iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

code spaghettifier @singlewordname.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

A computer science prof actually tested this digitally against a bunch of completely buckwild chess algorithms. Random movement comes out to about 478 ELO, though that's buoyed by a couple truly deranged opponents youtu.be/DpXy041BIlA

youtu.be

30 Weird Chess Algorithms: Elo World

YouTube video by suckerpinch

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Kelly Bodwin @kellybodwin.com · 16/09/2026

👏👏👏 to @liomys.mx for calling out the issue of academic works citing the IDE instead of the language/packages!

A slide containing many snippets of text from academic papers saying "analysis was performed with RStudio"

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Transactions on Machine Learning Research @tmlrorg.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

TMLR has faced a deluge of submissions, necessitating stricter desk rejection policies due to limited reviewer capacity Co-EiC Nihar Shah reached out to authors of 10 papers slated for desk reject. Could they answer questions about their *own* submission? medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ask...

medium.com

Asking Authors About Their Own Papers

By Nihar B. Shah

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

As an R user, I know it's tempting to dunk on SPSS, but I try to avoid such software snobbery. Occasionally, I even start up SPSS to make software comparisons. But that it takes almost 50 seconds to start up SPSS (on a freshly booted Windows machine) is just bonkers. #RStats #SPSS

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The High Fens before (2026-08-14) and after (2026-08-24) the wildfire. So much beautiful nature destroyed. #wildfire #highfens #hohesvenn

Satellite image of the High Fens on 2026-08-14.

Satellite image of the High Fens on 2026-08-24 showing the damage caused by the wildfire.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Standard issue cat recharging via solar power. #cat

A gray tabby cat sitting on a table in the sun.

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Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

The R Foundation @r-foundation.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

We invite #RStats users to contribute to a fund dedicated to helping the family of Tomáš Kalibera following his untimely death in April. Find out more and donate here: www.r-project.org/foundation/k...

r-project.org

R: Tomáš Kalibera Family Fund

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Image from the Sentinel-2 satellite from yesterday, showing the burning wildfire nearby in the High Fens (about 6km from where I live). #wildfire #highfens #hohesvenn

Image from the Sentinel-2 satellite from yesterday, showing the burning wildfire in the High Fens.

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Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

Johan Larsson @jolars.co · 15/08/2026

I just released version 0.19 of Arity: a formatter, linter, and language server for R! The headline of this version is that Arity now formats and lints your DESCRIPTION. The release also includes improvements to roxygen2 formatting as well as many bug fixes. #rstats github.com/jolars/arity

github.com

GitHub - jolars/arity: Language server, formatter, and linter for R

Language server, formatter, and linter for R. Contribute to jolars/arity development by creating an account on GitHub.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Wildfire burning nearby in the High Fens. Another wildfire is burning nearby in Hürtgenwald. #wildfire #highfens #hurtgenwald

Foto at night over a forest towards a wildfire in the distance illuminating the sky in red.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Built a pinhole projector with the kids to get ready for the #solareclipse tonight. We will only get about 89% occlusion, but should still be fun to see.

Photo from inside the pinhole projector showing the dot of the sun.

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Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

František Bartoš @fbartos.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

For the revision for our "Meta-Analysis with JASP, Part I: Classical Approaches" tutorial, I recorder a series of YouTube videos walking through the examples in JASP www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbou... First time doing this. Do you find walkthroughs like this useful? Let me know any suggestions!

youtube.com

Meta-Analysis with JASP, Part I: Classical Approaches (Example 1)

YouTube video by JASP Statistics

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Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

🐦 Thrilled to share our latest research, a milestone: the first first-author paper from @shreyadimri.bsky.social, published in @royalsocietypublishing.org Why do birds add fresh green nest material to their nests? 🧵 🔗 doi.org/10.1098/rspb...

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

What's up with all these apparently fake data science accounts? bsky.app/profile/ds-w... bsky.app/profile/ds-f... bsky.app/profile/ds-j... bsky.app/profile/ds-b... bsky.app/profile/ds-n... ... What's the endgame here?

