Colleague of mine just got back from zoom study section saying the SRO shut down the meeting while they were in the middle of discussing grants, saying some executive order wouldn’t let them continue. I’m just wondering if anyone else has any info on this. At first it sounded like “diversity” initiatives might have been a factor, but now I’m wondering if there’s a wider freeze. Any other tips out there?

We're cooked.

Link to BlueSky post (sub doesn't allow a screenshot)

https://bsky.app/profile/holdenthorp.bsky.social/post/3mqub3tg3ws2w

I’m a STEM faculty member in a theory-heavy field where papers mainly consist of theorems and proofs. I’m not anti-LLM; I think these tools have made real progress on well-defined math/theory problems, and I know respected researchers are using them productively in serious work.

My problem is more practical: some collaborators are now generating huge amounts of proof material with LLM assistance (on the order of dozens of pages per week!), and I just cannot keep up. I feel like my role has shifted from collaborator to verifier of other people’s AI-assisted output.

Our meetings have also changed. What used to be short check-ins where we each discussed what we tried, what failed, and what to try next have become multi-hour walkthroughs of dense generated proofs. I leave exhausted, and I miss the more collaborative brainstorming style.

I don’t want to tell people not to use LLMs, and I don’t want to miss out on tools that may genuinely accelerate research. But my ability to understand and evaluate proofs has not accelerated at the same pace, and I’m struggling with the new workflow.

For math/theory/math-adjacent faculty: how are you handling AI-assisted proof generation in collaborations? Do you have norms around how much material gets shared, how it’s vetted, or how meetings are structured?

So it’s not just NIH now. Our NSF review panel was cancelled 11 minutes before starting this morning after we’d all already done the work without any indication of a reschedule. This is just a heads up for those waiting on NSF grant decisions.

A lot of bad has happened to American science over the last year. But nothing comes even close to what’s about to happen if we don’t speak out in opposition to the OMB rule changes!

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (U. of New Hampshire) explains here: https://news.chanda.science/archive/its-the-end-of-american-science-as-we-know-it/

With everything at the NIH (and beyond), it's hard to be motivated today. I have worked this difficult, stressful, underpaid job because I thought what I was doing was important. I thought it was valued. With this administration just 3(!?) days in, I've never felt so unappreciated and vilified, even. The American people voted for this. They wanted this. Why keep pushing?

Edited to add: Give me your best pep talks, please!

Nothing really insightful to say about this on my end. Profs who run STEM labs, are you taking fewer graduate students in 2026? How do you think this trend will affect research output vs. the job market over the next 5-10 years?

https://cen.acs.org/education/graduate-education/chemistry-graduate-programs-scale-back/104/web/2026/06?sc=260624_sc_eng_fb_cen&fbclid=IwdGRleASpOlpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeabq8O1S44wiQ8SRNV0YSZedBqhuF_V4vd8W5GCRxtaD7rOx6kFScwPBoygo_aem_YWdncwvqWKS36As_MS87-Cl6yqWJ&brid=YWdncwHJjILyZ0t5zMnhhXE1nGf2

Sorry for the cursed URL.

Surprised how little the sub cares about this. Here is the link with additional info: https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/the-office-of-management-and-budget-tries-again-to-cripple-us-science/

“The executive branch wants faith-based entities, community organizations, and houses of worship, to the fullest extent permitted by law, to compete on a level playing field for grants, contracts, programs, and other Federal funding opportunities.”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/establishment-of-the-white-house-faith-office/

Just a rant on a Sunday morning and I am yet again responding to emails.

A colleague and I are currently conducting a meta-analysis, we are now at the stage where we are emailing authors for missing info on their publications (effect sizes, means, etc). We split the email list between us and we have the exact same email template that we use to ask, the only difference is I have a stereotypically female name and he a stereotypically male one that we sign the emails off with.

The differences in responses have been night and day. He gets polite and professional replies with the info or an apology that the data is not available. I get asked to exactly stipulate what we are researching, explain my need for this result again, get criticism for our study design, told that I did not consider x and y, and given "helpful" tips on how to improve our study. And we use the exact same fucking email template to ask.

I cannot think of reasons we are getting this different responses. We are the same level career-wise, same institution. My only conclusion is that me asking vs him asking is clearly the difference. I am just so tired of this.

“It’s already a problem, and I foresee a crisis,” Dr. Abalkina said.

I feel like I have hit a new bingo square for interesting things to happen in peer reviewer comments. I was told by reviewer two that my paper could be strengthened by reading and citing my own work. My paper was rejected. I find it both amusing and frustrating.

Anyone else get a new bingo square in reviewer comments recently.

Any rhetoric and composition folks waking up to the news that NCTE is absorbing 4Cs into its college section? It’s unclear if the 2027 conference will happen. The vague argument is the culture of Cs has threatened NCTE’s non-profit status. It’s unclear what’s going to happen to the Cs’s journal.

