Owen Forbes
Translational data science | Bayesian stats | Bridging data & impact | he/him
- Reposted by Owen ForbesLittle blogpost reporting an analysis of recent (2021-2025) retractions of highly-cited papers in relation to #PubPeer comments. deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... #retractions #publishing
- Reposted by Owen Forbes"How do class gaps compare to race and gender gaps? Strikingly, we find that the class gaps in tenure-track academia are as large as or larger than analogous race or gender gaps."
- Reposted by Owen ForbesNew study finds that emphasizing collective efficacy (people's ability to catalyze large-scale change) is very effective in catalyzing behavioural change. As you can see from my pinned post, I'm a big fan of simple messages that can mobilize public support for climate action!
- Reposted by Owen ForbesWriting is thinking "On the value of human-generated scientific writing in the age of large-language models." www.nature.com/articles/s44...
- Reposted by Owen ForbesThere is much to be done, at all levels. www.nature.com/articles/s44...
- Reposted by Owen ForbesThe 0.5.0 version of my {brms} + {tidyverse} translation of McElreath's "Statistical Rethinking" (2nd ed) is up! solomon.quarto.pub/sr2/ 1/3 #rstats
- Reposted by Owen ForbesAfter 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data. If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition. eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...
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- Reposted by Owen ForbesJust learned I've won the APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions to Psychology in the area of psychopathology, and am feeling pretty delighted!! So grateful to @aidangcw.bsky.social for nominating me, and very proud of the work it's based on.
- Reposted by Owen ForbesExcited to launch the new improved Reproducible Code guide from @britishecologicalsociety.org @methodsinecoevol.bsky.social FREE online here! www.britishecologicalsociety.org//wp-content/... Amazing work by some very talented ECRs. We hope it’s useful!
- Reposted by Owen ForbesThe breeding season is in full swing! After some troubles with currawong predation, most of the groups are on their second or third nest, and all the parents are busy provisioning their young 🦗🐦 30 chicks banded so far! #superbfairywren #SFW_ANU #birds #ecology
- Reposted by Owen Forbes“Overall, these findings suggest that the value of natural history collections as global research infrastructure is eroding due to decreased collecting of specimen data across species, locations, and time.“ doi.org/10.1038/s414... Interesting analysis based on @gbif.org data.
- Reposted by Owen ForbesWe need new collections but - most importantly - the future generations of scientists will need new collections. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Owen ForbesIn an era marked by rapid climate change and biodiversity loss, it is imperative that we continue to invest in the unique value of natural history collections data "Global sampling decline erodes science potential of natural history collections" 🧪
- Reposted by Owen Forbes"Here we show substantial declines in the rates of collection of specimen data over recent decades, from analysis of over 150 million records from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) spanning more than two centuries" www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧪 #Macroecology #EvoBio #Paleobio
- Reposted by Owen ForbesI’m pretty delighted to be part of this awesome group! Can’t wait to work together in this new chapter for HiTOP
- Reposted by Owen ForbesCongratulations to everyone elected to our Society's 2026 Executive Committee! President: Miri Forbes President-Elect: Chris Conway Secretary: Kelsie Forbush Treasurer: Len Simms Trainee Engagement Chair: Caroline Balling Membership Chair: Holly Levin-Aspenson Conference Chair: Martin Sellbom
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- Reposted by Owen ForbesCongratulations to my student, Maggie Ma, for publishing her first #rstats package {ggincerta} on CRAN 🥳 Spatial uncertainty visualisation (bivariate, pixel, exceedance, glyph), like {Vizumap}, but fully integrated with ggplot2 -- a much simpler API with all the advantages of the ggplot2 system.
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- Reposted by Owen Forbes🚨Our new package {galaxias} is released in R & Python today! 🚨 📦 galaxias makes it easy to standardise data to Darwin Core, the accepted format for sharing ecological data with infrastructures like @gbif.org and the Atlas of Living Australia galaxias.ala.org.au #rstats #python 🧪🌏🐟 A thread 🧵👇
- We're collecting less than half as many biodiversity specimens as in the 1960s-1980s, at a time when they're more important than ever for climate & ecology science. Natural history collections provide crucial data that no other source can match. Our new paper in Nature Comms: doi.org/10.1038/s414...
