Tracey McKee

Is Glasgow losing the spaces that made it an arts powerhouse? The closing of a cluster of leading creative venues has led to dismay and intensified fears the hubs that fostered Glasgow’s celebrated arts scene are disappearing

Is Glasgow losing the spaces that made it an arts powerhouse?

International Women's Day | United Nations The purpose of the day is to uphold women’s achievements, recognize challenges, and focus greater attention on women’s rights and gender equality to mobilize all people to do their part.

With #InternationalWomensDay coming up, please be aware the UN theme is Rights Justice Action (not Give to Gain).

UN: www.un.org/en/observanc...

This Guardian article explains the issue: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Do share this information. Thank you.

#IWD2026 #RightsJusticeAction

March 7, 2026 issue of The Lancet. The cover quote: “A staggering 840 million women and adolescent girls worldwide have experienced physical violence, sexual violence, or both […] —a number that has barely changed in the past two decades.”

Getting to zero: what will it take to end violence against women?

More and better data are needed—but enough evidence already exists to invest in bold action at scale.

Read more in our latest issue: spkl.io/63329Axjf7

The JBI logo appears in the bottom right, bold white text reads “Methodology Month” on a rounded blue banner, set against a dark blue background with abstract connected lines and nodes representing diverse methodologies grounded in shared principles, forming clear, systematic pathways that guide users step by step to rigorous, transparent, and trustworthy evidence syntheses. The JBI logo depicts a pebble (‘evidence’) dropping into water, symbolising the ripple effect of positive change driven by evidence.

🔥 Hot tip! Before starting a systematic review, make sure an information scientist/research librarian is part of the review team. They have specialised skills to develop & implement a comprehensive search strategy 🔎
Learn more: bit.ly/4spgp1z

#JBIMethodology #medlibs

This is Hippo. He's visiting Scotland for the first time. Had no idea they made squeaky toys for humans too. 14/10 (TT: kelseydarragh)

This local Wolfdog joined an Olympic ski event and triggered the finish-line camera. This is Nazgul. He snuck into a cross-country skiing sprint this morning and raced the homestretch with some competitors before being escorted home. 14/10 someone get him a medal

Promotional image. Text reads: 2026-27 research funding apply now

Our new Physicians' Collections Research Grant provides funding, space and research support.

Find out more and apply 👉 www.rcpe.ac.uk/education/ph...

table 1 extract from Guest, O., & van Rooij, I. (2025, October 4). Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacy for Psychologists. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dkrgj_v1

5 Ghostwriter in the Machine A unique selling point of these systems is conversing and writing in a human-like way. This is imminently understandable, although wrong-headed, when one realises these are systems that essentially function as lossy2 content-addressable memory: when input is given, the output generated by the model is text that stochastically matches the input text. The reason text at the output looks novel is because by design the AI product performs an automated version of what is known as mosaic or patchwork plagiarism (Baždarić, 2013) — due to the nature of input masking and next token prediction, the output essentially uses similar words in similar orders to what it has been exposed to. This makes the automated flagging of plagiarism unlikely, which is also true when students or colleagues perform this type of copypaste and then thesaurus trick, and true when so-called AI plagiarism detectors falsely claim to detect AI-produced text (Edwards, 2023a). This aspect of LLM-based AI products can be seen as an automation of plagiarism and especially of the research paper mill (Guest, 2025; Guest, Suarez, et al., 2025; van Rooij, 2022): the “churn[ing] out [of] fake or poor-quality journal papers” (Sanderson, 2024; Committee on Publication Ethics,

In addition, who is held accountable if nobody with intent authored the text? Because while the original data fed into the system is certainly written with goals, messages, and audiences in mind jumbling this into ad-libbed word salad removes authorial intent (Bender et al., 2021). So do the companies who own the chatbot own the text or do the original authors? These questions denote legal battles, which are being currently fought in the public eye and which affect all of us in all roles, not just as academics (Creamer, 2025; Knibbs, 2024; Reuters, 2025). Either way, even if the courts decide in the favour of companies, we should not allow these companies with vested interests to write our papers (Fisher et al., 2025), or to filter what we include in our papers. Because it is not the case that we only operate based on legal precedents, but also on our own ethical values and scientific integrity codes (ALLEA, 2023; KNAW et al., 2018), and we have a direct duty to protect, as with previous crises and in general, the literature from pollution. In other words, the same issues as in previous sections play out here, where essentially now every paper produced using chatbot output must declare a conflict of interest, since the output text can be biased in subtle or direct ways by the company who owns the bot (see Table 2). Seen in the right light — AI products understood as contentaddressable systems — we see that framing the user, the academic in this case, as the creator of the bot’s output is misplaced. The input does not cause the output in an authorial sense, much like input to a library search engine does not cause relevant articles and books to be written (Guest, 2025). The respective authors wrote those, not the search query!

Third, the peculiar idea that somehow we don't need to read, write, or perform literature reviews anymore; popping up like a satanic mushroom in almost all so-called OK uses of LLMs.

