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paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale
@paulnightingale.bsky.social
2.9K followers 3.5K following 1.4K posts

Professor of Strategy at SPRU.

Associate Dean of Research, University of Sussex Business School. #1 in UK for research income.

Editor Research Policy.

Acting Director HSP.

Views mine, not my employer. Politics unfashionable since 1654 .. more

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paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · Jan 7

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 3h
👇

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 6h
They are just sad people

Reposted by Paul Nightingale

ban-cbw.bsky.social
ban-cbw.bsky.social @ban-cbw.bsky.social · 7h
#BiologicalWeapon #ChemicalWeapon #Toxin #Assassination #Russia #OPCW #UK
UK confirms Russia poisoned Navalny in prison with rare toxin
www.gov.uk/government/n...

The UK is today exposing the brutal and barbaric circumstances surrounding the death of Alexei Navalny in a Russian prison.
Two ...
UK confirms Russia poisoned Navalny in prison with rare toxin
UK and partners are today exposing the tragic circumstances surrounding Alexei Navalny's death and have confirmed there was poison found in samples from his body.
www.gov.uk

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 7h
Same
simonwheeler.bsky.social Simon Wheeler @simonwheeler.bsky.social · 7h
I proudly volunteered as a participant in the UK Biobank Study about 15 years ago but almost everything I see coming out of it these days is just bollocks. It’s just sausage factory science that adds nothing concrete or genuinely useful. Makes for good lifestyle pieces though.
Men and women ‘should follow different diets to live longer’
Scientists have found that more coffee and fibre for men and more fish and dairy for women can add two to three years to their lives — here’s what to eat
www.thetimes.com

Reposted by Paul Nightingale

simonwheeler.bsky.social
Simon Wheeler @simonwheeler.bsky.social · 7h
I proudly volunteered as a participant in the UK Biobank Study about 15 years ago but almost everything I see coming out of it these days is just bollocks. It’s just sausage factory science that adds nothing concrete or genuinely useful. Makes for good lifestyle pieces though.
Men and women ‘should follow different diets to live longer’
Scientists have found that more coffee and fibre for men and more fish and dairy for women can add two to three years to their lives — here’s what to eat
www.thetimes.com

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 7h
On behalf of all the Nightingale's on the ski slopes in Italy today, I'd like to thank you for your support.

Reposted by Stephen Evans, Paul Nightingale

chrisdillow.bsky.social
Chris Dillow @chrisdillow.bsky.social · 13h
New substack: politics is not about cosy debates or soundbites on silly TV shows. It’s about conflicts of interest. chrisdillow.substack.com/p/economic-g...
Economic growth as social change
Raising economic growth requires the government to defeat some vested interests.
chrisdillow.substack.com

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 14h
Cheap (1€), delicious and strong enough to explain why Italy doesn't have a crystal-meth problem.

Reposted by Paul Nightingale

brankomilan.bsky.social
Branko Milanovic @brankomilan.bsky.social · 1d
A *super* interesting review by Jan-Luiten van Zanden of Greif, Mokyr & Tabellini new book "Two paths to prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000".
eh.net/book_reviews...
Two Paths to Prosperity: Culture and Institutions in Europe and China, 1000–2000 – EH.net
eh.net

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 1d
Very nice!

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 1d
Decolonising the market for lemons

Reposted by Ben H. Ansell, Paul Nightingale

lastpositivist.bsky.social
lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 2d
If this Most Cited List (from a Leiter post earlier this year on political philosophy books with over 4000 citations) is right then it's wild just how hard liberalism is winning in political philosophy. Total ideological domination.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 126,000 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, 34,200 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, 32,300 Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice, 20,700 Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship, 20,200 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice, 17,000 Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, 16,500 Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice, 16,300 Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities, 13,000 John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 12,600 Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 12,500 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 12,200 Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom, 11,800 Charles Mills, The Racial Contract, 10,000 Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 10,000 Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, 7,800 Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, 6,900 Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 6,800 Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy, 6,800 Susan Moller Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family, 6,700 David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, 6,200 Will Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture, 5,700 Brian Barry, Culture and Inequality, 5,000 David Miller, On Nationality, 5,000 Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations, 4,900 Will Kymlicka, Politics and the Vernacular, 4,600 Bruce Ackerman, Social Justice in the Liberal State, 4,200 Martha Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice, 4,100

