New preprint out today (osf.io/preprints/ps...). We tested whether AI agents are actually infiltrating online surveys.

Spoiler alert: they aren't

Thread 🧵

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A meta-analysis on reducing discrimination finds:
1) passive interventions, such as short-term education or bias reminders, are ineffective
2) targeting behavior directly to inhibit bias (eg making individuals accountable or changing social norms) is helpful
psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

#Wilmasreview

Wilma 🐶 is celebrating her 7th birthday 🎂 with a publication alert 🚨

Wilma consulted AI 💻 to generate ideas about presents for dog birthdays. While the AI 💻 suggests an enormous treat 🍬, Wilma's humans chose enjoying a sunny day outside with some healthy carrot snacks 🥕.

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For the last 3 yrs, I was the director for the Science of Science program at the NSF. We funded projects on science communication - science communication to the public, communication of public priorities to scientists, citizens engagement & participation in science. 🧵

Postdoctoral Researcher Position (3 years) in Political Science as part of the ERC-funded Lobbying (A)symmetry Project

🥁The LOBBYMETRY project is hiring:
1 PostDoc & 1 fully-funded PhD 🥳
Come to beautiful Copenhagen to research lobbying, informational quality and public policy formulation!

PostDoc: jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...

Please spread the word & and do not hesitate to reach out with questions!

The Trump administration wants more studies replicated. That won't be easy A key question is which studies get repeated and, with limited resources, at what expense.

Trump admin doesn't support replications to improve science ofc but wants to use them to bring long discredited ideas, flawed research questions and methods back into circulation. We should have collectively resisted the weaponization of replications as some magical demarcation criterion.

75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving More than 1,600 readers answered our poll; many said they were looking for jobs in Europe and Canada.

We polled Nature readers to ask if they were thinking of leaving the US for jobs abroad. Three-quarters of them (who said they were US-based scientists) said yes. 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Screenshot of title + abstract of the paper.

🚨New paper alert!🚨

Women are less likely to enter competitions than men—even when equally qualified. But telling them this can change behavior.

📈 In a field experiment on a job application platform, we found that highlighting this gender gap increased the # of job apps women submitted by ~20%.

This is actually the worst thing I’ve seen from federal granting agencies thus far.

Have heard of multiple groups getting these grant termination letters. Direct political interference with science. Absolutely unacceptable. 🧪

After a long wait, the working paper for the Many-Economists Project: The Sources of Researcher Variation in Economics. We had 146 teams perform the same research three times, each time with less freedom. What source of freedom leads to different choices and results? papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Scatterplot titled “Empirical Evidence of Ideological Targeting in Federal Layoffs: Agencies seen as liberal are significantly more likely to face DOGE layoffs.” • The x-axis represents Perceived Ideological Leaning of federal agencies, ranging from -2 (Most Liberal) to +2 (Most Conservative), based on survey responses from over 1,500 federal executives. • The y-axis shows Agency Size (Number of Staff) on a logarithmic scale from 1,000 to 1,000,000. Each point represents a federal agency: • Red dots indicate agencies that experienced DOGE layoffs. • Gray dots indicate agencies with no layoffs. Key Observations: • Liberal-leaning agencies (left side of the plot) are disproportionately represented among red dots, indicating higher layoff rates. • Notable targeted agencies include: • HHS (Health & Human Services) • EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) • NIH (National Institutes of Health) • CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) • Dept. of Education • USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) • The National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE), despite its conservative leaning (+1 on the scale), is an exception among targeted agencies. • A notable outlier: the Department of Veterans Affairs (moderately conservative) also faced layoffs despite its size. Takeaway: The figure visually demonstrates that DOGE layoffs disproportionately targeted liberal-leaning agencies, supporting claims of ideological bias. The pattern reveals that layoffs were not driven by agency size or budget alone but were strongly associated with perceived ideology. Source: Richardson, Clinton, & Lewis (2018). Elite Perceptions of Agency Ideology and Workforce Skill. The Journal of Politics, 80(1).

The DOGE firings have nothing to do with “efficiency” or “cutting waste.” They’re a direct push to weaken federal agencies perceived as liberal. This was evident from the start, and now the data confirms it: targeted agencies overwhelmingly those seen as more left-leaning. 🧵⬇️

The European Federation of Academies of Sciences has issued a statement in response to developments in 🇺🇸

"Censorship and political suppression of language, research topics, and methodologies— fundamentally compromise the integrity of scientific and scholarly endeavours"

allea.org/wp-content/u...

Meditations in an Emergency It's good to be shocked, but don't be awed

New, from me:
So much is happening, so quickly. The purpose of shock and awe is to bewilder and overwhelm. It is important not to look away, or get discouraged. Try to discern the what is a big and real threat. Here is my best effort to do so. 🧵
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/meditation...

list of banned keywords

🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.

EXCLUSIVE: NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with Trump’s orders Grantee accounts remain frozen, while union accuses NSF of ignoring rules governing peer review

Exclusive: NSF this week began to search through billions of dollars of grants the agency has already awarded for anything touching on topics that President Donald Trump has criticized. And NSF has blocked grantees and trainees from accessing funds while the review is underway. scim.ag/3El0NZh

Public Management Review Volume 27, Issue 1 of Public Management Review

Welcome to 2025 and to Volume 27! Here is Issue 1, featuring @juliealanger.bsky.social @mkfeeney.bsky.social
@mjinpedersen.bsky.social @nathanfavero.com @ehernandez.bsky.social @xcornellian.bsky.social @andrewasullivan.bsky.social @milagasco.bsky.social www.tandfonline.com/toc/rpxm20/2...

Super excited that this paper, co-authored with @mjinpedersen.bsky.social, is now out in early view in @pareview.bsky.social! (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...)

Not every study needs to have a power analysis, but every study needs a sample size justification. I discuss 6 approaches, and 6 ways to think about which effect sizes are of interest in the study you are planning.

online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art...

From our new issue: "Selecting for Masculinity: Women’s Under-Representation in the Republican Party" by Christopher Karpowitz, J. Quin Monson, Jessica Preece, and Alejandra Aldridge. #ASPRNewIssue www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

We've significantly updated our paper on modeling + measuring systemic discrimination! Check it out:

www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ab5yx...

(cc @aleximas.bsky.social + @aislinnbohren.bsky.social!)

A short 🧵 on what's new...

<em>Public Administration Review</em> | ASPA Journal | Wiley Online Library In response to workloads and service demands, frontline workers often prioritize among their clients when delivering public services. This article examines the implications of such bureaucratic prior...

Public servants often need to prioritize clients in public services, because of the limited resources they have for dealing with an almost infinite demand of public and social needs.

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doi.org/10.1111/puar...

American Journal of Political Science | MPSA Journal | Wiley Online Library The disadvantages experienced by minorities and lack of societal remedies are partly attributable to native-majority citizens’ limited awareness of minority hardships. We investigate whether informin...

(1/7) 📢 New research alert!

Even when people are shown clear evidence of #discrimination, it doesn‘t change their support for anti-discrimination policies.

Read @kkrakows.bsky.social, @asmusletholsen.bsky.social, and my article in @ajpseditor.bsky.social to find out why: doi.org/10.1111/ajps...

Just migrated—excited to explore this blue sky!😀