Jeroen van Baar, PhD
@jeroenvanbaar.nl
Interdisciplinary science for a mentally healthy society. Writing a book about uncertainty. Blogging irregularly at: jeroenvanbaar.nl/latest-newsletter. Postdoc @ Columbia Mailman, but views are my own. "Share useful stories."
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
Interesting read - 'Conspiracists are about to get a dose of reality' www.thetimes.com/article/b3bb...
Conspiracists are about to get a dose of reality
Antivaxers, cranks and fantasists thrive in safe, stable societies but the days of consequence-free idiocy may be ending
www.thetimes.com
February 19, 2025 at 5:31 PM
Interesting read - 'Conspiracists are about to get a dose of reality' www.thetimes.com/article/b3bb...
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
“Measles vaccination alone is responsible for half a percent of all US income this year, $76.4 billion. That is just from the reduced disease burden, it doesn’t include reduced medical costs.” Via @emollick.bsky.social www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
The Long-Term Effects of Measles Vaccination on Earnings and Employment
(May 2022) - The measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. Take-up of the vaccine in the United States occurred quickly and universally, leading to reductions in morbidity and mortality. New biological ...
www.aeaweb.org
February 17, 2025 at 4:11 AM
“Measles vaccination alone is responsible for half a percent of all US income this year, $76.4 billion. That is just from the reduced disease burden, it doesn’t include reduced medical costs.” Via @emollick.bsky.social www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...
New paper. With a big group of colleagues from Moldova and the Netherlands, we ran the first representative mental health survey of the adult population in Moldova. Local interviewer teams went door-to-door in 2022 to include 1826 adults in the study. 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Socioeconomic correlates of mental health in Moldova: A nationally representative door-to-door survey
The mental health system in Moldova is transitioning toward a community-based model, which requires data on population mental health. This is the firs…
www.sciencedirect.com
February 5, 2025 at 1:52 PM
New paper. With a big group of colleagues from Moldova and the Netherlands, we ran the first representative mental health survey of the adult population in Moldova. Local interviewer teams went door-to-door in 2022 to include 1826 adults in the study. 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
This is not business as usual.
It’s not just a change in funding priorities going forward; it is the reneging on funding agreements and is profoundly disruptive for even those grants that will be found to be compliant.
Meanwhile, trainees who often live paycheck to paycheck are going unpaid.
It’s not just a change in funding priorities going forward; it is the reneging on funding agreements and is profoundly disruptive for even those grants that will be found to be compliant.
Meanwhile, trainees who often live paycheck to paycheck are going unpaid.
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
www.science.org
January 31, 2025 at 12:35 PM
This is not business as usual.
It’s not just a change in funding priorities going forward; it is the reneging on funding agreements and is profoundly disruptive for even those grants that will be found to be compliant.
Meanwhile, trainees who often live paycheck to paycheck are going unpaid.
It’s not just a change in funding priorities going forward; it is the reneging on funding agreements and is profoundly disruptive for even those grants that will be found to be compliant.
Meanwhile, trainees who often live paycheck to paycheck are going unpaid.
I wrote about how it feels to be a UnitedHealthcare customer. New research confirms my hunch: broken trust isn't just frustrating, it's a health hazard. 🧪
jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/the-hidden...
jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/the-hidden...
The Hidden Cost Of Unreliable Insurance
Profit-driven health insurance may irreparably damage what it ought to aid: health.
jeroenvanbaar.substack.com
January 30, 2025 at 11:44 AM
I wrote about how it feels to be a UnitedHealthcare customer. New research confirms my hunch: broken trust isn't just frustrating, it's a health hazard. 🧪
jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/the-hidden...
jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/the-hidden...
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
Roy Baumeister called ego depletion "one of the most replicable findings in social psychology." As someone who spent 20 years studying it—and ultimately had to admit it wasn't real—I have to respectfully disagree. Here's my perspective of what went so wrong.
The Collapse of Ego Depletion
Science's Biggest Self-Control Failure
open.substack.com
January 29, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Roy Baumeister called ego depletion "one of the most replicable findings in social psychology." As someone who spent 20 years studying it—and ultimately had to admit it wasn't real—I have to respectfully disagree. Here's my perspective of what went so wrong.
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
NSF grantees - people who have already received their grants based on a previously funded and approved research proposal - are being told to stop any activities related to DEI and accessibility.
Call this what it is: government censorship of ongoing research projects.
www.opm.gov/policy-data-...
Call this what it is: government censorship of ongoing research projects.
www.opm.gov/policy-data-...
January 29, 2025 at 1:34 PM
NSF grantees - people who have already received their grants based on a previously funded and approved research proposal - are being told to stop any activities related to DEI and accessibility.
Call this what it is: government censorship of ongoing research projects.
www.opm.gov/policy-data-...
Call this what it is: government censorship of ongoing research projects.
www.opm.gov/policy-data-...
