David Mallinson

Population health scientist. Assistant prof @RushUniversity Family & Preventive Med. Interests: maternal/child epi, music, DnD. @dcmallinson.bsky.social

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

Shorter supply chains (like those for farmer’s markets) can lower risk of cyclospora cross contamination, but the same precautions to produce prep (washing, cooking thoroughly) apply regardless if you get produce at a farmer’s market or at a supermarket. https://t.co/lU6Kxrn4qW

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

We already have this problem. It's a huge one. It's hard to see how gen AI doesn't kick mass misinformation into overdrive without careful planning in how we integrate AI in our research (or in academia more generally).

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

I find it interesting that many outspoken AI enthusiasts in academia are mostly worried about luddites judging them. As a semi-skeptic, I'm not really worried about experts using AI. I'm worried about non-experts using AI to feign expertise and spread misinformation.

[Soumitra Shukla @soumitrashukla9]

There is a new emergent caste system in academia. The high priests, thinking what they do is special and rare, look down on AI use as "slop."

Unfortunately for them, Fable / GPT 5.5 Pro can do in 10-15 min what they spent years learning and feeling special about.

So like true high priests they will develop more guardrails and initiation ceremonies to determine who enters the temple. This would be a mistake. The correct approach is to embrace AI use and do more creative science that was not possible before.

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

@Novanamix Have personhood, some are making a decision (or hypothetically would make a decision) to abort based on a characteristic of a *person-to-be.*

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

@Novanamix As long as you support the right to abortion for any reason, I don’t think your individual belief on when personhood begins makes you any more or less leftist. FWIW, I do think some are being flippant in how they distinguish personhood. Even if you believe that a fetus does not

[Sasha Gusev @SashaGusevPosts]

Gelman on some recent campus cancel culture essays. 🔥

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

@timurkuran A bigger reason: https://t.co/SOSGR2F9cL

[Kyle Olson @olsonkyleg]

i gotta dip, but re the WashU-Vandy report: framing "social justice" as the paradigmatic extra-academic force that might improperly shape scholarship while at the same time not mentioning a damn thing about dual-use tech or military spending is disingenuous to say the least

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

@JohnHolbein1 I’ve noticed this among reactionary (or reactionary-adjacent) academics recently. They accuse certain disciplines of being too ideological and forgoing scholarly rigor in favor activism. And yet, their criticisms amount to…ideological hand-waving and activism.

[John B. Holbein @JohnHolbein1]

Irony is dead.

Widely circulated report that slams the humanities for a lack of rigor is ... not itself rigorous.

Humanities certainly have lots of issues, but we can do better than this.

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

@bigsnugga Reaching FYE prices.

[David Decosimo @DavidDecosimo]

We aren’t confused. “Results” aren’t the only thing that matters. There have always been norms & constraints in the practice of scholarship. Violation of some of these remove someone from the guild. Quite a few uses of AI in scholarship should be seen as just such violations.

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

@DavidDecosimo I'm in medicine/applied health sciences, and I think that AI for rote tasks (formatting papers, easier statistical programming) is great. Gen AI for writing deserves a great deal more scrutiny and skepticism.

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

Discuss and debate this, even if it requires a (temporary) ban on publishing manuscripts written by Gen AI?

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

Two thoughts. First, many have misinterpreted (perhaps willfully and in bad faith) that "ban on AI writing" as "ban on AI completely" Some have likened this statement to a ban on tools for rote/"unintellectual" tasks (citation management) or complex analyses (stats software).

[Jennifer A. Frey @jennfrey]

Every academic press and journal needs a clear ban on AI writing.

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

More disinformation from papers that aren't/can't be thoroughly vetted, more predatory journals dedicated to publishing papers that laypeople misinterpret as good research. We already have these problems, but gen AI could just accelerate and grow them. So shouldn't academics

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

@akoustov @DavidBulley My critique is less about the analogy and more that she called for a ban on a specific thing (“AI writing”), which you then interpreted far more broadly (“blanket ban on AI”). In fairness, my critique was not explicit.

[David Mallinson @dcmallinson]

@akoustov @DavidBulley “AI writing” is reasonably interpreted as writing the intellectual content of a paper, not formatting citations or even things like table/figure creation, which have been automated by non-AI tools. Zotero doesn’t write text for me, nor does it decide to cite a paper. Gen AI does.