Patrick S. Forscher
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psforscher.bsky.social
Patrick S. Forscher
@psforscher.bsky.social
1.6K followers 280 following 410 posts

Senior Behavioral Scientist at Busara, a non-profit that does behavioral science to advance development. Strong interest in applied meta-research. https://patrickforscher.com/

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Psychology 39%
Political science 11%
Posts Replies Media Videos

psforscher.bsky.social
Patrick S. Forscher @psforscher.bsky.social · 3d
I mean I think there is a reason the replication crisis was so bad in social psychology and that reason very likely has something to do with incentives

osf.io/6hevp
OSF
osf.io

Reposted by Andrew K Przybylski, Kris Inwood, Patrick S. Forscher , and 1 more

dingdingpeng.the100.ci
Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 3d
I started reading up on the whole "loneliness pandemic" narrative because this seems like a literature where the age-period-cohort problem may be relevant (or maybe it isn't?).

Here's data from Australia (HILDA), average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" (SD of ca. 1.8).>
Average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" plotted over time

Reposted by Brigitte Nerlich, Brendan Nyhan, Gavin A. Schmidt , and 7 more

jeremyfaust.bsky.social
Jeremy Faust, MD @jeremyfaust.bsky.social · 3d
We have the CDC-funded Hepatitis Vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau protocol.

It’s worse than you thought.

Check it out, first in Inside Medicine…

with @pauloffit.bsky.social David Boulware and others.

insidemedicine.substack.com/p/scoop-the-...
Scoop: The leaked protocol of the CDC-funded Hepatitis B vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau. “This is another Tuskegee.”
The protocol reveals that the trial will withhold the Hepatitis B birth dose from thousands—without placebos, without universal maternal screening, and with endpoints critics call indefensible.
insidemedicine.substack.com

psforscher.bsky.social
Patrick S. Forscher @psforscher.bsky.social · 6d
Can’t recommend it enough

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher

samperson.bsky.social
Samperson @samperson.bsky.social · 6d
greatest steam update of all time, because of one unnecessary detail

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher

hcp4715.bsky.social
Hu Chuan-Peng @hcp4715.bsky.social · 10d
We @chineseopensci.bsky.social wrote a brief Chinese introduction for this initiative: mp.weixin.qq.com/s/j8oTyoGtJ8...
开放数据 | WARN-D机器学习比赛启动，寻找抑郁症预测最佳模型
WARN-D 项目开放抑郁症研究数据，诚邀各界团队参与机器学习比赛，寻找最具预测能力和临床价值的模型
mp.weixin.qq.com

Reposted by Katharine Hayhoe, John R. Hutchinson, John Parker , and 13 more

philabcoulter.bsky.social
Brian Coulter @philabcoulter.bsky.social · 10d
Best TikTok thing going is the two dudes trying food from every country without leaving NYC. If you haven’t seen them yet, it’s incredible. My favorite so far is last week’s. Legit got me emotional.

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher, Wolfgang Huber

dingdingpeng.the100.ci
Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 11d
Explainers & tutorials are a great way to criticize current practices with a positive twist. Tailoring them to a specific substantive (!) subfield can greatly increase uptake. Forget about novelty; if some statistican said sth in the 70s but no one was around to hear it, say it again.>

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher

johnholbein1.bsky.social
John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 11d
In 2020, Facebook scientists worked to gauge the effect of deactivating one's account.

They found that people who stopped using FB for a week reported better mental health.

Rather than publishing/doing more research, Meta called off the research.

www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege
Rather than publishing the findings or pursuing additional research, Meta called off further work.
www.reuters.com

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher

johnholbein1.bsky.social
John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 11d
Broadband internet access is really bad for adolescents' mental health.

Why?

"Broadband internet access [is] associated with increases in cyberbullying & body dissatisfaction among adolescent girls and a reduction in the likelihood that adolescent boys reported getting an adequate amount of sleep"

Reposted by Martin Lang, Magnus Johansson, Patrick S. Forscher , and 3 more

eikofried.bsky.social
Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 11d
After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data.

If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition.

eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...
WARN-D machine learning competition is live » Eiko Fried
If you share one single thing of our team in 2026—on social media or per email with your colleagues—please let it be this machine learning competition. It was half a decade of work to get here, especi...
eiko-fried.com

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher

nrennie.bsky.social
Nicola Rennie @nrennie.bsky.social · 13d
I saw this chart in the wild a few days ago and it's been on my mind because the longer I look at it, the more confused I become by it. 📊

I'm fairly sure it's AI generated for a few reasons...

A #DataViz thread 🧵
Bar chart of percentage of population aged 25-64 that can't speak a foreign language. UK is at the top. The chart design is confusing to say the least.

Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Patrick S. Forscher

carlbergstrom.com
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 27d
One of the most important books I've read this year, from
@adambecker.bsky.social.

It's a devastating read at times—you'll find yourself shouting at the book "how can they be that goddamn crazy???!!!"

But it's critical to realize that they are.
justinhendrix.bsky.social Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 27d
12. @adambecker.bsky.social is a science journalist and author of MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, a book that chronicles the stew of nonsense that informs and motivates many of tech’s leaders.
Adam Becker Takes Aim at Silicon Valley Nonsense | TechPolicy.Press
In a new book, the science journalist Adam Becker skewers the more outlandish ideas and motivations in the tech industry.
www.techpolicy.press

Reposted by Elizabeth Saunders, Brendan Nyhan, Joshua S. Weitz , and 14 more

elizabethjacobs.bsky.social
Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · Dec 20
It is utterly catastrophic that RFK Jr. plans to end CDC recommendations for most childhood vaccines.

It’s a betrayal of science, ethics, compassion, and the people of the United States.

And it was also a specific goal of Project 2025 (page 254).
Screenshot from project 2025 that says By statute or regulation, CDC guidance must be prohibited from taking on a prescriptive character. For example, never again should CDC officials be allowed to say in their official capacity that school children "should be" masked or vaccinated (through a schedule or otherwise) or prohibited from learning in a school building. Such decisions should be left to parents and medical providers. We have learned that when CDC says what people "should" do, it readily becomes a "must" backed by severe punishments, including criminal penalties. CDC should report on the risks and effectiveness of all infectious disease-mitigation measures dispassionately and leave the "should" and "must" policy calls to politically accountable parties. Conflicts of Interest. There was a time when the CDC could not take money

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Brady T. West, Richard McElreath , and 3 more

rogierk.bsky.social
rogier kievit @rogierk.bsky.social · Dec 18
I've used Lavaan almost every (work)day for 15 years, but this open source labour of love has never received proper institutional support. I'm delighted to be a small part of an 1.5M OpenScienceNL award, led by Jorgensen, to completely revamp and futureproof Lavaan www.openscience.nl/en/news/45-p...

Reposted by Lisa W. Fazio, Richard S.J. Tol, Dorothy Bishop , and 35 more

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher

lakens.bsky.social
Daniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · Dec 17
Very happy to have received a replication grant from NWO! We will be reproducing power analyses of large scale replication projects, to learn how to improve power analyses, and increase quality control in large team Science projects! www.openscience.nl/en/news/27-s...
27 studies re-examined | Open Science NL
Open Science NL has awarded funding to 27 applicants to replicate earlier studies. They will reanalyse original data, repeat experiments, and replicate studies with slight variations to the original…
www.openscience.nl

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher, Daniel Kuehn

sarahkarlin-smith.bsky.social
Sarah Karlin-Smith @sarahkarlin-smith.bsky.social · Dec 17
Seems interesting that CDC is awarding $1.6M to a university in Denmark to study Hep B vaccine in Guinea-Bissau given recent CDC vax changes and FDA's Hoeg's connections to Denmark. Does this study sound ethical?
public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-23245.p...
public-inspection.federalregister.gov

Reposted by Andreas Ortmann, Wim Van Lancker, Patrick S. Forscher , and 3 more

dingdingpeng.the100.ci
Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Dec 17
You remember that Nature Aging paper about how multilingualism protects against accelerated aging? Well…

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher

devezer.bsky.social
Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · Dec 16
I cannot readily imagine a relative advantage of sampling survey/experiment data from an LLM to sampling known models/distributions if we cannot meaningfully define a population LLMs sample or formalize the sampling scheme. Idk what we can learn abt a model/method without clarity abt what we put in.

Reposted by Robert Böhm, Brady T. West, Brendan Nyhan , and 43 more

sabrinanorwood.bsky.social
Sabrina Norwood @sabrinanorwood.bsky.social · Dec 16
Did you know that from tomorrow, Qualtrics is offering synthetic panels (AI-generated participants)?

