Nicola Jones

The latest buzzword in AI is "neurosymbolic", the strategy of combining the learning prowess of neural networks with the logical reasoning of symbolic systems. My feature in Nature:  This AI combo could unlock human-level intelligence https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03856-1  

Canada just lost its 'measles elimination' status in the face of endemic and surging cases. Read my story for Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03769-z  mini FAQ Q: There are a lot of news stories about people deciding not to get vaccinated. Is that behind the surge? A: Yes and no. First, the rate of measles vaccination globally is going up, not down. (It took a hit during the pandemic and is still recovering back to pre-pandemic levels, but it is rising). Most countries, including Canada and the US and the UK, don't hit the recommended level of 95% vaccination. But that's usually okay. You can beat back the disease in a country with a much lower level of vaccination than that. Overall, Canada and the US and the UK do have fairly high vaccination rates, around 90%. BUT outbreaks do often happen in spots/communities where vaccination levels are low and so one case spreads. That's hard to fight back against. Q: Is Canada doing really badly for measles...

The creators of an influential list of highly cited researchers have shaken up their methodology this year, taking a swipe at scientists who associate with those linked to possible ethical breaches. The new rules have allowed the field of mathematics to return to the list, after being excluded for the past two years owing to concerns over suspicious citation patterns. Read my news piece in Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03691-4 On a related note, see also my Q&A in FQXI with the chair of a working group on mathematical publishing.   

When people think of scientific fraud, the field of mathematics doesn't ordinarily leap to mind. Mathematicians don't publish very often, and face less pressure to 'publish or perish' than many academics. They don't often fight for spots in Nature or Science . There is less money involved, too: mathematicians have relatively small grants, require no expensive laboratories, and risk no pharmaceutical profits with their work. A faked mathematical equation is surely easier to spot than, say, a set of faked experimental data. Why would anyone publish a fraudulent mathematics paper? But the field is not immune to ethical problems—in fact, it is unusually vulnerable to them. In October, a joint working group of the International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) released a scathing report on poor publishing practices in mathematics. They published two companion papers in the Notices of the Am...