Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 22/09/2026Reminder to Toronto people: It is mooncake season. Get your mooncakes. 010
Reposted by Ryan Briggs🇨🇦 CPSA ACSP 🇨🇦 @cpsa-acsp.bsky.social · 17/09/2026The Call for Proposals #CPSA_ACSP27 is live. ⏰ Nov 10 2026 Meet the colleagues behind next year's programme — and send them your work! 📍 UBC-Vancouver-CANADA|May 26–28 2027 mycpsa-cpsa-acsp.ca/cfp/cfp_index @traceyraney.bsky.social @svallejovera.bsky.social @ryancbriggs.net @randybesco.bsky.social 023
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 14/09/2026All academics fantasize of either opening a bakery or escaping to a remote cabin in the mountains 5180
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 10/09/2026When I was visiting my mom she gave me some bottles of alcohol that she was never going to drink, and I just opened this one and turns out it’s maple syrup 060
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 04/09/2026It has been embarrassing reading this and similar critiques, because they accuse the report of not doing things that it manifestly does do (like adjusting for time to accumulate citations). I hope everyone involved is more careful in their regular work. You hurt your causes by flubbing this hard. 151
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 01/09/2026The haskaps finally came in at my parent’s place! We made jam and haskap sour cocktails and a haskap pie is in the oven. 060
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 18/08/2026It's quite neat that the 1954 Salk Polio trial in the US had both a "matched" observational arm and a conventional RCT arm. There is an R package with the relevant data (PolioTrials in HistData) as well as an article about it by Paul Meier (webpages.math.luc.edu/~mgb/courses...). 2113
Reposted by Ryan BriggsMichael Clemens @mclem.org · 12/08/2026Incredible. When E—n M—k & his crew obliterated USAID in a weekend, they deleted a vast trove of publicly-funded knowledge: the Development Experience Clearinghouse. A Canadian high school student (!) happened to have downloaded the entire thing for a project. AidData has now posted it for all.aiddata.orgBefore reimagining development data, remember what we’ve learnedWhy we’re publishing a free, searchable, and ungated archive featuring a quarter-century of USAID evaluation reports. 374442808
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 12/08/2026I enjoyed this Asterisk article about taste: asteriskmag.com/issues/15/wh... My favourite little-known example of outstanding taste is cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli. Just while working at Norton her authors won 13 James Beard awards & at least 13 IACPs! Here are some of the books she edited:asteriskmag.comWhy We Like ThingsWhat Silicon Valley gets wrong about taste. 120
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 28/07/2026I’m late to this but the ninja creami is viral for good reason. It’s wild how good of a product you can get out of it, including vegan ice cream (almond milk + coconut cream). 111
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 26/07/2026The food court in the Mississauga flea market has incredible food. We got Malaysian but just in general it seems very strong. maps.app.goo.gl/KkoR12QxjZsN...maps.app.goo.gl 030
Reposted by Ryan BriggsPaul Nightingale @paulnightingale.bsky.social · 11/07/2026We are seeing similar at RP. It's not just AI. Also a huge increase in Chinese social science. Which is often very good. But AI slop is flooding the system. One author with 30 submissions in a month... now they "could" be super productive.... or it could be AI slop. 272
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 11/07/2026Spoke to an editor of a good social science journal who reported submission volume is now 400% higher than during Covid. He entirely blames AI. 25410
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 02/07/2026I think he deserved more than a dark corner in the Guinness museum 3455
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 23/06/2026Homemade ice kacang. I probably made lots of moderate execution errors, but it was good enough that the kids happily crushed it. 051
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 20/06/2026I won’t get into the data or analysis here (yet), but I’m very confident that lower ranked journals do not publish more null results than higher ranked ones. I looked across 11 disciplines and all have this (lack of a) pattern. 0100
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 10/06/2026This was a fun paper. We analyze results from a global survey of development studies (DS) profs and find that the income group of their country doesn't explain much about their views on DS. Instead, their discipline is huge. 081
Reposted by Ryan BriggsDaniel Lakens @lakens.bsky.social · 25/05/2026New blog post: Evaluating Dr. Cuddy’s Claim that the Debunking of Power Posing is a Myth. daniellakens.blogspot.com/2026/05/eval... On an AI generated description of a non-existent study, incorrectly citing findings from studies, and the importance of scientific criticism.daniellakens.blogspot.comEvaluating Dr. Cuddy’s Claim that the Debunking of Power Posing is a MythIn this blog post I will analyse the arguments that Dr. Amy Cuddy provided in a blog post “The "Power Posing Was Debunked" Myth: What the Re... 1517869
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 23/05/2026@prachisrivas.bsky.social you would love the number of people wearing Habs jerseys at this Toronto Blue Jays game 141
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 22/05/2026In the Fall I'll be teaching a new MA-level methods course entitled "Applied Statistical Evaluation of Development Projects". It will be 12 weeks, in R, and aimed around RCT evaluations. This is a draft outline. What am I missing? What seems redundant? 9357
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 22/05/2026An interesting EA forum post that is an anonymized slack chat about GiveWell and EA-style CE analysis: "across EA cost-effectiveness analyses, much more typically goes toward estimating the effect than estimating the costs." forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ru3wyS...forum.effectivealtruism.orgGlobal Health Charity Founders on GiveWell, Evidence Action, and M+E — EA ForumThe following is a lightly edited and anonymized transcript of a discussion among charity founders, researchers, and funders in Ambitious Impact’s Sl… 050
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 21/05/2026I'll be teaching a grad methods class focused on experiments in the fall for a development studies dept. I'm looking for published development RCTs. Ideally they would have: 1. replication packages in R, or 2. fairly simple code I could rewrite in R. Anyone have recommendations? 202
