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Elijah Watson

@elijahjwatson.bsky.social
991 followers 2.4K following 145 posts

anthropologist-demographer | postdoc-ing @ UChicago | Tar Heel born 🐏 researching (ejwatson.github.io): • early life origins of aging & stratification🧑‍🍼👵 • birth cohorts as “natural” experiments🤰 • environment & (epi)genetics 🧬

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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Henrich treats bioanth as the healthy foil, counting statistics as rigor. He should have had Claude plot the distribution of p-values in the top bioanth journals over the past 4 decades. Shrinking faculty numbers contribute, but can't fully explain why huge swaths of bioanth silently resist reform
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Now everything is safe and nothing is funded. The labs are clean and the researchers are desperate. The fume hoods work perfectly and no one can afford to use them. We have replaced the danger of mouth-pipetting with the danger of a generation of scientists spending their most productive years writing grants that will not be funded. This is its own form of danger, just slower and less honest than the phenol.
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Matthew Eadie @mattheweadie.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
BREAKING: Evanston police confirm a U.S. citizen was briefly detained by federal agents Sunday morning near Howard and Dodge before being released The man was taken to the hospital for injuries to his head, neck and teeth after agents drove off
evanstonnow.com
Federal agents detained U.S. citizen Sunday morning - Evanston Now
Police chief says officers responded to a man with injuries to head, neck and teeth on Howard and made contact with agents involved.
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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I spent the morning reading John Levi Martin's absolutely brutal takedown of the Vanderbilt report's assessment of politicization in sociology. I recommend it and hope it gets as much attention as the initial (crap) Vanderbilt report. A Reader’s Guide to the Rubin Report osf.io/preprints/so...
osf.io
OSF
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
you can be arrested if you give water to people waiting on line to vote
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Modeling non-response is an example I like to use when arguing that "descriptive" statistics also require causal inference. To describe the population, you have to model what causes the sample. Similar to occupancy modeling in ecology in many ways.
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Institute for Replication @i4replication.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
🧵 New DP from I4R co-director Lester Lusher, with Sonia Ale, Md Shafiqui Islam, Huda Osman & Jacob Stenstrom (Pitt): "When Samples Shape Significance." What happens when you re-estimate published results using fresh draws of the same data? Some evidence from Google Trends!
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NBER @nber.org · 03/09/2026
The individual economic consequences of wildfires are unevenly distributed, extend beyond property damage, and persist for years as individuals and communities recover, from Patrick Baylis, Judson Boomhower, Jonathan M. Colmer, and John L. Voorheis www.nber.org/papers/w35675
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The Downballot @the-downballot.com · 03/09/2026
From the LPM story: "Bevin was reportedly arrested while playing an extra on the set of a Christian film production there."
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The Onion @theonion.com · 29/08/2026
God Concerned By Q3 Circumcision Numbers
theonion.com
God Concerned By Q3 Circumcision Numbers
THE HEAVENS—Noting that a marked downward trend had developed this fiscal year and showed no signs of stopping, The Lord God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, reported He was concerned Monday over what He...
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
"we collect data from ~3500 sharing units (households) in 46 communities across the globe. In almost all communities, a sharing unit's material wealth is positively associated with the number of other sharing units it both helps and is helped by" arxiv.org/abs/2608.25488
arxiv.org
Social Network Structure, Wealth, and Wealth Inequality Across Cultures
Despite theory tying wealth inequality to social structure, empirical evidence has been limited to a few studies based on online social media data. This study uses a very different type of data, expan...
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Connie Schultz @connieschultz.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
There was no one like her. Dolly Pardon has died. She was 80. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/a...
nytimes.com
Dolly Parton, Superstar Whose Songs Spoke to Millions, Dies at 80 (Gift Article)
Known for her outsize persona, appearance and talent, she rose from rural poverty to become a top-selling singer, songwriter and entrepreneur.
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Backyard reads with Butters
I’m holding two books, All That’s Unseen by Emilee Hackney and Marked by Time by Robert J. Sampson, while my Shih Tzu, Butters, sits beside me in the backyard on a sunny afternoon.
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Jason Wilson @jasonaw.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
It’s just not surprising that more than a quarter of American adults are functionally illiterate. There are well funded nationwide institutional networks dedicated to this outcome. sciencepolitics.org/2026/08/21/a...
sciencepolitics.org
Adult Literacy Is Mysteriously Declining Across Many High-Income Countries - Science Politics
COVID and smartphones alone cannot explain the decline. One thing we do know: both young and old need to retain the ability to gather and process information.
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Kim Lane Scheppele @kimlanelaw.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Zero new NSF grants in sociology, anthropology, political science and economics. The agenda of this US govt is to stop documenting the society in which we live while they are destroying it. We will find other ways to track and explain our times and fight to restore our research funding.
