Sebastian Karcher
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adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher
@adam42smith.bsky.social
1.3K followers 790 following 2K posts

Director, Qualitative Data Repository (personal account).
Data, Zotero, Social Science Methods
https://sebastiankarcher.com

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Political science 25%
Computer science 23%
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adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 1d
I'm pretty sure skeleton racers would have your head for calling it luge :D

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 1d
I have been thinking about Borges a lot lately. The connections to debates about LLMs are everywhere.

Reposted by Sebastian Karcher

realscientists.de
Licinia @ Real Scientists DE @realscientists.de · 1d
Hallo liebe RealScientists Community! Ich bin Licinia, und darf diese Woche Einblicke in meine Arbeit auf diesem Account teilen. Ich bin Politikwissenschaftlerin und promoviere zu Digitalisierung, Parteien, und öffentlicher Meinung an der Universität Oxford. Ich stelle mich hier vor:
Blauer, sonniger Himmel mit überschwemmter Wiese. Im Hintergrund Umrisse alter, prächtiger Gebäude Oxfords.

Reposted by Sebastian Karcher, Nancy M. Wingfield

ykomska.bsky.social
Yuliya Komska @ykomska.bsky.social · 1d
Chicago UP is running a HUGE sale, and you can get extremely well-researched hard-bound books about all sorts of topics and all sorts of places for a price of a cheap paperback press.uchicago.edu/resource/Sal...
press.uchicago.edu

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Karen Benjamin Guzzo, Sebastian Karcher , and 2 more

joelhs.bsky.social
Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 2d
This message from the US State Department about "not wanting allies to be shackled by guilt and shame" is a pretty direct call-out to the German far-right argument that Germany has spent too long feeling guilty about the Holocaust, and needs to move on and stop doing remembrance.
Post from the Department of State: "We do not want allies to be shackled by guilt and shame"

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 2d
Not the point, but this list (which as I understand it is for law schools) is so weird: the top schools missing are U Chicago, Berkeley, Michigan and UVA.
Berkeley & Michigan are arguably the most progressive top schools.
UChicago has a brainy/academic rep.
What is going on???
chriso-wiki.bsky.social ChrisO_wiki @chriso-wiki.bsky.social · 3d
The US DOD has just blacklisted military personnel from taking courses at most of America's top universities and specialist tech and medicine schools, including Harvard, Yale, MIT and Johns Hopkins. Somehow I don't see the PLA making this kind of unforced error.

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 2d
The first two are fair -- never really my cup of tea (& I don't think either really has taken off), but M definitely pioneered. But pushed reproducibility? How that?

(I agree also on the marketing, btw.; my Mendeley story would be very different)

Reposted by Iikka Korhonen, Sebastian Karcher, Jason Lyall , and 1 more

chriso-wiki.bsky.social
ChrisO_wiki @chriso-wiki.bsky.social · 3d
The US DOD has just blacklisted military personnel from taking courses at most of America's top universities and specialist tech and medicine schools, including Harvard, Yale, MIT and Johns Hopkins. Somehow I don't see the PLA making this kind of unforced error.

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 3d
And to be clear, I'm not trying to argue here -- you're not the first person I've seen talking about this & if there's a way to make data wrangling less error-prone I want to understand that

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 3d
right, but I, too, lack the imagination to do this (even though I obv. write unit tests in software). Do you (or does Claude?) use simulated data with given properties for unit tests?
With software unit tests, I have a clear sense if X assert Y. But where do I get that from in data wrangling?

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Brian A. Nosek, Kai Sassenberg , and 7 more

malte.the100.ci
Malte Elson @malte.the100.ci · 3d
New paper, on a worrying trend in meta-science: the practice of anonymising datasets on, e.g., published articles. We argue that this is at odds with norms established in research synthesis, explore arguments for anonymisation, provide counterpoints, and demonstrate implications and epistemic costs.
psyarxivbot.bsky.social PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 3d
Against Anonymising Meta-Scientific Data: https://osf.io/6eyjf

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Sebastian Karcher

psyarxivbot.bsky.social
PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 3d
Against Anonymising Meta-Scientific Data: https://osf.io/6eyjf

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 4d
I'm confused here -- the paper doesn't make that assumption. Its main theoretical model uses 75% true hypotheses, and they show robustness with 90% true hypotheses given prevalent power estimates from the polisci lit.

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 4d
Depends.
There's consensus that you need to report using it as an analysis tool, such as in the Briggs et al. paper on null findings; and imo that's where LLMs are game changers: no way that paper gets written wo LLMs.

