New publication in BMC Public Health: Incidence of reported cases of euthanasia adjusted for demographic composition: a study of ten years of Belgian administrative data (2014–2023) bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... With @healthsociety.bsky.social

A lot of my feed is some variation of the following. Person A: X is rubbish and needs fixing. Person A some months later: People tyring to fix X are evil and making things worse.

It's that day I know you've all been waiting for with great anticipation. That's right, it's NEW INDICES OF DEPRIVATION day! www.gov.uk/government/s...

I am studying for a PGCert in Academic Practice and I am getting the impression that qualitative social science has a very unhealthy relationship with UK academia.

The two child limit and benefit cap are "economically inefficient" because [they] "undermine public health, early years development and educational outcomes.... This in turn increases pressure on local services, including schools, health and housing." www.lbc.co.uk/article/grou...

Most researchers are effectively on fixed contracts and very few get into positions where they are eligible for the REF. I don’t necessarily agree with Ottoline Leyser’s approach but I genuinely believe that she is trying to improve things.

Somebody please tell Microsoft that spell checkers were perfectly adequate ten years ago when they just checked for spelling. Now AI is analysing the context to suggest "better word choices" the whole process is become much slower and annoying.

"I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good" - Martin Luther King Jr. 💛 #PowerForGood

Causal Inference is Not Just a Statistics Problem. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... An introductory article including a primer on causal inference and DAGS , and accompanied by an r package containing simulated data to help explain concepts.

Academics what you do on annual leave, weekends etc is your own business. So if you want to write a book or paper because you love your work that is fine. But please avoid sending emails requesting people do additional work for you if you can. Giving people additional work is not a healthy hobby.

Next year the basic rate of benefits will be £98pw for a single person. Logically you'd expect this rate to be linked to the cost of a basket of essentials. It is not. It's why we need an independent process to advise on a rate that enables people to cover life’s essentials

One of the more annoying aspects of Bluesky is the disproportionate number of people who post headlines from a newspaper with standard digital subscription of £468 a year.

🧠 Midlife is a mental peak, not a decline A new study finds overall psychological functioning peaks between ages 55–60, when reasoning, emotional balance, and judgement combine at their best. 🔗 doi.org/10.64628/AA.... #Psychology #SciComm 🧪

The BBC commands middling levels of trust overall, but those levels are deeply polarised.

The impact of PhD studies on mental health - A longitudinal population study PhDs can be and some would likely argue, should be hard. But surely not *this* hard? #AcademicSky www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Radical Mundanity" Explanation of the Fermi Paradox "If aliens exist, their technology may be only marginally better than ours. And having explored their cosmic neighbourhood for a while, they simply got bored and stopped bothering, making it difficult to detect them." 🧪

One thing that rapidly becomes obvious in public health is that behaviour change is dependent on more than knowledge and education. Yet social media is full of "experts" in public health who completely ignore this and constantly stating that the solution is more training and education.

Join us next week for our #PublicHealth seminar on using casual inference in #epidemiology research for asthma & kidney disease #HealthData 🗓️ Tuesday 14 October, 12:50 BST 📍 LSHTM | Online Details ⬇️ www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/e...

The European Commission has cancelled all NGO operating grants for 2025. EUPHA was receiving around 400,000 euros a year and has been left with nothing. @eupha.bsky.social have started a solidarity campaign to address the short fall. whydonate.com/fundraising/...

There are more equitable ways of raising money from international students. The wealthier ones are consuming more luxuries and taking holidays, perhaps raise taxes in these areas? Others are struggling financially and having to work to support themselves while studying.

In our latest blog, Peter Lynn takes an overview of survey methods, and says understanding and care are more important than budget

Was asked about collinearity again, so here's Vahove's 2019 post on why it isn't a problem that needs a solution. Design the model(s) to answer a formal question and free your mind janhove.github.io/posts/2019-0...

Gender pay gap S Korea 31% Israel 25% Japan 21% Canada 17% US 17% Mexico 17% UK 15% Germany 14% Turkey 10% France 9% Spain 7% Italy 3% Belgium 1%

Why I gave the world wide web away for free | Tim Berners-Lee

In 2016 Geoffrey Hinton said “we should stop training radiologists now" since AI would soon be better at their jobs. He was right: models have outperformed radiologists on benchmarks for ~a decade. Yet radiology jobs are at record highs, with an average salary of $520k. Why?

Please only repost the first or key posts in a thread. If people are interested in it they will naturally follow it. Reposting all of them ends up with the thread in the wrong order and makes it harder to read.

