Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ingo Rohlfing

@ingorohlfing.bsky.social

4.4K followers 1.3K following 1.1K posts

I am here for all interesting and funny posts on the social sciences, broadly understood and including open science and meta science, academia, teaching and research. https://linktr.ee/ingorohlfing

Videos

Political science 30%

Sociology 17%

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 17h

in substantive courses are seen from a quantitative perspective because students can only address research questions that can be answered quantitatively. This would not be different in a quant department that offers substantive courses first. In that case, I see more value in the opposite order 2/

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 17h

An Undergraduate Degree in ‘Data for Political Research’: High in Demand and Student Value but Low in Supply #polisci
www.cambridge.org/core/journal... I can see the value of frontloading research design and quant methods undergraduate classes. It most likely implies that the topics in 1/

Reposted by Alexander Wuttke, Ingo Rohlfing

Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 1d

Twitter revolutionised my career.

I learnt a huge amount about causal inference through #EpiTwitter.

And I met many amazing people who I've since had the joy of working with (Eg @epiellie.bsky.social, @epidbydesign.bsky.social, @robertwplatt.bsky.social, @jlrohmann.bsky.social, etc etc)

Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 2d

Has anything great happened in your life because of social media?

2 5 71

Reposted by Ingo Rohlfing

Jan-Martin Wiarda @jmwiarda.bsky.social · 1d

Die Exzellenz ist müde
Die Exzellenzstrategie war ein Versprechen auf Wettbewerb und Aufbruch. Heute ist ihr Ende wissenschaftspolitisch absehbar. Doch was könnte, was sollte danach kommen?
Im Wiarda-Blog: www.jmwiarda.de/blog/2025/10...

1 13 25

Reposted by Cas Mudde, Will Jennings, Rosemary A. Joyce , and 3 more Cas Mudde, Will Jennings, Rosemary A. Joyce, Ingo Rohlfing, Alan Richardson, Stuart Shapiro

Boston Tom Levenson @tomlevenson.bsky.social · 2d

Two things of note in today's announcement of the 2025 Nobel physics prize (besides the work being honored).

1: The US institutional dominance of the prize continues.
2: 2 of the three laureates are immigrants, drawn here decades ago by the then-unmatched opportunities for science here...

1/

Nobel Prize in Physics Is Awarded for Work in Quantum Mechanics

www.nytimes.com

5 37 99

Reposted by Ingo Rohlfing

Klaus Pforr @klauspforr.bsky.social · 2d

"emerging literature" == i presented once at a conference
"recent research" == two papers and one blog post
"research tradition" == everything in my zotero folder
At least, that's what I was told

1 5 20

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 2d

In Germany, probably Austria too, there are so many Associate Professorships (W1, sometimes even W2) without tenure track that it is worth mentioning if you are on a tenure-track position.

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 2d

The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention
arxiv.org/abs/2509.13397 #MetaScience A specification curve analysis of LLM settings produces very different results. Maybe not surprising, but definitely worth studying and pointing out

Reposted by Ingo Rohlfing, Seán Hanley

Cas Ⓜ️udde @casmudde.bsky.social · 2d

My main problem with this is not so much the dominance of quantitative methods in “top-20” journals but rather the dominance of the exclusive use of quantitative methods — in many cases causality could and should have been established by a (nested) qualitative study. *

Alexia Katsanidou @alexiakatsanidou.bsky.social · 2d

Great paper on the state of political science osf.io/preprints/os... by @guygrossman.bsky.social et. al. We have become more diverse, more quantitative, and more collaborative.

1 9 36

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 2d

Seen from within academia, yes, but it may impress people from outside academia on LinkedIn, which is the point, I guess. (not endorsing this, tbc)

Reposted by Ingo Rohlfing

Jan-Martin Wiarda @jmwiarda.bsky.social · 2d

Die Professur auf Zeit, das System auf Probe
Ohne klare Gesetze und verlässliche Ressourcen bleibt der Tenure-Track ein Risiko für Nachwuchs und Hochschulen. Ein Gastbeitrag von Alena Fröde.
Im Wiarda-Blog: www.jmwiarda.de/blog/2025/10...

3 9

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 4d

I guess the mechanism is not clear. Could be randomization levels the playing field and diversifies pool of recipients, or that more researchers feel encouraged to submit who would have also got funded without randomization. In either case, randomization seems to have a diversifying effect 2/

Reposted by Veli‐Matti Karhulahti

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 4d

How randomisation has changed the British Academy’s approach to research funding
blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...
Another funding org exploring randomization of awards among proposal exceeding a certain threshold.
The pool of applicants and recipients was more diverse after the policy change 1/

1 3 4

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 5d

Correcting for collider effects and sample selection bias in psychological research
psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-... #CausalSky I am not sure collider bias is still that unknown. What was new to me is the proposed correction procedure (from 1982) that may help under sample selection

2 3

Reposted by Mel Bartley, Jörg Peters, Philip N. Cohen , and 3 more Mel Bartley, Jörg Peters, Philip N. Cohen, Andrew K Przybylski, Magnus Johansson, Ingo Rohlfing

Ian Hussey @ianhussey.mmmdata.io · 5d

My article "Data is not available upon request" was published in Meta-Psychology. Very happy to see this out!
open.lnu.se/index.php/me...

LnuOpen | Meta-Psychology

open.lnu.se

4 37 100

Reposted by Ingo Rohlfing

World Politics @worldpolitics.bsky.social · 6d

World Politics now has an #AI policy! That #policy lives on our website wpj.princeton.edu/authors-revi... and will be included in our updated Editorial Policies and Procedures document. The #journal is also adding an AI query to ScholarOne #Manuscripts that all #authors will be required to answer.

