Advert now up: www.imperial.ac.uk/jobs/search-...

This just happpened: I _almost_ missed the bus 🚌, but a passing scooterer 🛴 noticed and tapped on the door to alert the driver, then sped off once I was safely aboard. Pedestrians unite! 🙌

Happy #ClinicalTrials Day Trial design and conduct is no place for novices with best intentions. Patient participants make sacrifices. Medical progress holds its breath. Large sums of public and private money is invested. So get it right, from the start. statsepi.substack.com/p/dealing-wi...

Sometimes I feel like a lone voice banging on about research questions and associations all the time. But I'm not. Thanks @jeremylabrecque.bsky.social - and the CIIG for posting this excellent seminar to YouTube so quickly for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere 😄 www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKdC...

kiwibank would be taken more seriously if one of the largest clients in the country who literally own it used it

This article reflects repeated failure along the evidence generation pipeline. It shouldn't have been funded. It shouldn't have been published. And it absolutely shouldn't have been shared so widely in the media. It is not a bit of 'fun', it is a serious threat to the integrity of science. 6/6 🧵

While these may sound like technical points, they are actually bread and butter issues for observational causal studies. Yes, many studies get them wrong. But that is no excuse. We must demand higher standards from observational studies, particular those that get reported in the news! 16/18 🧵

When we took office, NYC had a $12B deficit. Today it’s zero. And we didn’t close that gap on the backs of working people. We closed it while funding parks, libraries, safer streets, & public housing. Call it Pothole Politics or Democratic Socialism: We are government that delivers for the people.

This @vicbiostat.bsky.social seminar is going to be great. @ghazalehd.bsky.social always explains complex concepts so clearly. Invite your friends! 28 May 9:30am AEST. #episky #causalinference #competingevents

Latest comic on an economy that has become hostile to humanity.

As ever, there's an XKCD for that: xkcd.com/936/

Apparently, a good password should include "English uppercase (A-Z), English lowercase (a-z), Base digits (1-10) or characters (!.&.%.£)" Whoever wrote this is not up-to-date with the latest guidelines from the National Cybersecurity Centre. Looong and memorable is better than short and complex!

Read and repost something positive for a change you doom-addled freaks www.emilywrites.co.nz/a-brighter-f...

Rewiring Aotearoa's new campaign, get behind it and share your stories www.rewiring.nz/this-car-can #kikorangi

Opinion from Auckland University: Targeted fuel relief doesn’t reduce a single litre of consumption. Free public transport, however, delivers household relief, eases congestion, and conserves fuel for those with no alternatives.

I've had an EV for nearly a year. As petrol prices rise, I've decided to share what I've learned (and saved) in that time: newsroom.co.nz/2026/03/24/w...

Why do so many PhD students to this day get taught to "find the gap in the literature"? It has nothing to do with understanding what questions *need* answering.

The Salvation Army lady was quite clear on RNZ. Beneficiaries also work, volunteer, take their kids to school, go to doctors appointments/grocery store and are going to be the worst hit by this crisis. She also said kids don’t choose where to be born.

I've been on the nutrition beat for 25 years. Over that time, I have been increasingly persuaded that most nutrition science is junk, and we know almost nothing. Except these 3 things. (gift link, at least I hope so) wapo.st/4bYDRgB

The Covid response "hard and fast" version of this what that Luxon and Willis mob are doing: Day 1) Cycle! Fuel free. Public transport, WFH, if you must drive lower your speed from 100 to 80, most cars use 30% more fuel at 100 than 80 Cycle. Bus. WFH. Slow down. Every choice saves fuel 2/2

Every day is a good day for sharing one of the most useful papers about research data ever written. PLEASE get your people to understand and follow this advice. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Ways the govt could quickly help New Zealanders reduce fuel usage, but probably won’t 🤷, for reasons: ⚠️ Lower speed limits 🚌 Encourage PT (eg bring back half-priced fares) 🚲 Encourage active modes (eg pop-up bike paths) 🛤️ Move freight from road to rail (eg ramp up KiwiRail) 🏡 Support work-from-home

Could we just perhaps have a little enquiry about the rapid rise of antivax rhetoric and the impacts of vaccine hesitancy? As a treat?

