Nicholas A. Christakis
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nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis
@nachristakis.bsky.social
19K followers 570 following 880 posts

Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University. Sociologist. Network Scientist. Physician. Author of Apollo's Arrow; Blueprint; Connected; and Death Foretold. Director of the Human Nature Lab: https://humannaturelab.net .. more

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Nicholas A. Christakis is a Greek American sociologist and physician known for his research on social networks and on the social, economic, biological, and evolutionary determinants of human welfare. He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. He is also the co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. .. more

Public Health 23%
Physics 18%
Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

johnmullahy.bsky.social
John Mullahy @johnmullahy.bsky.social · 11h
Exactly five years ago—the news that kindled hope amidst the pandemic's despair.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 21h
And yet not a peep on campus. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
Rebels Post Videos of Mass Killings in Darfur as the World Watches
After the fall of El Fasher to the R.S.F., observers fear for the next target in the war.
www.newyorker.com

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Nicholas A. Christakis, Brendan Nyhan , and 3 more

royalpratt.bsky.social
Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 1d
Here’s video of federal agents doing a drive by pepper spraying that hit a father and his one-year old on Saturday when the Feds were hitting Little Village and Cicero

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Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 2d
Yes. I could or should have edited that NYT subheading.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 2d
Tom Reese was a fabulous mentor. He was a giant of a scientist. I am very grateful to have had him in my life.

www.mbl.edu/news/obituar...
Thomas S. Reese | Marine Biological Laboratory
www.mbl.edu

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 2d
Plus I did some of my own research on septate junction structure, in one of my first publications (1986): journals.biologists.com/jcs/article-...

I learned how to perform freeze fracture electron microscopy at age 20. And I learned a ton of neuroscience (cellular neuroanatomy).

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 2d
I was a darkroom technician for Tom Reese, and many of his classic papers have images I helped create (to optimize for stereoscopic viewing).

My duties also included packing up his lab at NIH every May and driving a huge truck to @mblscience.bsky.social. He taught me how to pack a truck, too.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 2d
I learned so much about science, about its joys and struggles, and about running an inventive and open lab working at the scientific frontier from Tom Reese.

I still do many of the things I observed in my own lab, HNL www.HumanNatureLab.net
Homepage | Human Nature Lab | Human Nature Lab at Yale
www.HumanNatureLab.net

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 2d
I was honored to work for many years, from 1979-1984 (age ~17-22), as a research assistant in Tom Reese's lab at @mblscience.bsky.social & NIH, during the heyday of his work with John Heuser discovering synaptic vesicle exocytosis.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZv5...
Thomas Reese (NIH/MBL): Visualizing Synaptic Signaling
YouTube video by iBiology Science Stories
www.youtube.com

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 2d
A new and very accurate technique called mind captioning’ generates descriptive sentences of what a person is seeing or picturing in their mind using a read-out of their brain activity and AI tools.

This could also be used to reveal what animals are thinking.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Mind captioning: Evolving descriptive text of mental content from human brain activity
Nonverbal thoughts can be translated into verbal descriptions by aligning semantic representations between text and the brain.
www.science.org

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 2d
The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart.

The environmental group gave up its singular focus on climate change for a broader agenda. The ensuing internal strife left it weakened.

This is a common and unfortunate pattern.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/u...
The Sierra Club Embraced Social Justice. Then It Tore Itself Apart.
www.nytimes.com

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 3d
Yes, colleges face a crisis. It’s also an opportunity.

Over two centuries, American higher education has periodically remade itself. Time to do it again.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Prof. R. Howard Bloch and I have two modest suggestions. via @washingtonpost.com
Opinion | Yes, colleges face a crisis. It’s also an opportunity.
Over two centuries, American higher education has periodically remade itself. Time to do it again.
www.washingtonpost.com

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 5d
This makes sense to me.
adambonica.bsky.social Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 5d
I’ll keep pushing this line of analysis because I’m increasingly convinced the clearest path out of this mess is for Dems to adopt a relentless anti-corruption, anti-inequality, anti-oligarchy, pro-democracy platform. The Dem leadership hasn’t realized it yet, but they’re now a reform party.

Reposted by Anna O. Law, Nicholas A. Christakis, A. E. Dessler , and 8 more

adambonica.bsky.social
Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 5d
I’ll keep pushing this line of analysis because I’m increasingly convinced the clearest path out of this mess is for Dems to adopt a relentless anti-corruption, anti-inequality, anti-oligarchy, pro-democracy platform. The Dem leadership hasn’t realized it yet, but they’re now a reform party.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 5d
Yes, good analogy. Still, this reminds me of the old (efficient markets) joke at UChicago when I was there. Two economists are walking and there is a $100 bill on the sidewalk.

