Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 24/06/2026Kids in 1996: Yay, school’s closed! Let’s play in the SNOW! Kids in 2026: Yay, school’s closed! Let’s play in our HOT homes because it’s too HOT for school to stay open. (Maybe UK schools need to wrap up the school year earlier, like the US, now that summers are properly hot.) 020
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 23/06/2026London in a heat wave: all classrooms in the local *private schools* have *air conditioning* while *state schools* (what Americans call “public”) are having to *close* because it’s too hot. 032
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 27/04/2026Keep an eye out for these fantastic early-career scholars working at the intersection of politics and geography. The future is bright 💫 0100
Reposted by Melissa SandsMichael Hankinson @hankinson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026In sum, homeowners & renters are “the policy adjacent”—indirect winners & losers of affordable housing. We identify similar groups for other policies (eg, SNAP) & set an agenda for studying the spillover effects of policy on long-term support. Replication: dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtm... 9/9dataverse.harvard.edu 051
Reposted by Melissa SandsMichael Hankinson @hankinson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026Our findings present a trade-off. Renters want local priority, but the FHA limits such prioritization due to entrenching segregation. NYC was recently forced to lower local prioritization via court order, but Jersey City is pursuing 100% local priority by using only local funds. 8/9 121
Reposted by Melissa SandsMichael Hankinson @hankinson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026But the ability of affordable housing to ⬆️ home values may threaten renters, who are unlikely to receive a unit in the project due to long wait lists. The renter backlash to new affordable housing is driven by gentrifying neighborhoods, where housing instability is greatest. 7/9 131
Reposted by Melissa SandsMichael Hankinson @hankinson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026Why do homeowners & renters respond differently? New affordable housing often replaces blight, increasing nearby home values. Homeowners like this. To quote a homeowner who had written to his mayor to try to block a LIHTC development: "If they wanted to build another, more power to them." 6/9 121
Reposted by Melissa SandsMichael Hankinson @hankinson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026We also find null results using a placebo of the “near-far” design. Results consistently polarize by homeownership status, not other block-level traits (e.g., race). We also conduct a bounding exercise to estimate how much of our effect may be driven by residential sorting rather than persuasion 5/9 121
Reposted by Melissa SandsMichael Hankinson @hankinson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026But affordable housing may be targeted at the micro-level. So, we compare blocks near housing built from '03-'06 to blocks near housing built from '07-'10. These blocks are equally targetable for housing, but only some are treated prior to the '06 bond. Results are comparable. 4/9 121
Reposted by Melissa SandsMichael Hankinson @hankinson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026Comparing blocks near new affordable housing to blocks slightly farther away, majority homeowner blocks ⬆️ support for the '06 bond by 2 to 3 p.p. In contrast, “renter blocks” ⬇️ support by 1 to 2 p.p. Results are the same if treatment is defined by proximity or # of units. 3/9 121
Reposted by Melissa SandsMichael Hankinson @hankinson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026In '02 & '06, Californians voted on nearly identical $2+ billion housing bonds. We measure how affordable housing built from '03 through '06 affected support for these bonds at the block-level. Thus, we have pre- & post-treatment behavioral data on how policy implementation ➡️ policy support 2/9 121
Reposted by Melissa SandsMichael Hankinson @hankinson.bsky.social · 23/03/2026Building affordable housing ➡️ support for funding housing. Nearby homeowners ⬆️ support; renters ⬇️ support. Both are “the policy adjacent”—secondhand recipients & drivers of policy feedback. Forthcoming @ajpseditor.bsky.social ( doi.org/10.1111/ajps...) w/ A. Magazinnik & @msands.bsky.social 1/9 24621
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 15/02/2026covid is “a vascular disease masquerading as a respiratory one” www.bmj.com/content/392/...bmj.comWhy covid-19 is “a vascular disease masquerading as a respiratory one”Covid-19 is not just a respiratory infection. Cardiovascular symptoms are seen in both acute and long covid. Katharine Lang reports on what we’ve learnt since the onset of the pandemic Cardiovascular... 052
