🚨 SynthNet is out 🚨 Researchers propose new constructs and measures faster than anyone can track. We (@anniria.bsky.social @ruben.the100.ci) built a search engine to check what already exists and help identify redundancies; indexing 74,000 scales from ~31,500 instruments in APA PsycTests. 🧵1/3

New blog post! ”Which variables to control for, and why”: pedermisager.org/blog/which-v... In this post I give a beginner-friendly introduction to causal inference and statistical control, explaining why adjusting for the right variables clarifies relationships >

Join the next PMGS workshop where @ambra-prg.bsky.social will explain how to use Quarto for your reproducible research! 🔓🧑‍🔬

My paper with @lakens.bsky.social and @annaveer.bsky.social - “Replication value as a function of citation impact and sample size” - has just been published in Meta psychology! open.lnu.se/index.php/me...

I built a DAG diagram with garden hoses for teaching. Pictured: a collider bias diagram, inspired by a blocked pipe situation I experienced (which I credit with giving me the intuition though it also ruined my belongings in the flooded cellar).

Extremely honored to recieve Oslo New University College's science award for 2025. ONH has been a fantastic base to conduct my research at for the past 4 years, and I have an amazing team of colleagues around me to thank for that. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all!

Okay everyone, things are getting serious. I’m going to teach research methods again, 1st year psychology undergraduates. What would you cover with respects to philosophy of science, the research process etc.? I’m not very happy with the textbook stuff so I’m open to all ideas!

An abbreviation (ABB) in a journal article (JA) or Grant Application (GA) is rarely worth the words it saves. Every ABB requires cognitive resources (CR) and at my age by the time I'm halfway through a JA or GA I no longer have the CR to remember what your ABB stood for.

Can we infer causal relations from undirected network models of mental disorders? Some authors apparently say no. Personally, I don't see what network models are good for if they can't help us understand disease etiology (i.e. causality). Quote from onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New blog post! Why experiments are the gold standard for answering causal questions (pedermisager.org/blog/why-exp...). Many text books insist on experimental evidence to draw causal inferences bvut don't fully explain exactly what gives experiments their special powers.

RE @nulliusinverba.bsky.social ep 59: Meehl seems to assume that research is harder than teaching; teachers should be paid less and if you can't do interesting research you're "demoted" to teaching. Why not the opposite? Why not pay teachers more and say "if you cannot teach, do"?

Currently reading "Complex Systems Research in Psychology" (santafeinstitute.github.io/ComplexPsych/). If you're interested systems psychology/psychopathology, give this a read. van der Maas gives a very broad introduction to the topic, and supplements text with R code and practical exercises.

I often talk about the need for psychology to improve. That is because I think it is worth improving. It would be very helpful if I could easily provide a few dozen examples of the contributions that have been made to support that conviction. I know they exist. I would just like them in one place.

Just discovered "Mental health professionals’ attitudes towards the network theory of mental disorders" by @leahschumaker.bsky.social & Levente Kriston (osf.io/462cs). Fascinating read. Partly confirms suspicion I've had for a while that therapists see NTMD as "nothing new" (but see pub for details)

My editorial on how journals can earn trust. We often use journal names as proxies for quality. This is bad bc it’s not valid. But it could be. Editors could make journal name a valid signal. And we could place value on journals that show us how they do that. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

There is still time to sign up for the last workshop of this academic year at PMGS, "Scientific Criticism and Peer Review," by @renebekkers.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy Check out the details here: paulmeehlschool.github.io/workshops/cr...

Psych-DS is (1) spellcheck for your datasets and (2) a pathway to standardizing data in our academic fields that *everyone* can learn. And it's live RIGHT NOW! psych-ds.github.io (This is the announcement post I've been leading up to)

I'll finally get to teach a workshop on one of my favourite subjects - causal inference - at the Paul Meehl graduate school may 9th! Ever wondered what the point is of controlling for variables in your regression analysis? Come find out with us!

The new workshop of Paul Meehl Graduate School, Causal Inference and Variable Control by @isager.bsky.social, is open for registration. Check out the announcement below: paulmeehlschool.github.io/2025-04-02-c...

Looking for a PhD/Postdoc in Switzerland? English speaking lab, good pay, incredible scenery. There's lots of funding calls for projects related to my work on the meta-science of measurement, error detection and trustworthiness assessment. Reach out if you're interested in writing a grant together.

From www.chronicle.com/article/soci... by Gelman and King. I applaud the idea presented in this piece, but this specific argument is flawed🧵

My commentary on Isager, van ‘t Veer, and Lakens’ (2024) “Replication value as a function of citation impact and sample size” is now accepted at Meta-Psychology. CC: @isager.bsky.social @lakens.bsky.social @annaveer.bsky.social Preprint: osf.io/preprints/me...

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Inspiring work by @sajedehra.bsky.social et al. on identifying the various benefits of coordination in science, and providing a better language to talk about what coordination in science actually *is*. I personally long to one day be part of a truly coordinated research line.

