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Stephen A. Meserve

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H-index: 8
Political science 52%
Computer science 14%
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by Stephen A. Meserve

smeserve.bsky.social
Beautiful day on campus today, trying to touch a little grass with everything going on.
Picture of university campus with a small bus stop, campus buildings, and many colored desiduous trees.
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by Brendan Nyhan — Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Anna O. Law, Lisa W. Fazio , and 22 more

brendannyhan.bsky.social
Trump's higher ed ransom note is here - everyone would have to acquiesce to their unprecedented demands or not be "given priority for grants," plus they can demand "reimbursement" for "violations" www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

A mechanism to enforce fealty. An attack on academic freedom and democracy
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve

elizabethbitmeehan.com
Here is the January-June 2025 APSA eJobs report for the #polisky people: apsanet.org/wp-content/u...
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Michael A. Clemens, Smith , and 2 more

noamross.net
The Damage Done: @marianneguenot.bsky.social tells the story of clinical trials derailed by the administration's reckless science policy, across kidney disease, HIV, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer. Years of work and money thrown away, at times just short of a cure.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The damage done - Nature Medicine
When clinical trials are suddenly halted by US funding cuts, there are repercussions for investigators and patients, and they do not stop at borders.
www.nature.com
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve

ryanlcooper.com
useful piece. again and again it seems LLMs can be very useful *if you know what you are doing and are familiar with their strengths and limitations* lucumr.pocoo.org/2025/9/29/90...
90%
AI is writing 90% of the code I was in charge of
lucumr.pocoo.org
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Lisa W. Fazio, Jesse H. Kroll , and 3 more

astrokatie.com
That's quite the chart annotation.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A chart of "Major concerns of PhD candidates." The top text says, "Financial pressures top the list of concerns faced by PhD candidates, but concerns differ among the sexes. Those studying in the United States rank the political landscape as their main worry." The chart shows that in the full survey, political landscape is the biggest concern for about 20% of students (a bit higher for women than men) but there's an annotation saying "In US PhD students, this rose to 64%". Overall, the highest-rated concern was financial pressures at around 40%.
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve

jsievert.bsky.social
Re-reading Skowronek’e “Building a New American State” in 2025 as the administrative state continues to be whittled away is quite the experience.
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Anna O. Law, Robert C. Richards , and 9 more

anthonymkreis.bsky.social
Trump asks Supreme Court to decide whether he can end birthright citizenship www.cnn.com/2025/09/26/p...
Trump asks Supreme Court to decide whether he can end birthright citizenship | CNN Politics
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to review the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, pushing the issue back bef...
www.cnn.com
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Mark A. Lemley, Brendan Nyhan , and 3 more

katie-drummond.bsky.social
A new senate report is full of *shocking* details about DOGE activities inside the federal government. Including, unfortunately, the disturbing access that DOGE affiliates had to our SSNs:

"One whistleblower noted the possibility that the agency may need to re-issue SSNs to all who possess one."
Armed Guards and Muscle Milk: Senate Investigation Reveals DOGE Takeover Details
A new Senate report claims DOGE put every American's Social Security number at risk—and that officials at federal agencies essentially obstructed an investigation, all but denying DOGE even exists.
www.wired.com
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve

ryanlcooper.com
"Student arrivals to the US dropped 19% in August year-on-year to just over 313,000 – a fifth consecutive month of declines" www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
US Student Visa Arrivals Fall to Four-Year Low, Led by Asia Drop
Visitors to the US arriving on student visas hit a four-year low in August, portending a grim trend for the nation’s education sector.
www.bloomberg.com
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Joanna Bryson, Marc Lynch , and 18 more

gergely.pragmaticengineer.com
Those on an H1B cannot return to the US from tomorrow (Sunday) unless paying $100K. This is an out-of-the blue presidential action. We’ll see software engineers stranded abroad.

One easy to predict outcome: those on US visas will travel less… for work, for conferences etc.
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by Nathan P. Kalmoe — Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve

nathankalmoe.bsky.social
Ah, the well known “efficiency of operations” exception to the guarantee of speech free from punishment by the government.

“It adds the university's interest in the efficiency of operations may outweigh an employee's rights of free expression.”

krcgtv.com/news/local/m...
MU warns staff about social media, says employees 'do not have unlimited rights to speak'
As controversy around free speech and personal social media use swirled in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death, Mizzou clarified its stance and expectations.
krcgtv.com
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by Kate Starbird — Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Katharine Hayhoe, Lisa W. Fazio

katestarbird.bsky.social
New work about how perceptions of social consensus shape belief. My sense is that the design of social media, w/ signals of engagement on top of massive attention flows, shapes social consensus… a key factor (IMO ) of information disorder.
caulfieldtim.bsky.social
Timothy Caulfield @caulfieldtim.bsky.social · 22d
New evidence for the Gateway (mis)Belief Model: Perceived consensus shapes climate beliefs www.psypost.org/new-evidence...

