The Curious Engineer

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BishopBlog

deevybee.blogspot.com

Ramblings on academic-related matters. For information on my research see https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/research/oxford-study-of-children-s-communication-impairments. Twin analysis blog: http://dbtemp.blogspot.com/ . ERP time-frequency analysis blog: bishoptechbits.blogspot.com/ . For tweets, follow

ScienceSociety / politics / economy

’10’15’20’25
Posts
318 from 30 May 2010 to 24 Sep 2026
Posting
monthly (11 in the last year)
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personal blog
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https://deevybee.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

2026 9

  1. Trust in data: reproducibility packages do not guarantee validity
  2. Acceleration of the arms race between fraudsters and honest researchers
  3. How paper mills go straight (without going clean): a shift to dual-use services
  4. That fireside chat with Jay Bhattacharya: a view from across the pond
  5. Update on Wellcome LEAP's $50 million program on autism and the microbiome
  6. Bishopblog catalogue (updated 12 Mar 2026)
  7. Guest post: Stealth corrections are still a threat to scientific integrity
  8. An analysis of PubPeer comments on highly-cited retracted articles
  9. An Open Letter to the BMJ Editorial Board

2025 13

  1. The dangers of using bibliometrics with polluted data
  2. The inner workings of a paper mill:
  3. Problems with ELife's new article type: Replication studies
  4. A LEAP into the future, or off a cliff: Wellcome LEAP's new $50M program
  5. Gold standard science isn't gold standard if it's applied selectively. Part 2: Research on causes of autism
  6. Gold standard science isn't gold standard if it's applied selectively. Part 1: Firearms injuries
  7. New publishing models will only work if authors embrace them
  8. Trouble at t' (review) mill: How MDPI lets down authors
  9. Book Review: Unreliable: Bias, Fraud, and the Reproducibility Crisis in Biomedical Research
  10. IEEE Has a Pseudoscience Problem
  11. Seven reasons for keeping Elon Musk as a Fellow of the Royal Society
  12. Tomatoes roaming the fields and canaries in the coalmine: another embarrassing paper for MDPI
  13. Retrospective look at blog highlights of 2024: What happened next?

2024 18

  1. Finland vs. Germany: the case of MDPI
  2. Why I have resigned from the Royal Society
  3. I don't care about journal impact factors but I do care about visibility
  4. What is going on at the Journal of Psycholinguistic Research?
  5. An open letter regarding Scientific Reports
  6. Using PubPeer to screen editors
  7. Prodding the behemoth with a stick
  8. Now you see it, now you don't: the strange world of disappearing Special Issues at MDPI
  9. Optimizing research integrity investigations: the need for evidence
  10. My experience as a reviewer for MDPI
  11. Collapse of scientific standards at MDPI journals: a case study
  12. Whistleblowing, research misconduct, and mental health
  13. Does Elsevier's negligence pose a risk to public health?
  14. Are commitments to open data policies worth the paper they are written on?
  15. Some thoughts on eLife's New Model: One year on
  16. Just make it stop! When will we say that further research isn't needed?
  17. The world of Poor Things at MDPI journals
  18. An (intellectually?) enriching opportunity for affiliation

2023 11

  1. Low-level lasers. Part 2. Erchonia and the universal panacea
  2. Low-level lasers. Part 1. Shining a light on an unconventional treatment for autism
  3. Defence against the dark arts: a proposal for a new MSc course
  4. When privacy rules protect fraudsters
  5. Spitting out the AI Gobbledegook sandwich: a suggestion for publishers
  6. Polyunsaturated fatty acids and children's cognition: p-hacking and the canonisation of false facts
  7. The Discussion section: kill it or reform it?
  8. Is Hindawi “well-positioned for revitalization?”
  9. Papers affected by misconduct: Erratum, correction or retraction?
  10. Open letter to CNRS
  11. A suggestion for eLife

2022 16

  1. New Year's Eve Quiz 2022
  2. When there are no consequences for misconduct: Parallels between politics and science
  3. Biomarkers to screen for autism (again)
  4. What is going on in Hindawi special issues?
  5. A desire for clickbait can hinder an academic journal's reputation
  6. Reviewer-finding algorithms: the dangers for peer review
  7. So do we need editors?
  8. We need to talk about editors
  9. Can systematic reviews help clean up science?
  10. Contagion of the political system
  11. A proposal for data-sharing that discourages p-hacking
  12. Book Review. Fiona Fox: Beyond the Hype
  13. Some quick thoughts on academic boycotts of Russia
  14. Why I am not engaging with the Reading Wars
  15. Boris Johnson leads the world ....in the number of false facts he can squeeze into a session of PMQs
  16. Response to Philip Ball's critique of scientific advisors

