Migration does not have to be what it is now Innovation can change what migration *is*—more orderly, skilled, integrated, & tangibly beneficial to everyone affected In 2012 I proposed one way: Global Skill Partnerships The World Bank just released a major GSP roadmap—> hdl.handle.net/10986/42780

I'm constantly trying (/failing) to get this point across. If you're a trained expert in a field, then it may be worthwhile to question the scientific consensus of your peers. If you're not, the scientific consensus is absolutely the best you can do and it's arbitrary foolishness to disregard it.

Would anybody like to read one of my long threads about a 2.5bn year old rock, bacteria that could produce oxygen but not consume it, and tank production in wwii

There’s something sad about how many blogposts are simply copy-pasted ChatGPT output now. It’s not writing, it’s content — not voices, but outputs. When the only button you press is for an LLM, blogposts don’t earn applause, they earn scrutiny.

I've built a new tool! You can upload your pre-analysis plan or registered report, pre-submission to a registry or journal, and it will screen it for completeness, clarity, and consistency. 1/ 🧵

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.

New #UofGSpotlight episode on 'Work, Ageing and the Employment Rights Act'💡 @kezdugdale.bsky.social speaks with Kat Riach about ageing and work then @melaniesimms.bsky.social about employment rights and recent legislation. Listen and subscribe: uofgspotlight.com 🎧

I'm not an audiophile, but making the choice to switch back to wired headphones has massively improved my music experience

“We measure the impact of increased immigration on mortality among elderly Americans, who rely on the immigrant-intensive [health care] sectors… [we find] striking effects on mortality: a 25% increase in the steady state flow of immigrants to the US would result in 5,000 fewer deaths nationwide.”

So now we can see the official report of what happened to PEPFAR coverage in 2025 compared to 2024. 14.5m fewer people received testing and counselling (leading to a 400k drop in positive tests) 100,000 fewer on ARVs 1.6m drop in ART patients with documented viral load

I have used @raulpachecovega.bsky.social's to teach reading and literature reviews to easily 500+ students (mostly undergrads), and I regularly get feedback that they're among the most valuable lessons in my science and teaching writing classes. Cannot recommend enough.

"Our desperate times have created concerned reactions, so here's a firearm factsheet to consider if you're pondering gun ownership:" armedwithreason.substack.com/p/what-to-kn...

US Development Finance Corporation did $3.5bn in business last year. For comparison, China's Belt and Road investments last year were about $85bn. www.cgdev.org/blog/looking... greenfdc.org/china-belt-a...

Took advice from @parismarx.com a couple weeks ago and it's been great. Most all changes I've made have zero impact on my day-to-day, but mean I'm supporting a wide diversity of non-US platforms. A couple are even a genuine improvement. Combat both US tech capitulation and Enshittification at once.

Studies of mobilization against Bolsonaro and the effective unity of South Korean political elites against an authoritarian power grab by the last president are still underway. So there are several models politicians in the U.S. have.

Interested in learning more about policy and public engagement and develop the skills to engage in media interviews and public-facing writing? Apply for our workshop this summer - www.bridgingthegapproject.org/ipsi Applications close this Sunday

If you’re aged 18–30 and have a good business idea, Scotland will back you. Today I have launched The First Minister’s Start-Up Challenge and applications will open soon. £500 to test your business, and up to £5,000 to launch it.

Blog: The US Halt on Immigrant Visa Processing. On Wednesday the US announced it was suspending processing for immigrant visa applications in 75 countries home to 2.5 billion people with a combined GNI of $9.9 trillion....

“These findings provide clear evidence that data collected on MTurk simply cannot be trusted.”

Important considerations if you're collecting data on online platforms such as Prolific. www.science.org/content/arti...

Post-doc positions: "Academic freedom is under pressure today. This requires rescue havens of free research. ... [we] invite early career researchers, whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA..." uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

The Govt of India is dismantling the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, and that's a real shame.

“Randomizing newborns to no hepatitis B vaccine at birth in order to evaluate “overall health effects” of an intervention whose primary benefit is already known is indefensible. When benefit is established, withholding an intervention is no longer neutral experimentation; [it is] premeditated harm”

What the Democrats can learn from the UK Labour Party's complete implosion after moving right on immigration www.gelliottmorris.com/p/the-cost-o...

