The Economist coming out in favour of selecting embryos for IQ while dismissing the many extremely good arguments against this - from “it doesn’t work” to “promoting the idea that a flawed metric is a useful indicator of human worth is not going to go well” - is disappointing, to say the least

The Economist@economist.com · 4d ago

Progress in embryo screening will raise difficult ethical questions. But there is a big difference between the murderous coercion of early-20th-century eugenics programmes and parents seeking as much knowledge as possible when picking an embryo

What’s happened to income-group gaps in parental spending on children in the U.S.? For the last 45 years, they just. keep. getting. wider. In a new @socarxiv.bsky.social working paper, I present updated evidence on trends in spending on childcare, education, and extracurricular activities.

Do conjoint/factorial/vignette experiments reflect choices in the real world? Are hypothetical scenarios in the artificial survey context externally valid? Do hypothetical bias, intention-behavior gap and social desirability biases undermine validity? Two cautionary studies on this question:

Happy to share our new paper in Comparative Migration Studies, with @hcebolla.bsky.social , @borchgrevink.bsky.social , and Inmaculada Serrano, within @equalstrength.bsky.social, where we show that #Radical-Right electoral gains increase anti-Muslim #HateCrime across Europe. shorturl.at/UDGh9

The tipping point of intolerance: radical-right elections and terrorist attacks as catalysts for anti-Muslim hate crime in Europe - Comparative Migration Studies

Comparative Migration Studies - This paper provides a cross-country analysis of anti-Muslim hate crimes in Europe, using ODHIR-OSCE data for 30 countries between 2016 and 2022. We systematically...

link.springer.com

I wrote about the bizarre case of Herasight, the embryo selection company going all in on eugenics.

Embryo selection company Herasight goes all in on eugenics

...

open.substack.com

Why do associations between grandparents & child health vary [Africa]?: "implication is that net flows of support from grandparents to children diminish as societies undergo demographic & epidemiological transitions, weakening the positive association between grandparent coresidence & child health"

<em>Population and Development Review</em> | Population Council Journal | Wiley Online Library

In many modern populations, grandparents are increasingly becoming the primary caregivers of their grandchildren. This phenomenon has renewed interest in the role that grandparents play in within-fam...

doi.org

New paper out in Population and Development Review: We explore how the influence of grandparental co-residence on grandchildren’s nutrition varies across Africa’s diverse demographic and health contexts 👇 📄 doi.org/10.1111/padr...

<em>Population and Development Review</em> | Population Council Journal | Wiley Online Library

In many modern populations, grandparents are increasingly becoming the primary caregivers of their grandchildren. This phenomenon has renewed interest in the role that grandparents play in within-fam...

doi.org

"Sweeteners can harm cognitive health equivalent to 1.6 years of ageing, study finds" Or does it? Let's take a look at this "study"... www.theguardian.com/food/2025/se...

Sweeteners can harm cognitive health equivalent to 1.6 years of ageing, study finds

Researchers say low- and no-calorie sweeteners appear to affect thinking and memory in middle age

theguardian.com

New blog post: The New Eugenics Companies (Oops, I meant to say generational health and embryo selection)

The New Eugenics Companies

Oops, I meant to say generational health and embryo selection

ericturkheimer.substack.com

It is depressing, but all too predictable, how swiftly we’ve gone from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium offering reassurances about the uses of behavioural polygenic scores to one of their lead authors marketing embryo selection for IQ

@alvaroszv.bsky.social y yo (IEGD-CSIC) de @csic.es hemos sacado una nota de nuestro trabajo en curso sobre la relación entre #cambioclimático y #emigración en #PiedrasdPapel utilizando datos sobre el calor extremo en #Senegal. www.eldiario.es/piedrasdepap...

El mito de los refugiados climáticos

El mito de los refugiados climáticos es otra alarma que debemos a la pereza intelectual que informa muchos de los debates que mantenemos sobre la inmigración, como demostramos aquí con datos de Senega...

eldiario.es

Harvard sociologist/polisci Theda Skocpol explains how the vast expansion of ICE in BBB may be Trump's secret weapon to overcome the barriers of federalism and complete his autocratic takeover of the American state. (History from Germany & Hungary in 20s/30s.) talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/criti...

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

The first paper of my PhD—co-authored with @ishmamunoz.bsky.social and Alberto Palloni—is now out as a preprint! 👵👶 Grandparents’ investments matter for grandchildren’s human capital formation independently of parental investments —especially in Ethiopia and India. 📄 osf.io/preprints/os...

