Statistical Rethinking 2026 is done: 20 new lectures emphasizing logical and critical statistical workflow, from basics of probability theory to causal inference to reliable computation to sensitivity. It's all free, made just for you. Lecture list and links: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

Finally finished up a blog post on estimating Bradley–Terry models using brms. www.m-flynn.com/posts/2025-1...

🎉 New position paper out with @jess-hampton.bsky.social 🌱 Beyond the horizon: A more-than-human and holistic approach to language 🌱 Out now in *Language & Ecology* www.ecolinguistics-association.org/_files/ugd/a...

I ported the notes to Quarto and now all the old links are broken 😅. Here the new link to the chapter on Bayesian models of cognition: fusaroli.github.io/AdvancedCogn... Working now on 3 chapters on models of categorization (exemplar, prototype, rule-based)

Had a blast at #BAAP2026! [That also involved ripping my jeans while performing ballet at the bar (the drinks bar) for some of the conference dinner attendees who surely didn't ask for it] Jokes apart, amazing research being done and was happy to see Bayesian stuff!

All graphs are comparisons, and the relevance of this principle to practical advice for producing better graphs statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/04/12/a...

Asking for a colleague: First language English speakers survey on phonosymbolism. Please share: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Link to the paper, Phonetic features in the interactional management of laughter: www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour...

Fun fact: My boss, Stefan Schmukle, actually published a study on implicit gender self-concept (measured with the IAT) and 2D:4D ratios. And it's included in the loss-of-confidence project, because (surprise) he no longer believes in it. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

If research has no applied end-goal, it still matters. (Note that “no applied end-goal” doesn’t mean “no potential application”. I believe that all research has potential for application, that’s not the point I am making).

Some believe that others believe that Open Research is the ultimate *cure* to the research crises. But no: in most minds, Open Research is a *response* to the research crises, not necessarily a panacea.

A lot of (non-philosophical) discourse around science in linguistics and adjacent disciplines lacks a solid philosophical backdrop. What’s the point in trying to convince people that what you do is “science” when demarcation is a problem in itself?

Do researchers share their code upon request? Does running their orginal code on the original data produce the original results? We provide evidence in a new Royal Society Open Science publication. Studying more than 1,000 articles which use data from the European Social Survey, we find that... 🧵

Researchers in QUALITATIVE METHODS, can you please share examples of how you share data/annotations/transcripts and so on? Also how you organise your files and so on. Thank you!

Psychologists, please abandon box plots. They are bad (why? where do I begin...).

🎉 NEW PAPER with @gsakr.bsky.social "Multivariate Analyses of Tongue Contours from Ultrasound Tongue Imaging" 👅📡🩻📉 doi.org/10.1177/0023...

🎉 - NEW MANUSCRIPT with @jess-hampton.bsky.social Beyond the horizon: a more-than-human and holistic approach to language lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/009...

And the time comes when your tinsy work laptop has no more storage.

So Old Chinese *ɲ becomes Middle Chinese *ɻ (still /ɻ/ today in Mandarin). Does anybody know of a parallel change in other (non-Sino-Tibetan) languages?

My wish for 2026 is that I want to go back to my home planet. Take me back!!! Thank youuuuuu

We're delighted to welcome TWO new diamond-OA PCI RR-friendly journals Registered Reports in Linguistics, ed. by @scoretta.bsky.social ky.social & @jess-hampton.bsky.social + Replication Research @r2journal.bsky.social ed. by @aufdroeseler.bsky.social & team rr.peercommunityin.org/about/pci_rr...

In 2019, IPBES #GlobalAssessment est. 1 million species of plants & animals are threatened with extinction.🥀 The figure is probably even higher, but what's important is the urgent need for #biodiversity preservation! https://www.ipbes.net/global-assessment

In this writing and reviewing season, I would like to kindly remind linguists to not hide your data or your observations behind what you think is "the main theoretical point of the paper." Cursory data and description are the linguistic impostor syndrome in writing. 1/2

I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students. I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

🎉 "Normalising formant values for plotting and modelling" New blog post: stefanocoretta.github.io/posts/2025-1...

