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Reposted by Guy Lavender Forsyth

Danielle Navarro @djnavarro.net · 10d

A few words on survey weights, why I'm embarrassed to have forgotten to take them into account in the past, and how I got lucky because I personally didn't get burned. Not a mistake I intend to repeat in the future

blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2025-0...

Some notes on survey weights – Notes from a data witch

An area of statistics in which the author is not strong, and really needs to up her game

blog.djnavarro.net

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Reposted by Guy Lavender Forsyth

Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 13d

Now out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social. In our new article, @denis-cohen.bsky.social @thmskrr.bsky.social and I show that where local rent prices increase more, residents with lower incomes become more likely to support the radical right AfD.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 21d

My new paper critically analyses the available evidence (qualitative & quantitative) + defines plausible mechanisms that can be tested in future work with existing data

So stay tuned for more!

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 21d

Vanuatu’s lingua franca, Bislama, has been learnt by most people as a 2nd language for decades

But it's increasingly the main language of daily life. Linguists' reports reflect growing worries that this is interrupting transmission of local Indigenous languages

What is causing this shift?

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 21d

Vanuatu is the world’s most language-diverse country: >130 languages amongst 300k people. But is there a language shift ongoing that could threaten this?

The last major review said no. But that was 25 yrs ago. Has the story changed?

In a word––yes.

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 21d

New paper alert! 🧪

www.doi.org/10.1057/s415...

Language endangerment in Vanuatu: Bislama likely does pose a threat in the world’s most language-diverse country - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications - Language endangerment in Vanuatu: Bislama likely does pose a threat in the world’s most language-diverse country

www.doi.org

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Reposted by Guy Lavender Forsyth

Sheina Lew-Levy @sheinalew.bsky.social · 27d

@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised!

3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution

2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions.

Please share and apply!

www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

Fees and Funding - Durham University

www.durham.ac.uk

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · Sep 3

woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD

Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers!

This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

www.nature.com

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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · Aug 18

Climate models since the 1970s nailed it—most predicted global warming almost exactly as it happened.

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Prof Nichola Raihani @nicholaraihani.bsky.social · Jul 19

My colleague Quentin Atkinson wrote this piece - How Not To Run a University. It is an insanely good read about how managerialism is destroying universities.

Make time for it. Talk about it. Share it.

quentinatkinson.substack.com/s/how-not-to...

How not to run a university | Quentin’s Substack | Quentin Atkinson | Substack

A case study of one university’s managerial misadventures, why it is happening and what we can do about it. Click to read Quentin’s Substack, by Quentin Atkinson, a Substack publication. Launched a mo...

quentinatkinson.substack.com

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Reposted by Guy Lavender Forsyth

Anne Fausto-Sterling @birdlady.bsky.social · Jul 15

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Kiran Basava @incertaesedis.bsky.social · Jun 22

Happy to share our new paper introducing the Animal Culture Database in Scientific Data: We’re putting together a resource consolidating primary research on cultural behaviors in wild animal populations and how they’re affected by human activity (1/5) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mapping nonhuman cultures with the Animal Culture Database - Scientific Data

Scientific Data - Mapping nonhuman cultures with the Animal Culture Database

www.nature.com

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David @daverino.bsky.social · Jun 18

"Nasa has revealed a dramatic rise in the intensity of..events such as droughts & floods over the past 5 years. The study shows that..extreme events are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting & more severe"
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

Nasa data reveals dramatic rise in intensity of weather events

Extreme events such as floods and droughts are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting and more severe, study says

www.theguardian.com

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Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias @ceciliapad.bsky.social · Jun 18

I could not be more proud of my lab, and my fantastic colleagues for the study they just published in @nature.com revealing a massive expansion of our species' niche before dispersing out of Africa. Have a read, because it's an amazing paper 🤩

Evolutionary Ecology Group, Cambridge @eegcam.bsky.social · Jun 18

#newpaper now out in @nature.com!
A huge expansion of the human niche in Africa ~70 kya likely equipped later #outofAfrica dispersals with a unique ecological flexibility.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
led by Emily Hallett, @mikleonardi.bsky.social, Andrea Manica, @elliescerri.bsky.social 1/4

Major expansion in the human niche preceded out of Africa dispersal - Nature

Analysis of species distribution models in a pan-African database comprising chronometrically dated archaeological sites over the past 120,000 years shows major expansion in the human niche from 70 ka...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Guy Lavender Forsyth

Tim Bale @timbale.bsky.social · Jun 17

Fascinating - not least on why different datasets produce very different results.

