Dean Eckles
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eckles.bsky.social
Dean Eckles
@eckles.bsky.social

networks, contagion, causality
faculty at MIT

Mathematics 19%
Physics 19%
the White House's official X account gloats over the arrest of Don Lemon with a chains emoji
Microsoft Research NYC is hiring a researcher in the space of AI and society!
"Patrick Eddington, of the libertarian Cato Institute, said the FBI had no business investigating. “The use of encryption is as American as apple pie. The founders used it before, during, and after the revolution,” he said." www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
FBI to investigate Minneapolis activists after far-right claim about Signal chats
The FBI director, Kash Patel, said the inquiry followed a far-right influencer’s post about anti-ICE Signal chats
www.theguardian.com
In response to announcement that he will be a new CBS contributor, Andrew Huberman tweeted “I’ve always gone issue-by-issue on health & science, spoken to experts w/a range of takes & presented where I see the center of (data) mass pointed. I’ll do the same with @CBSNews”. In Sept he posted this:

Reposted by Dean Eckles

hivemind, i'm curious how you are dealing with llm/vibecoding in recruiting undergraduate research and masters RAs ..... so far the range has been pretty wide in terms of way overconfident use vs. being able to leverage tools to move along at a fairly effective pace
If Bilbo had Chat GPT
Apropos of the TikTok news last week, I have a piece coming out abt how the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the ban-or-sale law belongs in the First Amendment anticanon. It's not just wrong, but so wrong we should hold it up as an exceptional symbol of wrongness.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
TikTok v. Garland and the First Amendment Anticanon
<p><span>This essay argues that last term’s decision in <i>TikTok v. Garland</i>, which unanimously upheld the federal law that sought to ban TikTok in the Unit
papers.ssrn.com
The largest Trump superPAC donor so far this cycle is the president of OpenAI

Reposted by Dean Eckles

Looking forward to the workshop on “Causal Machine Learning for the Social Sciences” at the Newton Institute/Cambridge:
www.newton.ac.uk/event/cifw05/

I will discuss the big picture of possible research agendas at the intersection of ML, causality, and econ:
maxkasy.github.io/home/files/s...
Causal Machine Learning for the Social Sciences - Isaac Newton Institute
Causal inference and machine learning are profoundly transforming the social sciences by enabling researchers to move beyond mere correlation to identify...
www.newton.ac.uk
The replies to this post surfaced lots of great 3rd party tools (thanks!), but I still think it's interesting that bsky, as a platform, has decided to not prioritize algorithmic triangle closing (or follow recommendations, generally). See this fig from Zignani et al. (2014), when FB introduced PYMK.
Also, may I say that I don’t agree with people saying ICE and CBP need “more training.” They’re doing exactly what this administration has trained them to—impose a reign of fear in blue cities. They don’t need more training. They need to be ripped up root and branch.
If you're interested in seeing how framing contests are taking shape after the ICE killing of another person in Minneapolis, here's a window into the conversation on X this morning.
Link to interactive graph: faculty.washington.edu/kstarbi/Spot...
* I put this together quickly. Sorry for any errors
from what I can see, the video shows a beating followed by an execution.
Very interesting: when X made "likes" privates, the number of likes to high-reputational-risk content (e.g., extremists, onlyFans, but also politicians...) *didn't* increase.
arxiv.org/abs/2601.11140

The second group is the psych majors?
they went to an emergency room seeking help for their 7 year old child.

ICE arrested the 7 year old and her parents.

the family is here legally.

www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...
ICE detains family seeking emergency care for child at Portland hospital
The Venezuelan parents and their 7-year-old daughter entered the U.S. legally.
www.oregonlive.com
Vibe coding kills open source.
Our most direct title yet. @koren.mk @julianhi.nz @aaron-lohmann.bsky.social
Theory paper with numbers and policy recs. First at arxiv.org/abs/2601.15494
Comments welcome.

@ceu-economics.bsky.social @kiel.institute
There is no clear evidence of religious revival in two other surveys based on random samples conducted by other organizations: the General Social Survey and the American Time Use Survey.
Statement from the entire Minneapolis City Council in support of a General Strike and Day of Truth & Freedom on January 23rd.

I think the disclosures on my website are atypical and not solely reflective of established norms or journal policies. Some of its contents reflect my desire to change norms towards more disclosure. I use it as something to point eg journalists to, rather than for compliance with journal policies.
This video filmed by Ben Luhmann shows the moment a federal agent sprayed chemical irritants directly into a man's face in south Minneapolis.

Three agents already had the man pinned to the ground when a fourth agent walked up and sprayed the irritants.
How do you pause an injunction barring cops from using retaliatory violence against **peaceful** protesters?

That's . . . already illegal.

www.startribune.com/ice-raids-mi...
Live: Appeals court sides with ICE over its tactics against protesters
A federal judge previously issued an injunction meant to prevent immigration agents from detaining and pepper-spraying ‘peaceful’ observers.
www.startribune.com
An observer arrested in Suth Minneapolis. Photo by Richard Tsong-Taatarii/The Minnesota Star Tribune

Reposted by Dean Eckles

As one of the Bulwark hosts memorably stated on their livestream, it seemed like Trump described Greenland as a sheet of ice and it "one-shotted his brain."

Reposted by Dean Eckles

He looks like he is 14 years old. And is being arrested because he cannot pull out documentation proving he is a legal citizen. Could you have done that?

Indeed it seems to be new to everyone: no mention of coauthorship ties as a conflict for anything except editing/reviewing prior to late 2025
bsky.app/profile/danl...
News to me! Must be quite a recent change, as archive.org from the end of 2025 doesn't have the new language. Interesting change.
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
archive.org

And @profsanderlinden.bsky.social similarly notes that this is not the norm — in fact it is so different from the norm that "I don't know anyone who does that".
bsky.app/profile/prof...

It may really confuse things to blend together various kinds of industry "ties", as this preprint does.
To be fair I had never heard of the practice of disclosing past collaboration on future totally unrelated papers (I don’t know anyone who does that) but I’m not against it, I’m all for greater transparency. My bigger concern is with all the data that doesn’t even get published b/c of corporate COI..

Even in biomedicine, I don't think having coauthors (of another paper) who are/were employees in the same industry is normally disclosed.

Is there any field where they are?

I would be interested to see journal policies saying authors should disclose them. Or even examples of papers doing so?

Reposted by Dean Eckles

News to me! Must be quite a recent change, as archive.org from the end of 2025 doesn't have the new language. Interesting change.
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
archive.org
Posted a very early stage draft with rock star collaborators.

Key question: when we actually roll out AI tools, how do people use them? Do they just defer completely? Does it improve productivity and ability?

We look in the medical setting of pulmonary embolisms
paulgp.com/papers/Radio...