New paper! Despite qualitative researchers claiming that generalizability is not a goal, their published work does indeed contain generalizable claims. We document this and provide recommendations for how all researchers can better calibrate their generalizability claims. doi.org/10.1177/2515...

Extremely impressive field experiment by @nmalhotra.bsky.social et al. had few effects on election attitudes among conservatives in TX despite being "exposed to an average of 20 online videos, 18.5 cable TV videos, 23.9 display ads, 3 text messages, and 3 postcards" www.science.org/doi/full/10....

Back from my summer break with a piece for @transformernews.ai on why the impact of persuasive AI's will be smaller in the real world than some think because (1) it is hard to reach people and get their attention… buff.ly/TvWgFSH

AI is a worryingly-good persuader. But don’t panic, yet

AI systems are able to persuade people, but turning that ability into meaningful real-world influence may be harder

transformernews.ai

After six years as Head of the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, Professor Liam Delaney is handing over the role to Professor Alex Gillespie. We're grateful to Liam for his leadership and delighted to welcome Alex as our new Head of Department. Learn more 👇️

Professor Alex Gillespie appointed Head of PBS | LSE

Professor Alex Gillespie has been appointed Head of LSE’s Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, succeeding Professor Liam Delaney.

lse.ac.uk

Psychological Science special issue call 📣 Ever had your research denigrated bc it's "only descriptive", "what's the mechanism though?" and "but what are the theoretical implications?" Now has come your time to shine. Send your best descriptive work! www.psychologicalscience.org/publications...

As promised, we now share some details why it took 32 months to get this Matters Arising published, and, since many asked, share some comments on the reply to our critique. All details can be found in this small FAQ vincentholst.github.io/the_curious_.... Below is a summary 🧵

vincentholst.bsky.social@vincentholst.bsky.social · 2mo ago

In 2023, @nature.com published 'Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time', receiving world-wide media attention. Our Matters Arising, published after a 32 month delay (more on that soon), shows that the reported decline can largely be attributed to dataset artefacts. 🧵

There are still a few days to apply to work with me and @malte.the100.ci as a PhD or postdoc on the development and evaluation of RegCheck. Help us research whether RegCheck works in practice in helping to reduce preregistration-paper discrepancies. Apply below!

Jamie Cummins@jamiecummins.bsky.social · 3mo ago

WE ARE HIRING! Come work with us (me + @malte.the100.ci) on developing and validating RegCheck. PhD or postdoc applications welcome. Folk with backgrounds in meta-science, psychology, (pre)clinical trials, and/or economics are especially invited to apply. jobs.unibe.ch/job-vacancie...

New paper out now 🥳 When psychologists discuss generalisability, they often refer to vague notions of representativeness. We provide an accessible intro to the total survey error framework as a tool to reason about this more rigorously. w @taymalsalti.bsky.social @ruben.the100.ci >

Important @benmtappin.bsky.social on the need to carefully consider the relevant counterfactual when evaluating AI chatbots (also applies to social media!) benmtappin.substack.com/p/are-ai-cha...

Why we should rethink causal mediation, and what to do instead? Come to hear the answer from Vanessa Didelez at the next CIIG seminar! The seminar will be hybrid. If you are in London, come join us in person at UCL! Otherwise, you can join on Zoom as usual. Registration links in comment below.

Really helpful framework for thinking about the utility of survey experiments for practitioners by @benmtappin.bsky.social 👇 www.benmtappin.com/publication/...

Thinking clearly about the value of survey pretesting for practitioners | Ben Tappin

A research note in which I articulate a simple framework to try and facilitate clearer thinking about the value of survey pretesting for practitioners.

benmtappin.com

How do you align AI in a world of plural, conflicting, and evolving human values? A starting point is human society itself. @sydneylevine.bsky.social and I are hiring a postdoc at NYU to combine insights from cultural evolution, computational moral cognition, and AI safety. Please share widely!1/

I wonder how these rates of sycophancy (and their effects) compare against realistic counterfactuals like talking with one’s close friends or spouse.

Jay Van Bavel, PhD@jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 7mo ago

A new paper in Science measured the prevalence of social sycophancy across 11 leading large language models. The model’s responses were nearly 50% more sycophantic than humans’, even when users engaged in unethical, illegal, or harmful behaviors. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

📣 New job at Oxford's Centre for Advanced Social Science Methods (CASSM)! 📣 The Departments of Politics & IR (DPIR) and Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI) are hiring an Associate Professor of Causal and Experimental Methods. Come work with me and amazing Oxford peeps! Deadline NOON April 27th.

The synth backing track takes the vibe to an unexpected place 🥲

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛@rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

Closing out the teaching semester this week with one of my favourite topics. Sadly its pedagogy was forever and unforgivably mar'd by the truly worst naming convention of all time...

Yes. Then if you push on this the claim becomes “okay it may not cause but it’s still useful because it predicts”. But then it’s like if predictive accuracy was your goal the design and analysis should be different e.g., CV + more predictors. I’ve been fully Westfall & Yarkoni-pilled on this point.

Julia M. Rohrer@dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 7mo ago

Psychology has a whole cottage industry in which people come up with some construct that is essentially "attitudes/beliefs/expectations/feelings about X", and then the central claim is that this construct is a super important determinant of future X outcomes.>

Sydney named its socio-economic divide the "latte line" and has been arguing about who drew it for 20 years. London has the same divide and calls it "character." I built a machine learning model to do the impolite thing: draw it and blame someone. open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

London's Divide Was Called Character. It Was Actually Policy.

I built a machine learning model to find London's divide and you can enter your postcode to see which side you're on. We've been blaming the wrong people for it.

open.substack.com

someone at the pentagon frantically typing “Claude, open the strait of Hormuz for me, quickest possible strategy, make no mistakes.”

The character of Per’s posts increasingly remind me of when an LLM talks to itself (not derogatory)

Per Engzell@pengzell.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Bananas are botanically a berry but can't have a latin ending - Okay, dictator

The idea of the need for a control group may have been radical at the time, but trust me it's now generally accepted. This is not some fringe believe by methodological hardliners; it's established practice. www.clinicaltrialsabundance.blog/p/clinical-t...

Clinical trial reforms that once seemed radical

How randomized controlled trials, preregistration, and results reporting became standard practice.

clinicaltrialsabundance.blog

New newspaper headline for your Intro to Causal Inference lecture just dropped

Planning my next conversation starter

I too was very glad to see this! But I feel like the whole episode bodes badly for the future. It’s not sustainable to rely on the CEO of a private company to act against their financial self-interest in order to curtail high-risk AI deployment (here mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons).

🔔 “How real is the LLM threat to online research in academia?” will be live today. Experts from Microsoft Research, MIT / Stanford, Max Planck Institute, and Prolific discuss the threat of agentic AI to online research, and how to protect against it. Link to join live below. #AcademicSky #Research

Reposting for visibility. Many researchers still appear oblivious to this fact, which is terrifying! It should be included in every experiment design 101.

Julia M. Rohrer@dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 8mo ago

Per protocol analysis strikes again! Folks, if you randomize but then don‘t analyze some of the people who got randomized (maybe because they didn’t adhere to instructions, maybe because they dropped out), randomization will no longer do all the heavy causal inference lifting.

When I pitch academics on my paper on nulls one common and understandable reaction is "but they're probably noisy and thus uninformative nulls." This is true, but it misses the key realization that WE PUBLISH THE RESULT WHEN THE NOISY TEST IS P<0.05.

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.