25042
The other theme I detect when I read Insel and Cuthbert (2015) is the argument of the contemporary political partisan: whatever the shortcomings of biological science for the study of complex human characteristics, it beats the alternative. I am not someone who thinks Freud was wrong about psychopathology; Freud created a revolutionary and profound system of ideas that, despite the continual force of his genius across his entire career, failed to crystallize into a science. The great theories of psychopathology were theories first, with an IOU on the science that was never paid off. In its frustration, the modern psychopathology establish- ment, epitomized by the bleakly atheoretical technology of GWAS, has stood that strategy on its head: do the science now, and hope that the theory will come later. Neurologic and genomic science may or may not have anything important to say about why some people become depressed, but at least brain science is demonstra- bly science, satisfying on its own terms. And as noted above, one can always decide to just appreciate it as such, and leave the whining to others.
October 16, 2025 at 7:29 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
The meeting notes of this autumn's JUFO board meeting are out & can say these are the most interesting meta-science published every time they come out (highlights🧵)

julkaisufoorumi.fi/sites/defaul...
https://julkaisufoorumi.fi/sites/default/files/2025-10/Julkaisufoorumin_f_ohjausryhmän%20pöytäkirja_08092025.pdf
October 15, 2025 at 9:04 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
Been this year in the JUFO panel evaluating journals & learned some interesting things, such as: the criterion that a journal to qualify for any formal recognition it needs a board with ppl representing diverse institutions /3
October 15, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Reposted by Veli-Matti Karhulahti
mbeisen.bsky.social
Finally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com
October 15, 2025 at 6:33 AM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
Didn't read all but seems v ambitious eg "Ministry of Education and Culture will convene a strategic group to develop an internationally competitive operational environment for responsible openness in research through the vision for higher education and research [&] permanent operational structures"
October 14, 2025 at 6:10 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
How COIs operate in social science & humanities is a huge topic that few talk about, not least as it's damn difficult grasp the tons of variation in RQs, epistemologies, and histories of fields --
adam42smith.bsky.social Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · Oct 13
There are very little norms about this in social science IME. At least in my areas of it, industry funding is, comparatively, so rare, that it doesn't figure prominently in training or guidance, so people literally don't know whether to disclose affiliation or funding source twice.
October 13, 2025 at 8:25 PM
mkarhulahti.bsky.social
"Subjectively, the surface of human behavior is phenomenology; objectively it is meaning. Commitment to phenomenology and meaning, despite their scientific impenetrability, is the indelible mark of a human science."
ent3c.bsky.social Eric Turkheimer @ent3c.bsky.social · Oct 8
Haven't posted much lately-- busy. One of my Substack projects is republishing my chapters from the Kendler and Parnas series on the philosophy of psychiatry. The books are expensive and hard to find. This is, "The Hard Question in Psychiatric Nosology." /1 @awaisaftab.bsky.social
October 12, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Veli-Matti Karhulahti
devezer.bsky.social
I believe science is much more like art than many scientists are willing to consider. I have a feeling that it would free us to do better science if we embraced this view. I may be mistaken but that's where I am mentally.
October 9, 2025 at 3:14 PM