Remember: whether a claim is causal or descriptive is a property of your *question* (and implied theory), not your *analysis*

Ryan Enos@ryanenos.bsky.social · 7h ago

Don't posit a theory that is only interesting because it implies X causes variation in Y, test for a statistical relationship between X and Y, but then say you are not interpreting causally. Of course you are interpreting it causally. That was the whole point of what you just did.

Here's a simple idea for seeing your way through the current 'AI in academic papers' panic. If you are the author on a paper, you're not claiming you did everything in the paper yourself (whatever that could even mean), you're taking responsibility for everything claimed in the paper yourself.

Much of America's wealth and prosperity is down to its status as the premier destination for global talent. The Trump administration is destroying American prosperity for all of us, regardless of our politics.

Michael Clemens@mclem.org · 3d ago

The United States is losing one of its most precious assets: its onetime status as the top destination for global talent. Current politicians are poisoning that well. The cost, shared by Conservative and Liberal Americans, will be incalculable and permanent.

Yes tho we should have been doing this for the last 50 years

Clément Canonne@ccanonne.github.io · 4d ago

🧵To seniors: - move away from bean-counting (easy, right?). E.g., when evaluating CVs or grants or applicants, ask for the top 3 pubs, with a paragraph explaining why these are important. Hiring on a CV of 50 pubs was always sort of meaningless, now it's become meaningless-er (!) and gameable. 2/

I haven't watched many Christopher Nolan films but I want to be part of the zeitgeist so here is my take: How many genre-defining films has he made? I can think of just two: The Dark Knight in the "Superhero" genre The Prestige in the "Magic" genre (this is not a big genre)

The Winning Plot in my latest APSR pub! Thank you very much to those who submitted but got rejected. I got in with 6 peer reviews, & am so honored in that, unlike the rest of the field, I’m given very little time to practice, bc I’m focused on many other things. It’s called TALENT, and I have it.

I have read this Response to my Comment and have written a Rejoinder, showing three things: 1. The multiverse is many correlated tests. 2. The randomization inference is wrong. 3. The trichotomous moderator reaffirms my point. I also enumerate 7 misleading claims, now in print in the APSR.

Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR@cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · last wk.

#OpenAccess from @apsrjournal.bsky.social - Still Instrumentally Inclusive - https://cup.org/4bhrhsp "Do individuals in Western democracies shift their views on LGBT+ inclusion when exposed to opposition from Muslim out-groups?" - @turnbulldugarte.com & @bertous.bsky.social #FirstView

Yes, the relative silence of UK university leadership amidst what can only be described as a (self-destructive) assault on the sector by this government is quite astounding. Good on Larry for speaking out with clarity and force.

Ben Ansell@benansell.bsky.social · 4d ago

Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.

If I could encourage one thing in my fellow academics, it’s this: resist the temptation to “stop when things look good.” You don’t know the answer to your research question, that’s presumably why you do research. Be radically skeptical of your work, your tools, and yourself.

This guy is widely hated and yet everyone in media and political leadership keeps propping him up and humiliating themselves by praising him. It's so incredibly embarrassing for so many people.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 7d ago

CNN: "The president's overall approval rating now stands at just 34%. That matches his career low following the January 6 insurrection."

Just an enormous difference in Russian support for the war when comparing direct question estimates with experiments from list experiments. Also, peep those CIs! sensitivity bias has to be HUGE (which it apparently is in this case) to be detected with Direct - List

Georgy Tarasenko@tarasenkogeorgy.bsky.social · last wk.

Every wave after that splits. Direct support holds at ~75%. Indirect support drops to 44–58%. The gap runs from 16 to 30 percentage points.

🔔🔔 Russian polls have shown ~75% support for the war in Ukraine since February 2022, essentially flat. New working paper with Kirill Chmel and @nikitasavin.bsky.social shows that number is stable partly because it stopped measuring what people actually think. 🧵 ssrn.com/abstract=711...

This is a brilliant paper using a recentered instrument and I wish it were in a top polisci journal where it belongs. Econ doing this better than us right now, sad to say.

Anton Strezhnev@astrezh.bsky.social · last wk.

