Pieter T. L. Beck

I am proud to announce that the videos showing my replication experiments are now online! Here you can see the replication of Priestley's production of "nitrous air": /1

“Substituting automated machine processing for human presence, authentic listening, and personal responsibility in my work directly conflicts with my obligation to uphold human dignity and flourishing as primary” religionnews.com/2026/10/26/i...

OK, since this thread has blown up a bit, I think it's worth clarifying in a new thread to what extent the 'GenAI is asbestos for the mind' analogy might hold up, and where it breaks down (as even useful analogies always do): 1/n

It's October, already! I'll be speaking in Liverpool on Thursday 15th, about pseudoscience hiding behind cries of "free speech"... and how even some skeptics fall for it. www.meetup.com/merseyside-s... It's the day before the European Skeptics Congress, if you're attending that, too!

The owls are not what they seem, my cat said.

The next step: writing a book together on the history of scholarly evaluation. More to follow soon. In the meantime, take a look here if you're interested in the project: www.arts.kuleuven.be/cultuurgesch...! 2/3

Wanted to share my excitement about a small workshop on the history of scholarly evaluation that we hosted in Leuven over the last couple of days. The atmosphere was great and it was very productive! Here's a photo of the participants brainstorming. 1/3

Is this all you got @nathancofnas.bsky.social, just repeating Emil?

Why it is reasonable to label Nathan Cofnas’ race realism as pseudoscientific | Pieter Beck "Race realist" Nathan Cofnas claims his "hereditarianist" viewpoint is scientifically accurate - by citing pseudoscientific research and misleading rhetoric.

My article arguing that Nathan Cofnas's race realism is rightly labelled as pseudoscience is now also published at @skeptic.org.uk. Honoured to have it up there.

A good day for the Ghent HOPOS-tradition (I take the liberty of considering @masssimons.bsky.social as part of that tradition, I don't think he will mind?)

14/END And finally: I am perhaps even more proud that my article is in the same issue as the fabulous article that @mvandyck.bsky.social wrote on Bas van Fraassen his constructive empiricism - definitely also work checking out! www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/hopos/cu...

9/ My aim is to make a broader methodological point: If we want to understand the history of the philosophy of experimentation, we shouldn't only trace changing theories of experimentation. We also need to trace changing conceptions of the *aims* of philosophy of science.

1/ 🧵 The history of the philosophy of experimentation isn't really just a history of what philosophers have said about experiments. In a new #HOPOS paper, I argue that it is also a history of what philosophers thought philosophy of science itself was *for*. #philsci

Zeventienjarige Athena Matsas geeft het goede voorbeeld aan de rector van haar eigen universiteit. www.standaard.be/economie/vub...

This doesn't square with my experience. I'm a scientist. I was invited to give a science talk by the phil dept. I found everyone to be welcoming and genuinely interested in science. That they don't like what Cofnas has to say indicates that they take the science seriously.1/2

Cofnas tegen HLN: "Ik, een racist? Nee hoor!" HLN: "Ok, leuk! Volgende vraag." Cofnas wanneer zijn medestanders vragen waarom hij zo mak was in de KVHV-lezing in Gent: "Ik pas mijn boodschap aan wanneer de normies luisteren en ik moest oppassen om niks illegaals te zeggen."

Forgot to mention my most controversial "hot take". In the first class I explain why I think Kuhn is one of the most overrated philosophers of the 20th century, but why I also believe he is still worth being the central figure of the course.

What you won’t find much of are ordinary scholars who have neither an axe to grind about their failed hopes nor a buzz to create for their next NYT bestseller about why plagues are good or The Left has stifled debate by eating sandwiches. Both the picture and the personnel draw from the extremes.

In publications advancing an “antiwoke” line you will find a corresponding mix of would-be or once-was academics who couldn’t make it work for one reason or another, and classical liberal stars who are very much making it work — with a sprinkling of wingnut welfare types on race science postdocs.

There’s more to be said about the relationship between Pinker-style stardom and the state of academia. Not because academia is Woke, but because star systems loosen rigor at the top while solid scholarship becomes a dead end lower down. Shoddy celebrities and broke PhDs proceed from the same machine