📄 New working paper out: osf.io/preprints/so... We (@thiloalbers.bsky.social @felixkersting.bsky.social and Fabian Kosse) try to understand why some citizens who are objectively well off still feel left behind, and why this matters for populist attitudes.

Frankly, I don’t think frontier models should be used for research at all. Must be an “archivable” model (open weight or open source) that will be available indefinitely for reanalysis.

This by @jamesrdennison.bsky.social and @andrewpgeddes.bsky.social looks brilliant - and very timely! global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Surveys like this always alarm people Fortunately, recent research from cognitive psychology shows that the reason people are so wildly wrong when estimating the size of minority groups is largely NOT because of prejudice — but rather how humans think about unknown proportions of any kind

Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · last wk.

This actually explains something about how people talk about the Jewish community.

Boy this was a long road, but glad it's finally out! @dgrand.bsky.social @robbwiller.bsky.social @arechar.bsky.social (along with Michael N. Stagnaro, James N. Druckman, not tagable)

Nature Human Behaviour@nathumbehav.nature.com · last mo.

Representativeness and response validity across nine opt-in online samples

Someone compiled all of the Calvin and Hobbes strips about Calvin’s polls of his Dad, which is proof that good people do exist on the internet imgur.com/a/poll-resul...

Poll results for Calvin's Dad

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and ...

imgur.com

New publication! Unelected representation may influence how satisfied people are with democracy, opening up important discussions on the role activists play in shaping the legitimacy of liberal representative democracies. You can find out more below 👇

European Journal of Political Research@ejprjournal.bsky.social · 4mo ago

🆕 Unelected and untrusted? 🦹‍♂️ These authors 🧵 use a preregistered vignette experiment in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and Romania to assess whether citizens satisfaction with democracy is impacted by unelected representatives voicing political demands on behalf of constituencies buff.ly/YHgLyKN

🛑 Chatbots are not fit for giving voting advice 🗳️ Latest study from @liberties.eu on the Hungarian election shows lack of transparency and reliability in the advice. Our research shows that 10-15% by now use chatbots for advice, for young voters up to one quarter. www.liberties.eu/en/stories/h...

My university: "Copilot is Microsoft's AI-powered productivity service that uses large language models (LLMs) to help you create content, analyze information, summarize documents, and complete tasks more efficiently." Microsoft: LOL

Ingrid Burrington@lifewinning.com · 4mo ago

www.microsoft.com/en-us/micros... is it good to build an entire economy and software infrastructure on this

(1/9) Can the EU be seen as more legitimate through procedural reforms? The lead candidate system for president of the European Commission was one such attempt. In a new article, @acgoldberg.bsky.social, @pieterdewilde.bsky.social and I have sobering results: doi.org/10.1017/S147... #polisky #EUsky

(1/4) Marius Dotzauer and I recently published a paper examining Europeans' attitudes towards trade restrictions against China. In five EU member states, we find only limited support: doi.org/10.1080/0969... #polisky #ipesky #OA

Enter the trade war? European public opinion on trade restrictions against China

This paper investigates how geopolitical factors shape individual preferences for export controls, focusing on EU–China trade in high-technology sectors. Supporters of a tougher stance toward China...

doi.org

mariozechner.at/posts/2026-0...

New blog just dropped! This one is all about estimators—we cover James-Stein, classical test theory, empirical Bayes, penalized regression, and hierarchical models, showing how they all can be used to do a better job than sample stats alone 🤓 haines-lab.com/post/how-to-...

How to Estimate a Mean, and What It Means for Science | Computational Psychology

Introduction If I asked you to estimate 30 means, you would probably compute 30 sample means. And you would be provably wrong (well.. maybe not wrong, but at least provably inefficient).

haines-lab.com

I met with AI data labelers in Kenya who are organizing their colleagues to fight the brutal working conditions and horrible pay given to the workers at the "bottom of the AI supply chain." They believe the NDAs they've signed are unenforceable so are speaking out: www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back

Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.

404media.co

Strictly speaking, a postdoc is just a doc who posts

I'm not gonna lie: Macron and his generals singing the Marseillaise to a nuclear weapon is a bit chilling.

Rory Taylor@rorytaylor.bsky.social · 5mo ago

🇫🇷 Incredible acapella Marseillaise after Macron's nuclear speech at Île Longue. Almost makes you want to join the French Foreign Legion.

I think the main issue is that many people, quite reasonably tbf, don't like the default base data.frame print method... But this is easy to override! gist.github.com/grantmcdermo...

