Three weeks time to submit contributed talk abstract to StanCon 2026! You can also submit a poster abstract early, if you need to make early travel plans. There will be travel and accommodation support for students, too! More information about submitting at www.stancon2026.org/abstracts/

Fintan O’Toole @fotoole.bsky.social on the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti https://go.nybooks.com/4bmNB4F

Watched #Saboteur last night -- #Hitchcock captured the internal battle between democracy and fascism in 1942. A reminder that American fascists were fighting against democracy even during WW2: youtu.be/-rtlkILRmEQ

from what I can see, the video shows a beating followed by an execution.

StanCon 2026 tutorial and workshop deadlines in one week: discourse.mc-stan.org/t/stancon-20... @mc-stan.org

When works become public domain, anyone can reimagine and reuse them. 🚂 The Little Engine That Could can be freely reinterpreted—like this video marrying pages of the 1930 book to a Librivox audio recording. 📚+🎤 Learn more ⤵️ blog.archive.org/2026/01/01/w... #PublicDomainDay

And we're live, Lecture A1 is online. Introduction to Bayesian workflow, generative models, estimands, estimators, estimates, error checking, beginnings of probability theory and Bayesian updating. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztbY...

Great overview of current knowledge. Many patient factors impact the management of people w/ presumed infectious diarrhea. Therefore, multispecialty engagement optimizes access, linkage to care, and judicious use of diagnostics and therapeutics… academic.oup.com/cid/article/... #IDSky

Including the old black cat adoptions survival analysis example as a case study in the forthcoming Bayesian Workflow book. This is presented as a whole incremental workflow with simulation, validation, and model comparison. Just now went through code and extra-commented and cleaned. Getting close!

We're doing the final sprint, and I think we're able to send the PDF of the forthcoming Bayesian Workflow book to the publisher in the next two weeks (500+ pages), which would mean it would be published some time next year

American food safety could be headed for a breakdown. Story by @sarah-todd.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2025/12/22/a...

Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things

I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students. I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

Twelve former commissioners of the FDA express concern that the agency’s recent moves will undermine a regulatory model designed to ensure vaccine safety, effectiveness, and availability. Read the full Perspective: nej.md/48Ova76

"Validate With Simulated Truth: A first habit is to test whether an analytical pipeline can recover known conditions." Very good advice below. So much COVID nonsense (e.g. 'immunological dark matter') basically came down to a non-identifiable model that hadn't been properly tested.

Pseudomonas aeruginosa has big slug energy. #IDsky #MicroSky

A study of COVID therapeutics in immunocompromised individuals on B-cell depleting therapy!!! Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir significantly more effective than no rx (HR 0.56) molnupiravir w non significant trend to improved outcomes (HR also 0.56)… #IDSky #covid academic.oup.com/cid/advance-...

I am fascinated by how viruses evolve - and not just since #SARSCoV2 has shown us at the global stage how consequential virus evolution can be for us. In my new story in @science.org I got to explore how researchers are probing deeper into the past with old RNA virus genome. So a 🧪 thread…

💻Join online! 🎧 Süßmilch Lecture at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) Putting Science Before #Statistics 🗣️Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ MPI-EVA Leipzig 📅Oct 21, 2025 🕒3 pm CEST ✏️Sign up now: https://ow.ly/uxfc50Xb5Yx

Is a healthy microbiome one that is rich in phages? 🦠 Excited to share our paper out in Lancet Microbe with @bkoskella.bsky.social & @dholtappels.bsky.social where we test whether virome diversity can be used a broad signature of microbiome health 📈

What could possibly go wrong? #IDSky

I'm looking for a doctoral student with Bayesian background to work on Bayesian workflow and cross-validation (see my publication list users.aalto.fi/~ave/publica... for my recent work) at Aalto University. Apply through the ELLIS PhD program (dl October 31) ellis.eu/news/ellis-p...

Fantastic discussion of the BALANCE trial -- and randomized trial preparation / design in general. Also, great to hear Communicable and Breakpoints teaming up! #IDSky

"It turns out boredom is the Cadillac of feelings."

The new ggplot2 4.0.0 now supports absolute plot dimensions 🤩 #rstats #dataviz #phd

Happy International Microorganism Day! 🎉 Today, we are celebrating the tiny powerhouses that have a massive impact on our world. From the bacteria in our gut to the fungi that give us antibiotics, these incredible organisms are essential to life. Let's make some noise for the microscopic!