Follow me down a rabbit hole I'm calling "doing science is tough and I'm so busy, can't we just make up participants?"
Text reads: About synthetic panels Recruiting the right participants for a study can be difficult. You may not get the exact demographics you need, and the shorter the deadline, the less sure you can be that everyone will answer on time. One possible solution can be to use synthetic panels. Synthetic panels are powered by a first party proprietary AI model developed here at Qualtrics. Our synthetic panel is trained on thousands of responses from a variety of demographic backgrounds in order to more accurately predict how certain populations would respond to a survey. Our synthetic panel is based on the United States General Population, and is only available in English. This panel comes with ready-made quotas and target breakouts in order to represent your chosen population and make it easy to launch your survey right away. Text reads: Question-writing best practices To get the most reliable and actionable results from synthetic audiences, consider these question-writing best practices: Ask forward-looking and attitudinal questions. Synthetic panels perform best with perceptions, preferences, and intent-based questions. For example, “How likely are you to try…?” Synthetic panels are less applicable for studies on past behaviors, detailed recall, brand recall, or awareness questions. For example, “When did you last visit…?” Text reads: Discussion The current study aimed to conduct a meta-analysis of the TPB when applied to health behaviours which addressed the limitations of previous reviews by including only prospective tests of behaviour, applying RE meta-analytic procedures, correcting correlations for sampling and measurement error, and hierarchically analysing the effect of behaviour type and sample and methodological moderators. Some 237 tests were identified which examined relations amongst model components. Overall the analysis indicated that the TPB could explain 19.3% of the variance in behaviour and 44.3% of the variance in intention across studies. This level of prediction of behaviour is slightly lower than that of previous meta-analytic reviews which have found between 27% (Armitage & Conner, 2001; Hagger et al., 2002) and 36% (Trafimow et al., 2002) of the variance in behaviour to be explained by intention and PBC.

Reposted by Philip N. Cohen, Fabián Muniesa, Silvia Secchi , and 3 more

epopppp.bsky.social
Beth Popp Berman @epopppp.bsky.social · Dec 14
this, from @kevinbaker.bsky.social, is a better analysis of the intersection between LLMs and academic science than 98% of what's out there.
Context Widows
or, of GPUs, LPUs, and Goal Displacement
artificialbureaucracy.substack.com

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher

zooko2.bsky.social
zooko2.bsky.social @zooko2.bsky.social · Dec 14
Wtf. I just carefully read this entire interview with Frances Allen, only to find out at the end that it wasn’t really an interview with her, but was AI generated. “Vox Meditantis” and “Bob Lynn” have lied to me and I will not read their words again.

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, David Chester, Andrew K Przybylski , and 5 more

ianhussey.mmmdata.io
Ian Hussey @ianhussey.mmmdata.io · Dec 12
Keeping this at hand in case I need to point to it and tap

Reposted by Philip N. Cohen, Fabián Muniesa, Peter Campbell , and 5 more

carlbergstrom.com
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Dec 11
Computer scientists: "So with machine learning we can extract subtle patterns from massive datasets. What shall we do with it?"

Business school professors, every single time: "You know, I think phrenology got a raw deal in the late 1800s."
Can Your Face Predict Your Salary? Using AI Personality Assessments in Hiring
A new study from Wharton faculty explores how AI can extract personality traits from facial images — and what that means for your career.
knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu

Reposted by Patrick S. Forscher

mehr.nz
samuel mehr @mehr.nz · Dec 10
🇨🇦🇨🇦 Just announced: a massive new program from the Canadian govt, separate from the well-known CRCs and CERCs, to recruit foreign scientific talent

Canada was already a destination for scientists but whoa. Real impressive for a new govt to back political talking points with serious investment
$1.7 billion to attract international researchers to Canada
Details of the major federal initiative to draw new talent to the country's universities were announced today at UdeM.
nouvelles.umontreal.ca

psforscher.bsky.social
Patrick S. Forscher @psforscher.bsky.social · Dec 10
Ridiculous. How does ChatGPT have any knowledge at all?

Reposted by Norbert Schwarz, Patrick S. Forscher, Dominik Vogel

ianhussey.mmmdata.io
Ian Hussey @ianhussey.mmmdata.io · Dec 10
Many psychologists are treating LLMs as if they are the mind of god.

This study had chatGPT rate how central academic disciplines are to various constructs.

Why would chatGPT know this?

Where is the evidence its ratings are reliable or valid?

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

psforscher.bsky.social
Patrick S. Forscher @psforscher.bsky.social · Dec 8
P.S: This paper is part of a much bigger special issue in Proc B on diversifying cultural evolution research. There's lots of interesting stuff there -- please check it out!

royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...

7/
Volume 380 Issue 1940 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B | The Royal Society
Influential themed journal issues across the life sciences.
royalsocietypublishing.org

psforscher.bsky.social
Patrick S. Forscher @psforscher.bsky.social · Dec 8
Thanks to Jaspreet Singh for leading the paper, and to our collaborators @fallonmody.bsky.social, Mario Schmidt, Stephanie Shari, Joel Wambua, David Wilkinson, and the rest of the @replicats.bsky.social team!

6/