Under the subject line, “I needed this information to make a go/no-go decision on my new Death Star,” Kevin Lewis points to this press release from a prestigious journal: Because versions of the below articles were previously posted online, PNAS is publishing the articles without embargo: Potential atmospheres around TRAPPIST-1 planets Simulations of stellar winds […] The post PNAS forgets basic principles of game theory, thus dooming thousands of Bothans…
Today I noticed an op-ed by two political scientists, Howard Lavine and Wendy Rahm, entitled, “What if Trump’s Nativism Actually Hurts Him?”: Contrary to received wisdom, however, the immigration issue did not play to Mr. Trump’s advantage nearly as much as commonly believed. According to our analysis of national survey data from the American National […] The post About that claim in the NYT that the immigration issue <em>helped</em> Hillary…
Today I noticed an op-ed by two political scientists, Howard Lavine and Wendy Rahm, entitled, “What if Trump’s Nativism Actually Hurts Him?”: Contrary to received wisdom, however, the immigration issue did not play to Mr. Trump’s advantage nearly as much as commonly believed. According to our analysis of national survey data from the American National […] The post About that claim in the NYT that the immigration issue <em>helped</em> Hillary…
Kaiser Fung points to this news article by David Jackson and Gary Marx: The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is ending a high-profile program that used computer data mining to identify children at risk for serious injury or death after the agency’s top official called the technology unreliable. . . . Two Florida […] The post Flaws in stupid horrible algorithm revealed because it made numerical predictions appeared…
A couple months ago we reported on an article by sociologist Steve Morgan, criticizing a published paper by political scientist Diana Mutz. Mutz’s original article was called, “Status Threat, Not Economic Hardship, Explains the 2016 Presidential Vote,” and Morgan’s reply is called, “Status Threat, Material Interests, and the 2016 Presidential Vote” (it originally had the […] The post Does “status threat” explain the 2016 presidential vote? Diana Mutz replies to…
OK, this is a nice juicy problem for a political science student . . . Act 1: “Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists” David Adler writes in the New York Times: My research suggests that across Europe and North America, centrists are the least supportive of democracy, the least committed to its […] The post Can somebody please untangle this one for us? Are centrists more, or…
I just read this horrifying magazine article by Patrick Radden Keefe: The Family That Built an Empire of Pain: The Sackler dynasty’s ruthless marketing of painkillers has generated billions of dollars—and millions of addicts. You really have to read the whole thing, because it’s just one story after another of bad behavior, people getting rich […] The post Oxycontin, Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family, and the FDA appeared first on…
I just read this horrifying magazine article by Patrick Radden Keefe: The Family That Built an Empire of Pain: The Sackler dynasty’s ruthless marketing of painkillers has generated billions of dollars—and millions of addicts. You really have to read the whole thing, because it’s just one story after another of bad behavior, people getting rich […] The post Oxycontin, Purdue Pharma, the Sackler family, and the FDA appeared first on…
Annie Wang writes: I’m a law student (and longtime reader of the blog), and I’m writing to flag a variant of the “All Else Equal” fallacy in ProPublica’s article on the COMPAS Risk Recidivism Algorithm. The article analyzes how statistical risk assessments, which are used in sentencing and bail hearings, are racially biased. (Although this […] The post Average predictive comparisons and the All Else Equal fallacy appeared first on…
Matthew Simonson writes: I have a question that may be of interest to your readers (and even if not, I’d love to hear your response). I’ve been analyzing a dataset of over 100 Middle Eastern political groups (MAROB) to see how these groups react to government repression. Observations are at the group-year level and include […] The post Against Screening appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.
