iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Debating with colleagues about the practice of "deseasoning and deweathering" air pollution data before use in time series analysis. I can't see why you don't use the raw pollution data and model season/weather variables like normal confounders (independent variables). Can anyone defend this?

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January Weiner @january3.github.io · 23/09/2026

(I finally re-did it in #typst, though)

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Our new Born in Bradford study suggests that teenagers of Pakistani heritage in Bradford have better mental health and wellbeing than teenagers of white British ethnicity bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/4/3/... @bihr.bsky.social

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

"I made this with the aid of chatGPT"

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Adam Holland @holla-adam.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Today we’re launching a series of films - Drugs: It’s Complicated - intended to tackle the stigma directed towards people who use criminalised drugs www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NAj...

youtube.com

Reimagining Drug Use (Drugs: It's Complicated - Film 2)

YouTube video by Drugs: It's Complicated

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Jack Wilkinson @jdwilko.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This is from the same journal that brought us ‘add p-vals to Table 1, and write what you would have done had any been significant’

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

A failure in causal inference is the idea that it needs sophisticated methods. This has led researchers to say "it's not causal, we're just doing simple exploratory work". You don't need G computation to be interested in the effects of exposures and interventions. Even common sense is valid evidence

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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

24. Foo Fighters: www.rki.de/DE/Aktuelles...

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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

20. Rod Stewart: www.ajconline.org/article/s000...

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Old coding workflow: (1) Solve a problem New workflow: (1) Immediately ask AI (2) AI suggests 3 obscure solutions, which I half heartedly try implementing while getting AI to help debug (3) I think up a fairly obvious solution and for no reason suggest it to AI (4) AI declares me a genius

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

When doing simple operations in R, always prefer simple functions #rstats

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Meetingitis (rather than think about something, let's set up a meeting) is now extended to chatbotitis

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Why do we dichotomise things? We all deeply want to know if we are normal or deviant

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

If there is no statistical evidence of an association between Schoenfeld residuals and time, this does not suggest the proportional hazards assumption is met. It doesn't really tell you anything!

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Can we get a UX engineer involved in the clinical trial governance process please

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I met Ann Widdicombe when I was an undergraduate at LSE maybe in 2002. She gave a lecture, I think on the topic of "Europe", and for some reason only four people turned up. She approached it no differently to a hundred people and just gave more time for questions

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

If you try to describe research in plain English with very short sentences and only the most basic words, you can make it more difficult to understand. The reader is probably an interested and intelligent but not expert, rather than a toddler or an alien who doesn't understand terms like "the NHS"

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

The idea that everyone is a leader is completely mad

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

If events happen at random, the time until the first event follows a geometric distribution. This an be understood intuitively by simulating random events with a fixed probability across a population (R code below) #RStats

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

"Our primary outcome was XXX scale. Our secondary outcome/sensitivity analysis was a different version of the same scale (eg. dichotomised if the primary outcome is continuous, or vice versa" <- please don't do this!

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Anna Dixon MP for Shipley @annadixonmp.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Reform’s plan to effectively scrap Bradford’s Clean Air Zone is premature and reckless. Evidence shows the CAZ has improved air quality and cut GP appointments for breathing issues by 600 per month. Scrapping it now would be a public health mistake our children's generation will pay for.

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

I'm doing a bit of light p-hacking in preparation for an NIHR seminar on natural experiments - www.nihr.ac.uk/news/nihr-an... - I asked chatGPT if it could help me do more thorough p-hacking:

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

TIL that the NHS Health Research Authority approves **3500** research studies per year! www.hra.nhs.uk/about-us/wha... Thank you HRA

hra.nhs.uk

HRA and HCRW Approval

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

There are loads of well known assumptions, eg. difference in differences assumes parallel trends, instrumental variables assume there's no other causal paths. These assumptions aren't "violated", they're just more or less valid, or perhaps violated to greater or lesser degrees.

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

We looked at data on social media and mental health among 12-15-year-olds using data from Born In Bradford. I wrote a blog reflecting on the correlation between social media use and mental health, and our plans for The IRL Trial later this year. www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-o...

linkedin.com

From observation to intervention: why the social media causality debate is distracting us from more policy-focused research

Born in Bradford participants spend hours each day on social media - just like teenagers everywhere - and the heaviest users tend to be less happy. Scientists have focused on the debate about correlat...

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Imagine a world where you had more time than ideas

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Thomas Lumley @tslumley.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Both per capita and per unit area-- though I believe the standard per area illustration is that it has 2 popes per square kilometre.

