Currently attending a conference & our field is quite a bit into fancy modeling, so it’s time to repost this blog post. Don’t try to squeeze your research question into whatever model is fashionable right now; try to build the right model for your research question. www.the100.ci/2024/08/27/l...

📢 Appel à communications Les conférences annuelles des GDR FRESH et RESHAPE auront lieu à Montpellier, les 4–6 nov. 2025. Thèmes : santé publique & inégalités, climat & santé, evolutionary medicine, + session Varia. ✅ Inscription gratuite → fresh-reshape25.sciencesconf.org 📅 Deadline : 30 sept.

Proud to share our new @nber working paper on how genetics shape the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status in the Netherlands. 🧵(1/8) www.nber.org/papers/w34208

Choosing to go by train/ferry to #Flux2025 I emitted SEVEN times less C02 compared to a plane trip. Air travel is one of the largest contributors to the carbon footprint of research. Researchers, universities and conferences have the responsabilities to create more sustainable alternatives.

Brilliant paper by Visscher et al. Populations differ in traits/disease burden. Are these differences due to genetics? Comparing single variants or polygenic scores between populations is biased due to environmental confounders correlated with the variants. 1/3 www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is a helpful article of where Norwegian green politics is at and where it is coming from with insights by @elinlb.bsky.social www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/norways-elec...

To engage people on the problem of wealth inequality, we should focus on the “unfair influence” wielded by those at the top, write @michaelvaughan.bsky.social, @wealtherty.bsky.social & Annalena Oppel, even if that causes outrage. @jrf-uk.bsky.social 🔗 buff.ly/GAf0Es5

New paper! 📜 In nearly 50,000 individuals randomly sampled from the general population, we apply a symptom-specific perspective to examine which anxiety and depressive symptoms are most strongly associated with various aspects of financial adversity doi.org/10.1016/j.ss...

This is the most interesting opinion piece I have read on the topic of polygenic embryo screening! The "having" and "doing" of motherhood, the concrete practicalities of IVF, the blur between traits and diseases, etc. Highly recommended reading.

I could not resist...

"Sure, at some level everyone has a right to whatever knowledge is out there about their own genome, but dissemination of that knowledge should be based on something more than a toxic combination of libertarianism, greed, and ignorance."

I wrote another book & I'm very excited (& nervous) for it to be released into the world: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/714593...

How much do people know and understand what their administrative and health data is used for? Another story of consent for genetic data use this week.

A few thoughts on Herasight, the new embryo selection company. First, their whitepaper (drive.google.com/file/d/1EpFi...) implies that competitors like Nucleus have been marketing and selling grossly erroneous risk estimates. This is shocking if true! 🧵

Must-read for anyone considering Mendelian Imputation to increase their genetic sample. Is the potential benefit really outweighing the risks?

Poetry collection is going well thanks for asking

"One thing I deeply appreciate about genetics is that people do in fact cumulatively build knowledge. So if ideas are quietly set aside, that’s a consequence of the bulk of the field accepting empirical results and proceeding on the basis of those findings."

Worth highlighting as folks occasionally repost "data science" factoids by "Cremieux", unaware that he's also trying to mainstream racist & eugenics views (as Lasker in real life) based on a laughably poor understanding of genetics www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

New preprint!🚨 "“The Contribution of Common and Rare Genetic Variation to Emotional and Behavioural Symptoms in Childhood and Adolescence” is out on medRxiv. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1... Thread 👇

🧵1/7 New study: How do adolescent cognitive ability and education predict adult mental disorders? 🧠📚➜🧑‍⚕️ Using Norwegian register data (N = 272,351 men) of GP diagnoses and military assessed cognitive abilities. 👇

OK going to say it out loud. Writing good posts isn't an excuse to not think about who you promote. How about not advertising pro-eugenics individual(s)? How about including some non-cis-men voices? I can count women authors of cited papers on one hand, yet women are def not missing in the field.

Two weeks ago we had an amazing Social Science and Genetics conference in Oslo! Now that I had time to recover, I wanted to recall and reflect on some of the *ethical and social impacts* discussed during the conference. 🧵 /13

Brilliant panel on the education of mental health professional and the role of intersectionality, as part of Oslo Pride, with PROMENTA's Sam Fluit, Jacob Evje and @ziadaayorech.bsky.social, chaired by @nastjaontheroad.bsky.social. My highlights 👇

Brilliant panel on the education of mental health professional and the role of intersectionality, as part of Oslo Pride, with PROMENTA's Sam Fluit, Jacob Evje and @ziadaayorech.bsky.social, chaired by @nastjaontheroad.bsky.social. My highlights 👇

🧵 THREAD: New wine on socioeconomic status! Joakim Coleman Ebeltoft shipped a new tap in @NatureComms - a large study on the genetic and environmental factors behind socioeconomic status in Norway 🇳🇴 1/11 doi.org/10.1038/s414...