Our paper on the electoral benefits of Trump's ag payments is out now at the Journal of Public Economics. authors.elsevier.com/c/1nWEVAlwA2... tl;dr - We use the natural experiment from 2019's massive increase in spending to compare 2020 Trump vote in over-compensated vs. under-compensated counties.

Our paper on the electoral benefits of Trump's ag payments is out now at the Journal of Public Economics. authors.elsevier.com/c/1nWEVAlwA2... tl;dr - We use the natural experiment from 2019's massive increase in spending to compare 2020 Trump vote in over-compensated vs. under-compensated counties.

This is my sleeper issue for 2028. This industry is totally out of control

Catherina Gioino@catgioino.bsky.social · last wk.

I wrote about how much Americans wagered on sports betting in 2025 and how it’s more than they spent on movies, art, museums and music combined. Read my article @fortunemagazine.bsky.social fortune.com/2026/07/26/g...

Happy to recommend that people read this, but would strongly encourage that reading to take place in conjunction with my original comment. A number of claims in this now published response are outright false or misleading, and a careful reading of the two in parallel will make that very clear.

Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR@cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · last wk.

#OpenAccess from @apsrjournal.bsky.social - Still Instrumentally Inclusive - https://cup.org/4bhrhsp "Do individuals in Western democracies shift their views on LGBT+ inclusion when exposed to opposition from Muslim out-groups?" - @turnbulldugarte.com & @bertous.bsky.social #FirstView

The US Administration just restricted the duration of student visas. What's the problem? Now political appointees have full discretion to block most international students from staying after graduation. They've promised to use their new power to do just that. My new @piie.com post explains—>

A new US rule to restrict student visas will hurt the US economy

The Trump administration issued a final rule in July that gives it discretion to cut short the course of study of most international students at US universities. It will likely use this new power to b...

piie.com

Honestly I find it embarrassing for Britain's democracy that a novelty joke candidate has a serious chance of winning a critical by-election. The honorable thing would be for Farage to simply bow out.

Between 1960 and his death the man didn't make a non-classic. Wouldn't know how to begin to rank them. Imagine having a period in your career as good as his Dr Strangelove to Eyes Wide Shut arc.

Brendel@brendelbored.bsky.social · last wk.

It’s Stanley Kubrick’s birthday today, what is YOUR favorite Kubrick classic? 🎥

Be very skeptical of anyone ostensibly giving you things for free: - AI influencers (including academics) - Social media companies monetising your attention - AI companies and drug dealers giving you a “first taste is free” Another way the attention economy is how it has degraded social trust.

State of the world: influencers whose primary expertise is having a lot of followers seemingly being paid/compensated by OpenAI to pay LinkedIn to tell us how awesome OpenAI is. Social media = brain rot.

We want to hire a new, more techy AI person in the lab. Think mechanistic interpretability, fine tuning, large-scale evals that kind of thing. If you're interested and have Qs, lmk! interfolio.com/181820

We have re-opened our search for a 3-year AI-research postdoc at NYU's Center for Social Media, AI, and Politics!! The position starts this **September 1st** (or as soon as possible thereafter) and is in person at NYU. If necessary, we will also consider a 1/1/27 start. 1/3

A lot of ppl aren't aware that the Odyssey is short. The ancient Greeks were addicted to their phones and social media and had zero attention span, so Homer and contemporaries had to keep things moving

Audrey Truschke@audreytruschke.bsky.social · 2w ago

I have spent the last 3 days binge-reading Emily Wilson's Odyssey. After two decades with my mind occupied by the Indian epics, I have a lot of reactions (including, damn, the Odyssey is short). I'm enamored with the translation though.

Pure full professor energy

Paul Hünermund@p-hunermund.com · 2w ago

They didn't even bother to capitalize or punctuate 😱

i, too, have read the Odyssey

Feels unfortunate for humanity that we made the AI breakthrough before the limitless carbon-free energy breakthrough

Imagine being this good at *anything* at all

Juan Diego Flórez - Festival de Salzburgo 2015 (Parte final del concierto)

YouTube video by JP Toledo

youtube.com

This is very depressing. 1. It is not the case that "[the academy] pretend[s] that the political views of half the country are illegitimate." 2. Public funding of higher ed should not depend on professors saying things the public likes to hear. 3. All science is normative, including Westwood's.