2021 6

  1. Linking responsibility for climate refugees to emissions
  2. Universities vs Elsevier: who has the upper hand?
  3. Open data: We know what's needed - now let's make it happen
  4. Time for publishers to consider the rights of readers as well as authors
  5. University staff cuts under the cover of a pandemic: the cases of Liverpool and Leicester
  6. Time to ditch relative risk in media reports

2020 16

  1. Faux peer-reviewed journals: a threat to research integrity
  2. PEPIOPs – prolific editors who publish in their own publications
  3. TEF in the time of pandemic
  4. 'Percent by most prolific' author score: a red flag for possible editorial bias
  5. Frogs or termites? Gunshot or cumulative science?
  6. Boris Bingo: Strategies for (not) answering questions
  7. Manipulated images: hiding in plain sight?
  8. Attempting to communicate with the BBC: A masterclass in paltering
  9. Stepping back a level: stress management for academics in the pandemic
  10. What can scientists do in an emergency shutdown?
  11. Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in relation to DSM-5
  12. Changing terminology for children's language disorders: reflections on special issue of Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups
  13. Why eugenics is wrong
  14. Stemming the flood of illegal external examiners
  15. Should I stay or should I go? When debate with opponents should be avoided
  16. Research funders need to embrace slow science

2019 13

  1. Harry Potter and the Beast of Brexit
  2. The sinister side of French psychoanalysis revealed
  3. Responding to the replication crisis: reflections on Metascience2019
  4. Voting in the EU Referendum: Ignorance, deceit and folly
  5. A day out at 10 Downing Street
  6. Corrigendum: a word you may hope never to encounter
  7. A call for funders to ban institutions that use grant capture targets
  8. The Do It Yourself (DIY) conference
  9. Review of 'Innate' by Kevin Mitchell
  10. What is driving Theresa May?
  11. Benchmarking in the TEF: Something doesn't add up (v.2)
  12. The Paper-in-a-Day Approach
  13. NeuroPointDX's blood test for Autism Spectrum Disorder: a critical evaluation

2018 17

  1. Has the Society for Neuroscience lost its way?
  2. Working memories: a brief review of Alan Baddeley's memoir
  3. An index of neighbourhood advantage from English postcode data
  4. Should editors edit reviewers?
  5. Matlab vs open source: Costs and benefits to scientists and society
  6. More haste less speed in calls for grant proposals
  7. Standing on the shoulders of giants, or slithering around on jellyfish: Why reviews need to be systematic
  8. One big study or two small studies? Insights from simulations
  9. Preprint publication as karaoke
  10. Developmental language disorder: the need for a clinically relevant definition
  11. Sowing seeds of doubt: how Gilbert et al’s critique of the reproducibility project has played out
  12. How to survive on Twitter – a simple rule to reduce stress
  13. My response to the EPA's 'Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science'
  14. Power, responsibility and role models in academia
  15. Should research funding be allocated at random?
  16. Improving reproducibility: the future is with the young
  17. Do you really want another referendum? Be careful what you wish for

2017 20

  1. Using simulations to understand p-values
  2. Using simulations to understand the importance of sample size
  3. Reproducibility and phonics: necessary but not sufficient
  4. ANOVA, t-tests and regression: different ways of showing the same thing
  5. How Analysis of Variance Works
  6. Prisons, developmental language disorder, and base rates
  7. Citing the research literature: the distorting lens of memory
  8. Pre-registration or replication: the need for new standards in neurogenetic studies
  9. Breaking the ice with buxom grapefruits: Pratiques de publication and predatory publishing
  10. The STEP Physical Literacy programme: have we been here before?
  11. Prospecting for kryptonite: the value of null results
  12. Which neuroimaging measures are useful for individual differences research?
  13. Reproducible practices are the future for early career researchers
  14. Sample selection in genetic studies: impact of restricted range
  15. Advice for early career researchers re job applications: 1. Work 'in preparation'
  16. Barely a good word for Donald Trump in Houses of Parliament
  17. The alt-right guide to fielding conference questions
  18. We know what's best for you: politicians vs. experts
  19. A common misunderstanding of natural selection
  20. My most popular posts of 2016

