How do people feel about the term "data-driven research"? I hear it a lot, and - as an epidemiologist - it makes me cringe. If your research is exploratory, then you can reasonably adopt a "data-driven" approach. But for inferential research, I believe your analysis should by theory-driven.

Fantastic use of AI.

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

Today we launch the first stable release of RegCheck: v1.0.0. RegCheck makes it easier and quicker to compare study registrations to published papers for consistency - something we know is important in principle, but rarely done in practice. A 🧵 on what's new: regcheck.app

Still have a hard time wrapping my head around development economists continuing to pay money to the guy who has done probably more damage to international development than anyone else this century

Joshua Goodman@joshua-goodman.com · last mo.

I'm really disappointed that folks are still on X.

The population of Curacao is smaller than the population of Kingston Upon Thames. (Though tbf Kingston has given us Declan Rice and Luke Shaw...)

We've launched In Development! It is aiming to be the New Yorker for global development. We want to promote discourse on development without dogma - stories doing deep-dives into pressing development issues, backed up by evidence, argument, and experience. Subscribe here: indevelopmentmag.com

I believe in the year 2026 that schools could offer their term/inset dates as calendar files and not PDFs on the website.

Why don't we ask the EU to put biometric registration terminals in the departure areas of UK aiports?

GDS's big refresh of www.data.gov.uk is now live "The home of UK public data to inform decisions and build services" #govtech #datasharing #opendata -adjacent

As aid budgets gets slashed & the US withdraws from global institutions, this is an excellent opportunity to finally bring in a non-American leader for WFP (and please stop with the plastic press releases...)

My experience exactly. LLMs do not do data cleaning or organisation reliably. And it is troubling that they do not know they cannot do this. So far the only use I have found for LLMs is vibe coding. Which is fine if you don't care about the security of your code.

Rory Johnston@roryjohnston.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Wow, that LLM just took care of that really messy data cleaning exercise in a few minutes that would have taken me a few hours of manual data grubbing. ... ... ... oh, it's all wrong.

I suspect we are all going to need to read up on Akrotiri and Dhekelia - an example of a military base on an island (Cyprus) for which the military power (UK) has sovereignty. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrotir... www.cvce.eu/content/publ...

Would like to read analysis of: a. what would defence of the Arctic, including Greenland, look like? How much would it cost? b. what exactly are the valuable economic assets in Greenland? c. which businesses in the UK and EU countries would be adversely affected by an increase in US tarrifs?

Joan Robinson "Beggar-My-Neighbour Remedies for Unemployment" 1937 ia802806.us.archive.org/16/items/ess... (p170-184)

Gotta love the Danes

Dr Paul Dorfman @drpauldorfman.bsky.social · 7mo ago

FCDO's internal “best buy” documents identify which interventions deliver the greatest impact—but aren't publicly available. Euan Ritchie makes the case for publishing them to support partners and improve systems: https://go.cgdev.org/4q8qsa6

FCDO’s Best Buys Deserve a Larger Audience

FCDO has produced several sectoral documents specifying which types of interventions are likely to be most cost-effective based on a review of evidence— known as “best buys.” These documents—while imp...

cgdev.org

Sweden is the most development-friendly country for the third year running.

Center for Global Development@cgdev.org · 8mo ago

With shrinking aid budgets, attention is shifting to how rich countries support development beyond aid. 🌟 Explore CGD’s Commitment to Development Index to see how the richest nations rank, how they affect the poorest, and where they must step up ⬇️🧵 https://go.cgdev.org/49ZJoD5

31 years ago I set up the first UK government website to publish the budget online - the first country to do so. I took an ASCII version of the documents from the typesetters, and worked overnight to put in HTML tags by hand. I didn't FTP it to the server until the Chancellor sat down.

I am delighted to share that Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee will join our Department of Economics @econ.uzh.ch at the University of Zurich on July 1, 2026, as Lemann Foundation Professors of Economics. 🧵 1/7

Haha. Academia.edu account duly cancelled.

Oh. The stochastic parrot does not boost productivity. www.theregister.com/2025/09/04/m...

M365 Copilot fails to up productivity in UK government trial

: AI tech shows promise writing emails or summarizing meetings. Don't bother with anything more complex

theregister.com

As a former resident of wonk-land, this made me snort www.economist.com/britain/2025...

I would happily buy a smart speaker that responds to voice commands to play music or the radio, and to control lights and other home automation, but which does not make recordings nor send data to a tech company. Why does this not exist? Is there not a big enough market for it?

The evidence in favour of unconditional cash transfers continues to mount.

University of Oxford@ox.ac.uk · 12mo ago

NEW: A new study by @oxfordcsae.bsky.social reveals that giving unconditional cash transfers to pregnant women in rural Kenya significantly reduces infant and child mortality. Read more ⬇️ www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-08...

This does not signal a high degree of tech literacy among UK civil servants (at least, not the ones in DEFRA responsible for water). It might have been a good idea to check this with DSIT. www.gov.uk/government/n...

Lots of people seem to want to produce content using AI, but nobody seems to want to consume content produced by AI.

Giving cash has low overheads and it demonstrably works. (Though I don't think that evidence is driving decisions about foreign assistance right now.).

NPR@npr.org · 12mo ago

This man in Mozambique is one of many who've received a cash sum with no strings attached. The Trump administration has criticized and curtailed the practice. Advocates are pushing back with evidence.

Has anyone written (or read) anything that explains why the Government does not offer a simple age verification service? For example, I log in to a gov.uk verification service, verify who I am, get a token on my device, and use that token to verify that I am over 18 for any site that needs to know.

Economists reading news explanations that the deduction of imports from GDP is a "statistical quirk"

kermit the frog is sitting at a desk with his feet up holding a cell phone

ALT: kermit the frog is sitting at a desk with his feet up holding a cell phone

media.tenor.com

Happy Birthday, Rosalind Franklin. She captured an X-ray diffraction image of DNA and stated that a helical structure was probable. Watson and Crick then created a detailed model based on her results. They initially received credit for the discovery and were awarded the Nobel Prize after her death.🧪

Assuming these screenshots are genuine then Twitter's AI bot (Grok) is spewing anti-semitism on Twitter. There is a case for Ofcom to prevent Twitter from being accessed in the UK. It is ludicrous that UK public institutions, including the Government and the BBC, are still posting on Twitter.

Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · last yr.

If you search "every damn time" on X right now (a popular phrase among Nazis to claim Jews are always behind horrible things) you can see Elon Musk has dialed up Grok's antisemitism to new levels.