Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · 9d

I use Google Scholar to fetch BibTeX form citation information of articles and books, but it's not really great that capital letters in titles are not protected with curly braces, and LaTeX then renders something like genus names or "D-statistic" lower case. Come on 😤

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Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · 22d

I really don't mind social scientists saying something milk toast like "education improves health", but you can probably claim almost anything if exclusion restriction can just be assumed like that. And they will.

Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · 22d

You need those specific variants to only be associated with health via their association to "IQ", and you know most variants are associated with complex social traits through a huge mess of pathways that are mostly noncausal. The exclusion restriction is just obviously not justified.

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Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · 22d

OK but "If the Mendelian randomization assumptions hold, these findings suggest that both intelligence and education affect health". That conclusion probably isn't that controversial (or interesting), but why would the assumptions hold? That sounds like a huge if.

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Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · 23d

Well, can you now? If the score explains 1% of the variance in "IQ" causally, and some 10% through unknown non-causal confounding pathways, then what value can it possibly have as an instrumental variable? Sounds like the exclusion restriction is clearly violated.

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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä

Christopher Mathias @letsgomathias.bsky.social · Sep 14

Last year: Austin Peay State University learns prof is Nazi who went to Charlottesville rally. Admin drags heels, pays him $56k severance to leave

This week: APSU prof posts screenshot of headline - Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment- & is immediately fired

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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä

Nic Rawlence @nicrawlencenz.bsky.social · Jul 31

Thanks @newscientist.com for shining a light on the smear campaign against @toriherridge.bsky.social, @devoevomed.bsky.social, @flintdibble.bsky.social & myself just for fulfilling our critic & conscience role to provide expert commentary about de-extinction www.newscientist.com/article/2490...

Critics of de-extinction research hit by mystery smear campaign

Several researchers who have been critical of Colossal Biosciences’ plans to revive extinct animals say they have been targeted by online articles trying to discredit them

www.newscientist.com

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Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Jul 25

I didn't realize the Helvetica font could arouse any feelings one way or another.

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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä

Mother Jones @motherjones.com · Jul 17

After he leaked Zohran Mamdani's Columbia application data to the New York Times, critics called Jordan Lasker a "eugenicist." A Mother Jones report shows there's much more to his backstory.

Read @nlanard.bsky.social on the shocking rise of one of the tech-right’s favorite posters.

The shocking rise of one of the tech-right’s favorite posters

After he leaked Zohran Mamdani's Columbia application data to the New York Times, critics called Jordan Lasker a "eugenicist." A Mother Jones report shows there's much more to his backstory.

www.motherjones.com

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Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Jul 12

Ok how about less detail then? Because your "controversial source" (a Nazi fraudster) is not in fact an academic, you LIED to your readers.

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Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Jul 12

All race scientists had their pages removed. Someone has money. www.pinkerite.com/2025/05/rati...

Rational Wiki censorship-palooza - so many connections to Emil Kirkegaard!

Here are the articles that I am aware of that Rational Wiki has censored. Charles Murray declaring his financial support for the neo-Nazi ...

www.pinkerite.com

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Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Jul 11

They're going to be named Smaug or Nazgul, aren't they?

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Kalle Leppälä @kallelep.bsky.social · Jul 11

Partnering with Peter Jackson this time. Why, though?

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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä

👻Sewall Fright🎃 @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social · Jul 9

In a long, whiny post about a recent Atlantic article about him, white supremacist Jordan Lasker posts an incompetent analysis using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study dataset that appears to have been illegitimately accessed and then stolen by one of his coauthors.

Crémieux
@cremieuxrecueil
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The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) does not seem to have fact-checkers, or at least they're very lazy and perhaps incompetent.
Brieflv…

Four panel plot showing two distributions for white and black populations alleging for A) additive genetics, B) shared environment, C) nonshared environment, and D) IQ scores

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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä

Ari Pekka Mähönen @apmahonen.bsky.social · Jul 2

How plants sense injury in their barrier tissue, periderm? Painstakingly detailed and amazing work by post doc Hiroyuki Iida shows that wounding is sensed by the diffusion of two gases: ethylene and oxygen. @treebiocoe.bsky.social‬ @erc.europa.eu‬ 1/x 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Plants monitor the integrity of their barrier by sensing gas diffusion - Nature

A study using Arabidopsis shows that plants can monitor the integrity of their outer barriers by sensing gas diffusion, enabling them to initiate wound repair to prevent water loss and pathogen entry.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä

Laurits Skov @lauritsskov.bsky.social · May 5

We ( @zeniabaek.bsky.social @moicoll.bsky.social and @asgerhobolth.bsky.social ) present a new cool way to visualize the optimal trade off for hmm decoding called Artemis plots!
arxiv.org/pdf/2504.15156
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Reposted by Kalle Leppälä

Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Apr 17

Patenting de-extinction. Story by @antonioregalado.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/16/1...

Jurassic Patent: How Colossal Biosciences is attempting to own the “woolly mammoth”

The company claiming it can restore lost species also wants to patent them.

www.technologyreview.com

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