Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Adrienne Wood @adriennewood.bsky.social · 12d

Heads up that the NSF #GRFP guidelines suddenly changed and now only current first-year grad students are eligible...my second-year student who intentionally waited to maximize her chances is devastated, as countless others will be. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

www.nsf.gov

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Nathaniel Geiger @nathanielgeiger.bsky.social · 15d

Those poor cars!

More Perfect Union @moreperfectunion.bsky.social · 15d

The Trump administration has canceled grants for street safety, pedestrian trails, and bike lanes in communities around the country. One official wrote that a project was canceled because it created "a road diet that is hostile to motor vehicles."

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Trump Cancels Trail, Bike-Lane Grants Deemed ‘Hostile’ to Cars

The Trump administration canceled grants for street safety measures, pedestrian trails and bike lanes in communities around the country this month, each time offering a simple rationale for yanking ba...

www.bloomberg.com

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Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21d

KAMLAGER-DOVE: Dylan Roof, who followed white supremacist propaganda, murdered 9 Black parishioners in 2015. Do you deny this?

PATEL: I'm sorry. Dylan Roof? Can you give me more information?

KAMLAGER-DOVE: You're head of the FBI

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Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Neil Hillhouse (The Haunting Of) @nstenhouse.bsky.social · 27d

"The median analysis has about 10% power"

If true, this suggests that disciplinary expectations need to change, either in terms of huge increases in sample size, huge decreases in the complexity of models or desired precision of estimates, or some combination of both.

Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 28d

The pretty draft is now online.

Link to paper (free): www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/epdf/10....

Our replication package starts from the raw data and we put real work into making it readable & setting it up so people could poke at it, so please do explore it: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm...

The social sciences face a replicability crisis. A key determinant of replication success is statistical power. We assess the
power of political science research by collating over 16,000 hypothesis tests from about 2,000 articles in 46 areas of the
discipline. Under generous assumptions, we show that quantitative research in political science is greatly underpow-
ered: the median analysis has about 10% power, and only about 1 in 10 tests have at least 80% power to detect the
consensus effects reported in the literature. We also find substantial heterogeneity in tests across research areas, with
some being characterized by high power but most having very low power. To contextualize our findings, we survey
political methodologists to assess their expectations about power levels. Most methodologists greatly overestimate the
statistical power of political science research.

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Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · Sep 3

Self-care is overrated—helping others has the biggest benefits for everyone involved

A new 2-week intervention finds that helping others improves well-being more than "self-kindness", with benefits for depressed mood, anxiety, and loneliness due to social connection psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...

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Nathaniel Geiger @nathanielgeiger.bsky.social · Sep 3

The amount of stored heat above the freezing point of the lake has doubled? A bit mouthier.

Nathaniel Geiger @nathanielgeiger.bsky.social · Aug 28

This is a great set of articles and we (@janetkswim.bsky.social, John Fraser, and I) were happy to be able to contribute our work to the set.

bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

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Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Kyle Fiore Law, PhD @kyleflaw.com · Aug 27

🪦 New in @pnas.org: we analyzed 38 million U.S. obituaries to ask what signals a life well lived:

What values are people most remembered for?

How do legacies shift with cultural events?

How do age and gender shape what it means to have lived well?

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

An exploration of basic human values in 38 million obituaries over 30 years | PNAS

How societies remember the dead can reveal what people value in life. We analyzed 38 million obituaries from the United States to examine how perso...

www.pnas.org

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Nathaniel Geiger @nathanielgeiger.bsky.social · Jul 29

Our results suggest that the partisan deliberative bias is pervasive (both Democrats and Republicans think their partisan group is more capable of constructive political conversation than the outgroup) and associated with reduced cross-partisan conversations, but also malleable to intervention.

Nathaniel Geiger @nathanielgeiger.bsky.social · Jul 29

🎉🆕💥 New paper, with Bryan McLaughlin and @pedrohprocha.bsky.social now out in
@polbehavior.bsky.social! We explore the partisan deliberative bias - the sentiment expressed by both Democrats and Republicans that the political outgroup is less capable of constructively conversing than the ingroup.

A Waste of Time? Partisan Deliberative Bias as a Barrier to Political Crosstalk - Political Behavior

Americans are increasingly unwilling to talk about politics with out-partisans. One potential barrier to such cross-cutting partisan conversations may be partisans’ tendency to stereotype out-partisan...

link.springer.com

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Nathaniel Geiger @nathanielgeiger.bsky.social · Jul 29

Results suggest that the partisan deliberative bias is pervasive and associated with reduced willingness to have a cross-partisan conversation, but also that it is malleable and can be reduced in response to short interventions.

Nathaniel Geiger @nathanielgeiger.bsky.social · Jul 28

Supporting the theoretical model "fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering"?

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Nathan Kalman-Lamb @nkalamb.bsky.social · Jun 6

The University of Michigan spent $800,000 hiring private investigators--one of whom FAKED A DISABILITY--to surveil anti-genocide protesting students. I'm speechless.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Students say they have frequently identified undercover investigators and confronted them. In two bizarre interactions captured by one student on video, a man who had been trailing the student faked disabilities, and noisily – and falsely – accused a student of attempting to rob him.

The undercover investigators appear to work for Detroit-based City Shield, a private security group, and some of their evidence was used by Michigan prosecutors to charge and jail students, according to a Guardian review of police records, university spending records and video collected in legal discovery. Most charges were later dropped. Public spending records from the U-M board of regents, the school’s governing body, show the university paid at least $800,000 between June 2023 and September 2024 to City Shield’s parent company, Ameri-Shield.

