AnthonyHigney
@anthonyhigney.bsky.social
Economist at Glasgow University. Environmental economics and meta-research. https://anthonychigney.github.io/home/
Birdsong helps us feel calmer and more restored, but traffic noise may be drowning out those benefits. 🐦 Our latest research found that even low levels of traffic noise can undermine the wellbeing gains people get from listening to nature's sounds. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Mood-boosting benefits of birdsong drowned out by traffic noise, study finds
Even low levels of traffic noise can negate the benefits of listening to natural sounds, researchers say
theguardian.com
New paper: Discrete Choice Experiments are often used to value non-market goods. We show that auditory information, (birdsong), alongside standard text info, can make a big difference in how much people value such goods, in this case bird habitats. Link here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
This 1952 memo from the Pentagon UFO files is superb There is no point preparing for aliens ‘because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.’ 🤣 www.war.gov/medialink/uf...
I also signed this letter
Aveek Bhattacharya@aveek18.bsky.social · 7mo agoThe UK is terrifyingly ignorant when it comes to the problem of lead exposure. I've described it as a "don't ask, don't tell strategy". So it's great to have got politicians, scientists, policy researchers and to endorse the call for a national child screening program www.ft.com/content/ee60...
I should say: cutting US funding for Gavi is a tragically misguided decision that can and should be reversed.
Charles Kenny@charlesjkenny.bsky.social · last yr.Vaccines have saved more than 150,000,000 lives over the past 50 years. Over the past quarter century, Gavi has helped lead the global effort to extend vaccination to everyone. This is a simply tragically misguided decision. www.who.int/news/item/24... www.politico.com/news/2025/06...
🚗 Noise pollution also drowns out the sounds of nature🚐 Our research shows that traffic noise reduces the calming, restorative power of birdsong 🐤 w/ @konraduebel.bsky.social, @simon-butler.bsky.social, @anthonyhigney.bsky.social, Nick Hanley & Eleanor Ratcliffe 👉 osf.io/preprints/os...
BPS Environmental Psychology Section@bpsenvpsych.bsky.social · last yr.Environmental psychology knows that noise pollution is NOT silent killer - it is a loud, roaring, constant, annoying stressor that causes physiological stress & sleep disturbance www.theguardian.com/environment/...
🚨 Thrilled to announce 4th Annual SGPE Summer School 🎓 One-day masterclass on causal inference 📚 Topics: SCM, matrix completion, partial ID 🗓️ 5 June | 📍Stirling, UK | 💻 Dr Anthony Higney (Glasgow) 🎟️ £50 PhDs / £100 staff Lunch & dinner included! Sign up:bit.ly/SGPE2025SS All welcome!
www.thehindu.com/news/nationa...
90% of paint samples tested contain lead above permissible limits in India: Study
90% of 51 paints used to paint houses in India contain lead above govt's permissible limit of 90 ppm. 76.4% of these paints contained lead more than 111 times the limit. Lead poisoning in children is ...
thehindu.com
James Webb Satellite took a fantastic shot of the Planet Saturn with it's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). This is just an Amazing shot that shows the planet and the rings in brilliant detail.
Paper finds heat pump adoption in UK led to 70% less carbon usage and 40% less energy. www.nber.org/202502/diges...
My favourite Minoan fresco from Akrotiri, showing boats arriving to the harbour. A detail. #FrescoFriday
Workshopping here: if an estimate contains information about an ex-ante unobserved treatment then it has some degree of external validity for that treatment.
We should at a minimum do what Nature does, in which the referee comments and author responses are published along with the paper. Allows the paper itself to be an authoritative artifact while lifting the curtain on the debate that led its creation. (quoting @dholtz.bsky.social ) 4/
Some hope for first gens after all! Fabulous new study notes: "academics from poorer backgrounds introduce more novel scientific concepts but are less likely to receive recognition." This is good, not bad, news. Our different view on life is our super power to make change! www.nber.org/papers/w33289
Climbing the Ivory Tower: How Socio-Economic Background Shapes Academia
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
nber.org
According to some of the records in the archive, Santa Claus himself sat in Parliament in the 15th century... But was he really in Westminster when he should have been at the North Pole? #Christmas Below, Dr Hannes Kleineke explores the mystery of 'Nicholas Christmas'
Medieval MP of the Month: Santa Claus in Parliament - The History of Parliament
Here's a seasonal offering from Hannes Kleineke of the House of Commons 1422-1504 Section for our Medieval MP of Month...
buff.ly
Take a look at artifact. This inscription is ostensibly part of a large stele which has evidently been broken into fragments and we are seeing one (middle) section. All the edges are broken and unfinished. Here is the problem - if this was a broken stele, some letters would be fragmentary.
