Melissa Sands
Social scientist and Assistant Professor of Politics & Data Science at the London School of Economics.
🇺🇸 in 🇬🇧
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- Journal article: “the data are available on request” The data:
- So honored to join the other exceptional social psych scholars in this forthcoming issue of PIBBS! 🧠📊 Our paper examines how insights from social neuroscience can inform better public policy @fabbs.org @spspnews.bsky.social @sansmeeting.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
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- A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the release of Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” and the advent of the late-2000s electro-pop era, which both appeared around the same year, 2008.
- A new PNAS paper finds that polarization increased immediately after the invention of smartphones and the advent of social media, which both appeared around the same year, 2008. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- This entire weekend
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- 12 dead at a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach.💔 A 43-year-old father of two, Ahmed al Ahmed, snuck up & tackled a gunman to disarm him. Ahmed was shot twice. Both Jewish & Muslim faiths teach that “to save one life is to save all humanity.” Let us hold fast to our humanity.❤️
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- Ahmed al Ahmed, a Lebanese Muslim who owns a Sydney fruit shop, risked his life to disarm one of the Bondi Beach shooters. His courage gives me hope amidst the horror and darkness. Muslims and Jews are not enemies. Our futures, in the Middle East and beyond, are intrinsically bound. A true hero.
- Extraordinary courage from Ahmed al Ahmed, a Muslim, 43-year-old father of two, who bravely risked his life to save his neighbors celebrating Hanukkah. Praying for his full & speedy recovery. And so deeply inspired by his example.
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- Just went to the uni library for the first time in ... years. I couldn't find the book I wanted to read online. When was the last time you went? Went in looking for 1 book and came back with ... 6. Made me realise I really missed walking through those aisles browsing adjacent books in a collection.
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- What I always hear: “We can’t afford to pay our workers more than $15 an hour.” What I never hear: “We can’t afford to pay our CEO millions of dollars a year.” Funny how that works.
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- rfk jr wants to kill your kids, it’s really that simple.
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- Just imagining how much better it would be if ALL news stories about vaccine-preventable illnesses were illustrated with pictures of people with the disease, not pictures of needle injections. If you must show something that people will find scary & unpleasant, make it the disease, not the cure.
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- My bipartisan IRS MATH Act with Senator Bill Cassidy is now law. Now, if you mess up your taxes, the IRS has to tell you where you made a mistake and how to fix it. No more spending a fortune on lawyers or hours to find errors. That means fewer headaches and more money in your pocket.
- the case for slower, better/more careful research papers in poli sci gets another data point in its favor
- Last Friday we held Munster Replication Games (@uni-muenster.de jointly with #MüCOS and #CDSC). Sixty researchers replicated fifteen papers: well done, everybody! Many thanks to the local organizers as well, @bschlipphak.bsky.social and @aufdroeseler.bsky.social and Katrin Schmietendorf :)
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- Postdoc in Social Stratification, Education, and Genetics with @astabreinholt.bsky.social at Roskilde University, Denmark. The position is for 2 years, starting from May 1st, 2026. Apply by Dec 12th candidate.hr-manager.net/ApplicationI...
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- As a son of Appalachia, I understand the opioid crisis better than anyone. That's why I'm proud to stand with the Honduran president who delivered drugs to needy Americans with such efficiency. by JD Vance
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- Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread
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- Today I published a replication outlining concerns with "Instrumentally Inclusive" by Turnbull-Dugarte and López Ortega (2024, APSR). I document seemingly idiosyncratic and ad hoc choices made by the authors that create a pattern of statistically significant results consistent with their theory.
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View full threadAs I reflect on this, three thoughts: 1. This case is only symptomatic of a bigger problem; increasingly broken incentive structures in our disciplines and industry. Our job is *not* to publish for the sake of publishing. It is to produce and advance *knowledge*. This process is hard and slow.
- 2. Popper tells us that we should be our own best skeptics. Unfortunately our professional incentives often make us the opposite. As we conduct research, we should all be self-skeptical and self-questioning and self-doubting. We should expose our own thinking and decisions to close examination.
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