“The Problem with Mesearch” New For The Love of Science vlog on how to strike the right balance in science between a deep connection to one’s work and objectivity. www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-rS...

I started reading up on the whole "loneliness pandemic" narrative because this seems like a literature where the age-period-cohort problem may be relevant (or maybe it isn't?). Here's data from Australia (HILDA), average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" (SD of ca. 1.8).>

Mesh-Netze als Versuch, die Zensur zu umgehen:

I have to correct a typo in a manuscript, but I love my creation so much! (ChatGPT's visual)

I realised I follow several journals and now I learn about new publications and interesting papers often here first - so I made a Starter Pack with journal accounts in case you wanted to as well. Let me know if I missed an important journal and I'll add it. go.bsky.app/L57tAru

After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data. If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition. eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...

1. My new preprint has its own bluesky account. Why? The problems facing social media & scientific publishing are similar: both are dominated by powerful oligopolies. The @atproto.com tech underlying bluesky that aims to solve the social media prob might also help solve the scientific pub prob 🧪 🧵

The work of @moritzstefaner.bsky.social is just amazing, and it seems to get even better over time. One of the most talented people in the business. 📊 Here are a few of his recent projects in his latest update.

Thrilled to announce the Handbook of Computational Social Science is officially out! 956 pages, 118 authors, and truly global, interdisciplinary perspectives. Deep thanks to the contributors and anonymous reviewers who shaped this over 4 years. Buy your copy now! @elgarpublishing.bsky.social

🎄 Still looking for a gift for your favourite social scientist? How about a #preprint with 717 urban areas, 30 countries, and 16,164 models of #Immigrant #Segregation across Europe? Just published with @kasimirdederichs.bsky.social & David Kretschmer 🎅 🎁 Wrapped up here: arxiv.org/abs/2512.17037

here’s a free version: neat_research_panel <- data.frame( id = 1:100, treatment = sample(c(TRUE, FALSE), 100, replace = TRUE), outcome = rnorm(100, mean = 50, sd = 5) )

The Max Planck Society has begun an exploratory round table for open science. We are drafting some recommendations to leadership. Still a long way to go! But here are my notes on the most recent draft, just so you all know how I am trying to steer things.

In line with the 'credibility revolution', we are thinking about research designs that allow us to get closer to causal effects. Those who use surveys have often turned to survey experiments. At the same time, survey response rates have dropped considerably. Below are the figures for the ESS.

We’re excited to announce the winners of the 2025 Pudding Cup! Our entry pool was the strongest ever with close to 100 submissions. Show our 3 winners some love 🫶 on this thread, and check out the full details and honorable mentions at the link: pudding.cool/pudding-cup/

2️⃣4️⃣🎁🎄 Doing something new for Advent this year: one great data journalism piece per day until Dec 24. I’m teaching a data journalism course @hertieschool.bsky.social next semester, so this is partly selfish homework. But maybe interesting for others too.

Graz Winter School: Talk 2: docs.google.com/presentation...

Graz Winter School. Talk 1: Quantifying polarization and different ways how it can emerge through opinion dynamics docs.google.com/presentation...

Finally got around to switching my in-browser #rstats R Primers website to use the newer better-supported #QuartoPub Live extension, which will now let me eventually add nicer inline feedback someday - Free primers site: r-primers.andrewheiss.com - Extension: r-wasm.github.io/quarto-live/

I believe eigen fly. I believe eigen touch the sky.

Misinformation research has a causality problem: lab experiments are limited; observational studies confounded. We used causal inference on 9.9M tweets, quantifying effects in the wild while blocking backdoor paths. Does misinfo get higher engagement? Are following discussions more emotional? 🧵

Das crazy. -> Das's' crazy.

Job Alert! We are hiring two post-docs (full time, 4+ years) in our project SCEPTIC - Social, Computational and Ethical Premises of Trust and Informational Cohesion with @annanosthoff.bsky.social @guzoch.bsky.social and Prof. Andreas Peters (uol.de/informatik/s...)

📢 New Journal Article: AI & Deliberation 📢 What impact does #AI have on democratic deliberation? Together with @adrauc.bsky.social, I explore this question in a new article in Government Information Quarterly. Findings in the thread 🧵👇 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... (1/7)

Happy 3²/4²/5² day! (for the US only—it's the less cool 20(5²)-3²-4² in ISO-8601)

If you are interested in doing a PhD on Agent-based models of Protests consider this call: 2 Doctoral Scholarships (48 months) ‘Contentious Politics in the Digital Age’ (CoPoDi), funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Visit: www.bigsss-bremen.de/academic-pro...

