The richest man who ever lived was not Cresus but Marcus Licinius Crassus. He was among the most cruel of Romans, crucifixing thousands of Spartacus' rebellious slaves. He found his nemesis and death at the hands of the Parths, modern day...Iranians. Ivy League University graduates surely know this.

Many authors from EU-funded projects denounce: "Towards pollinator stewardship in all policies: Policy incoherence in the EU is a major barrier to pollinator restoration" zenodo.org/records/2071... @jeroenvandersluijs.bsky.social , @vitenskapsteori.bsky.social , @eea.europa.eu, @theguardian.com

Thanks to Vincenzo Punzo, Davide Iannelli, and Marcello Montanino a severe test was run on driver models using global sensitivity analysis. lnkd.in/epgMCuk4 This is an outcome of the i4Driving project.

New preprint on global sensitivity analysis for demographic projections @vitenskapsteori.bsky.social @upf.edu

New commentary published today, in the glorious Minerva. "Climate science has come to stand, in public debate, for what science itself is about, while within climate science, the authority of knowledge increasingly rests on large modelling infrastructures..." More at lnkd.in/gZgvmBcV

🗣️ Ocean Seminar with @andreasaltelli.bsky.social 🧑‍🏫 Very excited for #OceanSeminar - this time we will go to the limits...of digital twin modelling. 📆 Next Wednesday, May 13 at 5 p.m. (CET), information 6 registration: twinpolitics.eu/ocean-semina... 🌐 An @unoceandecade.bsky.social activity!

Interested if sensitivity analysis or multiverse analysis? You can register for tomorrow's Friday 06 12.30-13.30 Webinar events.teams.microsoft.com/event/e1020f... Note that the true title is not the one on calibration you see above *Global Sensitivity Analysis or Multiverse Analysis?*

"Perhaps it’d be a good thing if AI finally pushes us to move on from a system where universities spend taxpayer money to pay commercial publishers to very slowly produce paywalled PDFs with outdated results of publicly funded research." alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/academics-...?

... and here all the slides www.andreasaltelli.eu/file/reposit...

Are you in Barcelona tomorrow? Join us for a short seminar at 10:00-12:30, UPF Barcelona School of Management, Carrer de Balmes, 132: Models of pandemics: What should we do differently next time? Chair: Ismael Rafols Speakers: Tsuyoshi Hondou Andrea Saltelli Samuele Lo Piano Alessio Lachi

In the mail from Nature Briefing today. A singular perspective on whose science is challenged.

Just uploaded a preprint to osf.io entitled 'The Politics of Modelling'. Submitted as an entry to the forthcoming handbook of Ecological Macroeconomics, Open Book publisher. osf.io/preprints/so...

Mathematical models: a state of exception www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This is just two years old, so it is too early to say that it aged well ... link.springer.com/article/10.1...

13th Summer School on Sensitivity Analysis of Model Output (SAMO) 8–12 June 2026 | Fiesole (Florence), Italy Registration open. Cost: Free of charge Apply by 31 December 2025 Successful candidates notified by 15 January 2026 Info & registration at: lnkd.in/dySGBBqX #SAMO2026 #SensitivityAnalysis

www.mentinfuga.com/gaza-di-laur...?

Re-reading this piece, written 6 years ago with Belgian sociologist Paul Marie Boulanger; it seems to have aged well. What would Harold Innis and Niklas Luhmann write if they were alive today? www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

See about the role of AI: www.972mag.com/israelis-log...?

What does sensitivity analysis have to do with Guido Morselli's Dissipatio Hg? Discover it by listening to this video courtesy of Mariia Kozlova: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boz0...

Surely an expensive education *by itself* increases students' wage prospects, right? Only if one believes numerical fables. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Caveat emptor: Sensitivity of Cost–Employability Metrics Across Higher Education Models​ @vitenskapsteori.bsky.social @eurofound.europa.eu

The 2025 Elsevier-Stanford-Ioannidis ranking of scientists by citation-based composite indicator is just out: elsevier.digitalcommonsdata.com/datasets/btc... See related paper: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Thanks to @eurofound.europa.eu for inviting me to Dublin to discuss Quantitative Storytelling; great discussion, learned a lot! Here are the slides www.andreasaltelli.eu/file/reposit...

Interesting online journal, nonprofit, run by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists, and a great article www.972mag.com/palestinian-...?