Ata mārie #citycentre 🌅

RELEASE DAY 🥳 Add "Wet Paint" to your streaming collection. Buy it from Bandcamp. Play it on YouTube. Send this post to your mate who likes breakbeats & electronic music. Stream links: cartoonbeats.com/releases/cbr... #nzmusic #electronica #breakbeat #horror #cinema #synthwave

Emily Writes @emilywrites.co.nz and I are starting a new series called The Brighter Future, where writers and artists and poets and so on imagine what a better future might look like, if we actually did some of the needful that's right in front of us: www.emilywrites.co.nz/the-brighter...

Brilliant. An expat im Dubai has a startling revelation, by @stephencollins.bsky.social

Not sure what "entirely generated" means, exactly, but I feel we need new norms around this. Here's a blog I like about "etiquette", "consent", and what should be considered "rude" when sharing AI-generated content. Disclosures after the fact do not cut it, IMO. distantprovince.by/posts/its-ru...

New Zealand has more sunshine than Germany. But only 1 in 35 homes here has rooftop solar. Australia? 1 in 3. Why? I tried to find out - despite some strange secrecy www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...

Literally, at work this morning: Clinician: Patient should stop medication A, but must keep taking medication B. AI VR transcription of this: Patient should stop taking medication B. Seriously NEVER LET A DOCTOR USE AI FOR YOUR APPOINTMENTS. NEVER. UNDER ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES.

Statisticians are in demand for their technical expertise, but our job involves wearing many hats - researcher, collaborator, translator, negotiator. We're hosting an event in July to support early-mid career statisticians build confidence in these key skills & more! Sign up for updates 👇

Roses are red Let's be realistic The key to nutrition Is biostatistic.

Some governments raise taxes to fund public health and education. Not Luxon. He is literally raising taxes to subsidise fossil fuels. He is putting a levy on our electricity bills to pay for his LNG import terminal.

I'm not saying this is the end of the world or anything, but we really don't need to abbreviate so many things.

Reminder: regime voter suppression means you need to enrol early. vote.nz/enrolling/en...

Screen use before sleep might be more relaxing for teens than no screen use. In particular, gaming and social media. Surprising? Maybe. Our new paper out today: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

An important point: "Too many career decisions are based on CV length rather than quality, which maintains the pressure on researchers to publish as many papers as possible."

A big chunk of my time is spent harmonizing data sources so that they can be combined and compared. This is preventable. If you don't want to have to do this, make sure to spend time planning up front, so that you consistently name, code, and label variables across collections of the same items. 🙌

Of course this approach will out-compete careful, slow, rigorous, ethical clinical science.

At least as far as medicine goes, novice researchers unleashing machine learning algorithms on data they just happen to have lying around, hyping it all as ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and bewildering reviewer and editors has indeed led to more "impact", and this is a disaster that gen-AI will amplify.

Yippee ki yay! Headlines shout “growth is back!”. And pop the champagne corks! But, if growth is the answer (as many seem to believe it is), then remind me again what was the question? open.substack.com/pub/ganeshna...

Got this song stuck in my head for no reason

#3 - The focus on meat & butter is not consistent with evidence, which overwhelmingly points to sat fat raising LDL, and LDL being causal for heart disease. But they end up recommending 10% of calories from sat fat – new guideline, same as the old guideline.

#2 - Recommendations to reduce processed food, sugar, and refined carbs is totally fine, and also totally standard. It's too bad they miss the point on processing. Food isn't bad because it's processed. It's bad because manufacturers use processing to produce crap food.

In sum (!) I have 3 basic takeaways: #1 The focus on trials vs. observational evidence would be great if they actually followed it (see: artificial sweeteners). Observational evidence has been WAY over-interpreted, and is responsible for much conflicting advice (see: eggs).

The sole of my boot came off and I swallowed a bug.

It stole from beloved literature written by real humans to generate the list in the first place, it stole water and electricity and money in an age where those are often in short supply, and it's stealing our ability to have trust and confidence in the media at a time we need that more than ever

💡Our new research reveals the extensive labour of infant feeding for NZ mothers experiencing household food insecurity. Mothers showed remarkable determination & resilience - they stretched budgets, compromised their own diets & faced shame and stress when seeking support, affecting their wellbeing.

I don't use AI. I am old school and use my brain.

Do not cite an academic paper unless you’ve read it