Typhus, a disease once nearly eradicated in the U.S., is on the rise in Texas "76-year-old Clark contracted #typhus from clearing weeds from her garden" 🦠 flip.it/Zzrht7

#Newresearch This Bayesian statistical method uses timeseries microbiome data to infer interaction modules and is tested using a faecal transplant experiment in mice. #MicroSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Remembering David Rose today. www.bbc.com/news/article...

This week's rapid communications describe ➡️A strain of Neisseria gonorrhoeae producing false negative results on Xpert CT/NG assay in England 🔎An atypical sixfold rise in #influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 cases in Denmark during summer Full issue here 👉 bit.ly/eus2036 #EpiSky #IDSky #MedSky #STISky 🛟🦠🧫⚕️

Attention early-career scientists! Apply for ASM’s Young Ambassador Program to gain leadership experience, build your network and inspire the next generation of microbiologists. Applications are due Nov. 1. asm.social/2Ah

Simon Wood, the GOAT of generalized additive models & creator of the mgcv #rstats package, has an Annual Review of Statistics essay on GAMs, available open access #statssky #mlsky www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

More on the outbreak of Neisseria meningitidis conjunctivitis among military trainees, from the MMWR… #IDSky www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes...

Interesting that an unencapsulated meningococcal strain was responsible. Outbreaks of pneumococcal conjunctivitis have also involved unencapsulated strains (Baumgartner. N Engl J Med, 2003; Crum. Clin Infect Dis, 2004).

As national medical, scientific, public health and patient organizations, we call for the resignation of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to ensure the health of the American people. Our statement: https://bit.ly/45LeJHi

The Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics (CIDD) at Penn State is hiring for a senior-level position in Infectious Disease Modeling. Come join our dynamic group of disease researchers! Feel free to message me for details psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...

In my dept today we discussed deriving estimators from causal models. This can be opaque, but as a simple e.g. instrumental variable Z for estimating X on Y. Z –a–> X –b–> Y, and X <– U –> Y, where U is unmeasured, a and b are path coefs. We want to know b. U prevents direct approach. >>

I had a blast at #useR2025. Here are my slides on `tinyplot`. grantmcdermott.com/tinyplot/vig... (Rendering of the title slide is a bit off on mobile. I'll fix when when I get sec.)

Two major points on influenza-associated acute necrotizing encephalopathy - High mortality (27%) - Most affected children were unvaccinated & did not have major comorbid conditions #PedSky #IDSky

Across 42 countries, the proportion of CD4<200 at ART initiation (among those with measurement) still >= 30%. So much to do still to diagnose and intervene early, made more difficult in limited funding climate… #IDSky

A major KI initiative to recruit new assistant professors with outstanding proposals in all areas of medicine, biomedicine and public health. We offer an amazing research environment, great colleagues and generous startup packages. Check it out and get working on your applications! (repost please!)

Brilliant piece of work from Markus Arnoldini and Jonas Cremer into how much your gut bacteria really do for you! www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

A brilliant article by @rmcelreath.bsky.social . I had not heard of ‘bread scientists’ before but see them everywhere. Related to the strong case for teaching reliable, rigorous methods, I see as a major problem the selection of “optimistic” stat methods. #StatsSky #EpiSky

New online! Viromics approaches for the study of viral diversity and ecology in microbiomes

@rmcelreath.bsky.social with a radical proposal for science: "Research should be intelligible. Access is not sufficient."

#idboardreview 50 M recently returned after visiting family in Cost Rica x2wks, stayed in urban area, on return F, HA, retrobulbar pain, petechial rash on arm/trunk, leukopenia, normal diff, plt 120. CXR normal. vector? #medEd #idmedEd #idsky #idfellows #idfellowship

BEAST X for Bayesian phylogenetic, phylogeographic and phylodynamic inference www.nature.com/articles/s41...

apparently the trick to long life is to eat fewer than 365 hot dogs per year

"The assumption of perfect smoothness is demonstrably flawed, just as the assumption of an abrupt change is flawed; the reality likely lies somewhere between these extremes." Useful discussion on challenges of reconstructing infection peak from delayed outcomes: academic.oup.com/jrsssa/advan...