Arendt suggests Eichmann is a clown *rather than* a monster. But why not both—a clown AND a monster? It seems to me a key part of the horror of fascism is precisely its pervasive clownishness. There's a mind-rending indignity in having to take seriously rulers who are fundamentally unserious.

The art of politics is not to do what people think. If it was, there literally wouldn’t be any politics. The art of politics is to convert public opinion in the direction of your policies. Not so subordinate your policies to opinion.

🎉 New paper out in Political Behavior (with @gijsschumacher.bsky.social & @mrooduijn.bsky.social) Why do some people feel stronger emotions about politics than others? 💡Not political knowledge, but interest and confidence-in-knowledge drive emotional engagement. link.springer.com/article/10.1... 🧵

Disentangling the Sophistication-Emotion Link: Political Interest and Confidence-in-Knowledge, but not Knowledge, Drive Emotional Responses - Political Behavior

Why do some people feel stronger emotions about politics than others? Past work suggests that political sophistication, consisting of knowledge and interest, is related to feeling strong emotions abou...

link.springer.com

A blog post giving a more thorough take on survey experiments and the credibility revolution: cyrussamii.com?p=4168

Cyrus Samii@cdsamii.bsky.social · 8mo ago

This is an impressive project. My reaction to what it shows though is that survey experiments have gotten out of hand in polisci. I will blog more on this, but I do not think survey experiments are emblematic of the credibility revolution. Some are already interpreting as such, which is a problem.

The billions of research funds channeled into the pockets of Elsevier and other commercial publisher in return for very little actual value is one of academia's big inefficiencies that will eventually be replaced by more attractive Community-run alternatives

Stefanie Haustein@stefhaustein.scholcommlab.ca · 9mo ago

Over the past months (and at least 11 versions!), I was lucky to work with 11 amazing colleagues on a call to action to reform academic publishing. Not another declaration, but an appeal to our powerful friends, research funders & institutions, to Stop the Drain of Scientific Publishing. 1/n

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

The official home of the Python Programming Language

python.org

After a huge post-election flip in economic perceptions, I thought Democrats and Republicans might be lying to pollsters to send a partisan message — but I was wrong! New in the Journal of Experimental Political Science (open access): doi.org/10.1017/XPS....

Super happy to see this out in @jeppjournal.bsky.social 🎉🎉

JEPP Journal@jeppjournal.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Citizens in 🥜-regions closer to Russia became more supportive of EU defence, enlargement & foreign policy after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (exception: energy policy) By @giorgiomalet.bsky.social and @svenhegewald.bsky.social 🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

the disastrous refusal of the self-styled silicon valley technokings to keep anyone in their lives capable of questioning their increasingly incomprehensible politics has lead to a crisis of thinking so severe that a fifty-eight year old man believes something is important because he knows about it

Sharon 🪳🌹@sharonk.bsky.social · 10mo ago

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

Unless the article is fully generated (not likely) this is a symptom of a much older problem, which is that people aren’t reading many of the sources they cite — just gesturing at them.

Olivier Simard-Casanova@o.simardcasanova.net · 10mo ago

It's not the first time that I'm seeing this I'm afraid that hallucinated citations is an issue that scientists and experts will have to deal with from now on

Every time this worry comes up (www.ft.com/content/d419...) I post some Landy et al. (2018). People just answer questions about proportions (of anything) in a rather particular way. So I think it's unlikely that what they are being asked about is as important as you might expect it should be.

Jonathan Portes@jdportes.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Impassioned plea for more mixed-methods research (quant & qual) from @timharford.ft.com "The hard data is never as eloquent as a good story. Humboldt would measure the cactus but also sketch it; drag his barometer up a volcano, but spin a yarn about the epic climb." www.ft.com/content/d419...

Any comparable data for Europe out there?

Kevin Collins@kwcollins.bsky.social · 11mo ago

I’m going to need everyone who posts this poll to link to the actual study, which is not new, and shows that, on average, respondents overestimate the size of all small groups in surveys today.yougov.com/politics/art...

First they came for the immigrants, and I did not speak out (because the message test performed at a low percentile rank compared to other messages in our testing bank for non college men who opt into online surveys through various consumer reward programs)

G Elliott Morris@gelliottmorris.com · 12mo ago

okay ryan, but does it raise or lower trump's approval rating among people who sign up to take surveys in a digital ad-testing production system? that is the only question that matters