Joe Bak-Coleman

Joe Bak-Coleman

@jbakcoleman.bsky.social

452

Posts

Associate Research Scientist at Columbia journalism. Harvard BKC affiliate. Comp. soc. science, collective behavior, stats

Posts Replies Media

Really formative paper for me seems to have fallen. Imo this is an example of good sleuthing, measured critique, and raises important questions for reconciling visual odometry research following this paper. arxiv.org/abs/2405.12998

The miscalibration of the honeybee odometerarxiv.org We examine a series of articles on honeybee odometry and navigation published between 1996 and 2010, and find inconsistencies in results, duplicated figures, indications of data manipulation, and...

Important read on Meta science, metascience, and how Meta has leveraged academic collaborations for PR purposes. Against the backdrop of these industry friendly findings and a collaboration with CoS, Meta is clawing back independent researcher data access. www.techpolicy.press/the-politics...

The Politics of Social Media Research: We Shouldn’t Let Meta Spin the Studies It Sponsors | TechPolicy.Presswww.techpolicy.press Meta would like to disarm its critics, but Justin Hendrix and Paul Barrett argue that would be unwise.

No comments to the author but private comments to the editor to reject the paper is a first for me.

This is seriously the most important advice you can get as a scientist interacting with the press. If it feels seems even a little weird, decline or (if you must) answer in writing.

I tell scientists all the time: Look the journalist up. The number of times I interview a scientist about a paper and they end with '....who is this for?' I could have been from the Daily Mail!!! I am Googling you. Google ME. Or ask me for samples of stuff I've done I am always happy to oblige.

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Good news everyone! The mom and pup are alive and well, enjoying a beautiful day in the water 🥰

We were away for one night and missed a chance to witness harbor seal birth. There's a fresh gestational sack on our dock. There's a new baby in town 😍

Moved my stuff out of my office today, entering a strange interstitial place between one position ending and hopefully the next. The stack of books on my coffee table awaiting a home on a shelf was a great reminder of how awesome the past decade in science has been.

This is cool and a great example of priors being a useful feature of Bayesian Inference python.arviz.org/en/stable/ap...

arviz.psens — ArviZ 0.18.0 documentationpython.arviz.org

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Simple question for those who want to more aggressively criminalize scientific fraud. How would you prevent such systems from being weaponized against climate scientists, public health officials, etc. who report inconvenient truths? Even the threat of such abuses would be chilling.

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Murthy v. Missouri decision: SCOTUS rejects arguments that government illegally "censored" protected speech, ruling that plaintiffs lack standing. Very good day for social media moderation and for researchers caught in the crosshairs of a ludicrous accusation. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23p...

www.supremecourt.gov

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Carl T. Bergstrom

(I was annoyed for you) Metascience and the Philosophy of Science PoS Meets QSoS, 2024-05-28 Charles H. Pence figshare.com/articles/pre...

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“Some fields may still face a crisis of trivial effects reflected in low rates of replicability at typical sample sizes. Increasing sample size may make these informal false positives replicable, but replication alone provides no guarantees that they are correct or useful.” #MetaSci #PhilSci 🧪

The replication crisis is often described as a crisis of false positives, but is it? In our (re)new(ed) preprint, we show that false positives do not explain the replication crisis, and that varying rep. rates are often explained by replication sample size. #metascience osf.io/preprints/so...

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As a frequent recipient of baseless criticisms of theoretical models, the most frustrating (yet common) one that I encounter goes: "These results don't fit my own perception/intuition/observations/these data so it can't be true. 1. Models are models; they aim to be useful/insightful, not true. 1/n

We didn't do a full formal treatment on how our model relates to publication bias (only file-drawers). These are distinct but there seems to be some confusion about how ~90%+ of findings could be significant if there aren't massive file-drawers and heavy publication bias. Strap in!

The replication crisis is often described as a crisis of false positives, but is it? In our (re)new(ed) preprint, we show that false positives do not explain the replication crisis, and that varying rep. rates are often explained by replication sample size. #metascience osf.io/preprints/so...

It says a lot about metascience that it feels spicy to post a paper based on the idea that null hypotheses are useful fictions in the year of our Lord 2024.