I have been following #psychometrics jobs in #Scotland for a while. I think this is the first one* I am notified about in 2 years www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOU426/d... I have no experience with/connection to the employer. Given its rarity, it seemed worth passing on. #DataAnalysis #Job #MedicalEducation

The difference between being nice and being kind. It is important to recognise the difference. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

NIHR ARC Wessex withdraws from X/Twitter @nihrarcs.bsky.social @nihr.bsky.social www.arc-wx.nihr.ac.uk/post/nihr-ar...

We are excited to be attending the Society for Social Medicine & Population Health 69th Annual Scientific Meeting this week at The Midland Hotel and Kala Sangam in Bradford If you’re attending, we’d love to meet! We will have a stand with UK LLC merchandise and friendly faces 👋 #SSM2025

KGB: 1992’s subtly terrifying social poison simulator: jonminton.github.io/jon-blog/pos...

HUGE NEWS FROM HELSINKI, FINLAND Helsinki, a city of 690 000 people, has now had a full year without any traffic fatalities. None. No pedestrian, cyclist, scooter user or car deaths. This is a huge achievement for a city of our size. 💪🏻 A little background 🧵 1/ yle.fi/a/74-20174831

Due to disruptions in funding, there will be no applications admitted for U Michigan's epidemiology PhD this fall. 🧪 www.michigandaily.com/news/news-br...

Slightly worrying that some journals are responding to the difficulty in finding peer reviewers by having a single peer reviewer, plus comments by the editor. Especially when the editor is mostly commenting on the style of writing and not the scientific content.

The Health Survey for England 2025 will be the last HSE in it's current format. Please consider adding your views to this consultation if you think that timely national health data is important! Deadline 25 July, please retweet @socsocmed.bsky.social

Brandolini's law (aka the bullshit asymmetry principle): The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

Never heard of James McCune Smith? He’s only the first Afro-American to obtain a medical degree, at @uofglasgow.bsky.social, having been denied entry to US universities because he was Black. Also an abolitionist, the man was a total boss 💪🏾 #HiddenFigures en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M...

I’m working with @glasgowbell.bsky.social this week and on my way to Paisley for a rally about proposed redundancies at UWS. If you’re staff or a student who’ll be there and want to chat - or if you want to catch up separately - give me a DM. You can be anonymous!

Reckless disregard for the truth coming from cops, doctors, and scientists: A rant. statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/06/24/r...

People at Glasgow: what’s the mood in your executive & governance board about this? Would dearly like to know how me made the case that he’s a great leader, and if Glasgow knew about these Lancaster plans when they appointed him or if they are surprised as well.

I am absolutely fascinated by people farming nineties nostalgia who are just updating boomer memes and inserting games consoles, video shops and dial up modems into memes about playing out and having sleepovers. And how many of them have nostalgia for American things that didn't happen in the UK.

There is a big problem in academia of people advocating for novel methods without understanding them. It can lead to the widespread use of inappropriate methodology and misleading results. It suggests a lack of regard for the truth and is quite possibly bullshit.

Causal Inference What If by @miguelhernan.org ‬ seems to have progressed to Pre-order notification for Hardback copies. www.routledge.com/Causal-Infer...

The next meeting of the Scottish UKHLS User Group will be online on Friday 15th August from 1500-1630 This time there will be talks from Laurence Rowley-Abel (University of Edinburgh) and Mhairi Webster (Glasgow Caledonian University). Sign up here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/scotttish-...

I didn't expect the government to hold a public inquiry into the impact Brexit. However, the lack of any mention of evaluations is deeply concerning. It's not a functioning democracy when parties collude to prevent voters being adequately informed. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/70...

New Paper: Mental health of UK youth following the removal of the Education Maintenance Allowance in England: a natural experiment study using Understanding Society data. bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/3/1/...

People working in precision medicine seem to have rebranded social determinants of health "personomics", with the help of chat GPT-4, and seemingly ignorant of wide body of research in this area, and published in what I thought was a reputable journal.

I suggest that people stop reading anything by Matt Goodwin and read Harry Frankfurt's on Bullshit instead. vultureofcritique.wordpress.com/wp-content/u...

Today’s #ResearchTip is if you’re using an acronym to describe your study ensure it is clear, respectful, and does not imply cures or other promises your work cannot deliver. I’ve seen trials and other studies using acronyms like “hope” “calm” or “care” when they won't offer ANY of these things.

Interested in learning more about clinical trials? With input from experts in biostatistics and health economics, and sessions on design, analysis and reporting, the Clinical Trials Training for Investigators course is taking place at the University of Liverpool in September – tinyurl.com/4utspbvc