Maarten J. Bijlsma

@mjbijlsma.bsky.social

280 followers 200 following 49 posts

Senior Biostatistician at the Netherlands Comprehensive Cancer Organisation (IKNL). Former Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research & University of Groningen.

Not to be confused with prof. Maarten F. Bijlsma.

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Public Health 36%

Medicine 30%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Mar 3

Does he make bold statements for populist reasons (appearance of boldness), or is he actually bold and his words indicate what actions will soon follow?

Reposted by Martyn Plummer, Maarten J. Bijlsma

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · Jan 29

I'm so sorry I can't stop laughing. OpenAI, the company built on stealing literally the entire internet, is crying because DeepSeek may have trained on the outputs from ChatGPT. They're crying their eyes out. What a bunch of hypocritical little babies. Cry more, freaks.

www.ft.com/content/a0df...

OpenAI says it has evidence China’s DeepSeek used its model to train competitor
White House AI tsar David Sacks raises possibility of alleged intellectual property theft

OpenAI says it has found evidence that Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek used the US company’s proprietary models to train its own open-source competitor, as concerns grow over a potential breach of intellectual property.
The San-Francisco-based ChatGPT maker told the Financial Times it had seen some evidence of ‘distillation’, a technique used by developers to obtain better performance on smaller models by using outputs from larger, more capable models. This allows them to achieve similar results on specific tasks at a much lower cost.
OpenAI declined to comment further on details of its evidence. Its terms of service state users cannot “copy” any of its services or “use output to develop models that compete with OpenAI”.

Reposted by Ingo E. Isphording, Maarten J. Bijlsma

Shon Ferguson @shonferguson.bsky.social · Jan 23

Unsolicited advice to authors:
In your responses to reviewers, the best practice is to respond point by point, using the same numbering and even including the reviewers' comments verbatim directly before each response.
Do not remove the numbering, jumble the order, and paraphrase the comments!

Reposted by Maarten J. Bijlsma

Joanna Bryson @j2bryson.bsky.social · Jan 23

EUROPE IS DOING FINE. Look at these trade figures from Hélène Rey (London Business School and CEPR) which she presented in her prize talk at the 3rd Kiel-CEPR Conference on Geoeconomics this past autumn. In an equalising world, CN = US < EU

Video of talk is here www.ifw-kiel.de/institute/ev...

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Jan 20

Very nice view, but please be aware thay if anyone ever wanted to dox you this'll be quite helpful to them.

Reposted by Maarten J. Bijlsma

Jon Michael Gran @jmgran.bsky.social · Jan 20

We're still seeking candidates interested in causal inference and/or survival analysis for a postdoc position in Oslo. Deadline January 31.

Please apply or forward this to anyone who might be interested!

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Four year postdoc position at the Oslo Centre for Biostatistics and Epidemiology (OCBE) (272144) | University of Oslo

Job title: Four year postdoc position at the Oslo Centre for Biostatistics and Epidemiology (OCBE) (272144), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Friday, January 31, 2025

www.jobbnorge.no

Reposted by Frédéric Delsuc, Maarten J. Bijlsma

Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · Jan 19

People, just stop doing Frontiers special issues. Find a nice diamond open access journal, and self-publish and collaboratively peer review the set of papers you all want to write. Do not give Frontiers money. They add no value. If anything, they hurt your reputation. MDPI is of course even worse.

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Jan 16

Good to hear this is being pursued. If Europe wants strategic autonomy it needs to use its own infrastructure.

erika @yeeeerika.bsky.social · Jan 13

i don't want to hear your most boomer complaint. what's your most millennial complaint?

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Jan 10

I wonder if people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos use AI themselves or if they know its dangers and steer clear, considering it only for their underlings.

Kind of like a drug dealer: you don't get high on your own supply.

Reposted by Maarten J. Bijlsma

Dr Charles Smith @smith-brocca.bsky.social · Jan 9

My letter in today's Guardian. Just asking, like. But I think we know the answer.

Reposted by Maarten J. Bijlsma

Darren Dahly @statsepi.bsky.social · Jan 9

Two angels discussing the basics of treatment effects.

(ICYMI)

statsepi.substack.com/p/a-conversa...

A conversation on treatment effects

The trial statistician and the clinical investigator took a step back to admire their creation.

statsepi.substack.com

Reposted by Maarten J. Bijlsma

Erin Kane @dianamonkey.bsky.social · Jan 8

I wish cars would just do what I expect and follow traffic patterns. No, I'm not going to turn left across the street in front of you while you are unexpectedly stopped and waving for me to bike across and I can see a line of cars building up behind you getting grumpier and grumpier.

Reposted by Philipp Schmid, Kevin F. McCarthy, Maarten J. Bijlsma

Peter Bornstein @spidadoc.bsky.social · Jan 3

Vaccines are amazing.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

HPV vaccine stops 90% of cervical cancer cases

England began vaccinating teenage girls in 2008 and results show it is paying off.

www.bbc.com

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Jan 3

Just saw Heretic. Was about 2/3rds of a movie in terms of storyline. Not much character development. The acting was great, though.

