I sit at the interface

I met Ann Widdicombe when I was an undergraduate at LSE maybe in 2002. She gave a lecture, I think on the topic of "Europe", and for some reason only four people turned up. She approached it no differently to a hundred people and just gave more time for questions

If you try to describe research in plain English with very short sentences and only the most basic words, you can make it more difficult to understand. The reader is probably an interested and intelligent but not expert, rather than a toddler or an alien who doesn't understand terms like "the NHS"

Pop this on 1.5 speed and you can spend 38 minutes listening to me talking about natural experiments youtu.be/3pxudE0GNAo?...

What is a natural experiment? How can we use them to evaluate health interventions and policies?

YouTube video by NIHR Research Support Service (RSS)

youtu.be

The idea that everyone is a leader is completely mad

If events happen at random, the time until the first event follows a geometric distribution. This an be understood intuitively by simulating random events with a fixed probability across a population (R code below) #RStats

"Our primary outcome was XXX scale. Our secondary outcome/sensitivity analysis was a different version of the same scale (eg. dichotomised if the primary outcome is continuous, or vice versa" <- please don't do this!

Reform’s plan to effectively scrap Bradford’s Clean Air Zone is premature and reckless. Evidence shows the CAZ has improved air quality and cut GP appointments for breathing issues by 600 per month. Scrapping it now would be a public health mistake our children's generation will pay for.

I'm doing a bit of light p-hacking in preparation for an NIHR seminar on natural experiments - www.nihr.ac.uk/news/nihr-an... - I asked chatGPT if it could help me do more thorough p-hacking:

TIL that the NHS Health Research Authority approves **3500** research studies per year! www.hra.nhs.uk/about-us/wha... Thank you HRA

There are loads of well known assumptions, eg. difference in differences assumes parallel trends, instrumental variables assume there's no other causal paths. These assumptions aren't "violated", they're just more or less valid, or perhaps violated to greater or lesser degrees.

We looked at data on social media and mental health among 12-15-year-olds using data from Born In Bradford. I wrote a blog reflecting on the correlation between social media use and mental health, and our plans for The IRL Trial later this year. www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-o...

From observation to intervention: why the social media causality debate is distracting us from more policy-focused research

Born in Bradford participants spend hours each day on social media - just like teenagers everywhere - and the heaviest users tend to be less happy. Scientists have focused on the debate about correlat...

linkedin.com

Imagine a world where you had more time than ideas

Both per capita and per unit area-- though I believe the standard per area illustration is that it has 2 popes per square kilometre.

Do you ever come across research studies that develop or somehow validate a survey questionnaire, but don't include the actual questions? What's that about?

If you'd like to hear about our planned trial of social media limitations among young people ("The IRL Trial"), please feel free to sign up for one of our webinars - we have one specifically for researchers, and one for stakeholders working in policy / services, etc: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

#mentalhealth #adolescentwellbeing #trials | Born In Bradford

📢 We're hosting two webinars to introduce the IRL Trial — the world-first study exploring the impact of reduced social media on young people. Choose the right session for you: 1️⃣ Researchers and ...

linkedin.com

Nothing strengthens your argument like deleting half of it to meet the word limit

@newsfromgoogle.bsky.social Any chance you could make table borders a bit fiddlier in Google Docs? I like a challenge

2026 A.D. All the internet is occupied by AI. All? No! … One small indomitable footnote still holds out against the bots: "Message for Clarion WE KNOW YOUR LISTINING. The station has IP detection software"

If two people make a yes/no decision (eg. should a student pass their viva), they'll sometimes agree even if their decisions are random. If the event is rare or very common, they'll usually agree. Cohen's kappa accounts for random agreement. 0 = random; +1/-1 = complete agreement.

We're recruiting two research assistants to help us deliver "The IRL Trial" - a world-first randomised trial of social media limitations among 12-15 year-olds, and the effect on mental health. You'd be part of the Born In Bradford family. For more info and to apply: www.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jo...

Are you like me - do you love changing the fonts on your #rstats plots, but tire of fiddling around with extrafonts? Just load "ragg" and use the agg device - you can set the font in par (eg. `par(family = 'Verdana')` and you have direct access to system fonts! Thank me later.

Iain M Banks on avoiding self-destruction

Pockets of real deprivation

The hype around LLMs seems to be "yes the outputs aren't good and the costs and harms outweigh the benefits, but imagine if this or a different technology was actually useful"

New preprint 🥳 The city of Leipzig conducts large-scale surveys of adolescents. In 2023, the gender gap in life satisfaction has significantly widened, with girls declining more steeply than boys. What's up with that?> (work with @rmcelreath.bsky.social and @gregork.bsky.social)

Back on social media for a day and I already feel inadequate.

Journals - I'm totally up for doing peer reviews - sometimes I enjoy it! But it really is up to you whether you publish something