So much statistics discourse orbits around Bayes verses frequentist debates, but in practice Bayes verses frequentist is often a false dichotomy. Just as important as the inferential strategy is the underlying model, and how that model is specified. 🧵

In case you have missed Simine Vazire's excellent webinar yesterday, here is the link to watch it online: youtu.be/_vb1CNwC3CM Thanks again @simine.com for staying up so late and thanks to the audience for the great questions!

Over the last 5 years, I proposed more and more retro-definitions of traditional terms. But why am I doing this? Are these definitions driven by their "usefulness"? This new blogpost gives an answer. dlc.hypotheses.org/3975

Breakthrough Study Reveals Human-Like Voices Inside Sperm Whale Clicks 🐋 New research reveals that sperm whales produce vowel-like sounds hidden inside their familiar clicks—patterns only heard after speeding up thousands of recordings from family clans off Dominica. greatergood.com/blogs/news/s...

"Koch 1981 argued that historically, research has favoured epistemology and the knowledge gathering process, whilst ignoring ontology. A potential reason for this is the complexity of ontology as an area of study, which in turn can act as a deterrent for researchers" www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

🚨NEW PUBLICATION ALERT!🚨 The 'Design Features' of Language Revisited (w/ @mperlman.bsky.social @glupyan.bsky.social Koen de Reus & @limorraviv.bsky.social) Feature Review out now in #OpenAccess in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social! #language #linguistics Paper: doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Happy to share the first version of my textbook "Quantitative Data Analysis for Linguists in R". stefanocoretta.github.io/qdal/ Comments and suggestions welcome! (on the GitHub repo: github.com/stefanocoret...) The textbook takes you from 0 to basic stat modelling with Bayesian regression.

A lot of interesting things to think about!

I do not like when academics assume that if you teach statistics then you must be a positivist. Further from the truth, I rejected positivism a couple decades ago.

🎉 Finally out in Journal of Phonetics, tutorial with @paulbuerkner.com 📖 "Bayesian beta regressions with brms in R: A tutorial for phoneticians" Accepted manuscript here: doi.org/10.31219/osf... Repo: github.com/stefanocoret... Publisher link: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Still think this was one of the best power moves of all time www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This slide unfortunately generalizes well 🥲

And if this article is right, this is the perfect example of the underspecification of the theory. If people double-downed on the cult, it's because they reduced cognitive dissonance. Now it may turn out that people disbanded the cult. Well, it's because they reduced cognitive dissonance 😃

A lot of the criticism against Avi Loeb are based on straw-man arguments. Most of the characterisation from media does not reflect Avi Loeb and his team’s work in any way.

Exciting new addition to the AsPredicted and ResearchBox research infrastructure toolbox: AsCollected ascollected.org A platform to document results provenance - where did data come from, who collected it, and who cleaned and analyzed it. So important!

The dreaded question students ask me: “Can you show us a published example of outstanding use of quantitative methodology in topic X within linguistics?” My answer: “There is none, sorry!” (Yes that applies to my research and yours too, sorry to burst bubbles. We need to step our game up.)

It’s astonishing how many researchers seem to believe that a cluster analysis is such a sensible analysis that it needn’t even be justified through a coherent research question. Just cluster analysis go brrrrr

🎉 - Pleased to announce a new journal 📔 - Registered Reports in Linguistics (RRLing) journals.ed.ac.uk/rrling/index The first linguistic journal dedicated to Registered Reports. We accept submissions from all areas in linguistics and language research.

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of listening to Dorothy Bishop emphasize the responsibility of editors during the 12th PCI Webinar! If you weren't able to join, you can catch her talk and the following Q&A session at this link: https://youtu.be/0NJ87tYE8_s

Alien Earth is not good. Plagued with contemporary narrative over-redundancy: everything is over explained in the dialogue, there are 10 parallel narratives that you don't really need for the story to move on. When did flashforwards become a thing? For me, this is the worst in the Alien universe. 😢

If I were a Bayesian model, I would end up with 100% divergent transitions...