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Jan 3

You shouldn't install glass windows in your house because someone can just break the glass.

Reposted by Lucas Leemann, Oliver Mason, Maarten J. Bijlsma

Olivier Simard-Casanova @o.simardcasanova.net · Jan 3

Meta is testing, or has started to ship, its AI generated profiles, here on Instagram

www.instagram.com/himamaliv

#SocialWeb

Reposted by Maarten J. Bijlsma

Ulrike Franke @rikefranke.bsky.social · Jan 3

Extremely useful list by @zeit.de on (suspected) cases of Russian sabotage, espionage and more in Germany and Europe. It’s a LONG list!

www.zeit.de/politik/ausl...

Russische Sabotage in Europa: Wie Russland einen hybriden Krieg in Europa führt

Russland bekämpft europäische Staaten seit Langem mit Desinformation, inzwischen aber auch mit Sabotage und Anschlägen. Wann und wo es Attacken gab

www.zeit.de

Reposted by Maarten J. Bijlsma

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Jan 2

You all said I was being paranoid and it was just coincidence.

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Sometimes Siri would be inadvertently activated, a whistleblower told The Guardian, when an Apple Watch was raised and speech was detected. The only clue that users seemingly had of Siri's alleged spying was eerily accurate targeted ads that appeared after they had just been talking about specific items like Air Jordans or brands like Olive Garden, Reuters noted.

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Jan 2

Een oud basisschool docent van me heette Dolf. Vlak na WOII geboren. Gegeven ook zijn didaktische stijl hadden wij als kinderen zo onze verdenkingen.

Reposted by Mark E. Schaffer, Jason N. Doctor, Harry Ferguson , and 3 more Mark E. Schaffer, Jason N. Doctor, Harry Ferguson, Don E. Albrecht, Maarten J. Bijlsma, Ben Greiner

Khoa @khoavuumn.bsky.social · Jan 2

Researcher: "We let the data speak for itself."

Earlier that day:

Reposted by Mark Maslin, Wolfgang Wüster, Don Ross , and 4 more Mark Maslin, Wolfgang Wüster, Don Ross, Von P. Walden, Zerina Lokmic‐Tomkins, Frédéric Delsuc, Maarten J. Bijlsma

Mark Grabowski @markgrabowski.bsky.social · Dec 26

Resignation of the Journal of Human Evolution Editorial Board: We are saddened to announce the resignations of The Joint Editors-in-Chief, all Emeritus Editors retired or active in the field, and all but one Associate Editor. Press release below.

Reposted by Maarten J. Bijlsma

JAMES HEATHERS @jamesheathers.bsky.social · Dec 25

“A donor wanted to give $2 million to my lab, but only wanted to allow a maximum 10 percent to go to indirect cost recovery. And the school declined to receive the $2 million because they wanted at minimum, I believe it was 20 percent.”

www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/01/harv...

Harvard Professors Leaving for Private Sector Research | Harvard Magazine

Three distinguished scientists on leaving academia to advance biomedical research

www.harvardmagazine.com

Reposted by Maarten J. Bijlsma

Daniel Westreich @epidbydesign.bsky.social · Dec 23

Yes AND I personally would like those academics to also engage with the ways in which LLMs are "plagiarism machines" [1], and to reflect on their attitudes towards plagiarism in scholarly work, the classroom, and the academy generally.

[1] www.chronicle.com/article/chat...

Reposted by Olivier Giménez, Maarten van Smeden, Stéphane Cullati , and 3 more Olivier Giménez, Maarten van Smeden, Stéphane Cullati, Ewan Carr, Beatriz Goulão, Maarten J. Bijlsma

Maarten van Smeden @maartenvsmeden.bsky.social · Dec 23

Let us start 2025 in a positive mood: here are 10 methods things researchers can worry *less* about in 2025

a countdown clock with the number 10 in the center

ALT: a countdown clock with the number 10 in the center

media.tenor.com

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Dec 18

Probably not helpful for this current paper though; if applied psychologists are like demographers, they generally don't see the point of formalizing counterfactuals and it'll just confuse things.

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Dec 18

Ah, those type of papers are helpful / necessary. While I'm generally in favour of avoiding APC, I know you are an expert on causal inference. Perhaps you'll find this paper of interest since as far as I know it's the only paper describing APC with counterfactual notation doi.org/10.1007/s135...

An Assessment and Extension of the Mechanism-Based Approach to the Identification of Age-Period-Cohort Models | Demography | Duke University Press

doi.org

Reposted by Maarten J. Bijlsma

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · Dec 18

*sighs*

Percentage change should *always* be expressed on a log scale, because it’s multiplicative.

A doubling and a halving should be given equal space.

I did a whole thread on this at the time x.com/jburnmurdoch...

x.com

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Dec 17

What's the gist of your talk? A general caution or a substantive interest of some sort?

Maarten J. Bijlsma @mjbijlsma.bsky.social · Dec 12

For anyone who reads this thread and was as confused as I was; this is a post about absence of evidence not being evidence of absence.

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