iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Nick Wilson

jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 29/09/2026

"Replication crisis" reforms like preregistration & pre-analysis plans were developed to control false positives in experimental research. Does that work in observational studies? Our new paper in Sociological Methods & Research argues for a different approach. 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

A Replication Framework for Observational Research: From Specification Restriction to Specification Expansion
Jonathan Ben-Menachem https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8092-0848 jbenmenachem@gmail.com, Ari Galper https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7909-8837, and Nic Fishman
Abstract
Sociology has remained relatively insulated from debates about the “replication crisis.” Heeding calls to consider replication more deeply, we introduce a distinction between two types of research reforms that have emerged in the wake of the crisis: specification-restricting and specification-expanding reforms. Specification restriction is often promoted as a way to increase the repeatability of research findings by controlling false positives. We argue that this statistical justification is less compelling in observational contexts—where the assumptions licensing false-positive control are harder to sustain and rigid ex ante analytical commitments can instead enshrine fragile specifications—than in experimental contexts. We further argue that apparently low replication rates do not necessarily imply a high prevalence of false positive findings. Instead, we propose a replication framework centered on specification-expanding reforms, stronger incentives for confirmatory research, and meta-analysis. This approach equips sociologists to assess the repeatability of findings and build a more cumulative discipline.

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

For the moment, this is the Wikipedia page for Eric Schmitt:

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 29/09/2026

🤡 Schmitt beclowns himself 🤡 Schmitt concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory that Smith traveled to Atl for a Hawks game and to collude with Fani Willis, & flashed his "evidence" before accusing Smith of perjury. There's just one problem -- his facts were totally wrong. Here's the whole sequence:

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

Julian Go @juliango.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Latest news: 2 of my sociology colleagues, John Levi Martin & Geoff Wodtke & I each wrote separate reviews of the Vanderbilt-Wash U Report on Sociology by A. Rubin. For my brief opinion and links to all 3 reviews, see this blogpost: scatter.wordpress.com/2026/09/19/g...

scatter.wordpress.com

guest post: scholarly malpractice and the vanderbilt-washington university report on sociology

The following is a guest post by Julian Go. By now readers of scatterplot will be aware of the Sociology portion of the Vanderbilt-Washington University Report (VWUR) by Ashley Rubin. Part of the “…

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

Dan Hirschman @asociologist.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"If Rubin were actually sincere about not having sufficient evidence to make sweeping claims about the discipline, then she would not make such sweeping claims about the discipline. Yet she does. Over and over again." @juliango.bsky.social on the U Chicago responses to the Rubin report on sociology.

scatter.wordpress.com

guest post: scholarly malpractice and the vanderbilt-washington university report on sociology

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

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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Onion Sports @onionsports.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Rockies Pitcher Pledges To Give Up Home Run For Sick Child theonion.com/rockies-pitc...

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Excellent, even-handed, and damning analysis of Ashley Rubin's subsidiary Vanderbilt "report" on sociology. That (and the Vanderbilt report drawing on it) are deeply suspect as good-faith interventions into sociology (and other fields). osf.io/preprints/so...

osf.io

OSF

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

lukelukeluke @lukelukeluke.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Me: I’d like a slice of pizza Server: that comes with three sides Me: I know what shape it is

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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 10/09/2026

Being ejected from the plane entirely costs extra

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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

@tante.cc: 'Those “proofs” are about narrative building. Which is why especially people with no b/g in math keep using them as definite proof of LLMs being “more than just stochastic language models” which is just factually untrue and the mark of deeply unserious people.' tante.cc/2026/09/07/t...

tante.cc

The function of LLM-based math "proofs"

There has been quite the uptick in “AI” labs’ claims of their LLMs “solving complex math problems”. I wondered why that is, especially given that LLMs are not exactly built for the kind of rigor that ...

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Tim Gill @timgill924.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Speaking as a sociologist, I had never heard of Jason Arday until this whole scandal. So I’m not really sure he was “on top” of the discipline.