Is there really a religious revival in England? Why I’m sceptical of a new report

In Anglican and Catholic churches, average weekly attendance is down about 20% from pre-pandemic levels.

theconversation.com

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · Jun 16

“Historically, no one lived past age 35”

"I’ve heard *so* many versions of this claim, including recently from a menopause doctor (implying menopause is not “natural” because noone lived long enough to go through it). Every time someone states this “fact,” a demographer loses a piece of their soul"

There Were Still Old People When Life Expectancy Was 35.

A demography myth that won't die

jenndowd.substack.com

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Omid Ghasemi @omidghasemi.bsky.social · Jun 5

Our recently published paper in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review on #reasoning styles and #belief in God is now featured by @psychonomicsociety.bsky.social!
Thanks, Jonathan Caballero, for the interesting article.

📄 Read the paper here: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

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Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias @ceciliapad.bsky.social · Jun 4

I was really excited when I saw this study being presented at @icarehb.bsky.social last January and I'm really glad to see the paper out! Amazing record of cultural transmission strategies & cultural traits over 3 million years 🤩

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

An empirically-based scenario for the evolution of cultural transmission in the human lineage during the last 3.3 million years

Humans accumulate an ever-growing body of knowledge that far exceeds the capacity of any single individual or generation. Social learning and transmission are essential for this process. However, how ...

journals.plos.org

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · Jun 3

Very thought provoking

But it's difficult to see how “science cannot be mandated” tackles the incentives for 'fast science', quantity over quality, etc that the best of Open Science aims to overturn

Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · Jun 3

Fantastic blog post on the new EO and #openscience by Kevin Munger

kevinmunger.substack.com/p/open-scien...

Open Science and Its Enemies

Donald Trump has signed an Executive Order nominally aimed at “Restoring Gold Standard Science”. Setting aside the absurdity of “restoring” something that never existed, what does that purport to mean...

kevinmunger.substack.com

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Reposted by Guy Lavender Forsyth

Abby Cassario @abbycassario.bsky.social · May 20

🚨🚨 NEW PRE-PRINT 🚨🚨

Prominent theories in political psychology argue that threat causes increases in conservatism. Early experimental work supported this idea, but many of these studies were (severely) underpowered, and examined only a few threats and ideological DVs. 1/n osf.io/preprints/ps...

OSF

osf.io

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · May 8

🧪 New research for the science feed from #anthropology!

Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · May 1

Extremely happy to see some of my PhD work out in Current Anthropology!

"The Dual Foundations of Political Ideology Are Ubiquitous across Human Social Life"

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

The Dual Foundations of Political Ideology Are Ubiquitous across Human Social Life | Current Anthropology

Many people in Western countries represent the political landscape as a single dimension of conflict: authority, hierarchy, and tradition on the right versus greater freedom, equality, and systemic ch...

www.journals.uchicago.edu

Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · May 4

Thank you! Yeah it was quite a process but, perhaps like wine, I hope some aging has improved the piece haha

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · May 1

Many thanks to my co-authors/supervisors Quentin Atkinson & Ananish Chaudhuri and to my former PhD student compatriates @scottclaessens.bsky.social & @akfischer.bsky.social for their help in the six years since I first started working on this piece back in 2019!

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · May 1

... by presenting evidence that these political dimensions are not unique to Western or industrialised societies, and are not just products of modernisation/the Enlightenment as some others have suggested

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · May 1

We here extend our previous work on the 'dual evolutionary foundations of politics', which argues that the two dimensions of politics reflect two trade-offs in human group living about cooperation vs competition and autonomy vs social control...

(see www.nature.com/articles/s41...)

The dual evolutionary foundations of political ideology - Nature Human Behaviour

Claessens et al. propose that the two dimensions of political ideology identified by previous research correspond to two key shifts in the evolution of human group living: a shift towards cooperation ...

www.nature.com

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