Reposted by Ryan BriggsLauren Gilbert @lgilbert.co · 21/05/2026I'm hiring for In Development's first not-me hire. Help shape the future of development journalism; edit pieces that do serious cost-effectiveness analysis AND have jokes. Up to $90k USD, fully remote worldwide. indevelopmentmag.com/jobs/indevelopmentmag.comJobs – In Developmentevidence and argument for a developing world 33519
Reposted by Ryan BriggsEthan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 21/05/2026We can estimate the resource cost of solving the Erdos problem. The calculations below seem reasonable, so using the best public estimates we have, it took 0.6–6.3 kWh of electricity & 3–31L of water Equivalent to < 3 almonds worth of water & the electricity equivalent of 2-20 miles of EV driving 421524
Reposted by Ryan BriggsEthan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 20/05/2026June 2024: The latest general-purpose LLMs could not count the r's in strawberry. July 2025: The latest general-purpose LLMs get gold in the International Math Olympiad. May 2026: The latest general-purpose LLM solve an 80 year old problem, one of the "best-known questions in combinatorial geometry" 1029646
Reposted by Ryan BriggsEris @isolyth.dev · 20/05/2026OpenAI has used a "general purpose reasoning model" to disprove that the square grid type construction is the best solution to the planar unit distance problem. I am sure the "AI is completely useless" crowd will now change their ways, right?openai.comAn OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometryAn OpenAI model solved the 80-year-old unit distance problem, disproving a major conjecture in discrete geometry and marking a milestone in AI-driven mathematics. 1714418
Reposted by Ryan BriggsIt's Jamie @sjamieit.bsky.social · 11/05/2026The City of Ottawa posted the raw speed data from before and after Doug Ford banned speed cameras and the effect is so obvious it's not even necessary put a line marking when that happened. This chart shows the percentage of drivers going 15km/h or more over the posted limit. 472105848
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 11/05/2026We have a new version of this paper out. The headline results are the same—political science must filter results heavily for statistical significance—but we've added many extensions and rewritten much of it in response to feedback (thank you!). A quick thread on updates 👇 26819
Reposted by Ryan BriggsTed Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 23/04/2026How to post on a twitterlike: 1. spend 20 min listing edge cases and objections to your point, 2. compress each quibble into a single word choice that implicitly addresses it 3. finally, watch replies to the post ignore those qualifiers and perfectly recreate the original list of objections 417220
Reposted by Ryan BriggsRohan Alexander @rohanalexander.bsky.social · 22/04/2026All welcome at the workshop in 10 days. rohanalexander.com/tdw.html Also, if you read Ryan's piece and thought "hey, I have thoughts on AI and quant social science as well", please do get in touch. 071
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 21/04/2026I'll be at a workshop organized by @rohanalexander.bsky.social next week on how AI will change quantitative social science. This is my short paper, and this is the key argument. ryancbriggs.net/blog/as-ai-l... 5449
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 06/04/2026Me just finishing reading a kid version of Wizard of Oz to 3 year old: “There’s no place like home.” “No” “Is home your favourite place?” “No” “What is your favourite place?” “Hot pot” 1130
Reposted by Ryan BriggsJoshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 05/04/2026The more that folks outside of science hear of this, the more they should ask: why? open.substack.com/pub/joshuasw...open.substack.comDéjà vu All Over Again: The White House's Diminished Vision for Science in FY 2027A first look into the proposed FY 2027 budget reveals an ideological commitment to reduce the size, scope, and capacity of American leadership in R&D. 16643
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 03/04/2026There are no longer any great options in the twitter-ish social media space and it’s sad 220
Reposted by Ryan BriggsCarlisle Rainey 👨💻📊📚 @carlislerainey.bsky.social · 02/04/2026Feel free to borrow/steal---the source is here: github.com/pos5747/notes The goal is a *still relevant* course on parametric models that can sit alongside a course on more agnostic methods for causal inference. *These are in-progress and written in the pre-Claude Code era.github.comGitHub - pos5747/notes: Notes for POS 5747Notes for POS 5747. Contribute to pos5747/notes development by creating an account on GitHub. 0132
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 01/04/2026You guys @carlislerainey.bsky.social has a free textbook online and it seems really useful pos5747.github.io/notes/ 04520
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 01/04/2026probably a good time to share this again: asteriskmag.com/issues/10/ca...asteriskmag.comCan We Trust Social Science Yet?Everyone likes the idea of evidence-based policy, but it’s hard to realize it when our most reputable social science journals are still publishing poor quality research. 0194
Reposted by Ryan BriggsNature @nature.com · 01/04/2026A massive seven-year project exploring 3,900 social-science papers has ended with a disturbing finding go.nature.com/4bZ9k0Wgo.nature.comHalf of social-science studies fail replication test in years-long projectResults from massive, ‘eagerly awaited’ initiative reinforce concerns about the credibility of science — but raise hope for solutions. 08741
Reposted by Ryan BriggsJoris Frese @fresejoris.bsky.social · 01/04/2026📄Published Today in Nature: 500 researchers reproduced 100 studies across the social & behavioral sciences to assess their analytical robustness (led by @balazsaczel.bsky.social & @szaszibarnabas.bsky.social). Article: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Preprint: osf.io/preprints/me... TLDR: 1/11 29148
Reposted by Ryan BriggsInstitute for Replication @i4replication.bsky.social · 01/04/2026🧵1/ Our first meta-science paper (with 350+ coauthors) is published today in Nature. It presents one of the largest-ever reproducibility projects in economics & political science. Here’s what we found 👇 216989
Ryan Briggs @ryancbriggs.net · 01/04/2026Today is the day that a lot of social scientists get their first Nature publication 0160