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 28/07/2026

New job market paper 🚨 Local newsrooms are cutting crime coverage—but not homicide, which nearly every journalist I interviewed considers too important to skip. So why did so many journalists recount open newsroom disagreements over homicide coverage? onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Which deaths count? Debating homicide coverage amidst newsroom scarcity

Past research documents disparities in which homicides receive news coverage and how victims are portrayed, yet the organizational processes producing these patterns remain understudied. This paper asks how crime journalists navigate homicide coverage under resource scarcity—and why widely voiced concerns about the racialized consequences of coverage fail to resolve disagreements about equitable practice. Drawing on interviews with 58 crime journalists across 40 local newsrooms, I find that homicide coverage generated the most sustained professional disagreements in the data. Journalists agreed homicides were newsworthy and shared a vision for ideal coverage, but resource constraints often made it unrealizable. Participants invoked competing moral frameworks organized around two concerns: that selective coverage risks symbolic annihilation of primarily Black victims whose deaths go publicly unacknowledged, and that universal episodic coverage risks territorial stigmatization of communities where violence is concentrated. Because scarcity forecloses the coverage that would avoid both harms, it transforms professional discretion into a choice among ethically unsatisfactory alternatives. Some journalists responded by abdicating discretion entirely, endorsing universal coverage because they distrusted selective judgment. These findings illuminate why the coverage patterns that criminologists have identified as harmful persist even among practitioners who recognize and contest them.

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Philip N Cohen @philipncohen.com · 27/07/2026

Per @asanews.bsky.social email, after being cut off by NSF, ASA is ending the Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant.

AS American Sociological Association
Dear Colleagues,
We are writing with important information about the ASA Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG), which has been funded by the National Science Foundation for the past six years.
After learning that we will not be receiving our next funding increment from NSF, we are suspending the ASA DDRIG program and will not be opening the 2027 application cycle. This does not affect any student who currently holds an ASA DDRIG.
Over six application cycles, the ASA DDRIG program awarded 153 grants to students at 62 institutions. We would like to extend our sincerest thanks to all the reviewers who have made the program possible and to all the students, both applicants and grantees, whose work has inspired us. We are actively seeking other funding opportunities and will be back in touch with the sociology community if funding becomes available in the future.
In the meantime, we encourage you to write to your representatives in Congress to let them know how the cancellation and suspension of research funding impacts you, your students, and your colleagues. Please visit ASA Action Center to view our current action alerts on this matter. Feel free to customize your message if you received an ASA DDRIG or NSF DDRI and share how the program helped shape your trajectory.
Thank you for your understanding and continued support of ASA's efforts to promote the work of sociologists and the discipline of sociology.
ASA DDRIG Program Team
For assistance or information, contact communications@asanet.org.
To unsubscribe from future Messages from the ASA, click here.
American Sociological Association
1717 K Street NW, Suite 900, Washington, DC 20006
Privacy Policy Pop

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

Chris Gallant @gallantny.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

The recent fatal ICE shootings that claimed the lives of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, Alex Pretti, and Renée Good are heartbreaking and unacceptable These tragedies reflect serious failures in leadership, training, and accountability. #politics

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egg16z 🥚 @notlikewe.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

FED CHAIR ANNOUNCES FISCAL POLICY

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Rare professional post: I am honored beyond words to say that @mayrl.bsky.social and me have received the @asanews.bsky.social Comparative and Historical Section Barrington Moore Award for best book in Comparative Historical Sociology for *After Positivism* (tinyurl.com/442uh3b9). 1/

tinyurl.com

After Positivism | Columbia University Press

What is the value of comparison for research in historical sociology? Today, social scientists regularly express doubt about the positivist premises that hav... | CUP

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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

So if he has a tail and is a monkey how is Donkey Kong his dad is this a “I’m not a step dad I’m the dad that stepped up” sort of thing because if that’s the case that’s beautiful

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Adam Schwarz @adamjschwarz.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Trump has done such a massive disservice to the US football team and American fans with his intervention. He's essentially politicised the team through tainting them with his corruption. The rest of the world is now rooting for Belgium tonight for political reasons. That's not how sport should be.

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Caleb Scoville @calebscoville.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

It’s also unnecessary because this is the political subtext of intro to microeconomics, a class that many majors require and students and parents generally think is a good idea to take. Indoctrination works better when cloaked in formalism and technical jargon, rather than 1990s Nickelodeon slang.

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

InfoWars @realinfowars.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

InfoWars: The universe expands this fall.

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

OK, so the "headlines" for the sociology sub-report on the Boghossian report are out, and (as far as I can tell) there is no "objective," "rigorous" measure of scholarly quality to be found. ashleytrubin.substack.com/p/report-ref... 1/

ashleytrubin.substack.com

Report Reflection, Part 2: Types of Evidence for Sociology and Their Limitations

I first drafted this post a little over three weeks ago.