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
The silence from Dems is deafening.
We’re exhausted—looking for leadership and starting to feel desperate. Everything feels like it’s slipping away & electeds aren’t acknowledging it, let alone speaking on it.
@dougjones.bsky.social sounds like someone who’s actually read the room. More of this!
We’re exhausted—looking for leadership and starting to feel desperate. Everything feels like it’s slipping away & electeds aren’t acknowledging it, let alone speaking on it.
@dougjones.bsky.social sounds like someone who’s actually read the room. More of this!
January 29, 2025 at 2:21 PM
The silence from Dems is deafening.
We’re exhausted—looking for leadership and starting to feel desperate. Everything feels like it’s slipping away & electeds aren’t acknowledging it, let alone speaking on it.
@dougjones.bsky.social sounds like someone who’s actually read the room. More of this!
We’re exhausted—looking for leadership and starting to feel desperate. Everything feels like it’s slipping away & electeds aren’t acknowledging it, let alone speaking on it.
@dougjones.bsky.social sounds like someone who’s actually read the room. More of this!
Now that the leader of the free world has put his boot on the garden hose of knowledge, some might be wondering why we spend our money on research anyway. At the risk of stating the obvious, here are a few examples: 🧪
January 29, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Now that the leader of the free world has put his boot on the garden hose of knowledge, some might be wondering why we spend our money on research anyway. At the risk of stating the obvious, here are a few examples: 🧪
Voor de Nederlandse volgers: een hilarisch accurate beschrijving van het ondergaan van een MRI-scan 😁🧪
January 7, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Voor de Nederlandse volgers: een hilarisch accurate beschrijving van het ondergaan van een MRI-scan 😁🧪
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
Shame on the @washingtonpost.com, which at one time was beacon of the free press.
anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...
anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...
Why I'm quitting the Washington Post
Democracy can't function without a free press
anntelnaes.substack.com
January 4, 2025 at 2:57 AM
Shame on the @washingtonpost.com, which at one time was beacon of the free press.
anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...
anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...
Happy new year my fellow scientific travelers! May 2025 bring you much inspiration, growth, and fun. 🧪
January 1, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Happy new year my fellow scientific travelers! May 2025 bring you much inspiration, growth, and fun. 🧪
Shocked by the blatant corruption and greed in UnitedHealthCare’s Medicare Advantage scheme. You won’t believe the bonuses offered to practitioners… Excellent research by @wsj.com. Hope they lift the paywall. For those without access I will blog about this soon. 🧪 www.wsj.com/health/healt...
UnitedHealth’s Army of Doctors Helped It Collect Billions More From Medicare
The biggest Medicare Advantage insurer presented physicians with checklists of potential diagnose.; “I didn’t think I was obese,” one suspicious patient told his doctor.
www.wsj.com
December 30, 2024 at 10:17 AM
Shocked by the blatant corruption and greed in UnitedHealthCare’s Medicare Advantage scheme. You won’t believe the bonuses offered to practitioners… Excellent research by @wsj.com. Hope they lift the paywall. For those without access I will blog about this soon. 🧪 www.wsj.com/health/healt...
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
Goede recensie van Omtzigt bij WNL, al mist dat het storend is dat de interviewer en recensent hier ook door elkaar liepen (Nieman dus). www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/...
Tv-recensie | Boven nieuws over Omtzigt had ook zijn uitspraak over strafbaar stellen van bezit Koran kunnen staan
ZAP: Presentator Rick Nieman had gelijk: er zou nog ‘wel een beetje worden doorgepraat’ over het interview – met weglooponderbreking – van NSC-leider Pieter Omtzigt.
www.nrc.nl
December 23, 2024 at 10:59 AM
Goede recensie van Omtzigt bij WNL, al mist dat het storend is dat de interviewer en recensent hier ook door elkaar liepen (Nieman dus). www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2024/...
Has anyone been trying PaperQA2 for automated document/literature review? I would like to exchange notes on how to set it up & evaluate results. 🧪 github.com/Future-House...
GitHub - Future-House/paper-qa: High accuracy RAG for answering questions from scientific documents with citations
High accuracy RAG for answering questions from scientific documents with citations - Future-House/paper-qa
github.com
December 16, 2024 at 2:58 PM
Has anyone been trying PaperQA2 for automated document/literature review? I would like to exchange notes on how to set it up & evaluate results. 🧪 github.com/Future-House...
Many of the ‘systems’ scientists care about, from minds to ecosystems, are so complex that you can’t capture them with deterministic models. How do we deal with this ‘modeling gap’? Perhaps we can learn something from a cautionary fish tale. 🧪🐠 jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/a-fish-tal...
A fish tale that slams science
How cod ecology reveals the limitations of science and mathematical modeling.
jeroenvanbaar.substack.com
December 8, 2024 at 8:04 PM
Many of the ‘systems’ scientists care about, from minds to ecosystems, are so complex that you can’t capture them with deterministic models. How do we deal with this ‘modeling gap’? Perhaps we can learn something from a cautionary fish tale. 🧪🐠 jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/a-fish-tal...