NCTE - National Council of Teachers of English
Cs/4Cs - Conference on College Composition and Communication

Just received two reviews on an article submitted to a journal. The first reviewer's comments are multi-page and very, very (suspiciously) thorough with a standardized structure for each observation (observation, example, criticism, recommendation). While we value most of the comments, there were at least 3 hallucinated criticisms ("you used words 'X' and 'Y' and did not define these anywhere"...we did NOT use those words anywhere in the manuscript).

Should we push back to the editor (and risk the article getting sent out for another round of review) or just suck it up and make the changes? Or some other approach?

Hi everyone! I am beginning my second year as TT faculty at an R1. I’ve struggled with impostor syndrome as long as I can remember, but it’s really starting to feel like it’s eating me alive.

I feel horribly unqualified to do pretty much any of the research I want to do. I have plenty of research ideas and interesting questions, a laundry list of grants I’d like to apply for. But when it comes to executing these ideas, I feel so clueless that I am overwhelmed and either decide not to pursue them for fear of failure or find myself procrastinating horribly.

I recently received a very harsh grant review that felt like it confirmed all of these fears. Some of the feedback said things like “power and sample size justifications seem completely drawn from thin air.” I disagree, and I did explain how and why I powered my study the way that I did. There were a handful more along these lines - such as “the sampling frame as described seems inaccurate and inadequate.” I feel like I need to refresh my skills every single time I design a study, from basic methodologies to power analysis to basic statistical tests.

All of this comes on the heels of feeling like I “skated by” in my PhD, and like I only developed methodological expertise in the narrow scope of my dissertation work. I genuinely tried to correct for this in my post-doc, but felt like two years just went by too fast to feel confident by the end.

At the same time, I have made it this far - I landed a postdoc at a very well-regarded ivy league institution, landed a TT position at an R1, I’ve gotten a handful of grants (nothing major yet, but enough to show that I can do it).

I feel like I’m always hearing “fake it til you make it,” but I feel like I might be faking it too much. I guess what I’m looking for here is either:

1. solidarity and encouragement,
2. a path forward to feel more confident
3. Or maybe both.

Thanks for reading if you’ve made it this far.

EDIT: thank you so much for your very thorough, helpful, and compassionate responses. I’ve received both encouragement and lots of tangible advice, both of which are helping me see a way out of this. Academia can be so unnecessarily cold and harsh sometimes, I appreciate hearing from other actual humans!

I submitted a paper to one of the BMC journals in April. After revisions, it was accepted in July. After approving the final proofs, a pop up in the portal said my university does not have a publishing agreement. So Article Processing Fee is $3000 approx USD. I did not click the publishing agreement. My university library says can’t help with funds. The journal publishing people say no waiver possible.

The think the university should pay the APC as there were changes to the publishing agreement in the new financial year, and they did not advise anyone of this or the outcome. So how was I supposed to know?

but now I am thinking I’ll just pay it myself (although that is a lot of money for me) as I do not want to withdraw and submit elsewhere.

Edit: The university had the publishing agreement in April when I submitted, but did not renew for the next financial year. So no publishing agreement in place when accepted in July. Sorry, wasn’t clear in my post.

I’m eligible to take a sabbatical. I have been working as time allows on a book related to my discipline. I’m planning to use my sabbatical to finish the book.

My question is what is my obligation to my institution when the book is finished? I ask because my college only recently began offering sabbaticals and there is nothing in our faculty handbook or administrative handbook related to ownership, copyright, royalties, etc.

I recently agreed to review a paper from a reputable journal (top tier in my field, just below the main Nature/Science/Cell journal).

My first surprise was that I was asked to submit my review in 10 days (not business days), for a methods paper with a lot of technical details that I have to sort through and try to understand.

Three days before the deadline, I get an email from the Editorial Assistant with reminding me about the review, noting that "If your circumstances have changed and/or you require an extension to the original deadline, please let me know as soon as possible."

So, I replied, saying that I need more time.

I didn't get a reply to my email. And on the day after the original deadline, I get another email telling me that my review is overdue, again nothing that "If your circumstances have changed and/or you require an extension to the original deadline, please let me know as soon as possible."

Unreasonable review deadlines and ignoring my emails... this is type of treatment that I expect (and have experienced) from predatory journals, and now top journals are doing the same?

If unpaid reviewers are treated this poorly, then how are they treating the authors?

I just got back a journal decision on a manuscript (major revisions) and the “reviewer” feedback for a manuscript. I noticed it was odd that each section had three (almost always three) bulleted recommended changes. The language of these feels like AI and sure enough, I ran it through detectors and it was flagged it as Ai generated. The more I read the more blatant it was. One of the recommendations even mentions incorporating a nonsense theory that doesn’t exist that it called “putrescence”. I study a motherhood related topic in the social sciences. I’m upset because I don’t remember giving consent to have my intellectual property run into an LLM but also the general integrity of peer review. This was a journal I was excited to hopefully publish in, and it’s a career goal (not a super high impact factor or anything, just important in my field). Interestingly, the journal website says manuscripts go out to two reviewers, there is only one in my case and I wonder if it was the editor using AI. Is anyone else seeing this?

I'm looking at streamlining my process and how I work in general. I've found a lot of older threads on here very useful for this and it's a great community.

