@bergelsonlab
Official account for the Bergelson Lab at Harvard, sporadically maintained by the PI:). Just a lab, trying to figure out how babies learn language, somehow caught in the crosshairs of gov't admin battles.
The most impt change at #NIH and to US science this year is bigger than grant cancellations— it’s how the agency is governed.
For 75 years NIH has been largely independent of presidential control. That’s changed this year. New piece from me and @nataliebaviles.bsky.social in @nature.com
🧪
Every scientific manuscript is secretly 3 docs in a trenchcoat
1) back&forth w/editors & rev's that max ~6 ppl ever see
2) paper w/all the stuff u think every1 wants to know
3) supplementals w/all the stuff u had to do JIC but know will bore every1 but the real ones
tbh most ppl just see abstract 😅
A short Bluetorial on plots of NIH application success rates as a function of percentile.
1/20
And hats off to @marvinlavechin.bsky.social for creating leading and persevering on this and bringing me and @rplevy.bsky.social along for the ride:)
When @marvinlavechin.bsky.social first approached me about this project I thought no *way* could we get something useful out of messy early child speech. Delighted to have been wrong & excited for what babar will let us do at a bigger scale than the super hard manual transcription work it leverages!
Everything is open-source:
🔬 BabAR: github.com/MarvinLvn/BabAR
📦 TinyVox: github.com/MarvinLvn/tinyvox
🔊 Samples: marvinlvn.github.io/projects/babar/
📄 Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2603.05213
w/ @bergelsonlab.bsky.social and @rplevy.bsky.social Funded by the Simons Center for the Social Brain (MIT).
If you like sensitivity analysis in your research, may I introduce you to multiverse analysis?
Maie, Eguchi & Uchihara (2024). Arbitrary choices, arbitrary results: Three cases of multiverse analysis in L2 research.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Graph of award probability of R35 and R01 from NIH factbook as a function of review rank percentile. As is apparent, 2025 is a significant departure, with lower award probabilities at all scores <40 and significant departures from norm, where even being in the top 10% is no longer a nearly certain indicator of success. Data source: https://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/report/302
The data is in: the NIH goalposts have shifted.
What were once almost certain fundable scores have become coin flips and what used to be likely grants have become aspirational, leading to fewer awards.
Another manifestation of how HHS policies have led to fewer awards and less science.
YES. and when you mess up the easy stuff (#s that don't add up, typos, things that say 'remove before submitting') I immediately worry/suspect you've messed up the harder to notice stuff.
One of our lab's 10 commandments is
BE SUSPICIOUS (about data)
A composite image of me from the red carpet at the Hoppers premiere with the Hoppers logo and several hoppers characters.
After about 5 years (!) of keeping secrets, I am so excited that Disney Pixar's Hoppers is finally coming out on March 6th!
Back in 2021, Pixar emailed me asking if I could give a talk about my research to their employees. Then another talk. And another.
📸 Disney/Jesse Grant/Getty Images
Seriously, #EduSky, #Physics teachers, #scicomm folks, if you aren't familiar with thescienceplayground.com, you should be. Amazing collection of all kinds of science demos and games from across the web, all curated by a science game expert and, indeed, no AI!!!
Two dinosaurs and and the Stand Up For Science Duck mascot stand at the D.C. National Day of Action rally. The dinosaurs have signs reading "Don't let good science go extinct" and "Science saves lives"
The dinos are out for science!! Are you??? Join us in Washington D.C. on the National Mall!!!
Info here! : fight2win.standupforscience.net/DC-March/
I am focused on the Stand Up for Science events today, but I will dig into these data early next week.
I was continuously funded from when I started my independent career in 1988 until I move to NIH in 2003, usually with multiple grants.
1/2
Here’s a full draft of the upcoming second edition of my “Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction”: socviz.co
“Metaphor” of the day: fast walkers get more schmutz on their back
When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.
After several years of work, my lab is starting to put out our first papers on learning in a unicellular organism (Stentor coeruleus).
Here we show evidence for a form of associative learning in Stentor:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
It's a pretty funny criticism because
1) the data are sourced from a public database, NIH RePORTER
2) "Deranged activist" Jeremy Berg was an NIH institute director for 7 years
and most importantly
3) Thacker admits the story is totally accurate
two text bubbles, first says "hey do you have any gaities" second says "lol. hairties"
glad autocorrect knows i need cheerfulness in the plural, but wtf.
Our department is hiring an Assistant Teaching Professor!! This is a joint-appointed position with Computational Social Sciences (css.ucsd.edu). It's 75+ degrees F and sunny today, just thought I'd mention apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04461
Our new paper is now out showing how time perception in animals is linked to their ecology. Using data from 237 species we show temporal perception is faster in species that fly and pursuit predators www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌐
lots of good points have already been made on using AI Agents for cheating (e.g. the latest Canvas-bot), it degrades learning, etc.
One additional thing I'd like to point out: if you use this stuff, you're not being clever, you're just an asshole.
to explain:
🚨🚨 My lab is hiring a Postdoc! 🚨🚨
Postdoc opening in my lab at Harvard Psych (start: Summer/Fall 2026).
We study identity, group dynamics, language, & politics.
Rolling review begins 3/14
Apply: academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/15806
Please repost + tag folks who might be a good fit! 👇
what even is the fucking point
"Tech killed online education" is a heck of an outcome.
When we started @lingthusiasm.com, we benefitted from grad school funding that let us cover a few startup costs, and we recognize that not everyone has those resources
That's why in 2020, @superlinguo.bsky.social and I started the LingComm Grants, to help up-and-coming linguistics communicators
the Ipad/Tv isn't a babysitter, but it does have a remote!
Great, remote classes and cancelled daycare and school, the worst of all possible worlds for working academic parents
Research plug: we're currently seeking (bilateraly, congenitally) blind adults & Deaf adults for a *paid* online research study (screen reader compatible) on how individuals experience words across perceptual modalities. Ping bergelsonlab@fas.harvard.edu if interested! Reposts welcome! #Blind #Deaf