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
A new view on the gut microbiome and the social contagion of health 3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily... via @jeroenvanbaar.nl
A new view on the gut microbiome and the social contagion of health - 3 Quarks Daily
by Jeroen van Baar
3quarksdaily.com
December 3, 2024 at 5:16 AM
A new view on the gut microbiome and the social contagion of health 3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily... via @jeroenvanbaar.nl
As a scientist, I used the Mendeley reference manager nearly every day for the last 12.5 years.
Today, finally driven mad by their terrible redesign, I made the switch to Zotero.
Migrating took less than an hour and the experience is already endlessly better. AMA 😎
Today, finally driven mad by their terrible redesign, I made the switch to Zotero.
Migrating took less than an hour and the experience is already endlessly better. AMA 😎
November 22, 2024 at 2:21 AM
As a scientist, I used the Mendeley reference manager nearly every day for the last 12.5 years.
Today, finally driven mad by their terrible redesign, I made the switch to Zotero.
Migrating took less than an hour and the experience is already endlessly better. AMA 😎
Today, finally driven mad by their terrible redesign, I made the switch to Zotero.
Migrating took less than an hour and the experience is already endlessly better. AMA 😎
This is a huge insight, very exciting!
This work has implications for a radical idea: diseases formerly thought to be biologically non-communicable (e.g., obesity, depression, hypertension, arthritis, etc.) may actually be (somewhat!) communicable, via the spread of the microbiome. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 13/
Gut microbiome strain-sharing within isolated village social networks - Nature
An investigation into the relationship between network structure and gut microbiome composition among people living in 18 isolated Honduras villages reveals that strain-sharing can be mediated by...
www.nature.com
November 21, 2024 at 10:05 PM
This is a huge insight, very exciting!
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
What a chart.
www.economist.com/interactive/...
www.economist.com/interactive/...
November 15, 2024 at 12:37 PM
What a chart.
www.economist.com/interactive/...
www.economist.com/interactive/...
Does money make you happy? In a new post, I reviewed the adversarial collaboration between
Daniel Kahneman and Matthew Killingsworth that attempted to answer this age-old question. Had a lot of fun writing this! jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/data-dispa...
Daniel Kahneman and Matthew Killingsworth that attempted to answer this age-old question. Had a lot of fun writing this! jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/data-dispa...
January 19, 2024 at 9:07 PM
Does money make you happy? In a new post, I reviewed the adversarial collaboration between
Daniel Kahneman and Matthew Killingsworth that attempted to answer this age-old question. Had a lot of fun writing this! jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/data-dispa...
Daniel Kahneman and Matthew Killingsworth that attempted to answer this age-old question. Had a lot of fun writing this! jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/data-dispa...
❗ 27% of American adults are "most days so stressed they can't function" (representative APA survey from 2022).
🧠 But 100 years ago, legendary economist John Maynard Keynes predicted we would all live a life of leisure.
🤔 What happened? I wrote a post about it, link in bio
🧠 But 100 years ago, legendary economist John Maynard Keynes predicted we would all live a life of leisure.
🤔 What happened? I wrote a post about it, link in bio
January 15, 2024 at 3:49 PM
❗ 27% of American adults are "most days so stressed they can't function" (representative APA survey from 2022).
🧠 But 100 years ago, legendary economist John Maynard Keynes predicted we would all live a life of leisure.
🤔 What happened? I wrote a post about it, link in bio
🧠 But 100 years ago, legendary economist John Maynard Keynes predicted we would all live a life of leisure.
🤔 What happened? I wrote a post about it, link in bio
I wrote a Christmas-inspired newsletter this week, full of fascinating insights about the placebo effect. Read on: jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/the-perple... Happy holidays!
December 22, 2023 at 7:16 PM
I wrote a Christmas-inspired newsletter this week, full of fascinating insights about the placebo effect. Read on: jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/the-perple... Happy holidays!
Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD
This is my favourite vampire cartoon from Science Saves Lives…
October 13, 2023 at 1:37 PM
This is my favourite vampire cartoon from Science Saves Lives…
Trying to find median household income per month for Moldova, but lack the training... Using World Bank Poverty & Inequality Platform, I found survey median consumption at $10.6 per day (2017 PPP). Does this translate to 30*10.6 = $318 per month? 🤔 Help! #EconSky pip.worldbank.org/poverty-calc...
December 9, 2023 at 5:59 PM
Trying to find median household income per month for Moldova, but lack the training... Using World Bank Poverty & Inequality Platform, I found survey median consumption at $10.6 per day (2017 PPP). Does this translate to 30*10.6 = $318 per month? 🤔 Help! #EconSky pip.worldbank.org/poverty-calc...