Reposted by Melissa SandsHannes Rusch @hannesrusch.bsky.social · 04/02/2026📢 Call for Hidden Papers & Data on Ingroup Favoritism in Dictator Games We look for unpublished and hard-to-access experimental studies for our meta-analysis! Inclusion criteria: no deception, adults, manipulation of group membership of dictator game recipients. All tips and data very welcome! 1612
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 20/01/2026Early career researchers (especially in Europe / UK, but all are welcome): Apply to present your work on the urban/rural divide (very broadly defined!) @ LSE @lseinequalities.bsky.social @lsegovernment.bsky.social 012
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 11/12/2025Read the paper here, open access.doi.orgNationally Representative, Locally Misaligned: The Biases of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Neighborhood Perception | Political Analysis | Cambridge CoreNationally Representative, Locally Misaligned: The Biases of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Neighborhood Perception 010
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 11/12/2025We've also created an interactive dashboard where you can explore our data in detail. You can look at specific street view images, and see the distributions of LMM and human ratings across all four measures, split by gender if desired.joehigton.comStreetView Rating Analysis 110
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 11/12/2025Of course, these models may (potentially) improve. But while the specific relationships may change, the broad patterns reflect hard-to-resolve biases. To that end, the entire workflow is public and reproducible, so that future models can be tested with the same framework and data.github.comGitHub - joehigton/GenAILocalBiasContribute to joehigton/GenAILocalBias development by creating an account on GitHub. 110
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 11/12/2025We then study these relationships by gender. LMMs easily perform worst in recovering the views of Detroit men. Why? This difficult-to-reach population is likely poorly represented in training data/reinforcement feedback. It may be that this problem is hard to resolve even with better models. 110
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 11/12/2025We then asked the same questions of two human samples: a U.S. nationally representative sample and Detroit-representative sample (through DMACS at @umfordschool.bsky.social). We then compare these responses, two ways. In general, LMMs better recover national evaluations than local ones. 121
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 11/12/2025We pulled tens of thousands of open-source street view images from Detroit. We processed the images, and then sampled 85 for closer analysis. For each, we queried five LMMs (propietary and open-source) 30 times for ratings on wealth, safety (day and night), and disorder. 110
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 11/12/2025Can Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) extract features of urban neighborhoods from street-view images? New with Paige Bollen (OSU) and @joehigton.bsky.social (NYU): Sometimes, but the models better recover national assessments that local ones, even w/additional prompting (which can make things worse!) 1215
Reposted by Melissa SandsSara Hobolt @sarahobolt.bsky.social · 06/12/2025🚨Job News: Postdoc positions in LSE Government Department 🚨 Apply to work with the brilliant and wonderful Carl Muller-Crepon @carlmc.bsky.social on his BORDERS ERC project at LSE @lsegovernment.bsky.social jobs.lse.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/... 14332
Reposted by Melissa SandsFelipe @ftraposo.bsky.social · 05/12/2025📢 Call for Submissions UK-based early career researchers in political science, political economy & public policy: apply to our January Early Career Workshop at LSE. 🗓️ Deadline: 28 Dec 2025 🔗 forms.gle/HXU4DnBq9HmX...forms.gleLSE - Political Economy and Political Science Early Career WorkshopWe invite submissions for the LSE Political Economy and Political Science Early Career Workshop. This workshop is designed to support the development of early-career scholars’ research, including PhD,... 12833
Reposted by Melissa SandsAditya Dasgupta @adasgupta.bsky.social · 01/12/2025the case for slower, better/more careful research papers in poli sci gets another data point in its favor 0121
Reposted by Melissa SandsDaniel de Kadt @dandekadt.bsky.social · 28/11/20252. Popper tells us that we should be our own best skeptics. Unfortunately our professional incentives often make us the opposite. As we conduct research, we should all be self-skeptical and self-questioning and self-doubting. We should expose our own thinking and decisions to close examination. 1151
Reposted by Melissa SandsDaniel de Kadt @dandekadt.bsky.social · 28/11/2025As I reflect on this, three thoughts: 1. This case is only symptomatic of a bigger problem; increasingly broken incentive structures in our disciplines and industry. Our job is *not* to publish for the sake of publishing. It is to produce and advance *knowledge*. This process is hard and slow. 1232
