I wrote about the bizarre case of Herasight, the embryo selection company going all in on eugenics.

Why do associations between grandparents & child health vary [Africa]?: "implication is that net flows of support from grandparents to children diminish as societies undergo demographic & epidemiological transitions, weakening the positive association between grandparent coresidence & child health"

New paper out in Population and Development Review: We explore how the influence of grandparental co-residence on grandchildren’s nutrition varies across Africa’s diverse demographic and health contexts 👇 📄 doi.org/10.1111/padr...

"Sweeteners can harm cognitive health equivalent to 1.6 years of ageing, study finds" Or does it? Let's take a look at this "study"... www.theguardian.com/food/2025/se...

New blog post: The New Eugenics Companies (Oops, I meant to say generational health and embryo selection)

It is depressing, but all too predictable, how swiftly we’ve gone from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium offering reassurances about the uses of behavioural polygenic scores to one of their lead authors marketing embryo selection for IQ

@alvaroszv.bsky.social y yo (IEGD-CSIC) de @csic.es hemos sacado una nota de nuestro trabajo en curso sobre la relación entre #cambioclimático y #emigración en #PiedrasdPapel utilizando datos sobre el calor extremo en #Senegal. www.eldiario.es/piedrasdepap...

Harvard sociologist/polisci Theda Skocpol explains how the vast expansion of ICE in BBB may be Trump's secret weapon to overcome the barriers of federalism and complete his autocratic takeover of the American state. (History from Germany & Hungary in 20s/30s.) talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/criti...

Cremieux’s real name is Jordan Lasker. I put his name in the newspaper. He’s a scientific racist www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

The first paper of my PhD—co-authored with @ishmamunoz.bsky.social and Alberto Palloni—is now out as a preprint! 👵👶 Grandparents’ investments matter for grandchildren’s human capital formation independently of parental investments —especially in Ethiopia and India. 📄 osf.io/preprints/os...

A big thank you to Dulce Manzano with whom I coauthored this paper on how returns to preschool evolved over the last century. Open access ! direct.mit.edu/euso/article... Tracing the evolution of preschool’s impact on education over a century: Spain, 1900-1973 | European Societies | MIT Press

Why has fertility suddenly crashed everywhere all at once? Certainly, there are many factors, which vary across all world regions & over time. I’ve written on many of these! But we should also recognise the collapse of coupling. Always open to new data & ideas! 🙂 Graph by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com

🚨 The end of an era for global health data — and a defining crossroads. In Jan 2025, the DHS Program—the backbone of health & demographic data in 90+ countries—was terminated after US aid cuts of up to 84%. Our researchers & global collaborators reflect on it in a recent pre-print🧵

I just published a new #Rstats notebook to celebrate the release of {marginaleffects} 📦 0.26.0: Survival Analysis in R Please send me feedback, and don't forget to update the pkg for important bug fixes. Thanks to Robin Denz for his amazing work on this! marginaleffects.com/bonus/surviv...

REPORTER: Amazon will soon display a number next to the price of each product that shows how much the Trump tariffs are adding. Isn't that a perfect demonstration that it's the American consumer who is paying for these policies? LEAVITT: This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.

Here's an update on sociology (and some demography) journal editorial polices with regard to sharing preprints before submission and after acceptance. A big improvement from the last edition of this table. With one exception.

Las universidades públicas de Madrid irán a la huelga el 28 de abril contra la nueva ley de Ayuso www.infolibre.es/politica/uni...

New paper out with @marespadafor.bsky.social: we study the intergenerational effects of Spain’s 1970 school reform and find that, despite major educational expansion, inequality persisted 📚📉 academic.oup.com/esr/advance-...

Our new study in Molecular Psychiatry, in 1528 children and their parents (@ntrbiopsy.bsky.social) shows that indirect genetic effects—where parental genetics shape offspring traits via environmental influences (genetic nurture)—impact DNA methylation of children. doi.org/10.1038/s413... (1/5)

🔎 Según @hcebolla.bsky.social del Dep. Población (CSIC): "El calor es malo para todos los niños, pero en hijos de madres migrantes el impacto es mayor. Esto parece deberse a la menor presencia de aire acondicionado en sus hogares, reflejando un efecto de la pobreza".

It's finally official and verified: The X user "Cremieux" is ID'd as a guy called Jordan Lasker. Lasker has been LARPing as an expert in genetics on X to promote racist pseudoscience. @sashagusevposts.bsky.social has been calling out his bullshit for ages

No, las niñas no son peores en ciencia. En el día de la mujer y la niña en la ciencia recuerdo este texto de 2018 en @piedrasdepapel.bsky.social sobre la interacción entre estereotipos, actitudes, expectativas, rendimiento y decisiones académicas y laborales: www.eldiario.es/piedrasdepap...