How to 'unpack' a complex impact assessment? We utilize Brian Wynne's work from the 1980s, along with the checklist of sensitivity auditing, to examine the 2024 EU impact assessment on emissions. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... @vitenskapsteori.bsky.social

It was a pleasure to read!

Thanks to Zachary Webster Griffen @runzach.bsky.social‬ for his review of our book "The Politics of Modelling: Numbers Between Science and Policy" in Acta Sociologica. lnkd.in/deUes3qg

"Why would you grow a crop that requires so many dangerous substances?" Jeroen van der Sluijs on the pesticides needed for lily farming. butterfly-europe.eu/interview-wi... @vitenskapsteori.bsky.social

Greta and Foucault in substantial agreement: Greta on Gaza: youtube.com/shorts/nC7-F... Foucault on racism p. 254: cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.ed...

"Policy science, the science-and-society scholar Daniel Sarewitz wrote with his colleague Andrea Saltelli, has always been “inherently contestable, ..." nymag.com/intelligence...

In beautiful Anacapri, in Villa Orlandi (University of Naples Federico II) at the summer school of the i4Driving project. See www.andreasaltelli.eu/file/reposit...

... and here in Oslo at ISEE presenting on demography models; a few new slides www.andreasaltelli.eu/file/reposit... @vitenskapsteori.bsky.social @jeroenvandersluijs.bsky.social

Presenting in Genoa about global sensitivity analysis and multiverse analysis - Thanks to the Italian Statistical Society for inviting! Program: sis2025.sis-statistica.it/wp-content/u... My slides www.andreasaltelli.eu/file/reposit... @vitenskapsteori.bsky.social

Coming to Italy? One suggestion: don't fly ITA (ex Alitalia) 😩

Technology works as skyscrapers stand and airplanes don't fall from the skies, right? Depends upon the ideology of builder. A Dreamliners That Gave a Boeing Manager Nightmares Just Crashed url:https://prospect.org/economy/2025-06-12-dreamliner-gave-boeing-manager-nightmares-just-crashed-air-india/?

Disappointed about results in Poland? Time to read: Kuc-Czarnecka, Saltelli, Olczyk, Reinert. 2021. “The Opening of Central and Eastern European Countries to Free Trade: A Critical Assessment.” Structural Change and Economic Dynamics. www-sciencedirect-com.sare.upf.edu/science/arti...

Good piece by John P. A. Ioannidis and Michaéla C. Schippers Very polite even when critical; they talk about high-impact journals whose editorial can be 'imbued with unchecked biases' ... onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

@overleaf.com Is Overleaf down?

"... the radical character of [Feyerabend's] proposal ... three elements—the theory of technocratic domination, the critique of scientific ideology, and the radical account of the free society—come together as groundwork for a theory of scientism as a composite social pathology"

Cheers from SAMO! Here some slides: www.andreasaltelli.eu/file/reposit... @vitenskapsteori.bsky.social

This week happy to be in Grenoble at the 11th sensitivity analysis of model output (SAMO) conference.

Need a visa for the UK? If you do it online beware predatory sites that charge ~€90. Make sure you do it on GOV.UK where it will cost ~€20. Have a jpg/jpeg copy of passport and a photo ready 🥸.

Saltelli, Andrea, Lieke A. Melsen, and Arnald Puy. 2025. ‘Digital Twins of the Earth Between Vision and Fiction’. Minerva. doi: 10.1007/s11024-025-09581-3. Open access. How one can question if a model is fair? A critique of the projects for digital twins of the earth

Interesting seminar on responsible modelling in Aachen on April 3rd, see khk.rwth-aachen.de/event/worksh... Here some slides: www.andreasaltelli.eu/file/reposit...

Truly interdisciplinary paper on modelling claims, by a team led by Arnald Puy: "Socio-environmental modeling shows physics-like confidence with water modeling surpassing it in numerical claims" - OPEN ACCESS. @unibirmingham.bsky.social @vitenskapsteori.bsky.social www.cell.com/iscience/ful...

The final version is online open access: doi.org/10.1016/j.en... How can models do well for the common good? Narratives and counter-narratives are possible. The latter are taken here to argue that models may misuse their epistemic authority for reasons of occasion, opportunity and interest ...

Good piece! Jessica Weinkle on science diplomacy jessicaweinkle.substack.com/p/what-is-sc...