Reposted by Melissa SandsDaniel de Kadt @dandekadt.bsky.social · 06/10/2025Biased as I am, this is a great paper on the limits of current generative AI models for learning about fundamentally subjective assessments (in this case, evaluating features of neighborhoods from photographs).cambridge.orgNationally Representative, Locally Misaligned: The Biases of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Neighborhood Perception | Political Analysis | Cambridge CoreNationally Representative, Locally Misaligned: The Biases of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Neighborhood Perception 1161
Reposted by Melissa SandsCambridge University Press Political Science & IR @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 07/10/2025#OpenAccess from @polanalysis.bsky.social - Nationally Representative, Locally Misaligned: The Biases of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Neighborhood Perception - cup.org/3Kw6VkD - Paige Bollen, @joehigton.bsky.social & @msands.bsky.social #FirstView 011
Reposted by Melissa SandsAnton Strezhnev @astrezh.bsky.social · 11/07/2025New working paper! - zikai.li and I look at the problem of assessing pre-trends using one of the "new" DiD methods - fixed effects regression imputation. tl;dr - don't use the same regression you used to impute post-treatment to also impute pre-treatment. osf.io/preprints/so... (1/14) 35716
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 06/07/2025Best consumed in it’s entirety in one sitting… like their 1998 album 030
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 04/07/2025Where we are at, or where we *think* we are at? or the fact that there’s no longer a meaningful distinction? 010
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 18/06/2025Excited to share this new project, coauthored w/ @brycejdietrich.bsky.social , a VR extension of our field experiment on racial avoidance on NYC sidewalks. 081
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 18/06/2025PSA: stay👏🏼 home👏🏼when👏🏼you’re👏🏼sick If you can’t stay home, wear a mask. Lots of sickness, including covid, going around. Chances are you have a vulnerable friend, colleague, etc and may not even know it. Do it for them, if not for everyone around who doesn’t want your germs. 010
Reposted by Melissa SandsRyan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 12/06/2025RFK Jr’s ACIP pick, Martin Kulldorff, said one of the most disturbing images from the pandemic was a toddler crying about having to wear a mask. I see toddlers cry about everything all the time, and I found it far more disturbing to see refrigerator trucks full of body bags outside of the hospitals… 28384541852
Reposted by Melissa SandsJake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/06/2025In the modern era, even “riots” generate support, not backlash www.cambridge.org/core/service... 519757
Reposted by Melissa SandsDaniel de Kadt @dandekadt.bsky.social · 07/06/2025A close friend of mine sits on the board of Bophelo Daycare in Johannesburg, a place for children with severe disabilities. They're extremely well run & high impact, but have financial difficulties due to low enrolment. We've just sponsored a child from 6 months. If you want to match, please DM. 101
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 14/05/2025…Except for the UK, where Labour wants to discourage international students from coming here www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/b...nytimes.comThe World Is Wooing U.S. Researchers Shunned by Trump 030
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 14/05/2025Thanks but it’s not a matter of the editor. It’s the uninterpretable errors. I’ve been using latex (mostly *not* Overleaf) for ~13 years & still find it unintuitive & unfriendly. This overleaf outage (on a deadline day) might be the final straw. 000
Melissa Sands @msands.bsky.social · 14/05/2025Yes but getting it to compile locally is another story 😭 110
Reposted by Melissa SandsNIH Fellows United @nihfellowsunited.bsky.social · 10/02/2025📢FUND DON’T FREEZE!📢 Join researchers and academics in DC on February 19th at 12 PM to stand up for research, education, and jobs! Federal attacks on science and academia put all of our futures at risk - let’s show them we won’t back down! RSVP Here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... 412995
Reposted by Melissa SandsDaniel de Kadt @dandekadt.bsky.social · 10/02/2025These are great roles -- postdoctoral positions with reasonable teaching load and an excellent research community (seminars every day, pretty much). In general, people in these positions tend to go on to secure good permanent roles afterward. 0129
Reposted by Melissa SandsMark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 09/02/2025Well, it may be our last Super Bowl under the Philadelphia-founded constitutional order, so let’s do this #FlyEaglesFly 🦅 1114210