2 2

Reposted by Efrén O. Pérez

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 7d

Scientific Publishing Industry Faces (US) Federal Scrutiny
www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...
Trump admin is aiming at publishing industry, but also science more broadly, from multiple angles, including peer review, APCs and creating new outlets with questionable standards

1 2

Reposted by Richard McElreath, Ingo Rohlfing, Andreas Haupt

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 7d

Just finished reading this *excellent* article by Gabriel et al. which discusses which effects can be identified in randomized controlled trials. With DAGs!>

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Elucidating some common biases in randomized controlled trials
using directed acyclic graphs

Although the ideal randomized clinical trial is the gold standard for causal inference, real randomized trials often suffer
from imperfections that may hamper causal effect estimation. Stating the estimand of interest can help reduce confusion
about what is being estimated, but it is often difficult to determine what is and is not identifiable given a trial’s specific
imperfections. We demonstrate how directed acyclic graphs can be used to elucidate the consequences of common imperfections,
such as noncompliance, unblinding, and drop-out, for the identification of the intention-to-treat effect, the total
treatment effect and the physiological treatment effect. We assert that the physiological treatment effect is not identifiable
outside a trial with perfect compliance and no dropout, where blinding is perfectly maintained

Table 1 showing the Identifiability of target estimands depending on whether there is blinding, full compliance, and no drop-out

An example DAG from the paper.
Fig. 4: A blinded trial with noncompliance.

U are unobserved confounders, Z is treatment assignment, C is compliance, X is the realized treatment, S is the subject's physical and mental health status, Xself and Xcln are the treatment that the participant and the clinician believed the participant received, Y is the outcome.

4 23 120

Reposted by Ingo Rohlfing, Holger Heuer

Jan-Martin Wiarda @jmwiarda.bsky.social · 8d

„Die Exzellenzstrategie hat sich überlebt.“
CSU-Politiker Robert Brannekämper fordert im Interview mehr Tempo beim Hochschulbau, eine echte BAföG-Reform und weniger Drittmittelzirkus.
Im Wiarda-Blog: www.jmwiarda.de/blog/2025/10...

8 25

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 8d

Good for your and the MPG. My congrats.

Reposted by Heike Delitz, Ingo Rohlfing, Jan Fuhse

Steffen Mau @steffenmau.bsky.social · 8d

Some personal news to share www.mpg.de/25487784/aus...

Ausbau der Forschung zu Ungleichheit und Konflikten

Soziologe Steffen Mau an das Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung multireligiöser und multiethnischer Gesellschaften in Göttingen berufen. Neuausrichtung des Instituts startet

www.mpg.de

14 21 180

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 8d

For the fun of it, one can use the response letter to ask why exactly the estimate for the 9th control variable is important. In particular when considering the problems of interpreting estimates of control variables as causal
- doi.org/10.1017/psrm...
- doi.org/10.1177/1094... 2/

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 8d

I think this mostly explains why tables remain dominant (in my experience): Researchers are primarily trained in showing and interpreting tables, so one keeps asking for tables in regression articles. One can show them in an appendix, but there is little reason to waste article space on a table. 1/

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Meredith Broussard, Ingo Rohlfing , and 9 more Joanna Bryson, Meredith Broussard, Ingo Rohlfing, Ian Hussey, Martin Kreidl, Brian Keegan, Matt N Williams, Jens Rommel, Dana R. Fisher, Johannes Breuer, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Dana Howard

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 9d

A lot of psych is already conducted with online convenience samples & ppl are probably excited about silicon samples bc it would allow them to crank out more studies for even less 💸

How about we reconsider the idea that sciencey science involves collecting own data.
www.science.org/content/arti...

AI-generated ‘participants’ can lead social science experiments astray, study finds

Data produced by “silicon samples” depends on researchers’ exact choice of models, prompts, and settings

www.science.org

13 71 230

Reposted by Ingo Rohlfing

Iván Pérez-Neri @ipneri.bsky.social · 9d

If you face discrimination (or not) for doing evidence synthesis and/or meta-research, this is for you 👇🏼 engage.cochrane.org/tasks/4193

Please participate: a study about discrimination of researchers conducting systematic reviews, evidence syntheses and meta-research

Be part of a global volunteer community engaged in health evidence work

engage.cochrane.org

2 1

Reposted by Ingo Rohlfing

Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 9d

The EA/rationalists funding Metascience have happened upon the wild worry that they’ll speed science up too much and we’ll all die.

Don’t worry, they have a solution!

3 1 14

Reposted by Caroline Krafft, Ingo Rohlfing

AEA Journals @aeajournals.bsky.social · 9d

Academic economists forming connections on social media show a bias toward certain races, genders, and elite institutions, say researchers at @mcgill.ca, Sao Paulo School of Economics, and MIT. #econsky www.aeaweb.org/research/cha...

Bias in academic networking

A social media field experiment suggests that gender, race, and university affiliation influence the formation of professional relationships among economists.

www.aeaweb.org

6 7

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 9d

Still presenting regression results in tables? Why not forest plots?
www.mihiretukebede.com/posts/2025-0... #dataviz This meets with this #polisci article from 2007 jkastellec.scholar.princeton.edu/sites/g/file... I think the number of plots has gone up over time, but not by much across journals

1 6

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 9d

Interessant. Ich ahne, wieso das LLM auf diese Artikel verweist. Sie sind es aber nicht. Es war in einem Philosophy (of Science) Journal.

Ingo Rohlfing @ingorohlfing.bsky.social · 9d

I hope the #PhilSci crowd can help: I remember a paper discussing absences in causation. It has on the first pages a 2x2 table relating presence/absence of cause and effect to each other. Probably from 2000s, or 2010s. I remember neither title nor author, I hope someone knows what I am talking about

1 3