iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD

Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

“Measles vaccination alone is responsible for half a percent of all US income this year, $76.4 billion. That is just from the reduced disease burden, it doesn’t include reduced medical costs.” Via @emollick.bsky.social www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

aeaweb.org

The Long-Term Effects of Measles Vaccination on Earnings and Employment

(May 2022) - The measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. Take-up of the vaccine in the United States occurred quickly and universally, leading to reductions in morbidity and mortality. New biological ...

03922

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 05/02/2025

New paper. With a big group of colleagues from Moldova and the Netherlands, we ran the first representative mental health survey of the adult population in Moldova. Local interviewer teams went door-to-door in 2022 to include 1826 adults in the study. 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.com

Socioeconomic correlates of mental health in Moldova: A nationally representative door-to-door survey

The mental health system in Moldova is transitioning toward a community-based model, which requires data on population mental health. This is the firs…

181

Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 31/01/2025

This is not business as usual. It’s not just a change in funding priorities going forward; it is the reneging on funding agreements and is profoundly disruptive for even those grants that will be found to be compliant. Meanwhile, trainees who often live paycheck to paycheck are going unpaid.

science.org

EXCLUSIVE: NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with Trump’s orders

Grantee accounts remain frozen, while union accuses NSF of ignoring rules governing peer review

151012425

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 30/01/2025

I wrote about how it feels to be a UnitedHealthcare customer. New research confirms my hunch: broken trust isn't just frustrating, it's a health hazard. 🧪 jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/the-hidden...

jeroenvanbaar.substack.com

The Hidden Cost Of Unreliable Insurance

Profit-driven health insurance may irreparably damage what it ought to aid: health.

091

Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD

Michael Inzlicht @minzlicht.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

Roy Baumeister called ego depletion "one of the most replicable findings in social psychology." As someone who spent 20 years studying it—and ultimately had to admit it wasn't real—I have to respectfully disagree. Here's my perspective of what went so wrong.

open.substack.com

The Collapse of Ego Depletion

Science's Biggest Self-Control Failure

1119264

Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 29/01/2025

NSF grantees - people who have already received their grants based on a previously funded and approved research proposal - are being told to stop any activities related to DEI and accessibility. Call this what it is: government censorship of ongoing research projects. www.opm.gov/policy-data-...

402255778

Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD

Christopher Webb @cwebbonline.com · 29/01/2025

The silence from Dems is deafening. We’re exhausted—looking for leadership and starting to feel desperate. Everything feels like it’s slipping away & electeds aren’t acknowledging it, let alone speaking on it. @dougjones.bsky.social sounds like someone who’s actually read the room. More of this!

1497203405894

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 29/01/2025

Now that the leader of the free world has put his boot on the garden hose of knowledge, some might be wondering why we spend our money on research anyway. At the risk of stating the obvious, here are a few examples: 🧪

23213

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 07/01/2025

Voor de Nederlandse volgers: een hilarisch accurate beschrijving van het ondergaan van een MRI-scan 😁🧪

040

Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD

Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

Shame on the @washingtonpost.com, which at one time was beacon of the free press. anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...

anntelnaes.substack.com

Why I'm quitting the Washington Post

Democracy can't function without a free press

27712

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 01/01/2025

Happy new year my fellow scientific travelers! May 2025 bring you much inspiration, growth, and fun. 🧪

2151

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 30/12/2024

Shocked by the blatant corruption and greed in UnitedHealthCare’s Medicare Advantage scheme. You won’t believe the bonuses offered to practitioners… Excellent research by @wsj.com. Hope they lift the paywall. For those without access I will blog about this soon. 🧪 www.wsj.com/health/healt...

wsj.com

UnitedHealth’s Army of Doctors Helped It Collect Billions More From Medicare

The biggest Medicare Advantage insurer presented physicians with checklists of potential diagnose.; “I didn’t think I was obese,” one suspicious patient told his doctor.

65131

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 08/12/2024

Many of the ‘systems’ scientists care about, from minds to ecosystems, are so complex that you can’t capture them with deterministic models. How do we deal with this ‘modeling gap’? Perhaps we can learn something from a cautionary fish tale. 🧪🐠 jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/a-fish-tal...

jeroenvanbaar.substack.com

A fish tale that slams science

How cod ecology reveals the limitations of science and mathematical modeling.

2284

Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD

Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

A new view on the gut microbiome and the social contagion of health 3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily... via @jeroenvanbaar.nl

3quarksdaily.com

A new view on the gut microbiome and the social contagion of health - 3 Quarks Daily

by Jeroen van Baar

0182

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 22/11/2024

As a scientist, I used the Mendeley reference manager nearly every day for the last 12.5 years. Today, finally driven mad by their terrible redesign, I made the switch to Zotero. Migrating took less than an hour and the experience is already endlessly better. AMA 😎

020

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 21/11/2024

This is a huge insight, very exciting!

