Richard Shaw
LightNews LightNews
richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw
@richardshaw.bsky.social
1K followers 950 following 220 posts

Researcher @ University of Glasgow, UK. Epidemiologist interested in mental-health and wellbeing, health inequalities, administrative data, education.

Trying to learn Italian and Spanish.

Videos
Public Health 35%
Psychology 21%
Posts Replies Media Videos

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 2h
Unfortunately, deciding what a person wants to say and then manipulating evidence to fit seems to be the default position in most areas of life not just the BBC. This includes politics, journalism and academia. See the work on Questionable Research practices ukrio.org/ukrio-resour...
Questionable Research Practices - UK Research Integrity Office
Guidance from UKRIO Simon Kolstoe. Defining the Spectrum of Questionable Research Practices (QRPs), UKRIO, 2023 https://doi.org/10.37672/UKRIO.2023.02.QRPs References Andrade C. (2021). HARKing, Cherr...
ukrio.org

Reposted by Diane Coyle, Stephen P. Jenkins, Michael A. Clemens , and 7 more

jburnmurdoch.ft.com
John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 19h
Quick thread on the BBC and the political and societal significance of recent developments:

One of the main reasons the UK has historically been so much less polarised than the US, is that Britain has a shared source of information, consumed and trusted by most people regardless of their politics.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 22h
May be accepting Jeremy Hunt's tax cuts and promising not to put up Income Tax and VAT was in the long run a very bad idea.
tomcalver.bsky.social Tom Calver @tomcalver.bsky.social · 1d
After Liz Truss's mini-budget, just 15 per cent of people felt the Tories were the best party at handling the economy

Today, the equivalent figure for Labour is 12 per cent

www.thetimes.com/article/470f...

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Richard Shaw

stephenkb.bsky.social
Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 23h
The impossible dream some people on the British right are chasing is that you can have a BBC News operation that retreats from detail and expertise, that takes dictation from the government, but this will only create incompetence and failure when it suits you:
To fix the BBC, focus on competence and cash
Corporation fails to learn from criticism, while politicians have consciously reduced its scope for quality journalism
www.ft.com

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 23h
I think this is true of academia in general. Institutional knowledge of how the system operates is far more important for careers than disciplinary specific knowledge.

Reposted by Malcolm MacLean, Richard Shaw, Andrew Geddis

thespinoff.bsky.social
The Spinoff @thespinoff.bsky.social · 1d
We’ve forgotten what universities are for
We’ve forgotten what universities are for
With New Zealand universities facing not only a funding crisis but a philosophical challenge to their role, the soul of tertiary education is at stake....
thespinoff.co.nz

Reposted by Richard Shaw

tomcalver.bsky.social
Tom Calver @tomcalver.bsky.social · 1d
After Liz Truss's mini-budget, just 15 per cent of people felt the Tories were the best party at handling the economy

Today, the equivalent figure for Labour is 12 per cent

www.thetimes.com/article/470f...

Reposted by Richard Shaw

jacqueswels.bsky.social
Jacques Wels @jacqueswels.bsky.social · 2d
New publication in BMC Public Health:

Incidence of reported cases of euthanasia adjusted for demographic composition: a study of ten years of Belgian administrative data (2014–2023)

bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

With @healthsociety.bsky.social

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 3d
A lot of my feed is some variation of the following.
Person A: X is rubbish and needs fixing.
Person A some months later: People tyring to fix X are evil and making things worse.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 3d
Tinkering around with metrics to try and improve the behaviour of those extrinsically motivated and gaming system is missing the point.

The real issue is how do we get people to focus on the intrinsic motivation of creating and communicating good science.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 6d
My conclusion about this generation of social media is that you don't use it, it uses you.

Unless you are shareholder the best you can hope for it is amplify existing social capital.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 7d
Also attributing it to mental health is really stigmatising to people with mental health conditions. The underlying issue might better be described as Durkheim's Anomie.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 7d
This story highlights the problems of people speculating on social media without establishing what happened first. Only a single British born man was charged. The other may have been suspected simply because of their ethnicity and age.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 10d
People like Paul Johnson (formerly of the IFS) are saying that economic growth will make it easier for the government to solve problems. The unfortunate result is that the government ends up prioritising growth even if that growth causes the problems it supposed to help solve.

