Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 1d

CSV will not retain factor levels/labels, etc. I prefer to use .parquet or .qs2 formats, both open source and available in R packages `arrow` and `qs2`. The latter is R specific and has the added benefit of being able to save any R object to a compressed file.

2

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 1d

Det är mest troligt s.k. attention-control-frågor, som ibland läggs in i (långa) frågebatterier för att identifiera respondenter som bara kryssar random svar.

7

Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 1d

I really really really liked The Oatmeal’s take on AI here theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

A cartoonist's review of AI art - The Oatmeal

This is a comic about AI art.

theoatmeal.com

3 23 69

Jourhavande Filosof @systerfrida.se · 2d

”AI isn't going to wake up, become superintelligent and turn you into paperclips – but rich people with AI investor psychosis are almost certainly going to make you much, much poorer.”

pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...

Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

pluralistic.net

1 6 10

Dr Mircea Zloteanu ☀️ 🌊🌴 @mzloteanu.bsky.social · 2d

#statstab #432 PsychOpen Gold

Thoughts: instead of submitting to greedy and unhelpful publishers, try this list of fully open and free journals in psychology.

#OpenScience #openaccess #apcs #goldaccess #pedagogy

psychopen.eu

PsychOpen GOLD: Open Access Publishing

We are a Diamond Open Access platform for psychology research. Peer-reviewed, free-to-read journals with no publication fees, promoting open science.

psychopen.eu

1 2 8

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 4d

scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=s...

1

Robin Blythe @rbly.bsky.social · 5d

Love this paper by Hinne doi.org/10.1177/2515... but curious why BMA isn't compatible with competing theories: "BMA is less useful when...each candidate model may represent a different theory of a physical process...the models are not a nuisance factor; they are the focus of the analysis." #statsky

A Conceptual Introduction to Bayesian Model Averaging - Max Hinne, Quentin F. Gronau, Don van den Bergh, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, 2020

Many statistical scenarios initially involve several candidate models that describe the data-generating process. Analysis often proceeds by first selecting the ...

doi.org

1 2 5

Ian Hussey @ianhussey.mmmdata.io · 6d

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

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 7d

Exceptional Doctorow piece on the solar rollout, why it's unstoppable, & why many old downsides of solar aren't factors anymore. The entire material mining needed 4 a global solar transition = only 17% of the fossil fuel mining we do every year! & then we're done! doctorow.medium.com/https-plural...

Decarbonization at a distance

A post-American century that runs on sunshine.

doctorow.medium.com

7 120 360

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 9d

I'm sure there are ways it is brilliant, but my first methods check in EFA/CFA psychometric papers is always whether rule-of-thumb critical values are used to assess model fit. I don't think we should trust model fit interpretations using rule-of-thumb cutoffs in any paper.

1 2

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 9d

I strongly recommend to stop using rule of thumb cutoffs such as Hu and Bentler since they are unlikely to be appropriate. Dynamic/adaptive cutoffs should be used, see for instance pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36787513/

dynamic : An R Package for Deriving Dynamic Fit Index Cutoffs for Factor Analysis - PubMed

To evaluate the fit of a confirmatory factor analysis model, researchers often rely on fit indices such as SRMR, RMSEA, and CFI. These indices are frequently compared to benchmark values of .08, .06, ...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

1

Matti Vuorre @matti.vuorre.com · 13d

100% this, especially with Wiley given their anti-preprint stance.

Francesco Poli @francescopoli.bsky.social · 14d

Why are we still sending our work to Wiley and other publishing companies so that they can profit from it? There's so many better options now, for example: psychopen.eu/journals/

1 5 14

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 15d

Interesting paper on how software could help analysts. ”Causal clarity in statistical software” (Korf et al., 2025). I like many of the ideas, such as clarifying estimand, using multiple estimators, and no output of coefficients for adjustment variables doi.org/10.1093/ije/... #stats #rstats

Causal clarity in statistical software

Imagine running a simple regression in any statistical software of choice—but this time, you only get a point estimate of the regression coefficient. There

doi.org

6

Emil Hvitfeldt @emilhvitfeldt.bsky.social · 15d

I'm exited to announce a new resource about making slides with quarto and revealjs. This book is the combination of all the work I have done in this area, reordered and polished up

There isn't a lot of new information yet, but this format allows me to add more easily

slidecrafting-book.com
#quarto

Screenshot of first page of slidecrafting-book.com website

11 64 180

Anna Alexandrova @annaalexandrova.bsky.social · 17d

I hope Melvin Bragg's retirement will not end In Our Times. He has a lovely voice and manner but it's the people he invites that hold the show. I'll take this chance to post a thread of some of the more memorable episodes for me. Starting with Schaffer, Worrall, and @michelamassimi.bsky.social

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Scientific Method

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Scientific Method.

www.bbc.co.uk

3 16 72

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 17d

Indeed, and since data is always collected within a known time-frame, there is also a known upper bound, which count models generally do not respect. The impact of ignoring the upper bound (and potential one-inflation) will of course depend on the distribution.

