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John Holbein

@johnholbein1.bsky.social
16K followers 4.4K following 2K posts

Associate Professor of Public Policy, Politics, and Education @UVA. I share social science.

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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
When our first kid was born 10+ years ago, I thought I could never love someone quite how I loved them. But I was wrong! When our second was born, I thought "Ok, now I can never love anyone like this." Then, our third (final) kid came, & I was proven wrong again. Being proven wrong isn't so bad.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I'm basically Nate Silver now.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I’m regularly asked how high, or low, youth turnout will be in upcoming elections. So today, on a whim, I pulled the historical numbers and built a simple forecast. At last: my definitive prediction for how many young people will vote in 2026. You’re welcome, America.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
There’s a lot of doom & gloom around how AI is affecting higher education. To a certain extent, I get it. AI is making some things harder. But I’ve found that AI has in some ways greatly enhanced my teaching. For one, it’s opened up applied activities that weren’t possible before. One example: 🧵
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Googling these days
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Generative AI makes replication research even more important. Academia should take this opportunity to boost the incentives for replication. It’d be a huge missed opportunity if we don't.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
It’s 2023. 4 people are finishing a political science PhD. Same subfield. Same PhD program rank. Same publication record. 2 are female, 2 are minorities. Their predicted chances of a tenure-track job by fall 2024? Non-minority man: 27% Non-minority woman: 44% Minority man: 47% Minority woman: 45%
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
It's for this paper. We'll release it soon.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
APSR acceptance! Woot!
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Make academics bartenders again
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
But what happens when AI companies finally run out of generic, vaguely profound names for their models?
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Where does Jesus appear in scripture? Data: every verse in 22 canons. 36 Bibles. 11 Qur'ans. LDS standard works. etc. I coded 1.22M verses for Jesus mentions by name, by title, or through speech. I ran it multiple ways to try to (imperfectly) account for disputes. johnholbein.org/christ-menti...
johnholbein.org
Where Is Christ in the Canon? 1.22 Million Verses of Data
Find Jesus in holy writ. Every verse of 22 scriptural canons, coded for whether it refers to Christ — and the answer moves by a factor of eleven depending on the rule.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Getting closer to releasing estimates of LDS general authorities political ideologies based on data from General Conference speeches...
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
working on something...
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
You can literally see how Ariely* manually changed data to produce the results he wanted Truly remarkable level of fraud from one of the most famous social scientists *I bet Ariely will use the Gino dog-ate-my-homework defense that a mysterious RA selectively manipulate the data did it. I doubt it
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
We should give Ariely some credit: he’s a great storyteller. Of fiction.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Academics are biased against null effects. As it turns out, so is the broader public.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
More evidence out today that Dan Ariely likely fabricated data.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
lol
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
We need a word that describes the simultaneous exhaustion and excitement that comes from teaching.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
If anything, I think we’ve underestimated the harm PSR caused. My guess is we’ve also underestimated how many political scientists used that platform, at one point or another, to tear others down.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
It looks like Political Science Rumors has been deactivated. Good riddance.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
lol
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
The anti-Flock movement is getting pretty creative.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
brb, y'all.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
More evidence companies have retreated from DEI after Trump's 2024 election 📉 2024 EU: 13% of corporate social media posts mention diversity. 📉 2025 EU: 7% of posts mentioned diversity. 📉 2024 U.S.: 7% of corporate social media posts mention diversity. 📉 2025 U.S.: 1% of posts mentioned diversity.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Matt Walsh accidentally became an autoethnography stan.
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Reposted by John Holbein
Paul Hünermund @p-hunermund.com · 17/08/2026
➕➕➕ New Working Paper ➕➕➕ Fixed effects are the workhorse of management and economics for dealing with unobserved confounding. But what if they themselves create bias? 😲 A short thread 🧵 1/6
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
What’s the craziest weather event you’ve ever personally experienced?
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Charlottesville earlier this evening.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
How much have employers in the U.S. backtracked from their stated commitment to DEI? 📈 Jun 2020: 1 in 8 job postings (12%) affirm commitment to DEI 📈 Nov 2024: 1 in 4 postings (25.4%) did the same 📉 Feb 2026: 1 in 5 postings (19.9%) mention DEI “The reversal is unprecedented, yet partial”
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Are LLMs developing anything resembling a stable sense of self? This new preprint tackles this question. The answer is mostly no.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Interesting idea to incentivize self corrections in research. "... The Ctrl-Z award recognizes and celebrates early-career and senior scientists who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record."
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
We're experiencing loneliness epidemic. Could AI chatbots help solve that problem? If you would have asked me up until recently I would say "probably!". But we don't know for sure. To answer this question, researchers in France recently ran a very cool experiment...
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Reposted by John Holbein
John V. Kane @uptonorwell.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
OUT TODAY! 🥳 A straightforward, non-technical guide to thinking like a quantitative social scientist. Written for students, journalists, and curious citizens. A lot of thought and heart went into this. I genuinely hope folks enjoy it!
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Has the gap between MJ and LeBron closed over time? Not really! Since 2016, the gap has held steady. Nothing LeBron has done over the last 10 years has closed the gap. Not the 2020 title (+ the finals MVP). Not the 2024 Olympic gold medal. Not passing Kareem. I think this is fascinating!
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Who's the consensus best NBA player of all time? MJ or LeBron? To find out, I compiled all of the journalist player rankings that I could find. I found 54 in total. Here's what the experts think...
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
We have reached that point of the summer…
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I find political scientists' lack of attention to effect sizes/substantive significance deeply troubling.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Do you agree or disagree with this statement? “Students accused of plagiarism are punished more harshly than professors accused of plagiarism.”
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
If I submit a good and timely referee report to a journal, then they have to publish my research. That's how it works, right?
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Arthritis
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Reposted by John Holbein
Victor Araújo @victoraraujo.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
📄 New pre-print on SSRN New evidence on a timely question: Does holding anti-democratic leaders legally accountable produce democratic backlash? Contrary to widespread concerns, I find no evidence that accountability increased affective polarisation or reduced support for democracy. 🧵👇
papers.ssrn.com
Does Holding Anti-Democratic Leaders Accountable Backfire? Evidence from Bolsonaro's Arrest in Brazil
Whether holding anti-democratic leaders accountable strengthens or weakens democracy remains one of the unresolved questions in contemporary debates about democ
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Trump's tariffs have reduced tourism to the U.S. a lot. They've led to $1 Billion in lost revenue per month.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Psychologists often hide their sample sizes in abstracts. Political scientists often hide their identification strategies in abstracts. Economists often hide their study's context in abstracts.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Noncompete clauses reduce workers' earnings. Noncompete clauses also provide no measurable protection against trade-secrets being leaked beyond standard NDAs.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Broadband internet access decreased rural teen birth rates.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
Shutting down USAID literally made Africa darker.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Social media has decided every movie is terrible months before it’s released.
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Hard to win a World Cup when you’re not trying to score
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