Update. More on the debate between those who think we should encourage or require #OpenData even if #AI bots exploit it to churn out high-volume slop, and those who think solving the high-volume slop problem is more urgent and justifies cutbacks on open data.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01689-0
"Inside the campaign to discredit a key climate science report."
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/11/fossil-fuels-national-academies-climate-science-00897237
"#Oil industry allies are quietly targeting a field of #climate research that could cost #fossilfuel companies billions of dollars. In the crosshairs is a forthcoming report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [#NASEM] that will examine research into the ways corporate climate pollution is intensifying natural disasters…The heightened scrutiny…involves a secretive opposition research group scouring scientists’ emails."
"We published in Nature Medicine in 2025 for free. In 2026, it cost us $12,850."
https://www.statnews.com/2026/06/11/open-access-journal-fees-nature-wiley-elsevier-nih/
(#paywalled)
There's a lot going on in this confused and confusing article.
* The author and her co-authors were foolish to pay $12,850 for a Nature Medicine APC. They could have published the same article for a lower fee, or no fee, at many other respected journals. They didn't pay for quality. They paid for journal branding or prestige.
* The author says her team paid for the APC "to comply" with the NIH policy. Untrue. Complying with the NIH policy is free of charge. They paid the APC to publish in Nature Medicine.
* The author says that APCs "pose barriers to making NIH-funded research available to the public." Untrue. NIH makes funded research available to the public through #PubMedCentral (#GreenOA) no matter where the author chooses to publish and no matter whether the author chooses to pay an APC.
Elon Musk becomes a trillionaire.
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-ipo-makes-elon-musk-worlds-first-trillionaire-2026-06-11/
From the end of Seneca's second letter to Lucilius:
"The pauper is not the person who has too little but the one who desires more. What does it matter how much is stashed away in his strongbox or his warehouses, how much he has in livestock or in interest income, if he hangs on another's possessions, computing not what has been gained but what there is yet to gain? Do you ask what is the limit of wealth? Having what one needs, first of all; then, having enough."
Paul Litvak wrote a thoughtful piece on the limitations of the scientific journal article and the advantages of a proposed new genre or structure.
https://www.paullitvak.com/p/the-future-of-academic-journals
The new structure he describes is similar to one I proposed in 2012: one that would disaggregate claims and connect each one to the current evidence. See my 2012 essay, "The idea of an open-access evidence rack."
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:32988193
One difference is that his would use #AI. Mine would use #crowdsourcing. But his could also use crowdsourcing and mine could also use AI.
Another is that his seems meant to stand alone. Mine is meant to be a dynamic collection of "perpetually updated, public footnotes" that might stand alone or might be cited, as footnotes, by articles, books, and any other new genres that might come along.
My work tracking cryptocurrency and AI industry political spending has only underscored the importance of getting big money out of politics. I recently talked to Tiffany Muller, President of End Citizens United, about what it would take to do that, and how we’re closer than you might think.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZAhNJbsPcA
Transcript: https://www.citationneeded.news/end-citizens-uniteds-tiffany-muller-on-fighting-big-money-in-politics/
#cryptocurrency #crypto #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #CitizensUnited #USpol #USpolitics
Kudos to the #MIT Graduate Student Council for adopting "a resolution expressing support for campus libraries to exit big deal journal packages and calling for changes to promotion and tenure processes to move away from journal-based metrics."
https://www.heliosopen.org/campus-rpt-reform-case-studies/mit-graduate-student-council
Here's the resolution itself.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KLbj4UEGR8c_TT9sxt5D68JEIwDl7nof/view
#Assessment #BigDeals #Cancellations #ECR #JIF #Libraries #Metrics #Students
"Federal science agencies facing a ‘generational loss,’ nonprofit says."
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2026/06/federal-science-agencies-facing-a-generational-loss-nonprofit-says/
"Currently, there are about 726,000 federal employees working at science-related agencies…That’s after a decrease of close to 118,000 federal employees working in scientific fields between September 2024 and February 2026…While the federal workforce overall has shrunk by about 12% under the Trump administration, a large portion of those staffing losses, roughly 40%, came from science-related agencies, the report found."
#DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics
Update. Here's the #ADA side of the controversy. It was just following the law requiring nonprofit orgs to be nonpartisan.
https://diabetes.org/newsroom/press-releases/american-diabetes-associations-statement-regarding-nonpartisanship
PS: A few points in reply:
* Then why did the ADA flagship journal publish the pro-science, Trump-critical editorial in the first place? Is the ADA now saying that was a mistake? Will it try to retract that editorial?
* The members distributing copies of the editorial were not acting for the association. Or if that was not clear, what if they'd made clear (as the authors of the editorial made clear) that they were only speaking for themselves, not for the ADA?
* Could the ADA preserve its nonpartisanship by disavowing the peaceful leafleteers? Did it think federal law required it to call the police to remove them from the building?
* Would the ADA have called the police on peaceful pro-Trump or pro-Battacharya leafleteers?