A big thank you to Dulce Manzano with whom I coauthored this paper on how returns to preschool evolved over the last century. Open access ! direct.mit.edu/euso/article... Tracing the evolution of preschool’s impact on education over a century: Spain, 1900-1973 | European Societies | MIT Press

Tracing the evolution of preschool’s impact on education over a century: Spain, 1900-1973

Abstract. Preschool is acknowledged as a strategy for promoting long-term educational attainment and fostering equality of educational opportunities. Most of these expectations are based on evidence f...

direct.mit.edu

Why has fertility suddenly crashed everywhere all at once? Certainly, there are many factors, which vary across all world regions & over time. I’ve written on many of these! But we should also recognise the collapse of coupling. Always open to new data & ideas! 🙂 Graph by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com

The Times and Sunday Times@thetimes.com · last yr.

Countries across the world are fretting about falling birthrates. Now one academic believes she’s discovered the cause – and has a plan to address it

🚨 The end of an era for global health data — and a defining crossroads. In Jan 2025, the DHS Program—the backbone of health & demographic data in 90+ countries—was terminated after US aid cuts of up to 84%. Our researchers & global collaborators reflect on it in a recent pre-print🧵

I just published a new #Rstats notebook to celebrate the release of {marginaleffects} 📦 0.26.0: Survival Analysis in R Please send me feedback, and don't forget to update the pkg for important bug fixes. Thanks to Robin Denz for his amazing work on this! marginaleffects.com/bonus/surviv...

REPORTER: Amazon will soon display a number next to the price of each product that shows how much the Trump tariffs are adding. Isn't that a perfect demonstration that it's the American consumer who is paying for these policies? LEAVITT: This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.

Here's an update on sociology (and some demography) journal editorial polices with regard to sharing preprints before submission and after acceptance. A big improvement from the last edition of this table. With one exception.

Las universidades públicas de Madrid irán a la huelga el 28 de abril contra la nueva ley de Ayuso www.infolibre.es/politica/uni...

Las universidades públicas de Madrid irán a la huelga el 28 de abril contra la nueva ley

La movilización responde a "la asfixia económica y el ataque frontal" que supone la Ley de Enseñanzas Superiores, Universidades y Ciencia (LESUC)

infolibre.es

Our new study in Molecular Psychiatry, in 1528 children and their parents (@ntrbiopsy.bsky.social) shows that indirect genetic effects—where parental genetics shape offspring traits via environmental influences (genetic nurture)—impact DNA methylation of children. doi.org/10.1038/s413... (1/5)

Intergenerational transmission of complex traits and the offspring methylome - Molecular Psychiatry

Molecular Psychiatry - Intergenerational transmission of complex traits and the offspring methylome

doi.org

🔎 Según @hcebolla.bsky.social del Dep. Población (CSIC): "El calor es malo para todos los niños, pero en hijos de madres migrantes el impacto es mayor. Esto parece deberse a la menor presencia de aire acondicionado en sus hogares, reflejando un efecto de la pobreza".

It's finally official and verified: The X user "Cremieux" is ID'd as a guy called Jordan Lasker. Lasker has been LARPing as an expert in genetics on X to promote racist pseudoscience. @sashagusevposts.bsky.social has been calling out his bullshit for ages

No, las niñas no son peores en ciencia. En el día de la mujer y la niña en la ciencia recuerdo este texto de 2018 en @piedrasdepapel.bsky.social sobre la interacción entre estereotipos, actitudes, expectativas, rendimiento y decisiones académicas y laborales: www.eldiario.es/piedrasdepap...

No, las niñas no son peores en ciencias

En España los chicos obtienen puntuaciones en ciencias superiores a las chicas, equivalentes a lo que se aprende en casi 3 meses de escolarización. Sin embargo, cuando se analiza el conjunto de países...

eldiario.es

“Smoke’s Enduring Legacy: Bridging Early-Life Smoking Exposures & Later-Life Epigenetic Age Acceleration,” by Ramirez, Povedano, Garcia & Lund, uses the HRS (1992-2016) & VBS (2016) to investigate the complex relationship btw smoking/exposure & epigenetic aging. read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

I have a 99.8% snapshot of all zipped files from CDC Vital Statistics Online as of today. Documentation pdfs too. The one missing file was cut off part way 🤷‍♂️ will try again from time to time. Anyone needs anything reach out

Ah, so our students can't work with DHS right now, as (US-funded) DHS program is paused and not accepting registrations of new users 😶

How population stratification makes environments look like genes. A short 🧵: