In the backlash to the freewheeling 1920s, German fascists and eugenicists said you could identify sexual deviants (including masturbators) - and Jews - by their "nervousness." That's exactly what this is.

Love this timeline where we are fact-checking government claims about teenage sperm count… But glad that @alisongemmill.bsky.social & @srhayford.bsky.social answered the call! www.factcheck.org/2026/07/rfk-... #demography #fertility #publichealth

Everyone is saying he's best known for Jurassic Park, but "I would like to have seen Montana" will live rent free in my brain forever. RIP Sam Neil 💔

"In a democratic society, intolerance toward bigotry, of course, does not mean persecuting people for holding noxious views, but rather speaking out against them, and not using our platforms and institutions to promote them or their ideas." 🎯

This is a really useful post about what you need to know about Cyclospora. I learned things. You will too

I can write a gazillion well-researched, peer-reviewed, respected-by-actual-experts articles on the causes and consequences of low fertility and place them in high-profile academic outlets, and I'll never have the exposure or reach that a Christian Nationalist aligned with Heritage will have.

Some thoughts from me on World Population Day for @prbdata.bsky.social ....let's work on actually testing those biological limits of life expectancy already! www.prb.org/news/progres... #demography @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social @oxforddemsci.bsky.social @oxpop.bsky.social

Things the author of this op-ed have also proudly put out into world.

Interesting choice by NYT to publish an op-ed bemoaning America’s projected population decline by a guy who’s massively racist against immigrants and compares IVF to “Nazi eugenics.” The “pronatalists” only want more of a very specific kind of person in this country. It gives the game away.

Great post from @drjenndowd.bsky.social about what's wrong with these 'turning point' in aging studies jenndowd.substack.com/p/does-adole... with a great example by @adamjkucharski.bsky.social:

“you really can’t biohack your way completely out of disease or death,” said Jennifer Dowd, a professor of demography and population health at the University of Oxford. www.statnews.com/2026/07/08/b...

N-IUSSP: Can we really predict individual-level longevity? by Casey F. Breen and Nathan Seltzer www.niussp.org/health-and-m... #demography #populationstudies

Need a break from the heat? Cool spaces across London will welcome you in for a cool down, rest, and some respite from the sun. Find your nearest one with our Cool Spaces map:

Great explainer by @drjenndowd.bsky.social on this hopeful news. 🧪😷🛟 Sociology health policy demography idsky

👉 "Johnson’s announcement is a reminder that no matter how much anyone strives to optimize their health, “you can’t biohack your way completely out of disease or death,” said Jennifer Dowd, a professor of demography & population health at the University of Oxford." www.statnews.com/2026/07/08/b...

Social media makes the anti science, anti vax crowd seem much larger than it is. Surveys show it’s actually a very small share of the public greatly outnumbered by science believers. My new column: on.kff.org/4wthpni

New research by @lauragimeno.bsky.social, Charis Bridger Staatz, Alice Goisis, @drjenndowd.bsky.social and @georgeploubidis.bsky.social examines how chronic health conditions in midlife are linked to later health-related economic inactivity in the UK. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Can't remember if I already shared this, but the oddly smooth vampire man (Bryan Johnson) being in the news for giving himself(?) an autoimmune condition reminded me of this great longevity writeup @drjenndowd.bsky.social posted a few weeks ago: substack.com/home/post/p-...

I can't make heads or tails of this analysis (in the Guardian today). The methods section is one paragraph. Putting aside assumptions about health econ and NHS decision making, it doesn't seem to consider population growth, ageing, or mortality displacement... (1/7) www.bmj.com/content/394/...

Most people know that richer people tend to be thinner. Less appreciated is that this divide is largely driven by women. My column: The economics of women's weight 300 free clicks: as.ft.com/r/feaaaacf-8...

Low-educated groups die at higher rates from nearly every cause, yet the share of deaths from each cause is almost the same as in high-educated groups. So the common idea that they die mostly of "avoidable" diseases doesn't quite hold. Denmark and the US both 🇩🇰🇺🇸 Open Access 👇

Which we've written about here. www.cell.com/neuron/fullt...

Had to read this one to figure out whether it's as click-bait-y as the title. As somebody who has written a lot about causal inference with observational data, I'm quite conflicted about it.> asteriskmag.substack.com/p/the-case-a...

