I have news. Wonderful news. New paper on #disinformation. The title is the thesis. Think of disinformation as content that functions to optimise the decisions of the audience for the disinformant. This doesn't require deception or content that induces false belief. philpapers.org/rec/LITDIF

Not to be confused with s-values! search.r-project.org/CRAN/refmans...

Went to a FemTech conference. Watched companies profit from: (1) conflating base rates, (2) letting babies starve, then monitoring the jaundice, and (3) selling at-home testing without statistical literacy. 1. Critique 2. Synthesize ... 4. Profit! wildetruth.substack.com/p/femtech-fails

Oh noed! It hath snowed on my freshly planted windowboxes.

The FemTech Summit today in Berlin was everything a conference should be: – big curtains around panel rooms for hiding – speed-dating rooms w ppl shouting pitches at other ppl who were not the important ppl they wanted to pitch – free coffee, but no decaf (cruel) – free cookie for kid (redemption)

Five-year-old: "They're monster cookies... "This one is in profile."

Finally built a working version of the Rarity Roulette simulator! verawilde.github.io/rarity-roule... It's an app to help visualize estimated hypothetical outcomes of mass screenings for low-prevalence problems. More: wildetruth.substack.com/p/rarity-rou... Would love feedback + feature requests.

New favorite example: LLMs as rare event screeners! github.com/p-e-w/heretic Everyone: "We'll fix alignment with more accuracy!" Math: lol no you won't. Heretic: "Hold my AGPL license." Same problem as mass screenings: structure > vibes.

So I was going to try to code solutions to Frederick Mosteller's *Fifty Challenging Problems in Probability with Solutions*, (I don't know, when my kids go to college?). But it looks like there is already a hipper version of out there in Project Euler loriculus.org/blog/euler-45/

Chat Control is back! Now buried in telecom regulations. www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-cont... reclaimthenet.org/the-disguise...

Newly released Stockholm Declaration recommends the following reforms to publishing: 1. Academia resumes control of publishing 2. Incentive systems to merit quality, not quantity 3. Independent fraud detection and prevention 4. Legislation and policies to protect science quality and integrity

Psychologists are also definitely guilty of confusing change with treatment response, which is why I wrote about it here: www.the100.ci/2025/01/22/r...

“Landmark study” where openai comes to understand what we’ve been telling them about their own software for three years. (I’m sure many have been saying it for longer.)

Spending some time with family in the Research Triangle area and looking to connect with folks interested in research methods, causal inferences, and AI ethics. Ping if this is you! I'm working on mass screenings for low-prevalence problems, science + statistics reform, uncertainty, and feedbacks.

Rejoice! Papa Bear has been found again. His reappearance spurs me to think harder about endpoints, what really matters -- and how the liberty-security sequential-feedback continuum may extend to medical case studies. But where fore-art thou, adequate data? wildetruth.substack.com/p/bear-is-ba...

but that’s fine. It served a useful function at the time in getting people to think about potential informational value in P-values - it just was too crude an approach, so stimulated development of other methods. Can we have a “z-curve for dummies” explainer to improve take-up?

Arguably the first and most important use of language: getting others to do things. (Conveying factual information, on the other hand: not universally acquired and unstable without training.)

Pediatrician: Does your six month old say "baba"? Me: My baby says "hi," "hey," "Mama," "I go," and ("Are you gonna go get your brother?") "I'm gonna"!

I got a free copy of *The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity* from 80,000 Hours. Glancing at the table of contents, it fails to recognize perspectival limits including bias and error in the evidence on which it's based. But, on p. 6 so far, it's pretty good. Ruin it for me.

So much this. Except I started five blog posts in the midst of a mild autoimmune flare, childcare going away for a while, and grandparents flying in from the States for a summer visit. Now I am not sure which if any of us will survive the next two weeks.

Day 5 with my mother. Please send help. Chocolate, flame-throwers -- every bit helps.

Causal inference iceberg! What's missing?