James Green @ajamesgreen.bsky.social · 18d

This is why I wrote a paper on count regression, and in general am a big proponent of generalised linear models. Almost nothing is 'normal'/gaussian. Days off sick are very obviously a count (whole numbers only, never below zero) doi.org/10.1080/2164...

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 18d

For instance, yesterday I read a paper with a table describing participants' sickness absence days with a mean of 71 and SD = 88. Generating a random (gaussian) sample using these values produces ~20% participants with less than zero sick days.

James Green @ajamesgreen.bsky.social · 18d

This is why I wrote a paper on count regression, and in general am a big proponent of generalised linear models. Almost nothing is 'normal'/gaussian. Days off sick are very obviously a count (whole numbers only, never below zero) doi.org/10.1080/2164...

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 18d

For instance, yesterday I read a paper with a table describing participants' sickness absence days with a mean of 71 and SD = 88. Generating a random (gaussian) sample using these values produces ~20% participants with less than zero sick days.

A histogram with 10000 values using the mean+sd in the text, showing zero with a red line.

4

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 18d

Just to clear, it is not possible to have a negative number of sickness absence days, zero is the lower bound on this type of data.

1 2

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 18d

For instance, yesterday I read a paper with a table describing participants' sickness absence days with a mean of 71 and SD = 88. Generating a random (gaussian) sample using these values produces ~20% participants with less than zero sick days.

2 1 3

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 18d

For those unfamiliar with `fivenumber()`, the five numbers are the median, minimum, maximum, and the lower and upper hinges. The hinges are the median values of the upper and lower halves (split by the median).

3

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 18d

My impression is that papers in psychology often seem to assume all variables are gaussian and well described by mean/SD as summary stats. Having actually looked at a lot of data distributions in psych has made me a proponent of Tukey’s `fivenumber()` summary statistics.

1 2 8

Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.bsky.social · 19d

The Disney brand, and the USA brand, sinking together. Parody from Dutch TV
www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vRX...

Jimmy Kimmel’s show has been cancelled | The New Disney | LUBACH

YouTube video by LUBACH

www.youtube.com

64 640 2.2K

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 21d

Wonderfully snarky title.

Marcus Krueger @trustedsystem.bsky.social · 21d

:-)

Likert is Pronounced "LICK-urt" not "LIE-kurt" and the Data are Ordinal not Interval - PubMed

Likert-type scales are popular in educational research and often times analyzed using parametric tests. Implied in this kind of study is a general assumption that these data are interval in nature. Th...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

6

Marcus Krueger @trustedsystem.bsky.social · 21d

:-)

Likert is Pronounced "LICK-urt" not "LIE-kurt" and the Data are Ordinal not Interval - PubMed

Likert-type scales are popular in educational research and often times analyzed using parametric tests. Implied in this kind of study is a general assumption that these data are interval in nature. Th...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

1 1 11

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 21d

@mannegerell.bsky.social this might be of interest?

1 1

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 21d

I should add that describing reliability properties of a sample is of course a useful thing. But when doing psychometrics we also like to know the properties of the test/measure itself, to understand it's limitations and uses.

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 21d

Brilliant package name and sticker!

1

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 21d

The latter was recently acknowledged in non-modern test theory: link.springer.com/article/10.3...

Reliability representativeness: How well does coefficient alpha summarize reliability across the score distribution? - Behavior Research Methods

Scale scores in psychology studies are commonly accompanied by a reliability coefficient like alpha. Coefficient alpha is an index that summarizes reliability across the entire score distribution, imp...

link.springer.com

1 4

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 21d

Most point estimates of reliability have two main problems. One is that they typically describe properties of a sample, not a measure. Then they make it seem like reliability is a constant across the continuum measured, which is unlikely.

Dr Mircea Zloteanu ☀️ 🌊🌴 @mzloteanu.bsky.social · 22d

#statstab #418 On Misconceptions and the Limited Usefulness of Ordinal Alpha

Thoughts: Ordinal α seemed cool. Then I read this paper. Takeaway: methods need good peer review and debate.

#ordinal #likert #cronbachalpha #reliability #methods

doi.org/10.1177/0013...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

doi.org

2 4

Magnus Johansson @pgmj.bsky.social · 21d

The absurd amount of research grant money poured into that is sad to think about. Worse, it seems never ending, despite the lack of findings.

6