No consensus on whether you need to declare using it to write R code

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 4d
It's the Meat Loaf caucus

They would do anything for Trump,
But they won't do that

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 4d
Curious how you are setting this up account wise? Do you just expect students to have a Claude Pro account? Sponsor API credits? Does university help?
Even for workshops this is a logistical headache here, in spite of Claude Enterprise (which covers neither API nor Code) & generally helpful IT

Reposted by Benjamin Braun, Sebastian Karcher, William Myers

elizabethbitmeehan.com
Elizabeth (Bit) Meehan, PhD @elizabethbitmeehan.com · 4d
if I organized a roundtable about claude code at APSA, would you be interested in participating? I have seen several others post about it & think we need to make space for that conversation

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 5d
Doch

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 5d
If you're not hearing about DOJ career staffers quitting and blowing whistles left & right, you're not listening, from this week, e.g.: www.npr.org/2026/02/05/n...
(ICE is indeed rotten to the core; that's where 'abolish ice' -- hardly a new slogan -- comes from)
More frustrated prosecutors at the U.S Attorney's office in Minnesota call it quits
Turmoil continues at the U.S. Attorney's office in Minneapolis. This week another attorney was removed from a special assignment dealing with immigration cases after telling a judge she hates her job.
www.npr.org

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 5d
A lovely post -- I use "socio-technical" in virtually every grant application and either my co-authors or (even more likely) my grant folks always complain that it's jargony. But it's soooo useful to describe what we're doing as repositories & data stewards

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 5d
2/2 That's not against blogposts -- they can be supremely useful and carefully done. We should do more of them -- I think this is also what inspired Martin to start Rogue Scholar

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 5d
I agree. I also think it's bad. I've written peer reviews for papers that basically said 'this should be a blog post'. I think evaluating tools in rapidly changing fields are a perfect example: They should come out in real time and they don't benefit from engagement with the 'literature' 1/2

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 5d
Ah, excellent, was going to recommend just that

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 5d
Do you get DOIs for your Blogposts? That'd help with citations/citability

Reposted by Sebastian Karcher

datarescueproject.org
Data Rescue Project #DataRescue @datarescueproject.org · 5d
Data infrastructure isn’t just technical: thoughtful post from @mikalarae.bsky.social and friends.

www.datarescueproject.org/data-infrast...
Data infrastructure isn’t just technical
The New York Times recently published a story detailing the mishandling and misuse of genetic data from over 20,000 US Children. Scientists falsified access requests to the NIH, pretending to be locat...
www.datarescueproject.org

Reposted by Sebastian Karcher

qdr.bsky.social
Qualitative Data Repository @qdr.bsky.social · 5d
Halftime at #LoveData26 Week!
Our Blogpost for today: search facets qdr.syr.edu/qdr-blog/sea...
Incredibly useful to quickly filter data -- but they only work if you have good metadata in place (here's looking at you, controlled vocabularies 🥰)
Searching and Browsing QDR with Facets
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/w4xgx-vbc07 To mark this year’s Love Data Week, the QDR team is offering a set of three brief blog entries highlighting new features for our users and tips on how to make...
qdr.syr.edu

adam42smith.bsky.social
Sebastian Karcher @adam42smith.bsky.social · 6d
Congratulations!

Reposted by Sebastian Karcher

qdr.bsky.social
Qualitative Data Repository @qdr.bsky.social · 6d
It's #LoveData26 Week! We're starting off w a blogpost about one of the most loving things you can do for data: give it persistent identifiers.
doi.org/10.59350/vav...
And since we love persistent identifiers so much, even our blog posts have DOIs, via @rogue-scholar.wisskomm.social.ap.brid.gy
New Metadata Helps Identify Data Authors and Institutions
QDR now supports a wider range of persistent identifiers (PIDs), including ORCIDs and ROR IDs.
qdr.syr.edu

Reposted by Sebastian Karcher

ethanpants.bsky.social
Ethan Pants (he/him) @ethanpants.bsky.social · 7d
Remember to tell people that things have NOT DEESCALATED. Pulling 700 agents means there's 2,300 agents on our streets, terrorizing us and kidnapping our neighbors.

Reposted by Sebastian Karcher

morphss.bsky.social
MORPHSS @morphss.bsky.social · 8d
NEW resource for open research in the arts, humanities and qualitative social sciences:

The MORPHSS catalogue documents 30 open research practices in AHSS disciplines, with detailed descriptions, examples, and suggested resources and further reading.
catalogue.morphss.work
Screenshot of the MORPHSS catalogue