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Do you ever come across research studies that develop or somehow validate a survey questionnaire, but don't include the actual questions? What's that about?

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

If you'd like to hear about our planned trial of social media limitations among young people ("The IRL Trial"), please feel free to sign up for one of our webinars - we have one specifically for researchers, and one for stakeholders working in policy / services, etc: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

linkedin.com

#mentalhealth #adolescentwellbeing #trials | Born In Bradford

📢 We're hosting two webinars to introduce the IRL Trial — the world-first study exploring the impact of reduced social media on young people. Choose the right session for you: 1️⃣ Researchers and ...

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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Nothing strengthens your argument like deleting half of it to meet the word limit

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 29/03/2026

@newsfromgoogle.bsky.social Any chance you could make table borders a bit fiddlier in Google Docs? I like a challenge

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Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder @organgrinder.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

2026 A.D. All the internet is occupied by AI. All? No! … One small indomitable footnote still holds out against the bots: "Message for Clarion WE KNOW YOUR LISTINING. The station has IP detection software"

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

If two people make a yes/no decision (eg. should a student pass their viva), they'll sometimes agree even if their decisions are random. If the event is rare or very common, they'll usually agree. Cohen's kappa accounts for random agreement. 0 = random; +1/-1 = complete agreement.

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

We're recruiting two research assistants to help us deliver "The IRL Trial" - a world-first randomised trial of social media limitations among 12-15 year-olds, and the effect on mental health. You'd be part of the Born In Bradford family. For more info and to apply: www.jobs.nhs.uk/candidate/jo...

jobs.nhs.uk

Job Advert

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Are you like me - do you love changing the fonts on your #rstats plots, but tire of fiddling around with extrafonts? Just load "ragg" and use the agg device - you can set the font in par (eg. `par(family = 'Verdana')` and you have direct access to system fonts! Thank me later.

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Iain M Banks on avoiding self-destruction

A quote from "Consider Phlebas" by Iain M. Banks: "Still, the underlying point held; experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place."

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Pockets of real deprivation

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

The hype around LLMs seems to be "yes the outputs aren't good and the costs and harms outweigh the benefits, but imagine if this or a different technology was actually useful"

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 29/01/2026

New preprint 🥳 The city of Leipzig conducts large-scale surveys of adolescents. In 2023, the gender gap in life satisfaction has significantly widened, with girls declining more steeply than boys. What's up with that?> (work with @rmcelreath.bsky.social and @gregork.bsky.social)

Mean life satisfaction in the survey years 2010, 2015 and 2023, separately for female and male gender.
In general, girls have lower scores but in 2023, they are drifting even further down

The city of Leipzig in Germany conducts large-scale school surveys of adolescents in secondary education schools. Following the regular surveys in 2010 and 2015, the 2020 survey had to be rescheduled to 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this latest survey wave, the gender gap in general life satisfaction has significantly grown. While in 2010 and 2015 girls were somewhat less satisfied than boys (0.26 to 0.33 SD), in 2023 this gender gap had doubled (with girls 0.57 SD less satisfied). Why? Here, we probe various explanations, aiming to provide a template for researchers who are asking reverse causal questions (“What caused this?”). First, we find that the widening of the gender gap is much more pronounced among students with a migration background. This could plausibly be explained by a shift in the composition of the underlying population, with a strong increase of Syrian students, and a relative decrease of Vietnamese ones. Second, among students without a migration background, part of the increasing gender gap could potentially be attributed to survey mode: In 2023, for the first time, the survey was conducted on tablets—and unexpectedly, girls (but not boys) reported significantly lower satisfaction when surveyed on tablet rather than on paper. Third, beyond these two patterns, we still find significantly widening gender gaps in satisfaction with leisure time activities and relationships to friends. Thus, there may be a substantive increase in the gender gap in satisfaction in those two domains that is not readily attributable to changes in population and survey mode.

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Dan Lew @danlew42.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Back on social media for a day and I already feel inadequate.

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Journals - I'm totally up for doing peer reviews - sometimes I enjoy it! But it really is up to you whether you publish something

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

If you are not sure if method A or B is better, "sensitivity analysis" is probably not going to help you ...

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 13/01/2026

I'm so tired of reading AI slop in essays / grants / articles etc ... I don't really have anything against AI aside from the pointless destruction of the planet ... it's just SO DULL

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Dan Lewer @danlewer.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

When reading authors' responses to your peer reviews, does anyone appreciate "we thank the reviewer for this valuable comment"?

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