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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

A KKK rally or a Vance book tour. You decide. bsky.app/profile/theb...

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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Breaking | The Trump Administration is negotiating a deal to repaint Reflecting Pool to prior color, allow algae to stay.

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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

That’s the perfect name for this time of oligarchs: “the Re-Gilded Age.”

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Was confused by north-central Maine looking like it was ON FIRE for LaFlamme voting map until I moused over. NYT should hit a coffee shop there and find out what's going on.

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Do I enjoy getting unsolicited political fundraising texts (I hope mistakenly) addressed to my dead father? No, I do not. Makes me feel like I'm peeking ahead to the en-shittified AI future.

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

Mike Elgan @mikeelgan.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Now you can keep track of how many billions the AI companies are losing on AI. (Red is spending, green is revenue.) isaiprofitable.com

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

Julia Partheymüller @schnizzl.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

Can LLMs Emulate Human Belief Dynamics? 🧪 The answer is a clear no. [The findings] raise a sharp warning against deploying LLMs as human proxies in social simulations. arxiv.org/pdf/2605.18781 #SyntheticData #EsWirdImmerAbsurder

Screenshot of the abstract of the preprint.

Can LLMs simulate how humans form and change beliefs in social net-
works? We put this to the test by replicating an established study on belief
dynamics, evaluating 12 LLMs across multiple model families and param-
eter sizes. The answer is a clear no, and in systematic ways. LLMs fail
to capture initial human belief distributions and tend to be overall more
conformist than humans, shifting their responses to align with those around
them. They also take a nuanced approach to emulating human homophilic
tendencies within networks. Our findings carry a double payoff: they
highlight fundamental properties of LLM behavior, and they raise a sharp
warning against deploying LLMs as human proxies in social simulations.

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ArtButMakeItSports @artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Angels Appearing before the Shepherds, by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1910

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 15/05/2026

Today’s premium newsletter is part 1 of my "What If...We're In An AI Bubble?" series, covering the scenarios that could burst the bubble - starting with token-based billing's destruction of most AI products, and the slow collapse of data center construction. www.wheresyoured.at/premium-what...

wheresyoured.at

Premium: What If...We're In An AI Bubble? (Part 1)

Every day I read some sort of wrongheaded extrapolation about the future of AI — that today’s models are somehow indicative of AGI creating a “permanent underclass” of people that stops people from bu...

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

Agree. Who gives a fuck? Everyone can say what they want or write a letter. I'm pretty sure that's what free speech is.

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

I would add here that the elite media subtext here is that college students are whiny little bitches and here they go again. And yeah, a lot of them are whiny little bitches. But that's kind of what being in college is about and it's fine. It's fine to write a letter.

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Michel Nivard @michelnivard.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

PLEASE SHARE: Serious request for a future scientific collaboration. Do I know any historians/sociologists who works with, or love working with historic ego documents. Diaries, letters, notes, etc. Especially those that describe real, or wished for, romantic partners/interests? email me, DM me!

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Chris Gallant @gallantny.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

Join us on May 31st for our upcoming Shelter Island Town Hall. I’m hosting town halls throughout the district because I believe government should be accessible, collaborative, and connected to the people it represents. Sign up here: tinyurl.com/GallantShelt... #NY01 #Congress #Politics

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Reposted by Nick Wilson

Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

30 second ad database

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

~18,000 articles (~582K total references) over the last 50 years across the flagship journals of American Sociology, Economics, Political Science, Anthropology, Geography, History, and the Social Science History Association, guess how many references are cited at least once in all fields. (It's 20.)

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

"Fun" (in the sense that a secular decline in state support for social science is "fun") offshoot from a computational text/soc-of-science/knowledge project with @mayrl.bsky.social. Long-term declines in NSF acknowledgment for all measured social sciences (and basically none for history, ever).

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Tricia Dearborn @triciadearborn.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

If you're thinking about using gen-AI to "write" books, this 🧵 is for you. I’m a highly experienced editor who’s been in the biz a long time. Recently I’ve had manuscripts come to me where the author has used gen-AI – not for writing, I’ve been assured, but for “structuring” or "organising"

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Congrats to Yingyao Wang and my SBU history colleague, Susannah Glickman!

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In Otter News @in-otter-news.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Steve claims not to have thrown a snowball in Brad's "Annoying little face". The evidence suggests otherwise.....

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Nick Wilson @nickhwilson.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

This is just the worst way to have your YouTube freeze.

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