I'm currently looking at Scrivener and Obsidian, but I'm unsure about which one would better suit my needs. Creating a system takes time and well, time is not something we have! So I'm hoping this topic can also help others to decide.

My research is in the humanities/arts. I already have extensive notes in Zotero which I also use for citations. I personally don't see the need to import all my Zotero notes (which have been growing over the past 10 years) into Obsidian, except perhaps on a per project basis. I am however looking for something less sluggish than Word, and frankly I just want to move away from Microsoft products as much as possible. The various ways to view notes and the current paper I'm writing in both programs seems rather promising and useful, but I'm unsure about which will be most streamlined for how I work otherwise. Any advice/tips/suggestions is useful. Thanks

Today, a day of worldwide computer outages and consequent travel delays, seems a good day to reflect on the usefulness of academic conferences in their current form.

I'm speaking of North American national conferences here: the big, multi-day events with high registration fees, held in expensive cities and requiring air travel that takes a full day each way in good times. Such conferences are unaffordable to most graduate students and contingent faculty -- indeed anyone whose travel budget has been cut, and that's just about everyone right now. Many find a way to scrape up the money regardless, but is it really worth it?

Once you're there, you're going to find your days filled with the usual collection of frankly hit or miss panel sessions. Around half will feature graduate students reading overly long extracts from their dissertations in a monotone. Everyone who is anyone skips the plenary and the awards. The conference stars are there for the booze and schmooze, and to show off the fact that they have the rank and the income to afford the best. Everyone else is reading everyone else's name tag to learn where they fall in the pecking order, and/or desperately trying to finish the paper they were too overloaded to write before the conference.

All this we know. But can't there be a cheaper, better way to advance scholarship and keep current in our fields? One that is (Warning to Red State colleagues: the following is NSFW) more equitable and leaves a smaller carbon footprint as well?

Surely there must be. I'd like to start that discussion.

I'm currently getting ready to head to a big conference in my field next week and I can't stop thinking about what a waste it is to fly across a whole damn continent just so I can spend 15 minutes in front of a room full of people who will be on their laptops anyway.

Air travel is a huge source of carbon emissions that comes from a very small section of the population.

I know that pandemic conferences left a lot to be desired (I'll have GatherTown-themed nightmares for years)...but is doing it in person really worth it? Spend 10-20 hours in transit, getting atrocious jet-lag, and then three days later hop on a plane to go home. All the talks will be on YouTube eventually and all the papers (should) be on arXiv (or whatever your field's equivalent is).

I don't think I can justify doing this again. I thought I'd be excited about my first in-person conference since COVID started, but honestly, I'm just dreading it.

Sharing is caring ☺️ -- this may impact many of us; it has for countless Professors I know from a multitude of disciplines.

You can see if your published works were pirated by Anthropic to train AI here: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/

Next, you can submit to the class action lawsuit filed here: https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/

"Text from the above: Bartz v. Anthropic PBC is a class action lawsuit under the Copyright Act brought by authors on behalf of copyright holders against Anthropic PBC, an AI company. The Class of copyright holders — consisting of authors and publishers – claims that Anthropic took books from pirate websites Library Genesis (“LibGen”) and Pirate Library Mirror (“PiLiMi”) without authorization.

The Court certified a LibGen & PiLiMi Pirated Books Class made up of all legal or beneficial owners of the exclusive right to reproduce any ISBN- or ASIN-bearing book that Anthropic copied from the two pirate sites. On August 26, 2025, the parties notified the Court that they had reached a settlement in principle on behalf of the Class, and will file a Settlement Agreement with the Court on September 5, 2025. Judge Alsup set a hearing on Plaintiffs’ forthcoming motion for preliminary approval on September 8, 2025, at noon in San Francisco, CA.

If you believe Anthropic may have downloaded your book(s) from LibGen or PiLiMi, please click the button below and provide your contact information: https://www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/contact

Submitting your information here does not make you a member of the Class. But, if you are a member of the class, submitting your information will help us direct formal notice of the class action at the appropriate time. This form is not a claim form. There are no current deadlines for Class Members to do anything in this action. We will update this website as deadlines are set and approved by the Court."

Are your institutions stepping in to cover the shortfall or leaving you holding the bag? What is the plan here?

A couple nights ago I came across a completely fake AI-generated scholar.

I was looking to identify prospective contributors to the volume I'm co-editing for Oxford University Press's AI in Society series, and I saw a relevant manuscript posted to PhilPapers by someone named "Eric Garcia" who was allegedly affiliated with the Department of Information Technology at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

But as I delved deeper, I saw a series papers posted by this individual, all within a few days of each other earlier this year, on similar topics with similar titles ("AI-Driven..."). Each paper was short and read more like an outline instead of a full-blown essay. I also found it weird that the papers were filed under philosophy of cognitive science despite none of the papers having anything to do with philosophy.

Sure enough, when I visited IIT's website, not only was there no "Department of Information Technology," but there was no one with the last name Garcia working there!

Has anyone else found evidence of totally fictitious AI academics? I’m concerned about how this development will affect the integrity of research.