new paper by Sean Westwood: With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

Last Thanksgiving, two Dallas Police officers knocked on my door, citing a tip from the FBI national threat operations center that I was beating my girlfriend. The incident report confirms this. Today, I obtained a file from the FBI via FOIA that states the FBI has no record of receiving such a tip.

See stuff about AI etc etc ...starts reading The Butlerian Jihad

21st century phrenology is still pseudoscientific bullshit.

📢 #EdWorkingPapers: Tutoring is powerful but expensive to scale. Across 12 rapid A/B tests, @noamangrist.bsky.social, @ccullen.bsky.social, & @janicalapati.bsky.social optimize a tech-enabled tutoring program, boosting efficiency & finding low-cost ways to double learning impact. 📄 bit.ly/49MbmC8

Somebody just reminded me of this. Best correction ever:

For 90% of people there is no good reason these days to own a high value phone when a second hand one from several years ago can do everything you need it to and more. The added bonus appears to be that would-be muggers won't want to take it from you.

[the sound of a million people searching for HotDogGuy.jpg]

Way back in 1947, Alan Turing had thoughts on how AI would influence the demand for skilled labor. (via Matteo Pasquinelli 2023 _The Eye of the Master_)

Who uses AI for drafts? Drafts are for thinking through and crystallising your thoughts, working out how they link together, finding out the gaps in what you want to say. And generally, if it all hangs together. Unless you're writing very generic texts, this doesn't seem like a net positive.

We need to move away from First Past the Post. 🗳️ #PR #ProportionalRepresentation #FairElections Full article: https://loom.ly/ojnMd-A

I passed my viva! 🎊 I’m very happy to share that yesterday, after ~4 years of research, I successfully defended my DPhil thesis and will be awarded the title of doctor 😎 Thank you to my examiners, supervisors, and collaborators for all the advice and support given along the way.

Every year I look forward to the Don't Burn Down Your Fucking House posts from @cpsc.gov

...and when the tax base has been destroyed those retiring/-ed managers will wonder why their pensions are slashed...

Chilling piece on employment effects of AI on early careers. Includes this line, which will probably become the norm for many firms: "Managers at Shopify must now justify hiring a human by first explaining why AI can’t do the job." nymag.com/intelligence...

When asked what are the biggest issues facing them in their daily lives, only 5% of Britons mention crime or public safety. Partly this is because crime is highly concentrated so disproportionately affects a few people. But it probably also illustrates why big police funding increases are unlikely.

New paper with @instrumenthull.bsky.social and Michal Kolesár on leniency/judge IV designs. This article is targeted for the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and so we wrote it with the goal of being accessible to a wide range of users, including advanced undergrads!🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2511.03572

Schrödinger's causality! @pwgtennant.bsky.social

If you are not in academia, you might not know this, but job interviews used to be held at conferences IN HOTEL ROOMS. Women candidates in a hotel room alone with often all-male committees. People sitting on beds! The horror stories I've heard.

Cut to RTE in Dublin: We're hearing reports that the Spanish ambassador has been summoned.

It’s always good to see more employers committed to employing prison leavers. But it’s also vital to get prison education working properly, so people in prison can get the skills and qualifications that employers need. www.gov.uk/government/n...

Even more striking is that a quarter of employees will be higher rate tax payers by the end of the decade. This is a really fundamental shift in the structure of the tax system.

In Norway, you’ll be lucky if undergrads call you *anything*. Most messages or emails simply begin with, “Hei…”. I’m fine with this personally as it’s the norm here, but it *does* mean I usually need to give “the talk” to more senior students who need to contact researchers outside Norway

*record scratch* yup that’s me, you’re probably wondering how i ended up in this situation

Watching @earlkmiller.bsky.social’s SFN talk on the train to San Diego. I understand that I’m not missing anything b/c they stop letting people in when the seats were all full. Go Earl!

Evergreen.

We are delighted to announce that Professor @emlafitzsimons.bsky.social is to be the new director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies from Monday, 1 December 2025. Prof Fitzsimons has been director of the groundbreaking Millennium Cohort Study since joining CLS in 2014. Read more: bit.ly/3Lvhjtp

TIL: When the New Horizons space probe visited Pluto, it was carrying the ashes of Pluto's discoverer, the farm boy turned self-taught astronomer Clyde Tombaugh.

Paul Krugman only reads blogs and that is why he, unlike everyone else who has been in punditry for decades, has never lost his mind

If you’re starting to think about Christmas shopping, check out the replies to this.

Ancient philosophy is 50% profound eternal wisdom and 50% that same exact guy declaring with supreme confidence two paragraphs later that pee is stored in the armpit.

"Working Democracy"

“Candidates whose research is more similar to the committee are more likely to win” - we are just horrible at hiring in academia IMO #linkoftheday academic.oup.com/ej/advance-a...

It's mind-numbing how anyone could view city journal as operating in good faith. But many do.

Chief Economic Advisor, HM Treasury - a fantastic and extremely challenging job, following in the footsteps of Keynes.. www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...

"What is certain, and felt instinctively by almost everybody, is that things cannot go on in their present way" – The Times, May 1975 “It is difficult to imagine a previous period when such an all-pervasive hopelessness was exhibited at all levels of British life” – Professor Stephen Haseler, 1975

Very clear illustration of the different effects of alternative visualiaations of the same data www.nature.com/articles/s44...

If you’ve ever attempted a meta-analysis, you’ll know that authors generally do a poor job reporting statistics. If you do this well, you’ll improve your chances of your work being included in a future meta-analysis.

Maybe you've missed the crushing, DAG-wielding critique. Of course, not by a star scholar... www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Delighted to announce I have found my first published academic article clearly written by ChatGPT. Full of non-existent references. What are we even doing anymore?

📣 Digital Research Community! The new UK Adolescent Health Study will follow 100k young people (8–18yrs) for 10+ years. Please share what digital technology measures you think it should include. Please complete this survey (by 24th November 2025 @ 9AM): cambridge.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Fiscal creep has been an amazingly easy way for recent Governments to raise tax without anyone noticing. Here's the higher rate tax band since 1990. It rose faster than inflation from 1994 to 2009. Then began a steep decline - with many more people paying higher rate.

crazy IG em_clarkson

Please also add/repost the second Starter Pack, which I made because so many great criminologists have joined bluesky lately that the first starter pack got full. As before, please reply if you'd like to be added -- I'll do my very best to include all CJ academics here. go.bsky.app/7qmM6yB

That face you make when you get busted for murdering a vole and the evidence is splattered all over your bill but you’re so drunk with blood lust you don’t even care (Northern Saw-whet Owl)

Picard management tip: Ignore rules that make no sense.

A skydiving man captured in front of solar activity - actually real! #linkoftheday www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/...

I guess now would be a good time for my first post here. Yesterday we published a new paper on the incredible ecosystem of tetrapods and other vertebrates in Science. It has been years of work - but we got there in the end. Thank you to everyone the contributed to this work ❤️

Chinese state-backed hackers hijacked Claude Code to run one of the first AI-orchestrated cyber-espionage operations. The operation targeted large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies. www.anthropic.com/news/disrupt...