Once upon a stranger: The science of how small talk can add up to a big life Dr. Gillian Sandstrom
HEY EVERYONE, DROP WHAT YOU'RE DOING!
The amazing @gilliansocial.bsky.social 's book is out in the UK today!
Go get it: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/once...
📚💙
This "big-N quant research in Nature/Science journals" pattern is a direct manifestation of The Matthew Effect in scientific publishing (beyond misinformation lit). Groups with massive resources dominate glamor pubs burying complexity and nuance under size and impact. Metascience is a great example.
Tapping the sign
My own take on power analyses: I'm good with "we had xx power to detect effects as big as xx" but find "we made a pseudo-random guess about an effect size & determined that we need a sample of N=[some highly specific number]" to be too close to cosplay for me.
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190914564856692
🧵 1/∞
I'm also not worried for the same reason that so many scientists don't choose to p-hack or fabricate data just because they can. Literally everyone can do these things. But we're capable of making choices, learning things, having integrity, prioritizing some values over external incentives, etc.
oh fuck off
Science needs a culture of trust much more than a culture of interpersonal skepticism and suspicion. Verification is important but we cannot base verification systems on extreme distrust. Scientists' cynicism about their colleagues' values, priorities, and integrity leaves no room for social growth.
THAMES Time, MFers!!
Episode 3 of the blog series, all about the SIX SECRET LETTERS FOR CRITICAL THINKING THAT THE SCIENTISTS DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW
willgervais.com/blog/2026/3/...
#psychscisky 🧪 #philsci #methodology #teaching
The single best horror-comedy Ive ever seen. Its in the history books for the one of the longest one-shots in a film (37 min) and for making 1,000x its budget (cost $25,000 USD, made $30.5 million worldwide)
Masterclass of a film. And do not read anything about it going in.
Please do! Hope it's useful!
THAMES Time, MFers!!
Episode 3 of the blog series, all about the SIX SECRET LETTERS FOR CRITICAL THINKING THAT THE SCIENTISTS DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW
willgervais.com/blog/2026/3/...
#psychscisky 🧪 #philsci #methodology #teaching
Parts of a kiwi bird as fruit
1. New in-press paper on religion's functions, co-authored with amazing lab manager James Nesbit! Full text here, more info in thread below: columbiasamclab.weebly.com/uploads/5/9/....
#AcademicSky #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #CogPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social 🧪
holy shit
Cheers!
Succinct and a very interesting open access book on atheist pamphleteering in the United States: "Godless Polemics" (2026) by Florian Zappe. www.routledge.com/Godless-Pole...
Wilde
Surveys that find British young adults have high levels of Christian belief & practice have two things in common:
1. They survey opt-in panels that accept volunteers.
2. They don't make the underlying survey datasets publicly available for researchers to analyze.
My Beautiful Bullshitty Baby:
Episode 2 of our blog series on methods renovations. Diving into my Science and Critical Thinking module - layout, rationale, & the first few weeks.
willgervais.com/blog/2026/2/...
Read! Share! Tell us what you think!
#psychscisky 🧪 #philsci #methodology #teaching
NEW: Valeria Rainero, Jörg Stolz, Ruud Luijkx, The Faith Factor. How Scholars’ Religiosity Biases Research Findings on Secularization sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...
NEW: Read this terrific piece @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social for @thenerve.news in which she unpicks Edge.org, the hugely influential 'salon' funded by Epstein & threaded through with race science & eugenics.
1/
www.thenerve.news/p/epstein-bi...
On the publication bias discourse, I regret that metascience has become a source of decontextualized, low-res, bean-counting-focused `science is in crisis' narratives. It is largely uncurious abt science, desperately lacking in theory & measurement. I'll quote a few takes I liked & add my thoughts🧵
97% of r@pists walk free in the UK. Survivors don't. Let's change that!
This petition calls for free civil legal support for survivors, creating a real route to accountability where criminal justice often fails - and helping prevent repeat harm over time.
therightwordsproject.org/petition-fre...
stop using AI to do your research. it hallucinates too often. if you want an answer to something, post something arrogant on the appropriate subreddit. something like: "this item performs 10% better than everything else. only idiots deny this." this will bait nerds into doing your research for you.
Ooooof. Miss the phenomenon but not so much the experience.
Stay hunkered & safe!
Ice storm?
