Jose Pina-Sánchez 🇪🇺
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jpinasanchez.bsky.social
Jose Pina-Sánchez 🇪🇺
@jpinasanchez.bsky.social

Professor of Quantitative Criminology and co-director of the Social Research Methods centre at the University of Leeds. Interested in #Data #Bias #Measurement #CriminalJustice #Sentencing #Disparities.
jmpinasanchez.github.io/ .. more

Political science 34%
Sociology 29%
Headline from a serious and long working paper on the economic impact of Brexit. Possible that this has been feeding into OBR and HMT discussions?

I am still taking 3 flights to Europe just this term, so my cap is also full of the shit I am spreading through the atmosphere, but come on, a transcontinental flight to fascist America to have the privilege of speaking for 15 minutes in a half empty room?

Couldn’t agree more. If I don’t censor myself on this one, I’ll end up with no friends in academia.

All political parties in #Ilkley (West Yorkshire) support free parking. Even the #Green party is affected by this form of #Braincar rot.
Elon Musk’s AI service Grok is so drunkenly, transparently biased that it would be funny – if it weren’t a mortal threat to democracy

This week’s column by Stewart Lee

www.thenerve.news/p/stewart-le...
"Why American-style polarisation is spreading across the West"

Two words: algorithms and incentives. Mostly incentives. Until we modify or eliminate incentives, all we can do is watch as the fabric of society is pulled apart, strand by strand. www.ft.com/content/5060...

I am not ashamed to say it once took me 5 to 10 minutes to find the toilets in that building. Also, I still do not have a clue where level 1 is.

Keir Starmer and Labour could really learn a lesson from Spain about the implications of not being a dick to immigrants.
Spain in a sweet spot: tourism boom, growing high value services, decent manufacturing base, relatively low energy costs, high immigration.
www.reuters.com/default/spai...

I think it is just a case of excessive risk-aversion mixed-up with a chronic shortage of quantitative researchers in my field, but yes, in your case that might be the case. Absolutely crazy that Leeds students do not get to learn causal inference from you.

Same here. A key argument about expanding our training on quantitative methods has been: what happens if we need to replace you?
Spain in a sweet spot: tourism boom, growing high value services, decent manufacturing base, relatively low energy costs, high immigration.
www.reuters.com/default/spai...
Ok,a very informal survey. I need suggestions as to the best UG programs in criminology, criminal justice, crime science internationally. Context: we need to persuade my Uni of what the contents have to be for our reformed program & need to arm myself with arguments and good examples
The wonderful local newspaper The Dublin InQuirer has just published a number of stories from their own victimisation survey.

www.dublininquirer.com/new-survey-o...
Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching
arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review.

This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month.

Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.
Attention Authors: Updated Practice for Review Articles and Position Papers in arXiv CS Category – arXiv blog
blog.arxiv.org
It’s not easy to break free from deep dependencies. But it can be done. ICC to drop MS for German alternative ⬇️

www.euractiv.com/news/interna...
International Criminal Court to ditch Microsoft Office for European open source alternative | Euractiv
The court will move its internal work environment to Open Desk, a German-developed open source software
www.euractiv.com

Especially relevant to British and European criminal justice / criminology researchers with a thirst for empirical methods and open acess practices. There is life beyond the #BSC & the #ESC.

To the interest of researchers working on #empirical #criminal #law. There is a new working group hosted by the European Society of Empirical Legal Studies. Led by 2 rising stars in the field, @msoltes.bsky.social & Jakub Drapal. #ESELS members can join here: esels.eu/working-group/

I was once told I had to fill a risk assessment form to hold a seminar with colleagues (not students) outdoors, on the lawn in front of our building, in a sunny summer day.

My 10 years old son is obsessed with WWI. This is hpw he spends his evenings.
Sorcery in Caerphilly:
@johnsweeneyroar.bsky.social visits the Welsh valleys on the trail of a Russian spy, his wife, a Reform politician taking bribes, party leader Nigel Farage and a vanishing by-election candidate.
Here's a sneak peak of John’s film - coming tomorrow only in the Nerve

Unless they are willing to increase the amount of funding by taking it away from stem, or change the format of their funding schemes, e.g. lottery based, that would be the only rational - and honest - choice.

With these success rates, UKRI is now in a position to contribute - massively - to research in the social sciences and humanities if they were to cancel all government funding to those disciplines.
Quite a realisation.
After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results:

- AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2%
- ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1%
- ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%
Another day, another report of a road death which raises a number of issues identified in my report Behind the Headlines: Sentencing after fatal crashes:
news.sky.com/story/merced...

👉'shameful' delays
👉lack of lifetime bans for drivers who have shown themselves to be a danger to the public

If you ever submit a grant proposal that begins with:
“This project will have a small or iterative impact, if any…”
I promise I’ll have that page printed and framed in oak so you can display it proudly in your office.

good for Sheffield

"Projekt DEAL, established a fee of €2,750 per article with the publisher Wiley."
"Instead of paying for access, authors pay for publication, but the final amounts do not represent any savings."
How can this be justified? Why are not we ashamed?
The mirage of Open Access: articles free of charge for citizens are strangling universities buff.ly/PCfIJC4
The mirage of Open Access: articles free of charge for citizens are strangling universities
For science to be truly open and at the service of society, knowledge must no longer be solely in the hands of an oligopoly.
buff.ly
'New proposals by Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Wiley and Sage were sent to universities this week after their initial offers were decisively rejected by institutions in a sector-wide consultation run by Jisc,...negotiating jointly with Universities UK on behalf of universities.' 1/3
New offers from big five ‘still too costly’ for UK universities
‘Significant’ number of institutions predicted to drop deals with main scholarly imprints, leaving journal access much reduced
www.timeshighereducation.com

Am I the only one who thinks the UK is already incredibly 'culturally coherent'?
All the streets look the same anywhere you go, nero, whetherspoons, pizza express, prets, greggs, cars parked on the pavement, etc.
A Conservative MP tipped as a future party leader has been condemned for saying large numbers of legally settled families must be deported, in order to ensure the UK is mostly “culturally coherent”.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
Tory MP criticised after demanding legally settled families be deported
Katie Lam said move would make UK ‘culturally coherent’ and that a large number of people ‘need to go home’
www.theguardian.com