You wouldn't let a random stranger come into your house and insult you for no reason. Why on socials? I'm blocking anyone who is merely insulting from here on in.

Can you imagine if an AI just deleted all X posts that were name calling or unjustified assertion ...

Handy hint: Failing to look properly for evidence does not mean there is no evidence ...

"The Two Fs Dilemma". Are you dealing with a fraud or a fool? Civilised people tie themselves up in knots trying to be fair and come down one side or the other but rather often it doesn't actually matter. If you are dealing with _either_ the system is broken.

Could we predict the format of modern research activity on the basis of what is easiest/quickest? Reviewers won't let you have _no_ discussion of previous work but they _will_ let you have a random bunch of sources chosen non systematically. Therefore ...

My multipurpose generic Tweet: "The real truth is that cats are reptiles. When will you fools wake up?" You're welcome.

You can't have it both ways on climate denial. If the data is equivocal, the models tentative and so on then you _won't_ have a knock down argument against climate change because your premise is that it could go either way. Then you have to get dirty hands with the science ...

Sigh. Since I am not currently in paid employment I thought I would try putting one of own articles (or at least a final submitted version) through CopyLeaks. Far from giving false positives it seems that the free version cannot even complete the check ...

I am starting to think that a big problem with competence may be scaling. If an established HE staff member offers students a break down of marks by assignment section that significantly exceeds 100% is that "busy person slip that could happen to anyone", "quite worrying" or ...

There's a great line by Mark Knopfler: "Two men say they're Jesus. _One_ of them must be wrong." A million climate change graphs on here and no two seem to show the same thing. Makes one a little sceptical.

Even though one side was wrong, the debate between Steady State and Big Bang was constructive scientifically. If there is a debate at all between Postmodernists and Empiricists then my sense is that it is not productive. The difference is agreement about the aims of the debate.

If you think the media broke the rules in its coverage of Arday, write to the Press Council. If you think the rules should change in the light of this, write to your MP or a campaigning group. But don't just talk about a "pile on" which means less than nothing.

Think it through. Nobody is going to let Cambridge off the hook over Arday because Glasgow (say) didn't investigate him. This being so, which university mindful of its reputation is going to say in public "Oh yes, we've looked into this now and were totally suckered too."

The pub/lication criterion (finally found a decent use for those terrible social science slashes): Whether you would look forward to an evening at the pub with a person _and_ trust them (academically and logistically) to co-author a paper narrows the collaborator space a _lot_.

Echo Chamber sounding: Post an objection to a silly post and see if you get likes. Worryingly often you get none or one. Everyone in there is apparently perfectly happy with silly.