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Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Racist Zero under investigation by his current employer www.thenational.scot/news/2648073...
thenational.scot
Academic who sparked Jason Arday pile on under investigation by university
The academic who sparked the pile on which preceded a black British professor’s suicide has said he is under investigation by his university
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
NEW: The NIH is quietly restricting funding for research that evaluates how public policy impacts human health. According to internal documents I obtained, the agency no longer considers policymakers "mission relevant" — a massive shift for the biomedical funder. My latest for @nature.com:
nature.com
NIH limits funding for research on the health effects of public policy
US biomedical agency no longer considers policymakers as ‘mission relevant’, leaving dozens of grants in limbo.
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
After taking the rest of the month to relax and settle into my new apartment, I’m excited to share that I’ll be starting a postdoc this September at UChicago in the NIH/NIA T32 Demography and Economics of Aging training program. Looking forward to this next chapter!
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Just submitted my phd dissertation and mph research paper :)
static.klipy.com
Elijah Wood: It's Done - Lord of the Rings
ALT: Elijah Wood: It's Done - Lord of the Rings
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
I defended my dissertation on Monday (🎉), have packed and cleaned from Tuesday through today, am moving to a new apartment tomorrow, presenting my MPH poster next Wednesday, finalizing my dissertation for submission by next Friday, and then my partner has a major surgery the following Wednesday 😵‍💫
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The Onion @theonion.com · 16/07/2026
What To Know About Cyclosporiasis theonion.com/what-to-know-about-cyc…
Q: How many cases have been recorded?

A: Oh, the CDC doesn’t do that anymore.
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Finally reading this fully The part about forensic anthros being “coroners”, implying that they are workers not thinkers so they cannot contribute to debates in the field 🤯 (the field sure is happy to put them to work teaching 1st year seminars on CSI & Bones bc those classes get butts in seats)
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Something, something, the ontological turn & anthropology™ creating a world where (1) we endlessly qualify our claims as partial, situated, & positional, AND (2) dropping the cultural subfield prefix & treating humanism as the field’s all-encompassing mode of inquiry is the natural order of things
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
Submitted the last of my three dissertation papers to my committee yesterday! And woke up with a cold today. My body really held out until the end 😵‍💫😂
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Jason Fletcher @jasonmfletcher.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Very happy to work with @nber.org to outline our research program (with @hamidnb.bsky.social), summarizing what we are learning about the impacts of early life circumstances on old age mortality and next steps.
nber.org
The Long Shadow of Early Life: Life Cycle Exposures and Old-Age Mortality
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Center for Open Science @cos.io · 07/07/2026
⚙️ New on the COS blog: Principal Research Scientist Noah Haber (@whaleactually.com) shares how the SCORE project developed a collaborative reproducible manuscript workflow, walks through two different approaches, and introduces an open-source R package. www.cos.io/blog/toward-...
cos.io
Toward Collaborative Reproducible Manuscripts
COS Principal Research Scientist Noah Haber shares how the SCORE project developed a collaborative reproducible manuscript workflow, walks through two different approaches, and introduces an open-sour...
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Atheendar Venkataramani @atheendar.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
This is perhaps the most impressive #medical study I have seen in years: www.nature.com/articles/s41... It will save a lot of lives.
nature.com
An ECG biomarker for sudden cardiac death discovered with deep learning - Nature
A deep-learning model trained on electrocardiogram (ECG) waveforms identifies an easily visible biomarker that predicts sudden cardiac death more accurately than the current clinical state of the art.
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Hampton Gaddy @hggaddy.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
A paper based on my master's thesis is out this morning in PDR! It offers a new way of theorising and estimating "demographic memory". In a week of heatwaves and political instability in the UK, these toy examples work as a nice graphical abstract 🌡️ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Figure 2. The estimated annual level of global warming in the Northern Hemisphere from 1900 to 2025, compared to the 1861–90 average (panel a); a Lexis surface of the average memory of global warming from 1900 to 2025, in terms of average experience of warming after age 5 (panel b); population pyramids of Japan and Niger in 2025 with cohorts colored by their average memory of warming in 2025 (panel c); and the average memory of warming in Japan and Niger in 2025 across all cohorts since age 5 (panel d)Figure 3. The proportions of the life of the average British resident lived after age 18 (survivorship memory without individual-level forgetting) under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, Theresa May, Liz Truss, a male prime minister, an unknown prime minister (from August 2029 onwards), or outside the UK
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Lorenzo Fabbri @epilorenzo.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
While it does not implement TMLE, you could in principle try causatr: github.com/etverse/caus.... It would be a nice “validation” for me 😅
github.com
GitHub - etverse/causatr: R package for the estimation of causal effects.