Reposted by John McLaren, Paul Nightingale

thetnholler.bsky.social
The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 2d
SEN. KAINE: “You said American whites are victims of a cultural genocide… are they represented in the senate? House? Presidency? CEO’s?”

Trump’s white nationalist pick for a top state department spot Jeremy Carl skewered by @kaine.senate.gov

Reposted by Koen Frenken

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 2d
This is a great thread on the bias in metascience itself.

There is a big bias towards "its all terrible!!!!" and loads of very unrealistic assumptions.

As a community we are also dismal at seeing the very dubious politics behind a lot of metascience throughout its history.
devezer.bsky.social Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 2d
On the publication bias discourse, I regret that metascience has become a source of decontextualized, low-res, bean-counting-focused `science is in crisis' narratives. It is largely uncurious abt science, desperately lacking in theory & measurement. I'll quote a few takes I liked & add my thoughts🧵

Reposted by Diane Coyle, Paul Nightingale

gilesyb.bsky.social
Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 2d
Well this is utterly depressing

How London unwittingly killed housebuilding - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @jburnmurdoch.ft.com
How London unwittingly killed housebuilding
A perfect storm of policy and regulatory headwinds has slowed new construction to a trickle
giftarticle.ft.com

Reposted by Brian J. Enquist, Koen Frenken, Andrew Livingstone , and 3 more

devezer.bsky.social
Berna Devezer @devezer.bsky.social · 2d
On the publication bias discourse, I regret that metascience has become a source of decontextualized, low-res, bean-counting-focused `science is in crisis' narratives. It is largely uncurious abt science, desperately lacking in theory & measurement. I'll quote a few takes I liked & add my thoughts🧵

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 3d
Not now radioactive overly amorous terror pigs!

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 3d
Ok chemist here: this is very clever!!

Reposted by Paul Nightingale

jakeyeston.bsky.social
Jake Yeston @jakeyeston.bsky.social · 3d
Exciting chemsky work out First Release in @science.org from @gracegdhan.bsky.social and collaborators, scrunching up pyrimidones so tight with UV light that the strain release can boil water!

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Molecular solar thermal energy storage in Dewar pyrimidone beyond 1.6 MJ/kg
Storing sunlight in a compact and rechargeable form remains a central challenge for solar energy utilization. Molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage systems, which harness photon energy and rel...
www.science.org

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 3d
Please make this just stop.....

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 3d
12th Feb - the Guardian yearly "the world's problems are caused by the axioms of neoclassical economics, and can be cured by this one neat trick, follow me for more life hacks" has arrived early!!

Professor Grant Needed looking for £100m!

www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Economics has failed on the climate crisis. This complexity scientist has a mind-blowing plan to fix that
Doyne Farmer says a super-simulator of the global economy would accelerate the transition to a green, clean world
www.theguardian.com

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 4d
Sadly the UK debt ignores a lot of very good work on the c impact of AI because it's so framed in terms of AI and not how AI interacts with organisational and individual routines, processes etc.

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 4d
The structural problem about failure to regulate monopolies etc is a disaster here. AI hype etc has a dismal impact on that.

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 4d
Exactly the same in UK and EU. The public debate is between evidence free extreme of "AI is all hype" and "it changes everything!!!".

Sadly there is very little space for nuance.....