010

Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD

Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

What a chart. www.economist.com/interactive/...

8531501047

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 19/01/2024

Does money make you happy? In a new post, I reviewed the adversarial collaboration between Daniel Kahneman and Matthew Killingsworth that attempted to answer this age-old question. Had a lot of fun writing this! jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/data-dispa...

010

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 15/01/2024

❗ 27% of American adults are "most days so stressed they can't function" (representative APA survey from 2022). 🧠 But 100 years ago, legendary economist John Maynard Keynes predicted we would all live a life of leisure. 🤔 What happened? I wrote a post about it, link in bio

000

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 22/12/2023

I wrote a Christmas-inspired newsletter this week, full of fascinating insights about the placebo effect. Read on: jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/the-perple... Happy holidays!

000

Reposted by Jeroen van Baar, PhD

Daniel @danielrembrandt.bsky.social · 13/10/2023

This is my favourite vampire cartoon from Science Saves Lives…

216850

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 09/12/2023

Trying to find median household income per month for Moldova, but lack the training... Using World Bank Poverty & Inequality Platform, I found survey median consumption at $10.6 per day (2017 PPP). Does this translate to 30*10.6 = $318 per month? 🤔 Help! #EconSky pip.worldbank.org/poverty-calc...

200

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 08/12/2023

A surprising number of American parents are giving their children melatonin for sleeping. 😴 This fits in a larger trend of modern life: a counterproductive need for control, which leaves us less resilient to adversity and change. 🧠 Read more ==> jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/what-the-u...

000

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 10/11/2023

In the last ~5 years of doing research, I've seen repeated signs of uncertainty affecting human functioning in politics, mental health, and more. I thought this could be relevant for others so I started collecting my thoughts here: jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/are-we-liv...

jeroenvanbaar.substack.com

Are we living in an uncertainty epidemic?

Why everything feels confusing right now—and why it matters.

000

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 06/11/2023

One of the best conferences I have ever been to: the Global Mental Health conference 2023 at NIMH last week. Here are my main takeaways. jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/three-key-...

jeroenvanbaar.substack.com

Three key insights from the NIMH global mental health conference

Here's my summary.

020

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 27/10/2023

This week I dove into the trends on loneliness in the US and what they mean for mental health. It's not pretty, and we're not solving the problem in a productive way. Let me know what you think at jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/data-dispa...

Thumbnail of new blog post: "sitting *alone* is the new smoking"

000

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 22/10/2023

Ice skating in Holland, olive oil production in Spain, skiing in France: all customs that are waning due to #climatechange. But the Dutch, Spanish, and French have not changed how they see themselves--and this "sticky self-concept" may hinder climate action jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/the-world-...

jeroenvanbaar.substack.com

The world has a bundle on its head

How a sticky self-concept prevents us from leaning into change

021

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 13/10/2023

Wondering what you see in this picture? I dove into the most important scientific concept you’ve never heard of — wet-bulb temperature — and was shocked to discover what it means for climate change #hiscisky open.substack.com/pub/jeroenva...

open.substack.com

Data dispatch #2

Heat is dead, long live humidity

010

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 13/10/2023

I asked DALL-E 2 to draw itself, and this is what it gave me. Creepy! (Prompt: "a photorealistic image of DALL-E")

000

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 10/10/2023

To navigate the polycrisis we need a new, participatory social science. One that aims at application, embraces complexity, and capitalizes on the curiosity of the community. Follow An Educated Guess here and help this take off: jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/why-im-mov...

jeroenvanbaar.substack.com

Why I'm moving my research online

Substack allows for an exciting, new, participatory social science--one we desperately need

000

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 09/10/2023

Trying out proto-AI therapist ELIZA from the 1960s. It got pretty philosophical pretty quickly web.njit.edu/~ronkowit/el...

000

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 04/10/2023

It's unbelievable what weight loss fads were popular in the 1500s en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_of...

en.wikipedia.org

Diet of Worms - Wikipedia

041

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 30/09/2023

Experimenting with posts about data visualizations (enjoying them + thinking critically) -- lmk what you think! jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/data-dispa... #AcademicSky

000

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 27/09/2023

@gdezecache.bsky.social Hey Guillaume, where do you work now? What's IRD?

000

Jeroen van Baar, PhD @jeroenvanbaar.nl · 22/09/2023

Hello world! 😀 Here to talk #science and #society, #psychology and #brain, #writing & public speaking. Neuroscience PhD on the move. Based in Amsterdam and Washington, DC. Find me on Substack: jeroenvanbaar.substack.com #HiSciSky

000