To cite this meme: Photoshop et al. (2025)

My fourth day at #CCS2025 starts in the physics of self-organization satellite, where @cgershen.bsky.social discussed a balance-based narrative to explain complex systems science to the general public. He gave us a historical overview on the topic and then a formalization of his ideas.

realistic Star Trek

My daughter knew I would enjoy the evolutionary dynamics (an evolutionary stable state / Nash equilibrium) described in this 3 minute video from KQED’s excellent Deep Look team: These Lizards Have Been Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors for 15 Million Years #evolution #nature

PsyArXiv is seeking new moderators to help combat an increase in AI submissions! If you've ever posted a preprint to PsyArXiv, please consider joining. Minimum commitment 1h/month, there's a training session this Monday @ 1pm ET. More info here: forms.gle/9LB1rEtxHAeZ... #PsychSciSky

By far the best alternative I have come across is Matilda: matilda.science?l=en

We built the simplest possible social media platform. No algorithms. No ads. Just LLM agents posting and following. It still became a polarization machine. Then we tried six interventions to fix social media. The results were… not what we expected. arxiv.org/abs/2508.03385

Interesting paper that can extend to digital technologies generally and concludes: “Understanding the consequences of actual AI for actual democracy, and figuring out how to steer toward the better rather than the worse outcomes, will require new kinds of cooperation than the ones we have today.”

Super important blog post on large scale scientific fraud through „scientific publishing“ by paying for it in „paper mills“.

only a maniac would use a 2-sided test here

Men dominate hollywood scripts. pudding.cool/2017/03/film...

I think they’re here to stay, but it’s worth remembering (and this will become increasingly apparent in the years to come) that, despite some clear benefits, LLMs/large AI models are a net negative for society and it’s not even close.

Seltener Fund eines Fun-Content in der deutschen Wikipedia: Das Beispiel zum ökonomischen Grenznutzen ist wirklich besser zu verstehen, wenn man vorher dem Link zum Bratwurst-Artikel und das Bild konsultiert! de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenznu...

My lab has a name and a website now 🥳 Please welcome the "Psychology of Social Complexity" lab: www.socolab.co.uk

I've been working on a new tool, Refine, to make scholars more productive. If you're interested in being among the very first to try the beta, please read on. Refine leverages the best current AI models to draw your attention to potential errors and clarity issues in research paper drafts. 1/

Review "Opinion dynamics: Statistical physics and beyond" arxiv.org/abs/2507.11521 Lab experiments, data, models, analytical/computational tools. 93 pages, >1k references. With Fabian Baumann, David Garcia, Gerardo Iñiguez, Márton Karsai, Jan Lorenz, Katarzyna Sznajd-Weron. Led by Michele Starnini

The representative electoral statistics show how often each demographic group voted for different parties in the German federal election. This year, I’ve prepared the data as radar charts. What do you think: does this type of chart work well for this kind of data? www.spiegel.de/politik/deut...

Haben nicht alle noch nach einem Namen für schwarz-rot gesucht? Wie wäre es mit "Drecksarbeit"-Koalition?

This was the jumpstart event for a major focus of my research going forward, together with many excellent collaborators (those in attendance and many others). I’m so grateful for the opportunity to put this together, and i hope for more events to come. #culturalevolution

10 years work has led to this: Social identity networks: People holding attitudes are a collective social identity information system & bipartite networks are a useful way to represent them. European Review of Social Psychology. @polpsyispp.bsky.social doi.org/10.1080/1046...

Regarding Italian referendums, do I get it right: There is a participation quorum of 50%, but only 30% went (so FAIL). Of those, 85% were in favor of the labor law thing; thus, if an additional 20% of voters had voted NO, it would have been a WIN with 51% YES 49% NO? www.euronews.com/my-europe/20...

We're offering two funded PhD studentships in the ERC-Funded ID-Compression project at the University of Limerick, Ireland -- please pass on to any kind, curious & talented candidates who might be interested. Thank you! @csi-research.bsky.social www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/svvz1...

Ich mag keine (semi-)präsidentiellen Systeme. Sie ver-/behindern den Kompromiss als die eigentlich demokratische Form des Entscheidens.

Slides for SemGenAge Workshop: docs.google.com/presentation...

How AI will surpass human intelligence... 😂😅