“…misinformation about climate change can reduce people’s perceptions of scientific consensus, which in turn tends to lower belief in human-caused climate change…”
New evidence for the Gateway (mis)Belief Model: Perceived consensus shapes climate beliefs
New research suggests that even brief exposure to climate misinformation can distort how much scientific agreement people think exists, and this shift tends to lead to less worry and lower support for...
www.psypost.org
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Stephen M. Walt, Lisa W. Fazio , and 6 more

View post

Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Anna O. Law, Ben H. Ansell , and 13 more

anthonymkreis.bsky.social
One of Bari Weiss’s reporters over at the Free Press was shocked to discover what Columbia students are reading in class:

lol wat
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve

atherton.bsky.social
Cannot recommend enough the @bretdevereaux.bsky.social series on what Sparta was actually like, deep and accessible dive into a monstrous society that built an outsized reputation on a fragile system of pure cruelty and ho-hum but ultimately fleeting military success

acoup.blog/2019/08/16/c...
Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part I: Spartan School
This is Part I of a seven part series (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, Gloss., Retrospective) comparing the popular legacy of Sparta (embodied in films like 300) with the historical ancient state. Toda…
acoup.blog
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Anna O. Law, Colin F. Camerer , and 12 more

joshtpm.bsky.social
This “explicit” is a weird editorial choice. The constitution gives the president no power over this at all. It’s not ambiguous.
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve

atherton.bsky.social
Nothing but respect for my Burning Man
Burn Him in drones Zozobra burning Zozobra burning Zozobra really burning
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Elizabeth Stokoe, Justin H. Kirkland , and 6 more

adigitaltanay.bsky.social
On Prolific, "we estimate that about 34% of online study participants use LLMs to answer open-ended questions atleast some of the time..."

Seems like a very timely paper for behavioural scientists using online samples: osf.io/preprints/so... ;

We really need more papers on this issue
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Michael D. Green, Daniel W. Drezner , and 5 more

maggieastor.bsky.social
NEWS: CVS, the largest pharmacy chain in the country, is currently not offering Covid vaccines in 16 states and DC — even to people who meet the new FDA criteria — because the CDC hasn't signed off and isn't expected to do so (if it does so) for at least three weeks.
CVS Holds Off on Offering Covid Vaccines in 16 States
www.nytimes.com
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Steven Van de Walle, Mark Rice , and 1 more

jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
A century to build the expert civil service, a few months to burn it down for generations
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Henry Farrell

abenewman.bsky.social
I hate to say I told you so but...centralizing government data infrastructures and turning them over to inexperiences actors generates big risks to society. We are starting to see the first consequences for social security. Others will follow.
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/u...
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Anna O. Law, Kim L. Scheppele , and 18 more

acyn.bsky.social
Trump posts a letter stating that he is removing Fed Governor Lisa Cook
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by Stephen A. Meserve

smeserve.bsky.social
another orientation, another banner year of "strategic finance."
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by Megan L. Ranney — Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Brendan Nyhan , and 10 more

meganranney.bsky.social
A must-read, must-share piece - clearly deconstructing the shoddy science of the Geiers (who are inexplicably in charge of studies at HHS).

Consider this an early warning for what lies ahead. 🛟🩺🧪

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Opinion | The Playbook Used to ‘Prove’ Vaccines Cause Autism (Gift Article)
Data can easily be manipulated to show a causation that doesn’t exist.
www.nytimes.com
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by Shannon Vallor — Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Michael D. Green, Stephen D. Murphy , and 1 more

shannonvallor.bsky.social
Notable that AI tools could not even generate accurate meeting summaries beyond “a couple hundred words.” That’s useless for minutes.

And for lit review they *completely* shit the bed.

But these aren’t people’s favorite tasks & AI is way quicker, so many will keep using them, truth be damned.
I Tested How Well AI Tools Work for Journalism
Some tools were sufficient for summarizing meetings. For research, the results were a disaster.
www.cjr.org
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Axel Bruns, Zhang , and 20 more

thehighsign.bsky.social
Wow. The University of Chicago, a world-class institution whose humanities faculty in the past has included Homi Bhabha & Lauren Berlant & Ralph Ellison & Hannah freaking Arendt, is getting rid of basically every graduate department involving the acknowledgment that other cultures & languages exist.
Quote from a story on changes at the U of Chicago that notes they are "pausing" doctoral eduction in Classics, Comp Lit, Germanic studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Romance languages and literatures, and South Asian Studies.
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Stephan Lewandowsky, Gavin A. Schmidt , and 3 more

arstechnica.com
RFK Jr. defends $500M cut for mRNA vaccines with pseudoscience gobbledygook
He clearly has no idea what antigenic shift means.
arstechnica.com
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve, Kim L. Scheppele, Elizabeth Saunders , and 15 more

mcopelov.bsky.social
The entire business model of R1 public universities rests on 4 revenue sources:

1. Federal grants
2. Private gifts/endowments
3. Tuition (esp. from foreign students)
4. State $

For decades, 📈 in 1-3 offset a secular 📉 in 4. Now, 1 & 3 are being decimated & 4 ain't coming back. The math is clear.
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Reposted by: Stephen A. Meserve

ztul.bsky.social
the Wizard of Oz AI sphere thing is interesting (and gross) aesthetically to me because of the way the generated material draws on a certain type of hi-def photorealism stitched onto a movie whose charms, in my mind, are largely attributable to everything clearly transpiring on a soundstage in 1939
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