Companies writing our papers via their chatbots is not scientific at all. See section 5: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

7/

Wouldn’t have made it out of the VEEP writers room

Dr Vanessa Saliba, Consultant Epidemiologist at UKHSA, said: 'Infections can return quickly when childhood vaccine uptake falls; elimination is only possible if all children receive two MMRV doses before school. Older children and adults who missed vaccination must be caught up. The NHS is making vaccination easier, including offering the second MMRV dose earlier at a new 18-month appointment to boost uptake and support elimination goals.'

UKHSA responds to the confirmation from @WHO that the UK has lost its measles elimination status.

Read more from WHO here: https://bit.ly/3YZuOFa

David Lynch in the filming set speaking in the megaphone. He says “Okay, let's try that again, but this time good.”

Here’s to 2026

Tomorrow evening it’ll be my annual duty to vaguely shepherd the activity on the #duvetknowitschristmas hashtag and urge people to give small sums to charity. 7.30pm? Something like that?

Strengthening authorship transparency for letters to the editor Click on the article title to read more.

Another journal taking action due to GenAI being used to write letters to the editor. #UKMedLibs

Graphic showing flu virus icons with a warning light and snowflake, advising awareness of flu symptoms and safety measures during winter.

With case numbers for flu still increasing, we're continuing to encourage those who are eligible to come forward to receive their flu vaccine to help protect themselves and their loved ones.

More info 🔽
https://ow.ly/C9Ij50Xyzmn

Latest flu data here 🔽
https://ow.ly/UShK50Xyzmo

More than half of UK novelists believe AI will replace their work A new study by the University of Cambridge found many authors’ work has already been used – without their permission – to train large language models

Absolutely dire state of affairs.

Department of Justice chatbots mislead people seeking information Irish Department of Justice internalises the AI hype and takes no responsibility for misleading chatbots.

Our investigation into Irish Department of Justice use of chatbots. The department hides behind disclaimers while deploying misleading chatbots.

@iccl.bsky.social @abeba.bsky.social @johnnyryan.bsky.social

www.iccl.ie/news/irish-d...

The Editor Got a Letter From ‘Dr. B.S.’ So Did a Lot of Other Editors.

AI letters are flooding the medical literature. (gift link)

Thanks, Altman.

A set of amputation tools in a wooden case lined with red velvet. 5 steel Liston knives are lined up next to each other in the back section of the case.

Scottish surgeon Robert Liston, was born #onthisday 1794. He was renowned for his speed and dexterity when performing amputations. This was in part due to the instruments he used several of which he designed himself. His long, sharp Liston knives were a staple of 19th century amputation sets.

psychosisresearch.info/artificial-i...

There is some enthusiasm locally for using large language models (LLMs) to create more diverse patient and public involvement in clinical research - given PPI is hard to do. We at @psychosisresearch.bsky.social have some concerns we have summarised here.

This is located in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago, close to Fullerton and Sheffield. It's a densely populated area near DePaul University. I'm pleased to see the community standing up against these despicable individuals.

Border patrol agents deployed tear gas on the 3700 block of North Kildare where residents say a landscape worker, a resident, and a woman on a bike were detained. Video from a resident.

Panel 1 A figure lies on a lounger as a hot, orange sun sets, saying "The holiday's over." Panel 2 Now wheeling a suitcase towards a plane in warm eveniong light "It's nice to sit around in the sun reading all day." Panel 3 The plane rises amongst the clouds "But all good things must come to an end." Panel 4 The figure deplanes with the suitcase in drizzle "Coming home has its own pleasures." Panel 5 The rain is harder. The figure shelter under an umbrella and looks into a shop window containing a selection of books and a sign reading "New books for autumn!" Panel 6 The figure now sits at home by an open fire, happily reading a new book. The suitcase has not yet been unpacked.

My cartoon for the @theguardian.com books autumn reads special.

Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me? Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

THREAD: v niche sport-based plea!

The N.U.T.S. (National Union of Track Statisticians) Athletics & Olympic Archive & Library will be evicted from its current premises in ten days, and urgently needs either a) a permanent home or b) temp storage.

Croydon area preferred but all offers welcome. (1/4)

Hey, as a librarian I need to tell you:

Our funding depends on usage.

So go ahead and check out that book even if you don't think you'll finish it. No one will know. Check out that DVD even though you might not like it. Get ambitious in your quest for knowledge.

Your regular reminder that librarians and statisticians are natural allies in the medical research ecosystem.

It’s legendary, but is our music scene out of tune? A pulse check on Glasgow’s grassroots venues

Glasgow’s nightlife is in the “worst state it has been in since 1979”.

That’s according to the man behind one of Scotland’s biggest gig promoters, PCL Presents. He also owns Sneaky Pete’s in Edinburgh, and Broadcast.

How to read a paper involving artificial intelligence (AI) by Paul Dijkstra et al

Reading a research paper that involves using AI in clinical settings?

This article has questions to help you critically appraise AI papers:
bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/4/1/...