Reposted by Richard Shaw

stevensenior.bsky.social
Steve Senior @stevensenior.bsky.social · 11d
It's that day I know you've all been waiting for with great anticipation.

That's right, it's NEW INDICES OF DEPRIVATION day!

www.gov.uk/government/s...
English indices of deprivation 2025: frequently asked questions
www.gov.uk

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 11d
I am studying for a PGCert in Academic Practice and I am getting the impression that qualitative social science has a very unhealthy relationship with UK academia.

Reposted by Richard Shaw, Lisa Scullion

aaronreeves.bsky.social
Aaron Reeves @aaronreeves.bsky.social · 12d
The two child limit and benefit cap are "economically inefficient" because [they] "undermine public health, early years development and educational outcomes.... This in turn increases pressure on local services, including schools, health and housing." www.lbc.co.uk/article/grou...
Group of 40 economists & academics tell Chancellor ending two-child benefit cap will help grow economy | LBC
With less than a month to go before the Budget, the group have written to Rachel Reeves to warn that more than half of larger families could fall into poverty as a direct result of the cap.
www.lbc.co.uk

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 13d
Apologies for the passive aggressive thread detached from the original context. But people totally unaware of how they live in a tiny privileged bubble is both frustrating and a lost cause in terms of debate.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 13d
Which is more than I can say for many academics on secure contracts who are utterly oblivious to how exploited their junior colleagues are.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 13d
Most researchers are effectively on fixed contracts and very few get into positions where they are eligible for the REF. I don’t necessarily agree with Ottoline Leyser’s approach but I genuinely believe that she is trying to improve things.

Reposted by Richard Shaw, Margot C. Finn

resprofnews.bsky.social
Research Professional News @resprofnews.bsky.social · 13d
REF must ditch focus on individuals, says Ottoline Leyser.

Former UKRI head also echoes previous calls for universities to do less research.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-r...
REF must ditch focus on individuals, says Ottoline Leyser - Research Professional News
Former UKRI head also echoes previous calls for universities to do less research
www.researchprofessionalnews.com

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 13d
Or course that was after I had been made redundant.

Academia really needs to stop giving literally 10s of millions in funding to people whose understanding of research is so limited they would struggle to get higher than a C for a MSc dissertation.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 13d
Early in my career the PI wanted me to a "determinants of" paper. My failure to explain the flaws of the approach lead me spending the next year on utterly pointless research.

I was finally vindicated when a peer reviewer tore the paper apart.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 15d
Somebody please tell Microsoft that spell checkers were perfectly adequate ten years ago when they just checked for spelling. Now AI is analysing the context to suggest "better word choices" the whole process is become much slower and annoying.

Reposted by Richard Shaw

anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk
Anti-Bullying Alliance @anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk · 15d
"I am not interested in power for power's sake, but I'm interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good" - Martin Luther King Jr. 💛 #PowerForGood

Reposted by Jill A. Jacobson

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 17d
Causal Inference is Not Just a Statistics Problem.
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
An introductory article including a primer on causal inference and DAGS , and accompanied by an r package containing simulated data to help explain concepts.
www.tandfonline.com

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 18d
Academics what you do on annual leave, weekends etc is your own business. So if you want to write a book or paper because you love your work that is fine. But please avoid sending emails requesting people do additional work for you if you can. Giving people additional work is not a healthy hobby.

Reposted by Richard Shaw

katieschmuecker.bsky.social
Katie Schmuecker @katieschmuecker.bsky.social · 20d
Next year the basic rate of benefits will be £98pw for a single person.

Logically you'd expect this rate to be linked to the cost of a basket of essentials. It is not.

It's why we need an independent process to advise on a rate that enables people to cover life’s essentials

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 21d
Which highlights a real issue with the digital news environment. Most funding models are now based on subscriptions, which encourages people to read a biased subsets of news largely for the benefit for the paper's owners.

richardshaw.bsky.social
Richard Shaw @richardshaw.bsky.social · 21d
While the newspaper does have some decent journalism. The last issue I bought also had the "How you spend it section". Which seemed to be largely targeted at people with more money than sense.