🧵 THREAD: Preprint from @chrisrayner.bsky.social reveals how to fix selection bias in the Norwegian #MoBa study using population-wide registry data! For the first time, we can quantify and adjust for selection bias in this major epidemiological resource. Spread the good news! osf.io/preprints/os...

Tremendous work by Nikolai Eftedal, looking at 16 different types of family relationships to better understand variance in school performance in Norway.

Same problems everywhere, I guess.

Our public science committee published its first statement, 'against misuse of behavioral genetics research' on the website. Read it now on the website ⬇️ bga.org/content.aspx...

Looking for your next research position? We're recruiting two genetic epidemiologists to work on two projects at the Division of Psychiatry at UCL, part of the growing UCL Human Genomics group.

Thanks @eivindy.bsky.social! My first foray into the mysterious world of #SelectionBias. Very happy to receive feedback, and to discuss opportunities for improving/expanding this work!

I can definitely attest to the behaviour of one 3y twin influencing my opinion of the other twin 😅. Intriguingly, they sometimes change their niches - the "bad cop" starts to be the "good cop" and vice versa.

1/13 New preprint out! We developed methods to test a key assumption in family-based genetic studies: that siblings don’t genetically influence each other’s traits. Spoiler: mostly they don’t, but there’s a twist with ADHD ratings at age 3 👶 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Our paper on indirect assortative mating is now out in @natcomms.nature.com! In it, we provide refined definitions of terms used to explain partner similarity, develop statistical models, and find evidence of surprisingly high social homogamy for education. Link: doi.org/10.1038/s414...

You don’t need more ideas. You need a better question. A thread on clarity, chaos, & what a Nobel Prize winner, a mosquito net & a PhD meltdown taught me about writing (+ thinking) better. 🪨 Here’s my new Respect the Marble post: catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/you-dont-n... 🧵

In Oslo? We still have some seats left for our conference on Social Science and Genetics on the 12-13th June! More info and registration: www.sv.uio.no/psi/english/... @uio.no

I’d like to take this one step further: poor communication & hype often already start in sci papers. “Because this study was only observational, no causal conclusions can be drawn” followed by a discussion of policy implications and theorizing based on a causal conclusion.

Live from the conference continues, we are now at 98 club karaoke, first come first serve! @essgn.bsky.social

Ending the conference with a panel about Mendelian Randomization with @mendelrandom.bsky.social Alice Carter and Dalton Conley. My main take-away: use negative controls! @essgn.bsky.social

@sjoerdalten.bsky.social combines a trio PGI design with the sibling design (by Trejo, the model where you only need the phenotypes of both siblings) to look at the association of personality PGI and SES outcomes in Lifelines and the dutch registry. @essgn.bsky.social

Independent contributions to externalizing and internalizing symptoms from common and rare variants shown by @olivia-wootton.bsky.social in MCS and Alspac. Also always nice to see that the NonCog PGI association is not mediated by cognitive skills 🤞 @essgn.bsky.social

Very thorough investigation of the impact of low dose ionization due to nuclear incident in the UK. By Rossella da Sabbato @essgn.bsky.social I’m learning a lot here!

Using having two first children of same sex as an IV, Dalton Conley disproves the Trivers-Willard hypothesis: it appears having a girl is taking a bigger toll on parents’ epigenetic clocks. @essgn.bsky.social

“Social science genetics will continue as a field but your publications will stay” @libertyruth.bsky.social told us her wishes and advice as an NHB editor. -> Talk about your limitations, use correlation terminology when not testing causation, document your ethical considerations, write FAQs

Interesting method challenge from Niels Rietveld: how do you do an extended twin family model when you don’t know zygocity and have extremely gendered phenotype? They compare same-sex twins and same-sex closely spaced siblings! They run this on entrepreneurship in CBS. @essgn.bsky.social

Financial stress is most strongly associated with epigenetic aging amongst a broad range of negative life events (between-family estimates). By Bodine Gonggrijp @ntrbiopsy.bsky.social @essgn.bsky.social

In the UKB, breastfeeding (self-report) is associated with adult height and cognitive performance, even within-siblings. By Emil Sorensen. @essgn.bsky.social

A different kind of talk by Bennett McIntosh, with an ethnographic point of view. Teaching us about boundary objects and how social science genetics fits into reproductivism. Brilliant! @essgn.bsky.social

And that’s already a wrap for me, thank you all for coming to my poster! @essgn.bsky.social #ESSGN2025

Now trying to wrap my head around measuring ancestry-based assortative mating. Interesting methods being used by @luyinz.bsky.social. @essgn.bsky.social