2016 20

  1. Controversial statues: remove or revise?
  2. When is a replication not a replication?
  3. When scientific communication is a one-way street
  4. The allure of autism for researchers
  5. On the incomprehensibility of much neurogenetics research
  6. Some thoughts on the Statcheck project
  7. Why I still use Excel
  8. Alternative providers and alternative medicine
  9. Cost-benefit analysis of the Teaching Excellence Framework
  10. Editorial integrity: Publishers on the front line
  11. Ten serendipitous findings in psychology
  12. Who wants the TEF?
  13. Would paying by results improve reproducibility?
  14. Talking about tax avoidance: weasel words
  15. To: the World From: Deevybee Re: We have a problem
  16. Better control of the publication time-line: A further benefit of Registered Reports
  17. There is a reproducibility crisis in psychology and we need to act on it
  18. On the need for clarity of purpose in the REF and TEF
  19. Desperate marketing from Journal of Neuroscience
  20. The Amazing Significo: why researchers need to understand poker

2015 15

  1. The Green Paper’s level playing field risks becoming a morass
  2. A lamentable performance by Jo Johnson
  3. Open code: not just data and publications
  4. Who's afraid of Open Data
  5. The rationalist spa: an unmet need
  6. Opportunity cost: A new red flag for evaluating interventions for neurodevelopmental disorders
  7. Publishing replication failures: some lessons from history
  8. How the media spun the Tim Hunt story
  9. My collapse of confidence in Frontiers journals
  10. Will traditional science journals disappear?
  11. Great Expectations: Our early assessments of schoolchildren are misleading and damaging
  12. How long does a scientific paper need to be?
  13. Will Elsevier say sorry?
  14. Editors behaving badly?
  15. Journals without editors: What is going on?

2014 27

  1. Dividing up the pie in relation to REF2014
  2. Why evaluating scientists by grant income is stupid
  3. Metricophobia among academics
  4. Blaming universities for our nation's woes
  5. Some thoughts on use of metrics in university research assessment
  6. Why most scientists don't take Susan Greenfield seriously
  7. International reading comparisons: is England really doing so poorly?
  8. Replication and reputation: Whose career matters?
  9. Labels for unexplained language difficulties in children: We need to talk
  10. A film review from 32,000 feet: Noah
  11. Percentages, quasi statistics and bad arguments
  12. Should Vice-Chancellors earn more than the Prime Minister?
  13. The University as big business:
  14. How wishful thinking is damaging PETA's cause
  15. Should Rennard be reinstated?
  16. Data sharing: Exciting but scary
  17. Changing the landscape of psychiatric research:
  18. Data analysis: ten tips I wish I'd known sooner
  19. WeSpeechies: A meeting point on Twitter
  20. How do you communicate with a communications company?
  21. My thoughts on the dyslexia debate
  22. Parent talk and child language
  23. What is educational neuroscience?
  24. Why does so much research go unpublished?
  25. Off with the old and on with the new: the pressures against cumulative research
  26. A New Year's letter to academic publishers
  27. How the government spins a crisis: the blame game

2013 27

  1. The impact of blogging on reputation
  2. A letter to Boris Johnson
  3. The Matthew effect and REF2014
  4. On the need for responsible reporting of research to the media
  5. High time to revise the PhD thesis format
  6. Good and bad news on the phonics screen
  7. Raising awareness of language learning impairments
  8. Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate
  9. Changing children's brains
  10. The arcuate fasciculus and word learning: a critique
  11. Why we need pre-registration
  12. Discussion meeting vs conference: in praise of slower science
  13. Research fraud: More scrutiny by administrators is not the answer
  14. Overhyped genetic findings: the case of dyslexia
  15. Interpreting unexpected significant results
  16. Schizophrenia and child abuse in the media
  17. Have we become slower and dumber?
  18. The academic backlog
  19. Forget the Tower of Hanoi: A new ecologically valid test of executive function
  20. A short rant about numbered journal references
  21. Blogging as post-publication peer review: reasonable or unfair?
  22. Ten things than can sink a grant proposal: Advice for a young psychologist
  23. High-impact journals: where newsworthiness trumps methodology
  24. Postgraduate education: time for a rethink
  25. An alternative to REF2014?
  26. Journal Impact Factors and REF 2014
  27. Genetic variation and neuroimaging: some ground rules for reporting research