R package for the estimation of causal effects. Contribute to etverse/causatr development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Sanho Tree @sanho.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Technically, they’re Remains now.
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
#causalsky #biostatsky bat signal: Can anyone point me to TMLE code for a controlled direct effect adjusting for post-exposure confounders? (I've used medoutcon in other work for the IDE, but here I need a CDE 🙏) @nimahejazi.org @idiaz.bsky.social @kararudolph.bsky.social @aschuler.bsky.social
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Science Magazine @science.org · 22/06/2026
Exclusive: The National Science Foundation is trimming this year’s budgets for hundreds of its traditional basic science programs by roughly 20% to 30%, even though its overall budget is down just 3%. scim.ag/4xY2KCm
science.org
Exclusive: NSF slashes research programs to support new tech initiative, insiders say
Unexpected shift in funds has meant sharp drop in grants this fiscal year
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Had a great first time participating in the Evolutionary Demography Society conference last week in Fort Collins, followed by a much needed weekend hiking trip to the Snowy Range Mountains in Wyoming 🏔️🐾
Me and my Shih Tzu dog in a dog backpack carrier in front of the Snowy Range mountains in Medicine Bow National Park in Wyoming Me wife Chelsea and I smiling for a selfie with a snow capped mountains and a lake in the background
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Luke Russert @lukerussert.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
After the tarp went up to try and stop the “Berlin Wall” moment, Cliff Owen of the AP got the iconic 📸 shot. 🇺🇸
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Georgia Tomova @georgiatomova.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
If anyone is interested in this but missed the talk, I'm afraid it wasn't recorded on this occasion, but the slides are now available on our webpage: ciig-seminar.github.io And Vanessa is more than happy to answer questions by email!
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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 08/06/2026
Now that's what I call a spicy opeing: Understanding mechanisms is not a research question.
"Understanding Mechanisms?"
"Understanding" is not a research question
- how do you verify understanding?
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Was really excited that my recent paper got its first (non letter-to-editor) citation! But, then I realized it's apparently an AI hallucination :/
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Very grateful to have secured a postdoc offer in this market. Excited to share more soon and to start chipping away at submitting a backlog of papers that have overstayed their welcome in my Dropbox drafts folder and, more pragmatically, there's nothing like a hard deadline to whip me into shape :)
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 28/05/2026
Meanwhile, more on the shitweaselry within the NSF. For unexplained reasons they've put all grants to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Duke on hold.
nature.com
Exclusive: NSF puts new research grants to top universities on hold
US science funder once again restricts awards to Harvard University and other research institutions.
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Jonathan Basile @jonothingeb.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
I wrote for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social about Kathryn Paige Harden's new book, an attempt to popularize the eugenics of criminality. I read it as a gambit to build liberal support for the project animating far right politics today, inspired by Replacement theory.
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Just saw the news after writing a self-promotional post about my research on fetal exposure to political violence. (tired of being reminded how ubiquitous it is 😵‍💫) Long story short: political violence in the womb can leave long term marks on cardiovascular health and molecular aging
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Really excited to be speaking on my dissertation research on selection vs. scarring in utero, leveraging the enrollment timing of the Cebu, Philippines longitudinal birth cohort study relative to the 1982–83 El Niño drought and the August 1983 assassination of opposition leader Ninoy Aquino. (1/2)
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
My T32 postdoc applications are in limbo due to funding delays. I don’t know if I’m defending in 3-4 months (to start a postdoc) or staying in grad school another year. I have to sign a lease soon. It's a mess, but I'm grateful to have one more year of funding in such a turbulent time.
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
If only a dozen Republicans in Congress found the will, they could impeach and remove him today.
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
I've spent the past two hours digging around in online newspaper and governmental archives to try to clear something up for my dissertation and it has paid off beautifully. A very big small win 🥲
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
I’ve been dreading opening analysis files for part of my thesis that does geocoding in Docker and fits a model in Stan. I hand-coded (funny to have to say that now) it years ago, but before I was trained in reproducible coding. Claude helped me get it tight and reproducible in a few hours 🥲
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
I saw five 22 Clark buses in a convoy last night. My friend had a theory this route is cursed. She said it always comes in twos. I don’t know what five means but it cannot be a good sign.
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Elijah Watson @elijahjwatson.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
I've been helping my wife fight her insurance company for 2 years and it's been the most demoralizing but also radicalizing thing that could have happened while training as an anthropologist & epidemiologist.
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Sarah Burgard @burgards.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
PAA loves first timer attendees! Yay @elijahjwatson.bsky.social - we are having a special mixer for early career PAA folk from 4:30-6pm on Weds May 6 before the traditional Welcome Mixer at 6pm and we'd love to have you join us @popassocamerica.bsky.social
image showing information about PAA early career meetup on Weds May 6 at 4:30pm in Room 230 foyer
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