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- Reposted by Owen ForbesLook no further for an *excellent* overview of HiTOP! This chapter for the upcoming Oxford Handbook of Dimensional Models in Psychopathology does a fantastic job of pulling everything together. Tam Pham is an absolute superstar and I feel very lucky to work with her ✨ osf.io/preprints/ps...
- Reposted by Owen ForbesFinally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n
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- Reposted by Owen ForbesAdam Raine, 16, died from suicide in April after months on ChatGPT discussing plans to end his life. His parents have filed the first known case against OpenAI for wrongful death. Overwhelming at times to work on this story, but here it is. My latest on AI chatbots: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/t...
- Reposted by Owen Forbes“The AI in the study probably prompted doctors to become over-reliant on its recommendations, ‘leading to clinicians becoming less motivated, less focused, and less responsible when making cognitive decisions without AI assistance,’ the scientists said in the paper.”
- Our new Ecology Letters paper shows how natural history collections can use Bayesian decision theory & VOI to transform sampling and resourcing. Moving beyond taxonomy-focused collecting to strategic approaches, maximising impact for climate science, genomics & conservation doi.org/10.1111/ele.70188
- Reposted by Owen ForbesCalling all stats nerds to the heart of Australia to discuss all things #Biometrics! 🐨 at the upcoming Biometrics in the Bush Capital meeting #BIB25 ⚡ Abstract submission has been extended! We'll see you there!
- The abstract submission for Biometrics in the Bush Capital has been extended till 21st July 2025 5PM AEST 📢 We hope to see you there ☺️ #BIBC2025 For more information see: biometricsociety.org.au/conference20... Thank you to @fontikar.bsky.social for making the banner!
- Reposted by Owen Forbes1/ NEW R PACKAGE! For estimating the impact of potential interventions on multiple mediators in countering exposure effects (led by @cttc101.bsky.social) - Paper👉 tinyurl.com/ye26jsps - Package👉 tinyurl.com/yuh4kens Thread shows published examples of how the method can be used! #EpiSky #CausalSky
- Introducing {flawless} - a nested framework for analysing functional time series. Versatile insights for functional data across research domains, including neuroscience & mental health. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40577684/ Super stoked to share our new paper and matching Beyoncé gif 😅🎉💃 #flawless
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- Reposted by Owen ForbesFrancis Collins, the NIH Director for 12 years, led the Human Genome Project and other NIH efforts for 32 years, resigned today. Key words from his resignation letter www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/u...
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- Reposted by Owen ForbesGoogle has removed its Responsible AI Principles. This is actually a pretty big deal.
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- Reposted by Owen ForbesIn true academic style, I'm finishing my new years resolutions just before due date. The ideas behind this paper have been my passion project since day 1 of my PhD, and I'm pleased to announce that it's finally published! doi.org/10.1007/s115... @chris-drovandi.bsky.social
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- Reposted by Owen ForbesDear computer vision researchers, students & practitioners🔇🔇🔇 Remi Denton & I have written what I consider to be a comprehensive paper on the harms of computer vision systems reported to date & how people have proposed addressing them, from different angles. PDF: cdn.sanity.io/files/wc2kmx...
- Reposted by Owen Forbeslarge institutions/orgs are integrating AI into critical infrastructures, and most importantly, the public has been sold utopia based on lies and any realty check that points out the failures/harms from AI is framed as pessimism, making pushbacks difficult
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- Reposted by Owen ForbesChina has been producing open source models that surpass the performance of OS models from other countries on a number of metrics. Today, the model QwQ is measured to outperform OpenAI o1 and Anthropic Sonnet. Chat is here: huggingface.co/chat/models/... Blog here: qwenlm.github.io/blog/qwq-32b...