2012 33

  1. Genes, brains and lateralisation: how solid is the evidence?
  2. Psychology: Where are all the men?
  3. Moderate drinking in pregnancy: toxic or benign?
  4. Are Starbucks hiding their profits on the planet Vulcan?
  5. Flaky chocolate and the New England Journal of Medicine
  6. Auditory processing disorder (APD): Schisms and skirmishes
  7. Data from the phonics screen: a worryingly abnormal distribution
  8. What Chomsky doesn't get about child language
  9. How to bury your academic writing
  10. The bewildering bathroom challenge
  11. The devaluation of low-cost psychological research
  12. Communicating science in the age of the internet
  13. Schoolgirls' health put at risk by Catholic view on vaccination
  14. Causal models of developmental disorders: the perils of correlational data
  15. The ‘autism epidemic’ and diagnostic substitution
  16. Well, this should be easy….
  17. Sharing of MRI dyslexia datasets
  18. Neuronal migration in language learning impairments: a suggestion
  19. Getting genetic effect sizes in perspective
  20. The ultimate email auto-response
  21. BBC's 'extensive coverage' of the NHS bill
  22. Phonics screening: sense and sensibility
  23. C’mon sisters! Speak out!
  24. The REF: a monster that sucks time and money from academic institutions
  25. A letter to Nick Clegg from an ex Liberal Democrat
  26. Blogging in the service of science
  27. Time for neuroimaging (and PNAS) to clean up its act
  28. Neuroscientific interventions for dyslexia: red flags
  29. 2011 Orwellian Prize for Journalistic Misrepresentation
  30. Psychoanalytic treatment for autism: Interviews with French analysts
  31. Novelty, interest and replicability
  32. Time for academics to withdraw free labour
  33. Will I still be tweeting in 2013?

2011 38

  1. Publishers, psychological tests and greed
  2. NHS research ethics procedures: a modern-day Circumlocution Office
  3. Pioneering treatment or quackery? How to decide
  4. The weird world of US ethics regulation
  5. Your Twitter Profile: The Importance of Not Being Earnest
  6. Vitamins, genes and language
  7. A message to the world
  8. Accentuate the negative
  9. Lies, damned lies, and spin
  10. The joys of inventing data
  11. How to become a celebrity scientific expert
  12. Early intervention: What's not to like?
  13. So you want to be a research assistant? Advice for psychologists
  14. Susan Greenfield and autistic spectrum disorder: was she misrepresented?
  15. An open letter to Baroness Susan Greenfield
  16. What does it take to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine?
  17. How to survive in psychological research
  18. The National Children’s Study: a view from across the pond
  19. Autism diagnosis and hyper-systemizing parents: Nottingham vs. Eindhoven
  20. Should we ever fight lies with lies?
  21. A gentle introduction to Twitter for the apprehensive academic
  22. Brain scans show that.....
  23. Review of "How Genes Influence Behavior "
  24. Is poor parenting really to blame for children's school problems?
  25. Are our ‘gold standard’ autism diagnostic instruments fit for purpose?
  26. Scientific communication: the Comment option
  27. Autism diagnosis in cultural context
  28. The X and Y of sex differences
  29. The burqa ban: what's a liberal response?
  30. A short nerdy post about use of percentiles in statistical analyses
  31. Special educational needs: will they be met by the new Green Paper proposals?
  32. The expansion of research regulators: an evolutionary perspective
  33. The one hour lecture: How to captivate your audience in ten easy steps
  34. Where commercial and clinical interests collide: the case of auditory processing disorder
  35. Academic publishing: why isn't psychology like physics?
  36. Orwellian prize for journalistic misrepresentation: an update
  37. What works for women: some useful links
  38. Should we ration research grant applications?

2010 19

  1. A day working from home
  2. “Neuroprognosis” in dyslexia
  3. What's in a name?
  4. When ethics regulations have unethical consequences
  5. Parasites, pangolins, peer review, promotion and psychopathology
  6. The Challenge for Science: a speech by Colin Blakemore from 1998
  7. Science journal editors: a taxonomy
  8. Science and journalism: an uneasy alliance
  9. Genes for optimism, dyslexia and obesity and other mythical beasts
  10. Three ways to improve cognitive test scores without intervention
  11. How our current reward structures have distorted and damaged science
  12. The difference between p < .05 and a screening test
  13. Book Review: The Invisible Gorilla
  14. An exciting day in the life of a scientist
  15. Journalists and the "scientific breakthrough"
  16. Book review: biography of Richard Doll
  17. Orwellian prize for journalistic misrepresentation
  18. Postscript : Academic mobbing in cyberspace
  19. Academic mobbing in cyberspace