“Smoke’s Enduring Legacy: Bridging Early-Life Smoking Exposures & Later-Life Epigenetic Age Acceleration,” by Ramirez, Povedano, Garcia & Lund, uses the HRS (1992-2016) & VBS (2016) to investigate the complex relationship btw smoking/exposure & epigenetic aging. read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

I have a 99.8% snapshot of all zipped files from CDC Vital Statistics Online as of today. Documentation pdfs too. The one missing file was cut off part way 🤷‍♂️ will try again from time to time. Anyone needs anything reach out

Ah, so our students can't work with DHS right now, as (US-funded) DHS program is paused and not accepting registrations of new users 😶

How population stratification makes environments look like genes. A short 🧵:

Is population stratification a problem in real GWAS data? Recent family GWAS (Tan et al. medrxiv.org/content/10.1...) estimated 50% of the GWAS effects for Education and 65-75% for IQ, Income were not direct, with population stratification likely the major cause.

Resignation of the Journal of Human Evolution Editorial Board: We are saddened to announce the resignations of The Joint Editors-in-Chief, all Emeritus Editors retired or active in the field, and all but one Associate Editor. Press release below.

Cuts to public universities, growth of private ones. Two sides of the same coin. 19 Dec, at 12 protest at Madrid Assembly against cuts in public spending. And foreign colleagues: if you look for Spanish partners for H2020 projects, infrastructure, acad network etc choose public centres! Reasons 👇

Elsevier have chosen new editors for Intelligence, which will hopefully lead to a dramatic improvement in the quality of research published. New followers may be unaware of just how shockingly bad is the “research” the journal has published, epitomised by the paper which assumes the earth is flat

Ahora que Ayuso ha cedido y se crearán más de 1000 plazas de ayudantes doctores en Madrid, es crucial que sean plazas abiertas y que se valore el historial investigador, no solo el docente.

I'm organizing a CenSoc Users Conference this Friday, Dec 6th! Please consider tuning in (all are welcome) to hear about some of the fascinating mortality research being done with these data. Full program and Zoom link: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

In Spain in regions like Madrid (7 public, 14 private), public unis face huge cuts while private ones thrive—backed by right-wing policies. What to do? Read my Op-ed published in El País: Defending Public Universities (translation from Spanish below) 1/2

🚨 The second round for #PAPERSS Seminars is here! 🥊 Early-career researchers in political science, sociology, and applied economics are invited to submit proposals for the Spring series by January 1st, 2025, through our online portal ⬇️. Let’s keep the momentum going! 📚✨

"Behavioral Genetics on the Brink: A Review of Eric Turkheimer’s Understanding the Nature-Nurture Debate." My new preprint book review. I will post a thread about the book in the near future. doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Let's continue welcoming our newest members of the @eapsphd.bsky.social committee 🤗🎉 Aitor is a PhD student at Poblacion CSIC🇪🇸 and Carlos III - Juan March Institute 🇪🇸, and a researcher in the ERC ECHO Project🇪🇺. His research focuses on SES differences in #Health and #LifeCourse

I created this list a couple of days ago based on some people I know about but there has been a ton of new arrivals--please let me know who else to include. Also, this is an interdisciplinary list! #EconSky #Sociology #PoliSky #Demography go.bsky.app/T667spi

Mostly #work-family sociologists so far. Reach out for an add! go.bsky.app/63Jq944

Lots of new faces here so I’m resharing this starter pack of folks interested in Family Studies. Comment if you want added, hope it’s useful 😊 go.bsky.app/RvM95NE

The Austrian Research Agency publishes a list of #ERC applications that you can find online. If you are applying, this can be helpful. If you have received a grant, I would urge you to share yours too: www.ffg.at/europa/heu/e...

Starter Packs feels a bit like making a mixtape to this 80s kid... I ran into the max number pretty fast so apologies to anyone I missed and I'll have to make a Volume II!: go.bsky.app/2ZUFQtv

I wrote about Eric Turkheimer's recent book on "the nature-nurture debate", which should be of interest to people thinking not just about the genetics of behavior but complex traits more broadly. A 🧵:

In Carlos III, the PhD students organize a seminar series for young researchers. Take a look if you are interested, and reach out to join the mailing list! 📫: [email protected] 💻: sites.google.com/view/paperss...

Otro starter pack: go.bsky.app/5vnvpMR Si alguien se quiere añadir solo tiene que comentarlo abajo

Study leveraging DHS data to explore how associations between grandparental coreisdence and child stunting vary according to grandparental characteristics, across lower and middle income countries echo-erc.csic.es/wp-content/u...

Go read this excellent & thought-provoking new piece by Thom McDade challenging us to rethink how we think about inflammation & aging: #episky #medsky #demography #anthropology www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

MACIES - Madrid Center for Interdisciplinary EUropean Studies at UC3M is looking to hire someone to support its launch in 2024. Part-time (15 h/week) in Madrid, compatible w/ grad school. Requirements: ES & EN proficiency; EU-related interest a plus. Details in the link. Deadline: 28.11.23 EUsky