S. Scott Graham
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sscottgraham.bsky.social
S. Scott Graham
@sscottgraham.bsky.social
770 followers 430 following 420 posts
Writing about health, ethics, COI, rhetoric, AI, and anatomy museums (usually only 2-3 in any given act of writing) at UT-Austin. https://sscottgraham.com
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sscottgraham.bsky.social
I had to google the term, but damn, it's hard to imagine a more apt description than this...
picture of text with highlighted passages represented in brackets in alt text: About this book: This book is an original and innovative study of how Gothic nostalgia and toxic memory are used to underpin and promote the ongoing culture wars and populist politics in contemporary popular culture. The essays collected here cover topics from the spectral to the ecological, deep fakes to toxic ableism, Mary Poppins to John Wick to reveal how the use of an imaginary past to shape the present, creates truly Gothic times that we can never escape. These ‘hungry ghosts’ from the past find resonance with the Gothic which speaks equally of a past that often not only haunts the present but will not let it escape its grasp. This collection will look at [the confluence between various kinds of toxic nostalgia and popular culture to suggest the ways in which contemporary populism has resurrected ideological monsters from the grave to gorge on the present and any possibility of change that the future might represent.]
October 16, 2025 at 11:22 AM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
I love this story with my entire heart and soul. www.bbc.com/news/article...
US scientist Dr Fred Ramsdell was on the last day of a three-week hike with his wife Laura O'Neill and their two dogs, deep in Montana's grizzly bear country, when Ms O'Neill suddenly started screaming. But it was not a predator that had disturbed the quiet of their off-grid holiday: it was a flurry of text messages bearing the news that Dr Ramsdell had won the Nobel Prize for medicine. Dr Ramsdell, whose phone had been on airplane mode when the Nobel committee tried to call him, told the BBC's Newshour Programme that his first response when his wife said, "You've won the Nobel prize" was: "I did not."
October 8, 2025 at 1:46 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Um... seems a little fast for a parking lot
Grey sedan with collapsed front end, smashed up against light pole, in strip mall parking lot.
August 28, 2025 at 3:13 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Doing a little background research on the Pathological Anatomy Museum in Vienna and I am reminded sometimes Wikipedia will provide important bits of information not typically available in the scholarly literature.
Picture of text: In popular culture. The main character in the film series Mad Max, Max Rockatansky, is named after Carl von Rokitansky. The reason for this bizarre connection is the fact that the director of this film series, George Miller, studied medicine and also made a living as doctor at the time when he was raising funds for his first movie - Mad Max.[53]
August 24, 2025 at 12:17 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
My uni has 2-3 email addresses for every member of the campus community. You'll never guess how they've decided to fix this problem!
Stick drawn comic strip. Title: How Standards Proliferate: (see A/c chargers, character encodings, instant messaging etc). Panel 1: Situation: There are 15 Competing Standards. Panel 2: Two stick figures talking complaining about the need for one true standard. Panel 3: Soon: Situation: there are 15 competing standards.
August 22, 2025 at 5:47 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
I’m getting a huge kick out of Empire the Dude
Image of Lee Pace from the TV show Foundation he has a long hair and beard and an open furry robe.
August 5, 2025 at 4:11 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Fun fact: Edinburgh law requires that there is always at least one bird shitting on Adam Smith’s head.
Statue of Adam Smith with bird shitting (rear view) Statue of Adam Smith with bird shitting
July 20, 2025 at 10:03 AM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England. The newish redesign does a great job with both the historical and anatomical displays. I really love the giant digital showcase of historical anatomical publications.
Digital display of the anatomical drawings of Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842). Blood vessels in the background link his portrait, his placard, a digital replica of his book, and a excerpted page of a torso with colored vasculature. White marble statue of John Hunter, sitting with hand on chin in thoughtful pose.
July 16, 2025 at 4:09 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
This is not a person who has opinions I need to know about.
Four Emma Beddigton headlines about not liking dogs or pets.
July 14, 2025 at 5:22 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
I'd love to hear metascientists reflect more on what they could learn from all of hist sci. IMO Daston & Galison have a much more compelling account of scientific criticism and the relationship with aesthetic criticism than it's "about aspects of the real world."
Picture of text. Highlighted passage: In this period, scientists came to see mechanical registration as a means of reining in their own temptation to impose systems, aesthetic norms, hypotheses, language, even anthropomorphic elements on pictorial representation. What began as policing of others (artists, printers, engravers, woodcutters) now broadened into a moral injunction for the investigator, directed reflexively at themselves.
July 8, 2025 at 1:41 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Wasp Thanksgiving? (A bad day to be without my macro phone camera attachment)
Image of wasp dragging dead quarter-sized spider through dirt, fallen leaves, and much.
July 1, 2025 at 2:09 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
There was an unexplained noise, and now Haggis is concerned for your well being.