Reading this paper now. Interesting but I don't quite agree with his take on "true" p-values. Will post about it next week. arxiv.org/abs/1603.07532
This person is using my study/chart in a misleading way on twitter. There is a correlation here between the SE and effect size that is picked up by pub bias methods. Partly this is due to underlying study characteristics. Adjust for this and we find there is pub bias, but lead does cause crime.
I haven't fully read this piece by @jacklandry.bsky.social yet but according to his meta-analysis of only the recent spat of GI pilots, the income elasticity of labor supply on the intensive margin is...0.16. Which is broadly consistent with the literature! jainfamilyinstitute.org/guaranteed-i...
Guaranteed Income In The Wild: Summarizing Evidence From Pilot Studies and Implications for Policy - Jain Family Institute
How to make sense of competing claims about guaranteed income?
jainfamilyinstitute.org
This fearless science sleuth risked her career to expose publication fraud Anna Abalkina @abalkina.bsky.social is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2024. Holly Else reports at Nature. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
This fearless science sleuth risked her career to expose publication fraud
Anna Abalkina is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2024.
nature.com
Funding available to do a PhD on statistical methods for assessing the integrity of RCTs, based in Aberdeen, with Alison Avenell, myself, Graeme MacLennan and Mark Bolland. Competitive process, funded by MRC Trials Methodology Research Partnership: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Investigating statistical methods to assess the conduct and integrity of clinical trials at University of Aberdeen on FindAPhD.com
PhD Project - Investigating statistical methods to assess the conduct and integrity of clinical trials at University of Aberdeen , listed on FindAPhD.com
findaphd.com
I have started writing about papers as I read them to help remember them, but in case others are interested I am also putting them on my site. First one is a working paper criticising publication bias detection. I think their critique is not quite right. anthonychigney.github.io/home/blog/Tr...
How Much Should We Trust Publication Bias Detection Techniques?
Publication bias occurs when the distribution of observed effects differs from the distribution of all such effects. Usually, this means there is some filter based on the magnitude or direction of the...
anthonychigney.github.io
My default explanation for sudden changes in a time series is change in measurement. So glad to see another example, sent to me by a colleague who shares my cynicism. Short, clear explanation of Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry. Which is important to the story.
Maybe it's just YOUR testosterone that's low
How the measurement tools have led us to falsely believe our T is low
eryney.substack.com
Around 1800 BCE, a businesswoman named Taram-Kubi received 20 shekels of fine gold, presumably as payment for textiles she wove. She lived in Assur, capital of the Assyrian empire, and sent her textiles to far-flung Anatolia for her husband to sell them cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/28...
We've just made it much easier to reuse the data on Our World in Data. Here is an overview of our new features: enhanced data downloads and the Chart Data API. ourworldindata.org/easier-to-re...
We've made it much easier to reuse our data
An overview of our new features: enhanced data downloads and the Chart Data API.
ourworldindata.org
The National Milk Scheme led to large increases in Milk consumption (Hollingsworth, 1951). Much lower now.
Wow - @flintdibble.bsky.social has collected loads of archaeology starter packs here in this thread. Lots of fantastic people doing brilliant research and engagement here in the cerulean ether. Thank you Flint!
Flint Dibble@flintdibble.bsky.social · 2y agoThis thread 🧵 collects all the #archaeology 🏺 starter packs Share far & wide. We could all use a little more archaeology in our lives @cjfrieman.bsky.social made the OG Archaeology and heritage list with first wave Twitter refugee scholars & orgs. Go follow Catherine now! bsky.app/starter-pack...
Bit of trivia: my Auntie (furthest left) is in possibly the first ever image uploaded to the Web. petapixel.com/2012/07/10/t...
This is the First Photo Ever Uploaded to the Web
What you see here is the first image ever uploaded to the World Wide Web. It's a graphic featuring a promo shot for comedy band Les Horribles Cernettes,
petapixel.com
![4-panel comic. (1) [Person 1 with ponytail flanked by person with short hair and another person speaking into microphone at podium] PERSON 1: In the early 2010s, researchers found that many major scientific results couldn’t be reproduced. (2) PERSON 1: Over a decade into the replication crisis, we wanted to see if today’s studies have become more robust. (3) PERSON 1: Unfortunately, our replication analysis has found exactly the same problems that those 2010s researchers did. (4) [newspaper with image of speakers from previous panels] Headline: Replication Crisis Solved](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreibwuu57ullc7vacjyno6c5z3gtyakkg2qub6cn3dbbjdpn2kaowmi)