Spicy

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Spicy

Applying our model to replication efforts, we find that variation is rates of significance for replication efforts is almost entirely explained by the **replication** sample size. OSC 2015 used N=71, low replicability. Soto, Protzko etc.. used N>1000.... high replicability!

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The replication crisis is often described as a crisis of false positives, but is it? In our (re)new(ed) preprint, we show that false positives do not explain the replication crisis, and that varying rep. rates are often explained by replication sample size. #metascience osf.io/preprints/so...

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There’s a common story that, loosely speaking, the replication crisis occurs when publication bias and questionable research practices fill the literature with false positives. That story motivates a lot of science reform efforts — and it’s wrong. A thread on our new preprint:

The replication crisis is often described as a crisis of false positives, but is it? In our (re)new(ed) preprint, we show that false positives do not explain the replication crisis, and that varying rep. rates are often explained by replication sample size. #metascience osf.io/preprints/so...

The replication crisis is often described as a crisis of false positives, but is it? In our (re)new(ed) preprint, we show that false positives do not explain the replication crisis, and that varying rep. rates are often explained by replication sample size. #metascience osf.io/preprints/so...

Leaches are rad, and some of the most chill of the blood eating species.

Oh boy, interesting science for today. Jumping leeches. www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/s...

Videos Show That Leeches Can Jump in Pursuit of Bloodwww.nytimes.com There has long been anecdotal evidence of the wormy creatures taking to the air, but videos recorded in Madagascar at last prove the animals’ acrobatics.

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Are social media algorithms affecting the beliefs people form? Can we design prosocial algorithms to promote belief accuracy and consensus? Check out my recent work w/ @stefanherzog.bsky.social and @lorenzspreen.bsky.social for new evidence from a controlled, pre-reg'd experiment. bit.ly/4bL1AOZ

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Forking paths and workflow in statistical practice and communication statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2024/06/24/f...

Forking paths and workflow in statistical practice and communication | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

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Today, our team posted another piece of rapid research on information integrity and elections. This one, led by PhD student Nina Lutz, shows how social media platform policies around in-platform searches are not enforced equally across languages: www.cip.uw.edu/2024/06/24/e...

Discrepancy in implementations of social media election information policies in English and Spanish in-platform searcheswww.cip.uw.edu Our researchers find a significant disparity in enforcing election integrity policies when comparing Spanish and English search results for queries related to rumors about election procedures and e…

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Joe Bak-Coleman

Dumb example that could never happen.

This is an interesting (if dense) read, arguing from an ontological perspective that psychological phenomena are "unsteady" and that if we view the replication crisis in that way it isn't really a crisis. Provocative, but I don't know that I can fully sign on...

"In Popperian falsificationism, falsifiability is the hallmark of science: Taking reproducibility as a defining of science was anathema to this methodology." Burgos, J. E. (2024). Getting ontologically serious about the replication crisis in psychology. doi.org/10.1037/teo0... #PhilSci #MetaSci

This post is a fantastic example of how the most effective argument for Bayesian inference is simply that it does more and can help us ask our questions better.

Looking for a mind-growing distraction? How about my 3 part intro to Bayesian causal inference. It's like a condensed version of my book, 10 weeks of causal computation in 3 short blog posts. Take with plenty of water. #stats elevanth.org/blog/2021/06...

Regression, Fire, and Dangerous Things (1/3)elevanth.org It isn't my job to disappoint people, but I'm good at it.

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I guess I’ve become sort of a science-hype debunker so as far as this goes, let me just say: it’s real. Really really real. You could soon get a shot every six months that would basically eliminate your chance of getting HIV. Taken a step further: we have the tools to eliminate HIV in our lifetime.

Gilead’s twice-yearly shot to prevent HIV succeeds in late-stage trialwww.cnbc.com Gilead's experimental twice-yearly medicine to prevent HIV was 100% effective in a late-stage trial, the company said Thursday.

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OMG this Pacific harbor seal mom is hiding its newborn with its umbilical cord still in place. My heart 🥰

In a Dillinger pit, I got nerd sniped by being a collective behavior scientist.

About as promising as phase II can get. www.gilead.com/news-and-pre...