Robin Engelhardt

Research Integrity teacher @ucph, frm science journalist, mostly misinformed, RT's ≠ endorsements

[Robin Engelhardt @robinengelhardt]

If you only follow people you agree with, you are doing it wrong.

[Ben Golub @ben_golub]

data from a country where it's still legal to give bad grades

[U.S. Ambassador to Belgium Bill White @USAmbToBelgium]

The United States Mission to Belgium condemns, in the strongest terms, Ghent University’s retaliation against an American scholar following his accurate whistleblower reporting on academic fraud.

The United States government regularly funds and supports research, academic exchanges, and other engagements with overseas universities. Dishonest, corrupt institutions that engage in, or reward, scapegoating mob behavior are not desirable partners for us. This is particularly true where the purpose and effect of the scapegoating is to punish accurate journalism unearthing academic dishonesty. We are therefore reviewing any relationships we have with Ghent University.

Bad-faith idealogues will try to make this a referendum on the content of Cofnas’s scholarship – or polemical distortions of it. That’s wrong. Free speech means that controversial views are protected. And Cofnas’s views were known to Ghent University when he was hired.

The ultimate purpose of freedom of speech is to overturn lies, fraud, and false ideologies. This is precisely what Cofnas was doing, and precisely the reason his home institution wants to silence him.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Sabine Hossenfelder @skdh]

Physicists may have found the origin of gravity. And that would finally explain why gravity is different from the other forces of nature.

[Daniël Lakens @lakens]

My favorite Metascience conference will land in Copenhagen next year. The 9th (!) edition of the Perspectives on Science Error conference will be from January 27 to 29. Block your calendar, and see you there! https://t.co/XDgOi7KHR6

[Matthew E. Kahn @mattkahn1966]

@ben_golub I agree with Ben and this is why I wrote and continue to edit my optimistic paper. I discuss how proactive economics departments could incorporate AI into every phase of our educational process. Will the Deans reward us for such innovation?
https://t.co/HdTj2C5Zh3

[M1 @M1Astra]

Anthropic says new Claude models will embed invisible watermarks in all generated text, everywhere Claude is offered.

The watermark is part of the text, it isn't metadata: "it will travel with the text when it's copied and pasted elsewhere, and may persist through some editing."

This starts with models launched on or after August 2, 2026, under an EU AI Act code Anthropic signed. Anthropic is still working on adding it to current models. The rollout is worldwide.

[Robin Engelhardt @robinengelhardt]

I just contributed to the Philosophical Intuitions Survey!<br>Share your own intuitions and help advance our understanding of philosophers' and the public's intuitions: https://t.co/HEjdc0tQ0s

[Rushi @rushicrypto]

Greenland is now asking Trump to invade, hoping to secure a deal similar to the one Iran got.

[Alexander Eichholtz @EichholtzAlex]

Bin selber Ossi. Habe in einem verkommenen Produktionsbetrieb gelernt. Kohlen geschleppt. Die verdreckte Luft geatmet. Alles, was mich umgab, war kaputt, auch die Menschen. Im Unterschied zu denen da bin ich aber den Wessis dankbar und versinke nicht in Mitleid oder habe mir eine besondere Antenne für Diktatur angedichtet. Obwohl ich die schon damals hatte und demonstrierte als die Vopos noch prügelten. Die da haben damals gar nichts getan. Die da hatten es nie schwer, auch nach der Wende nicht. Schwer hatten es die Polen, Ungarn, Tschechen und vor allem die Jugoslawen - denen als Flüchtlinge im Osten die Scheiben eingeschmissen wurden.
Wir im Osten hatten abgefederte, auszuhaltende Probleme, aber waren 1990 alle in Italien und sonstwo wie Graf Koks am Buffet und wedelten mit der D-Mark.

Und jetzt stehen die da und halten sich für erleuchtet - winken mit Russenfahnen und ergötzen sich in Vernichtungsfantasien gegen „Altparteien“; in denen sie sich nie engagierten.
Dabei müssten die auf Knien rutschen dafür, dass Leute aus Essen, Dortmund und Hamburg teilweise Kassenkredite aufnahmen, um im Osten den Russen-Schrott zu beseitigen. Aber NÖ: Riesige Klappe, von nix einen Plan und ein Handy voller Lesezeichen zu Nuoviso, Ken Jebsen und Daniele Ganser.

[Robert Parham @kn_owled_ge]

Teaching in the age of LLMs:

I failed 4 students, for the first time ever. I also gave more A+'s than ever before.

In previous years, students realized after the first or second HW that they weren't in Kansas anymore and needed to work hard.

No more. Just solve it with LLMs.

But then the midterm arrives, and they can answer 0 of 40 questions. Do they reform their ways? Nah, they just decide to "give up" on class, assuming they'll get a B, or a C, or whatever, because they submitted HW and got decent grades on those. And never before have they encountered a professor who will dare fail them.

The flip side is that the most "agentic" students now have the world's best tutor at their disposal. They deeply understand the material and aced my (intentionally very difficult) exams. As if we live in "The Diamond Age".

Inequality galore.

From my vantage point, "the permanent underclass" appears to be about agency, not assets.

[auonsson @auonsson]

Russian destroyer Severomorsk is anchored along very busy shipping routes between Denmark and Germany.

Here she is with last 24 hour commercial traffic animated. No open mil attention, but surely unseen dito.

Her position is confirmed by photos, satellite, local media.

[CSPAN @cspan]

CIA whistleblower arrives at Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on government COVID-19 response, identified as James Erdman III:

[Ashley Rindsberg @AshleyRindsberg]

The @Wikipedia entry "COVID-19 lab leak theory" uses the term "conspiracy theory" around 20 times. (42 if you count sourcing.)

~50% of the entry is written by just 4 anonymous editors. One of them is a known far-left adversarial editor (TarnishedPath).

The most politically consequential scientific theory of our lifetimes is being discredited as a conspiracy theory by four unknown actors.

This determines not mere "history" but what AI systems consider to be ground truth.

Even more importantly, it's shaping the worldview of AI models that train on its data.

[Robin Engelhardt @robinengelhardt]

@WarMonitor3 Being able to throw a stone - and hit.

[Martin Collignon @martincollignon]

1/ Two years ago I obtained a copy of the Danish pesticide application registry. Today, I present https://t.co/wZYnttnRxm, which I think is the world's first national map of estimated pesticide applications at field level - and it's going back to 2010 ⬇️

[Crémieux @cremieuxrecueil]

Science is about to get absolutely nuked.

Unless we get extremely strict about providing and opening up code and data and documenting lab experiments rigorously, a torrent of credible-looking but fraudulent papers is upon us.

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?

[Elisabeth Bik @MicrobiomDigest]

I knew this was coming. We are so f*cked - fake and real now look the same.

We desperately need tools to show journals and researchers that data is real, not AI-generated.

[HotSotin 🇫🇮🇺🇦🇪🇺△ @HotSotin]

1923 – earthquake in Kamchatka
1924 – Lenin died
1952 – earthquake in Kamchatka
1953 – Stalin died
2006 – earthquake in Kamchatka
2007 – Yeltsin died
2025 – earthquake in Kamchatka
2026 - ???

[Robin Engelhardt @robinengelhardt]

This is the autocracy inc. network to be cut tomorrow. Anybody having something to add?