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 4d
Beamish and Butthead frog baseball at a Boston animation festival
andykhouri.bsky.social Andy Khouri @andykhouri.bsky.social · 4d
Have asked this before and always like the responses. What are your biggest “I saw that in the first run cinema” flexes? Couple of mine:

Transformers: The Movie (1986)
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
Office Space (1999)

Reposted by Paul Nightingale

conradhackett.bsky.social
Conrad Hackett @conradhackett.bsky.social · 4d
Fascinating paper! Scholars who are secular are more likely to believe in secularization & find evidence of it in their research. The opposite pattern is true for scholars who are religious.

This is worth your time to read in full:
sociologicalscience.com/download/vol...
Few terms have the ability to fire up conversations among sociologists of religion like secularization. Despite the amount of research produced on the topic of religious change, no consensus has been reached on the trajectory of religion facing modernity. In this study, we test whether the secularization controversy stems not only from disagreements over empirical evidence on religious decline but also from different religious and secular beliefs of researchers involved in the debate. We find that religiosity has a significant negative impact on both believing in the validity of the secularization thesis and finding evidence for it in published work. This effect size is non-trivial: researchers with the highest level of religiosity are 24.0 percentage points less likely to believe in secularization and 19.2 percentage points less likely to find evidence of secularization in their published work than their secular colleagues. This result cannot be explained by differences in methods used (whether qualitative, quantitative, or non-empirical), study impact, or by differences in the religious traditions or geographical areas under study. Importantly, we cannot determine who is responsible for the bias, whether religious scholars, secular scholars, or both. Nor can we assess to what extent this bias is explicit, intentional, and how much of it is implicit and unwanted. The precise mechanisms through which such biases emerge remain unclear as well. Is it the case that researchers make certain methodological choices to come up with a desired study outcome that is consistent with prior beliefs and orientations? Or is it the case that results that align with authors’ ideological views are evaluated less critically than results disregarding their own personal beliefs? In our view, there is likely a confirmation bias at work: people tend to seek, favor, recall, and value evidence confirming their pre-existing beliefs while ignoring or downgrading disconfirming evidence

paulnightingale.bsky.social
Paul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 4d
My hot take: the UK Conservative party is the model for the Republican party post Trump.

Reposted by John Maynard, Paul Nightingale, Colin Woodard

andykhouri.bsky.social
Andy Khouri @andykhouri.bsky.social · 4d
Have asked this before and always like the responses. What are your biggest “I saw that in the first run cinema” flexes? Couple of mine:

Transformers: The Movie (1986)
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
Office Space (1999)

Reposted by Paul Nightingale

ncrm.ac.uk
National Centre for Research Methods @ncrm.ac.uk · 4d
Need to boost your digital skills? We've reduced the price of this online course to just £25!

Join Digital Research Skills for Social Scientists on 3-6 March 2026 to learn techniques for boosting the efficiency and reliability of your #research.

Find out more: www.ncrm.ac.uk/training/sho...
A person doing an online training course on a laptop.

Reposted by Paul Nightingale

scientificdiscovery.dev
Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 4d
Great post @ruxandrabio.bsky.social on FDA’s refusal to review Moderna’s flu vaccine, changing its position on what trial design was acceptable.

Regulatory uncertainty doesn’t just mean missing out on this vaccine, but also reduces future R&D investment:
clinicaltrialsabundance.blog/p/the-modern...
Adding to the confusion, entrepreneur Dr. Jing Liang noted on X that publicly available trial data appear to show Moderna conducted analyses involving higher-dose comparators in older adults. If accurate, it would raise further questions about the basis for issuing a refusal-to-file letter in the first place. No matter which account ultimately proves correct, this episode leaves us with two uncomfortable possibilities. If the FDA changed its regulatory position after years of clinical development, that reinforces a persistent concern about regulatory inconsistency. If, alternatively, Moderna met the agency’s highest level of stated expectations, actually did use a high-dose comparator and still received a refusal-to-file letter, the implications are even more serious, raising questions about transparency and internal coherence at the agency.