🆕 Can forecasting social science make experiments better? Today on VoxDev, Stefano DellaVigna (UC Berkeley) &Eva Vivalt (University of Toronto) discuss why research forecasts overestimate effects, and how to correct and reweight them: https://ow.ly/jfjL50ZpWlv

Can forecasting social science make experiments better?

Evidence from 100 Social Science Prediction Platform projects shows that research forecasts are too optimistic on average, but still predictive enough to improve study design when they are combined, shrunk, and weighted carefully.

ow.ly

Congratulations to Cabo Verde.

Eva Vivalt@evavivalt.bsky.social · 3w ago

If Spain wins the whole thing, then this World Cup they would have had 0 losses and only 1 tie: Cabo Verde.

How can better forecasts of research results improve power calculations? Presenting in just a few minutes!

In advance of listening to a presentation on FRI's forecasts of the economic effects of AI, I thought to update this tracker: evavivalt.com/writing/fri-...

If Spain wins the whole thing, then this World Cup they would have had 0 losses and only 1 tie: Cabo Verde.

Off to NBER SI, where I'll present on forecasting research results using data from the Social Science Prediction Platform. I'll be at sessions each of the three weeks! (Hey, if jobs are changing to be more based on interaction....) Please connect & catch up if you'll be around.

Basically: we are flying blind and just hoping everything works out, and not only works out, but goes as well as possible. I don't think people are taking that seriously enough yet. I signed this statement because it's important to build common knowledge.

I joined economists and AI researchers in signing “We Must Act Now: A Statement on AI’s Transformation of the Economy.” wemustactnow.ai

And here it is.

Ethan Mollick@emollick.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Well, this situation is confusing. www.anthropic.com/news/fable-m...

They're looking to block access to Fable - nevermind any more powerful future models - to non-Americans. archive.ph/vDzFQ

Interesting read. I genuinely worry all the time about Canada falling behind with AI. It seems so hard to turn around and the US absolutely has its own incentives.

Tom Chivers@tomchivers.bsky.social · 2mo ago

A bunch of European AI policy and engineering guys asked me to help out on this project and it's been fascinating and chilling: what happens to the EU if it doesn't step up on AI (in short, economic collapse and vassalage to the US/China) europe2031.ai long but I hope worth it!

If you use any of my work in your teaching, please let me know so I can cite it in my tenure package! Thanks! (We have a pretty late deadline here.)

Very happy to be presenting on forecasting research results, based on the Social Science Prediction Platform data, at the IDB's EconNet seminar series. There's a public Zoom which you can find by googling, in case it's of interest (trying to avoid bots).... It starts at 12 ET!

Pretty cool project!

Sebastian Ramirez-Ruiz@seramirezruiz.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Our paper is out in Nature Human Behaviour! @rsenninger.bsky.social and I asked a simple, underexplored, question: when governments write policy documents, whose knowledge do they actually cite? 👉 rdcu.be/fhngy 🔓 seramirezruiz.github.io/papers/ramir... DOI: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵👇

This is from the co-founder of Anthropic, interesting that he refers to public sources when he is also obviously privy to lots of internal sources that he cannot discuss. I assume he sees the same thing at Anthropic. importai.substack.com/p/import-ai-...

Try it out and see how it does for you. If you're willing to share its report on power, I'll give you free credits.

Eva Vivalt@evavivalt.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Did you ever wish you could get help with your power calculations? Now you can! earlyreview.ai will give you estimates of treatment effects based on your early project documents (e.g., pre-analysis plans, registered reports, grant proposals, etc.).

Did you ever wish you could get help with your power calculations? Now you can! earlyreview.ai will give you estimates of treatment effects based on your early project documents (e.g., pre-analysis plans, registered reports, grant proposals, etc.).

Just a note that with all this "LLMs accurately identifying users from text", some free text responses in allegedly de-identified survey data could in principle identify research respondents, if not today then soon.

Gah, apparently for the past two weeks all my past blog posts got overwritten by AI-generated summaries of them. Thanks for nothing, Claude.

Two thoughtful essays about the impact of LLMs on graduate education: ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma... economics.mit.edu/sites/defaul... From personal experience I think the self-control problem mentioned in the first essay is very real.

SCORE, a collaboration of 865 researchers, is now released as three papers in Nature, six preprints, and a lot of data (cos.io/score/). SCORE examined repeatability of findings from the social-behavioral sciences and tested whether human and automated methods could predict replicability.

SCORE | Center for Open Science

SCORE shows that there is no shortcut to producing credible research findings, and there is no single indicator of trustworthiness. Research progress depends on transparency, rigor, and establishing r...

cos.io

Also finding it hard to keep up with new research? I built something to fix this. SciLove — swipe through recent papers in your field. The feed learns from your saves. Also matches you with researchers saving your work back (opt-out if you prefer). www.scilove.app 3,000+ journals, updated daily

SciLove — Discover new research on the go

A personalized feed of the latest peer-reviewed papers — swipe to save, skip, and make connections in minutes a day.

scilove.app

Going to SXSW to talk about human and AI forecasting! If anyone wants to meet up, LMK.

Wow, potentially useful tool for those considering offers rn: www.econphdplacements.com

Where do PhD economists land?

Comprehensive placement data from 40 top economics departments spanning 30+ years. Explore 8,000+ placements by name, field, and department.

econphdplacements.com

I can't find a post about it to repost, but Claude Code is getting a "voice" mode. They've presumably made it for coders, but I'd just been vibe coding something much worse to fulfill this kind of function, which could be a game-changer for almost blind people. 1/2

Since people are still applying to this, I'll leave it open but start to review applications (so early is better, but if you haven't applied yet you still can).

Eva Vivalt@evavivalt.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I'm hiring pre-docs interested in applied microeconomics, especially with AI. Check out the link and apply! Deadline for the first round of review is tomorrow, Feb. 24. evavivalt.com/2026/02/pre-...

I'm hiring pre-docs interested in applied microeconomics, especially with AI. Check out the link and apply! Deadline for the first round of review is tomorrow, Feb. 24. evavivalt.com/2026/02/pre-...

Adding a link to the tool, so you can try it out yourself: earlyreview.ai

EarlyReview

Verification for pre-analysis plans and registered reports

earlyreview.ai

Eva Vivalt@evavivalt.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Where were plans most likely to fail? Here is a summary: evavivalt.com/2026/02/a-no... 5/

I tested out EarlyReview on a random set of pre-analysis plans posted to the AEA RCT Registry. All received comments. Hardly any passed all the checks. 1/

I'm looking for a few pre-analysis plans / registered reports to highlight as examples on EarlyReview (with permission). If interested, DM me. I can provide free credits!