My piece in @theconversation.com - on the study of arts engagement & aging - was heavily delayed to give the authors a 'right to reply'! Their rebuttal (see pic) appears directly below my piece. I didn't know this would happen & was not given a chance to respond, so I will respond here! 1/10 🧵

My piece in @theconversation.com - on the study of arts engagement & aging - was heavily delayed to give the authors a 'right to reply'! Their rebuttal (see pic) appears directly below my piece. I didn't know this would happen & was not given a chance to respond, so I will respond here! 1/10 🧵

'Can engaging in the arts slow ageing, as a recent study suggested?' I'm excited to share my new piece in @theconversation.com! Please share! Prepare for a drive-by lesson in reverse causality, residual confounding, and the importance of asking "compared to what?"

It's really clear to me how few higher ed instructors (profs or otherwise) have ever received teacher training or engaged with research on effective pedagogy. I get it, I went through the same system - largely dropped into teaching sink-or-swim style. But there IS literature on assessment strategies

'Can engaging in the arts slow ageing, as a recent study suggested?' I'm excited to share my new piece in @theconversation.com! Please share! Prepare for a drive-by lesson in reverse causality, residual confounding, and the importance of asking "compared to what?"

Managers, teachers, and supervisors need to stop using the carrot and stick model of motivation Punishment and reward are not the only factors at play. In my experience, people want to do good work. If they aren’t, the problem is not motivation, it’s that there’s an impediment that must be removed

Great example why statistical literacy needs to be part of the curriculum for every student.

People on all sides of the political spectrum need and deserve access to high-quality scientific evidence. I therefore believe in a pluralistic approach to science communication activity, regardless of my own politics.

There's no "study," this is based on a crank manifesto with only four footnotes written by a bunch of health grifters. Why is the Guardian covering this like it has any academic credibility?

An AI platform that writes NIH grants for you in a single Chat GPT session, released "just in time" for the June submission date. What could go wrong?

Excellent example of why expertise matters. When you find experts who make good arguments that help you better understand your world: follow them, support them, and promote them. @pwgtennant.bsky.social @debscohen.bsky.social

Love this from @pwgtennant.bsky.social critique, highlighting the problem with “international comparisons”. I wish there was more work on this in relation to the #TotalFertilityRate (TFR) metric itself, which is a highly abstract metric and the most commonly used to make international comparisons.

"There’s nothing quite like a graph to capture the public imagination. A claim this big would need a broad, peer-reviewed body of evidence pointing in the same direction, not a viral graph."

Since writing this, it's become apparent that the definition of when 'smartphones take off' - which varies between countries - suspiciously coincides with the fertility rate local peak for each & every country examined! Considering no methods are given this is a MASSIVE RED FLAG for cherry picking!

You may have seen this graph in the FT, which claims to show birth rates plunging since the introduction to smartphone. Except it doesn't. Read my short piece with @debscohen.bsky.social on some of the problems with this graph of juicy cherries! unherd.com/newsroom/are...

I have spent the last 4 years being lectured by British colleagues about German weakness towards Russia. Well.

Today I learnt "Manchesterism" is a 19th century word which means extreme economic liberalism, characterised by ruthless free marker capitalism, worker exploitation, and minimal government regulation and social protection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manches...

That would be great @pwgtennant.bsky.social! @bharrap.bsky.social re local courses: 1. My team delivers an intro causal course 2x/year-see "Observational studies" in tinyurl.com/causalmelb 2. Our annual ViCBiostat Summer School in Feb offers advanced causal courses, e.g. mediation (2027 program TBD)

Do you know I actually think that these people are so inoculated from any public sentiment that they are legitimately shook by a handful of boos at commencements this week?

Activated my account because I was just reading Unherd and thought 'is this the same Peter Tennant?' closely followed by 'I bet he gets a comment on BlueSky criticizing his choice of outlet'. Unherd has good stuff - I've learned things from their articles I wouldn't ever learn from the Guardian

You may have seen this graph in the FT, which claims to show birth rates plunging since the introduction to smartphone. Except it doesn't. Read my short piece with @debscohen.bsky.social on some of the problems with this graph of juicy cherries! unherd.com/newsroom/are...

Is a 30 minute shorter journey from London to Birmingham worth £103bn? Just think what this money could have been spent on instead? Electrifying and upgrading all conventional rail lines? New bus, tram, and cycling networks? Reopening many old branch-lines? These would have been revolutionary!

"They're really nice. But nothing like you" PEOPLE KEEP SAYING THIS TO ME!