@justsand.bsky.social and I have updated our estimates of lives lost based on cuts to US foreign assistance spending through the end of the fiscal year. They look similar or worse than they did back in June: in the range of 500,000 to 1,000,000 people. www.cgdev.org/blog/update-...

When I was at NC state, I had lunch with a visiting scholar from Sweden who was visiting US universities for the first time. He described his experience as touring “hedge funds with football teams.”

🚨 New working paper! How well do people predict the results of studies? @sdellavi.bsky.social and I leverage data from the first 100 studies to have been posted on the SSPP, containing 1,482 key questions, on which over 50,000 forecasts were placed. Some surprising results below.... 🧵👇

The destruction of US science will be felt worldwide for decades. Take it from @msier.bsky.social, who was the lead program director for the Biological Oceanography program at the US National Science Foundation.

"Migrants are also likely to be net fiscal contributors. Far from draining our welfare system, migrants are supporting the British state’s solvency." While @lgilbert.co also argues that a collapse in immigration will harm the UK’s economic prospects ukandeu.ac.uk/lower-migrat...

New from me. What I Tell Policy Students About Doing Research with Practitioners 1. Meet practitioners where they are. 2. Do not start by asking for what you need. 3. Make your partners' lives easier. substack.com/@jaeyeonkim/...

I recently discovered Conventional Comments (conventionalcomments.org) for providing a pseudo-standard set of labels for feedback and just tried it for an article review and it was really helpful to specify issues vs. thoughts vs. suggestions, etc. Hopefully it's helpful for the authors too!

Too cloudy? Too sleepy? Too lazy to go outside? I have a solution for you. Aurora webcams.

Fundamentally, what we need is leadership. But we break with the chorus of most #OpenScience initiatives here and emphasize very strongly that this leadership must come from funders and institutions. We researchers can support the battle, but we cannot lead the charge. Funders hold the cards. 6/n

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

this is a depressingly good point (about how the EU / Aus / China / Asia-Pac etc did not step up nearly enough to fill the gap left by USAID)

Good news for China, India and Canada: "firms respond to restrictions on H-1B immigration by increasing foreign affiliate employment... particularly in China, India, and Canada. The most impacted jobs were R&D- intensive."

Very important work by @lgilbert.co comprehensively dissecting and demolishing the myth spread by politicians and "thinktanks" that recent migrants are likely to be a drain on public finances. www.laurenpolicy.com/p/are-recent...

A lot of the studies on media influence on political behavior focus on Fox's position in the channel line-up to generate an exogenous effect. This one looks at the effect of a city boycotting a particular newspaper because of its coverage of a sports tragedy. theconversation.com/did-the-sun-...

Nice to see a refreshed corner store in Winnipeg’s Elmwood neighbourhood. The world needs more corner stores. Cities need more neighbourhoods built to accept and support them.

"We need a statewide and a federal ban on assault weapons."

📊 New dataset and paper alert! We’re proud to launch the Opposition Movements and Groups (OMG) Dataset, 1789–2019: a global dataset covering 1,452 mass mobilization movements. It was just published in Comparative Political Studies. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Below follows a 🧵

I think if Britain colonised your country of origin you should get free BBC iplayer.

Thanks to @scotnational.bsky.social for bucking the trend and sharing positive stories about the people behind the statistics

University of Oregon is planning to close dept and lay off faculty—incl many *tenured* faculty—& among those impacted are Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, and Holocaust Studies. Here is a link to a petition asking the president to reconsider actionnetwork.org/petitions/fi...

New research from Dr Bernhard Reinsberg shows France’s supply chain law has not hurt company profits or revenues. Firms can succeed while meeting human rights and environmental standards. Read more on the #SocSciHub: tinyurl.com/8rbdhjrv

"Some students have given up on enrolling in U.S. schools entirely out of anxiety over the political environment in the United States. Others are staying away because they worry that even if they were to gain entry, they would effectively be trapped..." 🗃️ www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/u...

What happens when governments meddle with official statistics? Here's a terrific piece from the former head of Greece's statistical system, outlining just how badly it can distort economic and political life. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/o... (gift link)