An extraordinary cancer stat recently just dropped: zero. That’s how many UK women in their early 20s died from cervical cancer between 2020-24. My latest @opinion.bloomberg.com is on 20 years of HPV vaccines--& how the US could better maximize the potential of this critical public health tool (🎁):

GOOD NEWS! A personalized mRNA vaccine, known as mRNA-4157, has shown promise in keeping melanoma, a deadly skin cancer, from returning. FIVE years later, NEARLY 70% of people in the vaccine group are CANCER-FREE. The vaccine also cut a person’s risk of the cancer metastasizing by NEARLY 60%.

It's not easy being meme-d. #Oh-Gee-I-See-Algae 👀

Female academics have kids later (male academics, not so much), and if they have kids earlier, they face career penalties.

New post! Most people didn’t think it was possible to develop Covid vaccines fast enough to be useful. In the summer of 2020, I came to a different conclusion. Now I wanted to look back on how it happened, and suggest boldly that we should ask whether that speed should've been the norm all along.

This confirms what the CDC leader said before she was fired. Kennedy wanted the science to be cooked until it aligned with his politics.

there's something really special about a place in this world where people have been gathering for literal millennia to complain about the seating's lack of upper back support

I got asked by a reporter how long Trump might live for his 80th birthday, which sent me down a life table rabbit hole, like any good demographer :). jenndowd.substack.com/p/how-much-l...

So exciting to meet Nobel Prize winner & mRNA technology pioneer Katalin Karikó yesterday, where she was awarded an honorary degree from @ox.ac.uk. Also to meet her daughter Susan Francia, an Olympic Champion Rower! 🤩 @ridhikashyap.bsky.social @oxforddemsci.bsky.social @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social

Looking for a postdoc? Interested in infectious disease modeling? Love causal inference? Want to work with @mlipsitch.bsky.social? Come do a postdoc with us at Stanford! postdocs.stanford.edu/prospective/...

can’t believe a narcissist is being so publicly humiliated by a reflecting pool

Come back to Blue Sky, @khoavuumn.bsky.social!! 🙏🔥 #econsky #demography

Some demography thoughts: finishing childbearing early in the reproductive life course was (is?) a feature of a short era when family limitation was already normal but ages at marriage were still low. "Finish having kids by 30" is a fine goal if that's your jam but it's not the historical norm

When I assign a research paper, it's not because I want an essay I can use to evaluate the student ex post. It's because I want the student to have the experience of going through the process of all of the above steps, perhaps iteratively, that is necessary to write a good research paper.

Cross-national analysis without controlling for non-independence of data points is also the kind of exceedingly poor quality research which really shouldn't be getting published in 2026 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

3/ I worry natural experiment studies, esp policy evaluations, are increasingly becoming a house of cards. We wrote a paper on what natural experiments can and can't do last year (evidence.nejm.org/doi/full/10....), but I wish we were even more circumspect.

1/ There is are interesting discussions blooming everywhere on #modern #causal #inference methods in economics. The push-back seems to be around (1) "plug-and-play" research, (2) narrowness of the parameters obtained, (3) validity of underlying assumptions. I hope this debate comes to #medicine!

"I have accepted Keir Starmer's resignation as my chief servant and have invited Andy Burnham to lay out details for how many meals a day he'll give me"

Isn't science amazing... The drops in cervical cancer mortality in England reported here are incredible. 🧪🛟😷🧭 Sociology demography idsky

Is it a bad sign if I can’t tell if this is supposed to be ironic? #demography

UW-Madison Sociology is hiring! We're inviting applications for an assistant professor position in the fields of demography, soc of population, and health, to begin August 2027. Come join @uwsoc.bsky.social and the great @cdeuw.bsky.social! Apply here: jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...

Wonderful news! #VaccinesWork Cervical cancer deaths fall to zero in young women given vaccine www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Did the iPhone *really* cause the baby bust? A more skeptical reading of the new viral study from LCDS Deputy Director @drjenndowd.bsky.social jenndowd.substack.com/p/did-the-ip...? #demography #econsky #causalsky @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social @oxpop.bsky.social

What’s happened to income-group gaps in parental spending on children in the U.S.? For the last 45 years, they just. keep. getting. wider. In a new @socarxiv.bsky.social working paper, I present updated evidence on trends in spending on childcare, education, and extracurricular activities.

@drjenndowd.bsky.social makes the important point that terrain ruggedness and AT&T 3G coverage is absolutely correlated with other geographic factors. And that especially it is *correlated with exposure to the 2008 financial meltdown*. jenndowd.substack.com/p/did-the-ip...

Curious about the recent claims that the iPhone led to huge declines in births? @drjenndowd.bsky.social breaks down the analyses and brings some much needed skepticism.