A close-up photo of a bright pink flower with white edges on the petals. There is another one in the background.
A closeup of a yellow daffodil flower with an orange center. The petals are fully open. There is a filed of similar daffodils in the background.
Flowers from this morning's dog walk.
Another summary of fascinating research in This Week in Social Science. These posts are always succinct and well written. TWISS #54: Apple of your (mind's) eye
open.substack.com/pub/twisswee...
Goooooo Bluuuueeeee!
Long read but GREAT @brookings.edu policy analysis by @econsarahreber.bsky.social and my grad school compatriot Sarah Turner. Excellent teaching resource on policy analysis, the complexity of well-intentioned policies, and importance of administration. Courts too! www.brookings.edu/articles/the...
I enjoyed this @voxdev.bsky.social podcast on today's dog walk. It is a mini master class in the evolution of rigor in evidence, using the contact hypothesis as a case study. It ends with a meta-analysis based just on pre-registered experiments. Great for teaching!
open.spotify.com/episode/4xrF...
Rest in peace Robert Mueller.
A photo of a bunch of daffodil flowers growing among some mulch in a backyard.
Daffodils!
GBR!
Easy to read summary of very interesting research by @egap.bsky.social researcher Chris Grady.
TWISS #49: The Paradox of Self-Interest
open.substack.com/pub/twisswee...
That amusement when you're told to bring your presentation on a thumb drive and you search your office frantically for one, to see that the only file on the drive you find is dated 2011. Time flies!
⏰ REMINDER: Applications for AREN's Local Network Leads program are open through March 16.
This program trains researchers & research professionals in #Africa to become #openscience leaders who can establish a community of practice at their institution.
Learn more & apply:
Call for Proposals: Data Collection for Replication+Novel Political Science Survey Experiments Alexander Coppock and Mary McGrath January 27, 2026 We invite proposals for a survey experiment replication+novel design competition. Se- lected replication+novel design survey experiments will be conducted on large samples of American respondents, quota sampled to match U.S. Census margins and filtered for quality and attention by the survey sample provider Rep Data (repdata.com). Each proposal consists of two parts: (1) a replication study of an existing, previously published survey experiment, and (2) a novel experimental design on a topic of the authors’ choosing. The replication studies and reanalyses of the existing studies will be combined into a meta-paper to be co-authored by all authors of accepted proposals along with the princi- pal investigators (Coppock and McGrath). As a condition for acceptance, authors commit to sharing the data and producing a write-up of the findings from their novel design for submission to a scholarly journal, and public posting of a working paper pre-publication.
🎺 Call for proposals 🎺
1️⃣ replicate an existing experiment
2️⃣ run a novel experiment
on repdata.com
3️⃣ coauthor with Mary McGrath and me to meta-analyze the replications and existing studies
4️⃣ publish your study
details: alexandercoppock.com/replication_...
applications open Feb 1
please repost!
On the first prediction, stay tuned for forthcoming @nature.com article by Andrew Tyner and @briannosek.bsky.social of @cos.io (and almost 300 coauthors including me) on the replicability of published findings in the social sciences. Due out mid-March.
A big thanks to @justinwolfers.bsky.social, Joshua Hill, and MacMillan Learning for a great webinar today on "AI won't replace econ professors, but it will change the way we teach." I left a little less scared of AI and much more curious about what I can create!
There's something very special about Harrison Ford and Michael J. Fox sharing the screen.
Thank you for sharing this finding! We would *hope* that many of our hypotheses are based on good theory or intended to cumulate evidence on prior findings. So, it shouldn't be 50-50, right? But there are still many empirical questions (theory can go both ways) or true equipoise experiments.
It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.
I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.
Cross posting from LinkedIn where I introduce and comment on a great post by #PaulWeisenfeld in the @modernizeaid.bsky.social blog, in which Paul explains the challenges US State has for staffing humanitarian and development programming. www.linkedin.com/posts/annett...
Oren Cass uses serious economics to trash finance in the NYT cepr.net/publications... Why don't all economists?
tweet: “as English speakers we have to sort out the 'had had' situation. it's frankly embarrassing to the language” Merriam-Webster Quote Tweet: “But, it’s not wrong that that occurs.”
There, there…
I just listened to the @voxeu.org podcast with #GiancarloCorsetti about this research. Great insights and evidence about what is going on with the dollar exchange rate right now. #econsky cepr.org/voxeu/column...
REMINDER: Our West Africa Hub is hosting a Learning Days workshop at CERAP this June 🌍
We welcome applicants from Africa-based researchers & evaluation professionals from university, government, & civil society orgs.
Apply by: Feb 27, 2026
Learn more: buff.ly/9l0bdig
New blog post summarizing my and coauthors' recent #systematicreview of the comparative effectiveness of #locallyleddevelopment approaches. Post includes additional analysis of agency-related outcomes as reported in the included studies. Journal article in comments.
www.linkedin.com/pulse/limite...
I recommend that everyone read this new essay by Dario Amodei, CEO of @anthropic.com. It is sobering, especially as I think about what the future holds for my 20 yo daughter. I appreciate Amodei's transparency, which he says is the first defense. www.darioamodei.com/essay/the-ad...?
Done.
Thank you @dktrdr.bsky.social and Eddy Malesky for invite to be discussant for "Major Challenges in Development" panel at the upcoming @egap.bsky.social meeting at #Duke! Fab panel includes @nataliasbueno.bsky.social, @melinaplatas.bsky.social, & Eddy and co-discussant @danielnposner.bsky.social.