* Would it have called the police on attendees who sat quietly in their seats wearing "We stand with science" buttons?
#Censorship #DefendResearch #FirstAmendment #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics
I've been running Follow the Crypto since 2024. Today I'm relaunching it as Tech Influence Watch, expanded to cover AI political spending alongside crypto. They’ve spent more than $400 million this election cycle, and now you can follow it in close to real time.
https://influence.citationneeded.news/
Here’s the full story behind the Tech Influence Watch launch, including what I found while building it and why it matters now: https://www.citationneeded.news/tech-influence-watch/
#crypto #cryptocurrency #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #USpol #USpolitics #CitationNeededNewsletter
"Judge Learns #Lawyers on Both Sides of Case Used #AI, Cancels Trial, Kicks Everyone Off the Case."
https://www.404media.co/judge-learns-lawyers-on-both-sides-of-case-used-ai-cancels-trial-kicks-everyone-off-the-case/
There was no AI (as we know it today) when I was in law school. But we had a name for this kind of case: 𝘈𝘴𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘷. 𝘈𝘴𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦.
As research is reshaped by #AI, geopolitical shifts, and growing demands for transparency, the question is no longer whether we need #OpenScience, but how to make it work in practice.
OpenAIRE’s 2026–2028 Strategy focuses on:
🔹 trusted scholarly communication infrastructures
🔹 responsible AI in research
🔹 Open Science monitoring
🔹 skills and capacity building
🔹 legal and policy challenges
🔗 Learn more: https://www.openaire.eu/openaire-sets-out-its-strategy-for-2026-2028-scaling-openness-trust-and-intelligence
🔗 Strategy: https://www.openaire.eu/strategy-2026-28
@olibrendel @A_J_Millar No... I am working on it... If, by chance, there was a need for such a service that was officially expressed by someone, or, better, a community such as a lab... that would help a lot.
🤔
"The Bethesda Declaration: One Year Later."
https://www.27unihted.org/bethesda-declaration-one-year-later
"Today, on June 9, 2026, we provide an update to members of Congress and the public on the current status of #NIH, one year after the #BethesdaDeclaration. The chaos of 2025 has been replaced with coordinated, systematic, institutionalized destruction in 2026. NIH policy directed by #HHS and the Office of Management and Budget (#OMB) and implemented by Director Bhattacharya continues to flout ethical, statutory, and legal standards…
* Concern 1: An anti-science agenda is disrupting research for health advances and cures
* Concern 2: Discriminatory policies are worsening disparities
* Concern 3: Ignoring ethical standards has put research participants and the public at risk
* Concern 4: An unstable research environment is undermining scientific advances and public trust
* Concern 5: Lost critical expertise is hindering the NIH mission
* Concern 6: Changing of policies without staff input is creating foreseeable damage
* Concern 7: Cumbersome and shifting processes are wasting resources and harming health
* Concern 8: Disruption of global research is endangering people in the United States and around the world
* Concern 9: A culture of fear and low morale is eroding scientific integrity."
Also see the original Bethesda Declaration, from one year ago today.
https://www.27unihted.org/bethesdadeclaration2025
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics
Update. After the American Diabetes Association (#ADA) physically evicted five members from an ADA event for peacefully handing out print copies of a pro-science, anti-Trump editorial published in the ADA's own flagship journal …
https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/121657
* two senior leaders resigned in protest -- the new President-Elect and the chair of the Scientific Sessions Planning Committee;
* at least two others might have resigned, but these reports are still unconfirmed;
* dozens of members walked out of the presidential address, holding signs that said "We stand with science"; and
* colleagues launched a "shame on you" open letter against the ADA.
https://www.change.org/p/an-open-letter-to-the-american-diabetes-association-shame-on-you
(I just signed the open letter and hope you will too.)
#Censorship #DefendResearch #Medicine #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics
"Bots Now Outnumber Humans Online And The Internet Was Never Built For This."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/josipamajic/2026/06/04/bots-now-outnumber-humans-online-and-the-internet-was-never-built-for-this/
(#paywalled)
"The culprit is not the old wave of scraper bots and search crawlers, but agentic AI… #AgenticAI…made up just 1.7% of automated traffic at the start of last year. By the end of 2025 that category had grown 8,000%."
Update. @TranslateScience launched a community of interest on multilingual #OpenScience.
https://prereview.org/clubs/translate-science
Read any good preprints about multilingual open science lately?
Now that the Translate Science PREreview Club has published our first review, we'll be keeping our eyes open for a great preprint to review next. We're counting on you, our community, to send amazing preprints our way.
This club doesn't review on a regular schedule. We'll be reviewing opportunistically and as resources permit. Sign up at the link below to stay informed about our activities:
Well this just seems sensible, and worth a signature to at least force a debate.
Update. "All the Ways Europe Is Ditching American Technology."
https://archive.is/T2g2C
PS: Do US tech CEOs not realize what Donald #Trump is costing them? Or do they see a net upside in authoritarianism?