Reverse brindle French bulldog standing on wood floor looking earnestly at camera
June 30, 2025 at 6:18 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Looks like oral exams after LLM use may not be the easy fix some are hoping for. arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
This study explores the neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing. Participants were divided into three groups: LLM, Search Engine, and Brain-only (no tools). Each completed three sessions under the same condition. In a fourth session, LLM users were reassigned to Brain-only group (LLM-to-Brain), and Brain-only users were reassigned to LLM condition (Brain-to-LLM). A total of 54 participants took part in Sessions 1-3, with 18 completing session 4. We used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess cognitive load during essay writing, and analyzed essays using NLP, as well as scoring essays with the help from human teachers and an AI judge. Across groups, NERs, n-gram patterns, and topic ontology showed within-group homogeneity. EEG revealed significant differences in brain connectivity: Brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks; Search Engine users showed moderate engagement; and LLM users displayed the weakest connectivity. Cognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use. In session 4, LLM-to-Brain participants showed reduced alpha and beta connectivity, indicating under-engagement. Brain-to-LLM users exhibited higher memory recall and activation of occipito-parietal and prefrontal areas, similar to Search Engine users. Self-reported ownership of essays was the lowest in the LLM group and the highest in the Brain-only group. LLM users also struggled to accurately quote their own work. While LLMs offer immediate convenience, our findings highlight potential cognitive costs. Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI's role in learning.
June 16, 2025 at 1:47 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
I've written a lot of letters of rec over the years, but this is the first time I recall seeing Microsoft Word tell me that "Dr. [Lastname]" should take "his" as the pronoun. It shouldn't in this case (and is incorrect for the sentence). Has it always done this or is this a new AI "improvement"?
redacted letter of recommendation showing Microsoft word suggesting "his" to refer to a Dr. LastName pairing.
June 3, 2025 at 3:53 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
A longstanding problem for science journalism, unfortunately. Made worse by declines in science journalists. (journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....)
Table shows how much text in science journalism is copied or remediated from press releases. Up to 95% in some cases. Highlighted sentence: Within the journalistic coverage as a whole (i.e., duplicate, refashioned, and new articles), institutional press release material makes up the bulk of the content, and new material constitutes less than 40% of the entire article (Table 3).
June 2, 2025 at 2:03 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
This would make a quality sleeve. Source: www.instagram.com/p/Cn8BF7DrDvy/
woodcut of soup pot with giant fish in middle and vegetables all around. Swirls in the background.
May 31, 2025 at 2:18 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
One of the most striking to me is radiologist Guido Holzknecht's (1872-1931) severely radiation damaged hand which sits in a jar of preservative fluid at the Pathological Anatomy Museum in Vienna. (I don't think any public photos exist.)
Guido Holzknecht experimenting with x-rays. Black and white photo of man in lab coat using a machine with several meta bars and a shiny metal orb.
May 28, 2025 at 6:59 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
🚨New pub: Research on policy mechanisms to address funding bias and conflicts of interest in biomedical research: a scoping review.

tl;dr: We got a lot of articles in this space re-demonstrating the same things over and over again. Time for something new!
Picture of text: The results of this review indicate that the COI policy landscape could benefit from a significant shift in the research agenda. The available literature predominantly focuses on a single policy intervention–author disclosure requirements. As a result, new lines of research are needed to establish a more robust evidence-based policy landscape. There is a particular need for implementation research, greater attention to the structural conditions that create COI, and evaluation of policy mechanisms other than disclosure.
May 14, 2025 at 2:36 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Had the misfortune of riding in a Tesla Taxi in Copenhagen last week. Noticed something horrific. Tesla HUD reads Dutch cargo bikes as motorcycles. Nothing can possibly go wrong here.
Dutch cargo bike (cargo area in front of rider) with child in cargo. Arrow pointing to grey visualization of a motorcycle from Tesla heads up display.
May 10, 2025 at 12:51 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Could be a funny coincidence, but I fear it's the future of private equity driven healthcare. (multi-species subspecialty care, anyone?)
Side-by-side ophthalmology practices, one for people, the other for animals.
May 8, 2025 at 3:43 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Been to ~15 anatomy, pathology, or medical museums on three continents so far. The are chock full of homages to storied physicians & surgeons. There's all manner of wood-cuts, posters, busts, paintings, and even statues. These are the first stained glass homages I've seen. (University of Innsbruck)
Stained-glass windows of Andreas Vesalius and Joseph Hyrtl. Brightly colored figures with names above and birth-death dates below.
May 6, 2025 at 7:26 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Time to up your game, every other library I’ve ever been to. (National Library of Austria)
May 4, 2025 at 5:19 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Same, koala. Same.
Sleeping koala arms hanging from tree branches
May 3, 2025 at 1:48 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Anatomisches Museum, Universität Basel - fanstistic museum, great staff. Holds oldest anatomical preparation in the world, by Andreas Vesalius in 1543. Don’t feel too bad for Mr. Karrer here. This was part of his punishment for trying to kill his wife after she found out he had a second secret wife.
Entry to Anatomisches Museum Basel. White stucco(?) building. Large poster with museum name printed vertically and a stylized image of a swirl in a skull in a face. Picture of a picture (I did not take this picture) of a human skeleton in a glass case, flanked by various images of bones and historic manuscripts.
May 1, 2025 at 5:34 PM
sscottgraham.bsky.social
Musée Fragonard d'Alfort at the École Nationale Vétérinaire de Maisons-Alfort. Amazing veterinary and human collections. Jaws used to teach animal aging. 1300 preserved parasites in jars. Striking écorchés - this one an homage to Dürer's The Apocalypse
Facade of collection. Light grey stone building, arched doors and windows. Collection of 50 or so horse jaw bones and teen in rows on white wood shelfs. Jaws are labeled with age of animal. 1300 medical on shelves, behind glass. Vertical text on glass case says "collection of parasites," in French. Ecorche of man riding horse. Both the rider and the horse are prepared anatomical specimens Specimens are tan, dried, and have exposed veins and sinews.
May 1, 2025 at 6:18 AM