Econ1: "Look: a $100 bill."

Econ2: "It can't be. Someone else would have already picked it up."

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 5d
I’m surprised by this finding, inconsistent with received wisdom.
aeajournals.bsky.social AEA Journals @aeajournals.bsky.social · 5d
The space race produced great feats of engineering, yet contrary to conventional narratives, it failed to boost the wider economy. We spoke with Shawn Kantor and Alex Whalley about why this technological push didn't translate into big productivity gains. www.aeaweb.org/research/pub...
Technological spillovers
Shawn Kantor and Alexander Whalley discuss the long-term effects of public R&D investment made during the Cold War–era space race.
www.aeaweb.org

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis, Iikka Korhonen

aeajournals.bsky.social
AEA Journals @aeajournals.bsky.social · 5d
The space race produced great feats of engineering, yet contrary to conventional narratives, it failed to boost the wider economy. We spoke with Shawn Kantor and Alex Whalley about why this technological push didn't translate into big productivity gains. www.aeaweb.org/research/pub...
Technological spillovers
Shawn Kantor and Alexander Whalley discuss the long-term effects of public R&D investment made during the Cold War–era space race.
www.aeaweb.org

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 6d
This is not how our nation is supposed to run. The lawlessness of the Trump administration and its lackeys must be resisted by all lawful means.
royalpratt.bsky.social Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 6d
A Border Patrol agent was caught on video telling another to throw tear gas “for fun,” according to a court filing. They also mocked protesters and residents who were getting gassed.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 6d
What is Hades 2?

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 6d
Follow-up: Two men aged 18 and 20 stupidly and for no apparent reason set off a commercial firework in the building. Further frontal lobe maturation (studied in the building they damaged) may take place in federal prison. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/u...
Two Massachusetts Men Charged in Explosion at Harvard Medical School
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

manlius.bsky.social
Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 6d
TL;DR: Even the most advanced language models crumble on first-person false beliefs, showing sharp accuracy drops and revealing that their “understanding” of others’ minds is still shallow pattern mimicry, not genuine epistemic reasoning.

www.nature.com/articles/s42...
Language models cannot reliably distinguish belief from knowledge and fact - Nature Machine Intelligence
Suzgun et al. find that current large language models cannot reliably distinguish between belief, knowledge and fact, raising concerns for their use in healthcare, law and journalism, where such disti...
www.nature.com

Reposted by James Q. Wilson, Nicholas A. Christakis, Melanie C. Green , and 1 more

royalpratt.bsky.social
Gregory Pratt @royalpratt.bsky.social · 6d
A Border Patrol agent was caught on video telling another to throw tear gas “for fun,” according to a court filing. They also mocked protesters and residents who were getting gassed.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 6d
It will pass like a wave.

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

astrojonny.bsky.social
Jonathan O'Callaghan @astrojonny.bsky.social · 7d
This super interesting study found that SpaceX's Starlink constellation reacted to the May 2024 solar storm like a giant wave as the atmosphere swelled.

It highlights some of the challenges constellations face from the sun.

Story by me in @newscientist.com

www.newscientist.com/article/2502...
SpaceX's Starlink and other satellites face growing threat from sun
There are now over 10,000 satellites in orbit, more than at any point in history, and this growing number is starting to reveal how solar storms could disrupt internet mega constellations like SpaceX'...
www.newscientist.com

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 7d
I feel seen.
tedmond.bsky.social Ted Schwaba @tedmond.bsky.social · 7d
On my calendar today I have scheduled "zoom GWAS" for 1pm. Current me has no idea what this refers to, there's no zoom link, no other guests, nothing in my last month of emails provides a clue. SO I'm just going to anxiously await an email at 1:05pm that says "where are you?" SORRY to whomever!

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

tedmond.bsky.social
Ted Schwaba @tedmond.bsky.social · 7d
On my calendar today I have scheduled "zoom GWAS" for 1pm. Current me has no idea what this refers to, there's no zoom link, no other guests, nothing in my last month of emails provides a clue. SO I'm just going to anxiously await an email at 1:05pm that says "where are you?" SORRY to whomever!

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 7d
We are still talking about this over 3,200 years later. The only actually heroic man in the whole story. And he was a Trojan! ;-)

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 7d
Of one focuses on Hector (the only real hero of the book) and Andromache, real values emerge. ;-)