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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · Jun 4

An analysis of ~100,000 academics finds that a small subset of academics generate majority of social media posts.

That vocal minority can skew how the public—and even journalists—infer “academic consensus,” potentially fueling false perceptions. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Political expression of academics on Twitter - Nature Human Behaviour

An analysis of nearly 100,000 academics on Twitter reveals strong progressive stances on climate and social issues, driven by a small, vocal subset. The study highlights potential gaps between academi...

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · Jun 2

if you set the distribution of harms from pollution (e.g. cancer and asthma rates) next to the distribution of benefits from economic cooperation (e.g. income/wealth gaps) then the narrative that environmentalism is for the rich is the thing we should find surprising!

Jason Hickel @jasonhickel.bsky.social · Jun 2

This fascinating new research overturns longstanding assumptions. It finds that lower-income groups are more concerned about the environment and prefer environmental protection over economic growth, compared to higher-income groups. Data from the USA.

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Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Christopher Petsko @chrispetsko.bsky.social · May 28

A red flag if ever there was one:

The Board of Trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is selectively approving tenure bids, without explanation or comment.

www.chronicle.com/article/at-c...

At Chapel Hill, Only Health-Sciences Professors Have Been Getting Tenure

The UNC Chapel Hill board hasn’t tenured a single professor in fields outside the health sciences since January. The inaction has prompted confusion and alarm among faculty.

www.chronicle.com

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Nils Reimer @reimtime.bsky.social · May 27

With everything that's going on, I haven't been sharing much about our research. But, today, I'm happy to share that @jennrichler.bsky.social wrote about our papers on "Double Standards in Judging Collective Action" for @natrevpsychol.nature.com! rdcu.be/enhkl

Ideological alignment determines whether protest action is considered acceptable

Nature Reviews Psychology - Ideological alignment determines whether protest action is considered acceptable

urldefense.com

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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · May 23

I am a staunch free speech supporter. But after ten years of freaking out about woke students deplatforming right-wing speakers, I don't have the energy to pivot to criticizing a fascist president for launching an all-out attack on free expression at universities.

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Casey Lewry @caseylewry.bsky.social · May 21

🎊 New preprint 🎊 w/ Tania Lombrozo

Why do people engage in collective actions, even when they believe their actions won't make a difference?

Based on evidence from the 2024 election and a hypothetical election, we find that *moral* responsibility, not causal, drives voting

osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Kristian Steensen Nielsen @kristiansn89.bsky.social · May 20

🧠 Can large language models predict public support for climate policies?

In our new paper, we test whether LLMs—such as DeepSeek and GPT-4o mini—can simulate how different people might respond to #climate policy surveys based on their socio-demographic profiles🧵

osf.io/preprints/os...

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Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Danbischof @danbischof.bsky.social · May 16

🚨 working paper (w. @morganlcj.bsky.social @markuswagner.bsky.social): Protesters are not judged equally - even if tactics of groups are similar.

We ran an experiment in 🇩🇪 testing how people react to farmers vs. climate activists blocking roads.

What we find is disturbing:

osf.io/preprints/os...

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Nathaniel Geiger @nathanielgeiger.bsky.social · May 12

I keep seeing this graph used to make a certain point. I do wonder about the premise. Is it unreasonable that ~20% of people might want to work in a given profession, and others who don't want to might still think it's a good idea to have more jobs in that profession?

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Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Kristian Steensen Nielsen @kristiansn89.bsky.social · May 6

🟢 How effective are sustainability labels in changing real-world consumer behavior?

I’m excited to share our new meta-analysis on quantitative #sustainability labels, which synthesizes findings from 49 experimental studies involving over 150,000 participants.
www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6...

A meta-analysis of the real-world impact of sustainability labeling on consumer choices

Sustainability labeling aims to encourage consumers toward environmentally friendly choices, yet its effectiveness remains uncertain. In this pre-registered meta-analysis of 49 studies (n =&thi...

www.researchsquare.com

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Reposted by Nathaniel Geiger

Sara Mitchell @sbmitche.bsky.social · Apr 30

We should thank [our] lucky stars that Trump chose to do this in the most stupid way possible,” says Lucan Way, a political scientist at the University of Toronto who studies democratic backsliding.

Zack Beauchamp @zackbeauchamp.bsky.social · Apr 30

I've spent years reporting on how democracies die. And I've noticed something: by international standards, Donald Trump is really, really bad at destroying a democracy.

And that should give us real reason for hope. www.vox.com/politics/410...

Trump is losing his war on democracy

Trump’s power grabs are dangerous. But he’s going about them all wrong — and facing effective resistance as a result.

www.vox.com

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Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · Apr 28

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

Title:
SOME GRAMMATICAL VOICES FOR USE IN SCIENTIFIC WRITING

ACTIVE VOICE
e.g.
Our team collected samples and then we tested them.

CLICKBAIT VOICE
e.g.
We collected some samples...
You won't believe what happened next!

PASSIVE VOICE
e.g.
Samples were collected and tested.

HAIKU VOICE
e.g.
Quiet science lab.
Workers arrive with samples.
The testing begins.

PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE VOICE
e.g. We did all the collecting and testing.
No need to thank us.
Just doing our job.

CONSPIRACY VOICE
e.g.
Mysterious "Samples" were harvested and covertly "tested" by so-called scientists.

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