Mark your calenders. The dates and topics of the upcoming workshops of the Paul Meehl Graduate School are announced. Stay tuned for more information paulmeehlschool.github.io/2025-02-10-s...

My team is looking for someone to lead our operations and communications in a senior-level role! More details: www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/50079/

Go, shorty: New blog post! (How) should you interpret pre-post differences in a randomized study? In which we introduce a new format, "reviewer notes" -- points that occasionally need to be made during the peer-review process. www.the100.ci/2025/01/22/r...

New paper for holiday reading! @isager.bsky.social and I provide an introduction to three-sided testing, a framework for testing estimates' practical significance. We offer a tutorial, Shiny app, + commands/code in #Rstats, #Jamovi, + #Stata. 1/9 osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/8y925 #EconSky #PsychSky

New preprint: “Three-Sided Testing to Establish Practical Significance: A Tutorial” (osf.io/preprints/ps...) with @FitzgeraldJack_, proposing an upgraded version of the TOST equivalence test 🧵

How do we judge whether a particular experiment is 'pursuitworthy'? What factors need to be considered? @ennofischer.bsky.social & I are receiving submissions exploring these & related questions for a topical collection in EJPS! Please help us spread the word! tu-dresden.de/gsw/phil/iph... #philsci

New blog post: Seven basic rules for causal inference: pedermisager.org/blog/seven_b..., in which I state the most basic ways that causal relationships can produce correlation, and provide R code to demonstrate how each rule plays out in data.

Ever had really great discussions during a hackathon and gone home thinking others could also benefit from the ideas bounced around? Inspired by @simine.com's garage analogy, we thought about how to coordinate scientific self-correction. See our ‘hackathon proceedings’ osf.io/preprints/me... 1/

New preprint: "The value of replications goes beyond replicability and is tied to the value of the research it replicates: Commentary on Isager et al. (2024)" My very quick take on the Isager and team's work on value of replications. Read: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Ever wanted to test both equivalence and superiority/inferiority? How about a four-sided test of significance (FOST)? In this blog post, I describe what a FOST is, when it might be useful, and I ask readers to help me assess if FOST makes sense: pedermisager.org/blog/four-on...

My wife has family in Gaza, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. I don’t need to tell you how bad things are, and they’re the lucky ones. We want to try to help get them out. Please, if you can, donate and/or share this gofundme link; no amount is too small. gofund.me/6356721f

Interested in replication research? Consider writing a commentary for the next special issue in Meta-Psychology which will publish critiques of the article "Replication value as a function of citation impact and sample size": open.lnu.se/index.php/me...

Anyone feeling qualified to review (psych) papers that use equivalence tests (i.e., review with a focus on the equivalence tests)? I get too many requests and don’t know who to recommend other than @lakens.bsky.social and @isager.bsky.social (who probably have the same problem)

@annaveer.bsky.social @lakens.bsky.social Thed van Leeuwen and I applied a method for quantifying "replication value" on a large sample of fMRI articles in social neuroscience, to see if the method is practically feasible. Open access version of our attempt is now online: doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

“Causal inference is not just a statistics problem” New article by @lucystats.bsky.social, @travisgerke.bsky.social, and @malcolmbarrett.malco.io in the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education Open access: doi.org/10.1080/2693... #Stats #DataScience 🧪

New episode of @nulliusinverba.bsky.social on mentorship in academia. nulliusinverba.podbean.com/e/mentorship/ What are the characteristics of a good mentor-mentee relationship? We discuss some of our mentors, and how important they are for a career in science.

I'm thrilled to announce the new Psych Science editor team! We'll start on Jan 1, 2024. Check us out: here: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/psychological_science/2024-editorial-board We're spread across 15 countries in 5 continents! 🌍🌎🌏 Here’s a thread to introduce the team!

Tenure-Track Professorships at Leibniz Institue for Psychology in Trier (Germany): * Science Acceptance  * ❗Psychological Metascience❗ * Big Data in Psychology Never seen such posts in Germany before ... wind of change (😉🦂) Deadline: Dec. 14th leibniz-psychology.org/en/the-insti...

I teach quant methods to psych students. I miss good algebra-free intro materials on causal inference. So I have decided to make some and post them on my blog. Here is the first, in which I explain *why* we warn that "correlation does not equal causation": pedermisager.org/blog/why_doe...

This was a great episode! Listening to it made me realize the huge role that trust plays in scientific efficiency. E.g. applied researchers can get nowhere w.o. trust in basic research. The importance of trust in science says much about the practical costs of quality control.

New @nulliusinverba.bsky.social episode is out on "Quantifauxcation" nulliusinverba.podbean.com/e/quantifaux... - when numbers are used to give credence, even if they mean little. After which @smritimehta.bsky.social embarks on a lecture on how to develop valid and meaningful measures.

Forthcoming in Cortex Several methods for identifying high-value replication targets have been proposed, but we need to show that these can be implemented in practice. In paper with @lakens.bsky.social and @annaveer.bsky.social we assess the feasibility of one method (RVcn): osf.io/preprints/me...

This is a wonderful paper! If you're interested in the causes of mental health and disorder, give it a read.