DIGITAL HEALTH WARNING: if you copy and paste from a Google doc with tracked changes (or 'suggestions'), it doesn't give you the suggested version (I.e. with changes accepted), it gives you a garbled mix of all inserted and deleted words! Why would ANYONE want this?

Where do people go to learn causal inference when I'm not running my course? 🤔

Have another referendum on 4 options, rejoin, join common market, free movement, stay out…. Let ppl express a detailed preference, and makes sure everyone would have to campaign on it. Also without a referendum the now deeply unpopular govt won’t have a mandate to rejoin…

Kind of funny that academics like to proselytise on the benefits of being "interdisciplinary" then promptly take a big shit on other disciplines' norms and processes

"Forcing Farage to talk about the Brexit disaster is key to defeating him" <- completely agree, and don't understand why others don't realise this!

A MUST attend for anyone who does mediation analyses. And if you're in London, you can attend in person!!!

Dietary exposures have 2+ potential estimands. Additive effects are effects of adding exposures to your diet including adding calories. Substitution effects are effects of swapping exposures for other foods, keeping calories constant. For most people adding calories is harmful, whatever the food.

"Traditional Biostatistics Angle" vs "Translational Research Machine-Learning Approach"

NYT/Siena poll on approval of AI Mostly good 16% Neither good nor bad 45% Mostly bad 35% Net: 🔵 DEM: -28 ⚪ IND: -23 🔴 GOP: -5 18-29: -30 30-44: -31 45-64: -17 65+: -6 Men: -10 Women: -28 18-29: -30 30-44: -31 44-64: -17 65+: -6 White -19 Black -25 Hispanic -10 College -9 Non college -26

The Microsoft office suite seems to be deteriorating on a daily basis. I assume it's because either 1) the don't care about it at all - because they're too busy pushing Ai snake oil - so its naturally degrading 2) the code is being updated by AI and being actively broken.

have any other tech folks noticed that software across the board has been getting buggier, especially over the past year? from macOS to the stock apps to third party tools, it's just nonstop, basic functionality bugs that make me feel like i'm back in windows 98.

How about asking them? - are you using genAI in any way for writing? - have you checked the references? Personally, I would already become very cautious if they say yes with the first question.

I would never collaborate with anyone outside of my narrow micro discipline if I was held responsible for their citation hygiene!

Anyone see the piece in the FT by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com hypothesising that mobile phone ownership explains declining fertility rates? My view is "that's an interesting hypothesis that is impossible to study". But maybe we should debate identification strategies!? www.ft.com/content/fba3...

Dear health/medicine researchers, Do you routinely check the accuracy (and relevance) of all references for all papers that you coauthor? Is your behaviour different when senior author vs middle author? I have not routinely been doing this, & it's not something I ever experienced as first author.

"Standard research practice in medical research" = "Is this research misconduct"?

Next step is someone holds my hand as I press the buttons on my MS Word

My lukewarm take is that most citations in medical research are pointless anyway. They serve as a cheap signal to peer reviewers to please not think too hard about this sentence because it's window dressing. I ain't wasting my time validating a citation that congestive heart failure is bad

Dear health/medicine researchers, Do you routinely check the accuracy (and relevance) of all references for all papers that you coauthor? Is your behaviour different when senior author vs middle author? I have not routinely been doing this, & it's not something I ever experienced as first author.

Anyone see the piece in the FT by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com hypothesising that mobile phone ownership explains declining fertility rates? My view is "that's an interesting hypothesis that is impossible to study". But maybe we should debate identification strategies!? www.ft.com/content/fba3...

"Standard research practice in medical research" = "Is this research misconduct"?

It's a different culture that does different work using different norms. Having written in both traditions I think it would be nice to have more interdisciplinary curiosity and less accusing an entire field of academic fraud.

Today is the first day when I've seen some low-hanging 'anti-AI in academia' content and thought, "can we have a little less performative rhetoric and a little more nuance please"? Makes me wonder how often that's me. And question the benefits of binary ideology in the face of widespread norms.

Few things buttress my faith in humanity like this loathing. The fact that the AI overlords have so miscalculated what we would think and whether it would matter is fun too. A bit like the Trump Administration's miscalculation of how Minneapolis would respond to invasion by a thug army.

Alien: And how did you run out of water? Earthling: Machines drank it. Alien: Machines. Earthling: We had to feed machines the water. Aliens: So the machines were holding your planet hostage for water. Earthling: No, we made the thirsty machines. They worked for us. Alien: End communication.

Look like this will been delayed slightly to allow the authors the right to reply!