41 MEPs call upon the European Commission to initiate an independent inquiry into large-scale unlawful transfers of personal data between @frontex.bsky.social and @europol.europa.eu following our investigation for El Pais, Le Monde, Solomon, and Netzpolitik.

Remember the librarian problem from Tversky & Kahneman? Neither does Joanne Briggs — daughter of fraudster scientist Michael Briggs. So I'm reading re-relevant, vintage Brian Deer on failed HIV vaccine trials instead of her new memoir. wildetruth.substack.com/p/birth-cont...

New @eckles.bsky.social et al. piece out in Biometrika and straight onto my summer reading list: arxiv.org/pdf/2004.09458 Maybe I'll finally get a grip on the relationship between continuity- and randomization-based identification strategies in RDD.

Your world may end in fire; theirs may end in ice. But mine will end in butter and salt. Won't that be nice? (with deference to Robert Frost)

Bad proxies are bad. Friends don’t let friends confuse easy metrics with meaningful outcomes. But how do we do better? From breast cancer screening to mass surveillance for child sexual abuse material, it's not entirely obvious what endpoints should be. wildetruth.substack.com/p/bad-proxie...

Oh yes new jazz / romantic piano fix, oh yes Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKU7...

Continual moral panic over companies (gasp) selling formula is a mommy-shaming scam that hurts babies. Moms commonly can't produce enough milk to feed their babies, buy formula to do the job, and then are told they're not doing what's "best." Going hungry isn't better. See verawil.de/breastfeeding

wildetruth.substack.com/p/you-say-to... Frustrated with how iterated screening models often throw away info, I fell into a Bayesian search rabbit hole so you don't have to! Spoiler: it means different things to different people, and multilevel modeling may make more sense.

Astral Codex Ten goes deep on the missing heritability question and recent findings on educational attainment www.astralcodexten.com/p/missing-he...

A lost bear -- found. A New Yorker article -- flawed. An endpoints rainbow for vaccines -- sketched. And a question about how to extend that to security and other rule-abidingness domains. (Or: Wait, what was the question?) wildetruth.substack.com/p/the-bear-t...

The bear is lost. The bias is pervasive. Maybe I can finally manage to accept defeat as nobly as my four year old. wildetruth.substack.com/p/we-didnt-s...

Illuminating the process of producing rigorous science by selecting on the dependent variable

the omnisolution:

Relevant blog post by @ruben.the100.ci: www.the100.ci/2020/06/24/m...

Two salvaged Covid vaccination essay drafts, one last science writing post before I really try to do the tech skilling up pivot I should've done years ago. wildetruth.substack.com/p/notes-from...

Indeed another excellent and timely piece to unpack the discourse behind it. “The lesson from abroad is clear: lasting change requires transforming the conditions that make parenthood feel untenable, not just offering token incentives.”

Read what happened in English with partner @technologyreview.com www.technologyreview.com/2025/06/11/1...

I’ve spent a lot of time investigating shitty AI cynically used to pursue vulnerable people in welfare systems. When I talk about this work, I invariably get asked: is it possible to make these systems fair?

Currently popular Chez Wilde: - *Press Here* www.amazon.de/-/en/Press-H... & - *The Book with No Pictures* www.amazon.de/-/en/Book-No... Both are children's meta-books -- books based on a premise of functioning in a different way from how books normally function. Is this a new phenomenon?

IJ Good on varieties of Bayesians (many) and a Bayes/non-Bayes compromise (practical), h/t Sander Greenland. fitelson.org/probability/...

Recent health + methods readings, ft. the usual methods mistakes & spin: - Covid vax in pregnancy may increase birth defect risks. - Abortion, antidepressants, & RSV vax in pregnancy may increase preterm birth risk. - Underpowered trials get spun as conclusive. wildetruth.substack.com/p/links-0611

Really interesting, very in-depth on how open science and replication efforts were funded and gradually grew more influential. Great example of what thoughtful philanthropy can accomplish. goodscience.substack.com/p/metascienc...

In which I explain why (and not everyone has to agree): statsepi.substack.com/p/out-of-bal...

3/4 plants agree having a baby in January was survivable!