Simon Titone
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simontitone.bsky.social
Simon Titone
@simontitone.bsky.social
Queer feminist neuroscientist (they/them)
Reposted by Simon Titone
I feared this in 2016, but now it’s happened:

The CDC is gone. Strike them from your list of reliable purveyors of information.
CDC has overhauled its website to assert that “the claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim”
November 20, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.

It's *scientific publishing*.

We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...

Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇
November 12, 2025 at 10:31 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...
November 9, 2025 at 8:49 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
June 19, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
Age and gender distortion in online media and large language models

"Furthermore, when generating and evaluating resumes, ChatGPT assumes that women are younger and less experienced, rating older male applicants as of higher quality."

No surprise, but now documented:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Age and gender distortion in online media and large language models - Nature
Stereotypes of age-related gender bias are socially distorted, as evidenced by the age gap in the representations of women and men across various media and algorithms, despite no systematic age differ...
www.nature.com
October 16, 2025 at 8:53 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
If there’s one thing about the last decade that has truly done my head in, it’s seeing how many people - including many very well educated people with power - appear to be totally incapable of spotting an obvious bullshitter in the act of bullshitting.
How do people not SEE the extent to which this guy is an utter bullshitter? Is this some kind of autistic soul-read thing I'm manifesting? I don't understand how people aren't getting constant red flags from this guy. Every picture just trumpets bullshitter, he is like a parody of a normie-fooler.
October 14, 2025 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
Frodo: “I wish it need not have happened in my time."

Gandalf: "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

J.R.R. Tolkien
September 28, 2025 at 4:14 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
My mom called me last night about the Kimmel firing, saying "This is how Hitler got started!" I quickly responded, "By firing the late night tv hosts?"

Turns out, mom was right.
September 18, 2025 at 8:27 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
These are precedented times and the precedent is a loud ass warning

www.nytimes.com/1939/02/04/a...
Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime (Published 1939)
www.nytimes.com
September 18, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
IT'S OFFICIAL: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New York City have formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative.

The collaborative will issue their own vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health efforts.
September 18, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers, according to new research on more than 600,000 college grads theconversation.com/studying-phi...
Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers, according to new research on more than 600,000 college grads
Philosophers are fond of saying that their field boosts critical thinking. Two of them decided to put that claim to the test.
theconversation.com
August 22, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
"You know the Reichstag fire? Where the Nazis, oh that's us in this analogy, they used it as an excuse to take over the government and then start WWII and commit heinous genocide? Yeah that's us right now. It's like the Mitchell & Webb skit except I'm saying we ARE the baddies. Like the Nazis."
I was expecting the Reichstag Fire parallel to be made, but I did not expect it to come from the right.
September 12, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
🧠 New preprint! 🧠

As part of a forthcoming book on consciousness, we wrote a chapter on:

Spontaneous thoughts and experiences across wakefulness and sleep
osf.io/preprints/ps...

with @parboulakis.bsky.social @ademertzi.bsky.social and @jdsitt.bsky.social

A brief 🧵!
September 4, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
✨✨ We are excited to announce the OHBM Australian Chapter 2025 Annual Meeting! 🧠🇦🇺

📢 Abstract submissions & registration now OPEN (abstract submission closes September 15th at 5pm)

📍 Melbourne 🏙️☕
📅 Wednesday, November 12, 2025

ohbm-aus.github.io/posts/2025-a...

We hope to see you there! 🤩
August 25, 2025 at 5:18 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Carinna Torgerson, Megan M. Herting, et al:

More similarity than difference: Comparison of within- and between-sex variance in early adolescent brain structure

doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
September 4, 2025 at 3:33 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
Involuntary memory retrieval is a common phenomenon in autobiographical #memory, and a symptom of #PTSD. This study reveals the neural mechanism of #InvoluntaryMemory, showing that involuntary & voluntary memories rely on distinct neural processes @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4oQkb3e
August 21, 2025 at 8:12 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
Dream start for database that aims to improve our understanding of conscious experience in sleep

Free link to the paper in Nature Communication is rdcu.be/eAwni !
A dream EEG and mentation database
Nature Communications - The authors present a multicenter database to investigate the neural correlates of dreaming, including physiological, behavioral and experiential data. This database could...
rdcu.be
August 14, 2025 at 12:24 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
People living under fascism didn’t survive by giving up joy—they protected it.

They held onto the things fascism tried to erase: art, friendship, jokes, rituals, language, memory.

Not as escapism but as resistance. As proof they were still human.

Joy isn’t frivolous under fascism. It’s strategic.
July 4, 2025 at 5:01 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
It's like, how many warnings do we have to give?
Every disaster starts with scientists being ignored and that is not a movie... #BirdFlu #H5N1
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
March 8, 2025 at 2:07 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
This increased functional connectivity continues to be robust in musicians (esp singers) - more evidence that learning to play an instrument is beneficial. 🧠🎶 (And yes, you can start learning to sing at any age!) #neuroskyence #music
Eierun, C et al. doi: 10.1093/psyrad/kkad003. eCollection 2023.Resting-state functional connectivity in lifelong musicians
On resting state fMRI, musicians show an increase in average functional network connectivity (FNC) with age while controls show a decrease (P = 0.013). #neuroskyence
February 23, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed.

Goes beyond MMWR +other CDC pubs. Applies to research already submitted to top medical journals.

Take a look.
open.substack.com/pub/insideme...
BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed.
Any unpublished manuscript mentioning certain topics, including gender and "LGBT," must be pulled or revised.
open.substack.com
February 1, 2025 at 9:20 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
As a licensed psychologist I am saying with my whole chest: Gender-affirming care for young people is health care. Medically necessary, age-appropriate, science-backed, life-saving health care, supported by EVERY major medical association.

It is our duty to protect trans youth at all costs.
January 29, 2025 at 12:21 AM
Reposted by Simon Titone
The fact that NIH grant-making has been switched off so haphazardly, for reasons that remain unclear, and despite the scope of troubles it creates, suggests that higher ed will be profoundly vulnerable during the second Trump era, writes @ibogost.bsky.social:
The Chaos in Higher Ed Is Only Getting Started
Grant reviews have been suspended at the NIH. This could be an omen.
www.theatlantic.com
January 24, 2025 at 11:54 PM
Reposted by Simon Titone
Hello everyone! We compiled a list of Trans Inclusive / LGBTQIA+ health resources. Normally we wouldn't ask for engagement, but sharing this around would be deeply appreciated. Remember: You're not alone. We'll endure.

www.broadlyepi.com/lgbtqia-heal...

#MedSky #LGBTQIA+ #TransRights #HumanRights
November 8, 2024 at 7:29 PM