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MikeKSmith @mikeksmith.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Inspiring talk from Dariia Mykhailyshyna about teaching and surveying the R community in Ukraine while in the midst of a war. #rstats #useR2026

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

The standard random-effects model in meta-analysis assumes that the amount of heterogeneity is homoscedastic. This assumption may not be true. I derived and examined various tests for heteroscedastic heterogeneity. See osf.io/cavhy for a preprint describing these methods. #MetaAnalysis #RStats

osf.io

OSF

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

As another alternative to the standard forest plot for visualizing many effect size estimates in a meta-analysis, one can use 'orchard plots' (Nakagawa et al., 2021). Example code to create such figures can be found here: www.metafor-project.org/doku.php/plo... #MetaAnalysis #RStats

An orchard plot showing many effect size estimates clustered by a categorical moderator variable, with pooled estimates (with 95% CIs/PIs) within subgroups superimposed.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

In large meta-analyses, standard forest plot can become excessively large. One solution is to group the estimates together within studies. I just added an example to the metafor website illustrating this possibility: www.metafor-project.org/doku.php/plo... #MetaAnalysis #RStats

A forest plot where the effect size estimates within studies are grouped together.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

The third edition of the Open Handbook of Experience Sampling Methodology is out! The book includes 14 chapters that cover all aspects of designing, running, and analyzing the data from an ESM/EMA study. The book is freely available here: www.kuleuven.be/samenwerking...

Cover of the Open Handbook of Experience Sampling Methodology.

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Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Had a fantastic time last week in Trondheim at the @eshackathon.bsky.social 🇳🇴 A full week discussing evidence synthesis & how to improve it with a brilliant and knowledgeable interdisciplinary team. Highly energising! 🙌 Thank you to @drmattg.bsky.social for hosting us & taking such good care of us

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

I recently reviewed a paper for a top journals in statistics that was written front to back with a LLM. To make things worse, the conclusions drawn from the simulation study did not match what the results actually showed and instead just conformed to what the authors intended to show.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

I asked ChatGPT to imagine what my ideal retirement will look like. This is what it came up with.

A relaxed retired academic sits in a cozy lakeside study surrounded by books, chess pieces, Linux laptops, and R code, enjoying coffee while overlooking mountains and a peaceful European village.

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Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

Mattias Villani @matvil.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

R-folks, is the RTMB package the go-to autodiff package in R now? Limitations? Fast? Alternatives? #RStats #r4ds

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Speaking of crazy d values, this reminds me of this feature I was thinking about adding to the forest() function in metafor. #Rstats #MetaAnalysis

A forest plot showing emojis in place of the points.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Ian Hussey (@ianhussey.mmmdata.io) contacted me about the recurring problem of unusually large SMD values appearing in published meta-analyses. Very large SMDs can result from using SEs in place of SDs in their calculation, which is a mistake I have also seen in practice. 1/4

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

A new version (1.6-0) of the metadat package (wviechtb.github.io/metadat/) has been released on CRAN (cran.r-project.org/package=meta...). The package provides over 100 meta-analytic datasets, which are useful for teaching and testing purposes. #RStats #MetaAnalysis

wviechtb.github.io

Meta-Analysis Datasets

A collection of meta-analysis datasets for teaching purposes, illustrating/testing meta-analytic methods, and validating published analyses.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

A new version (5.0-1) of the metafor package has been released on CRAN. It includes some smaller updates, including more ways to visualize prediction intervals / distributions. Further details here: www.metafor-project.org/doku.php/new... #Rstats #MetaAnalysis

A forest plot with various methods for visualizing the prediction interval / distribution at the bottom.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

The best of both worlds: `<=` <- .Primitive("<-") x <= c(2,5,6) mean(x) #Rstats

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Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

@lajeunesselab.bsky.social has written the paper that meta-analysts were waiting for, and I can't recommend it more: Converting and Constructing Effect Sizes With the Response Ratio doi.org/10.1111/ele.... Go check it out (and use it!)

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Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

dennis hernaus @dhernaus.bsky.social · 17/03/2026

Two new papers out! 🎉 We revisited the idea that oxytocin promotes prosocial behaviour by collecting new data (n=211) and pooling it with data from another recent large-scale replication attempt (n=321).

sciencedirect.com

Absence of a meaningful effect of intranasal oxytocin on trusting behavior: a registered report with pooled equivalence testing

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) is thought to modulate important aspects of prosocial behavior. In a seminal paper, Kosfeld et al. (2005) reported tha…

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

I rarely use Windows, but noticed that #Rstats plots under Windows (using windows()) looked very fuzzy even with a 4k resolution. This seems to be related to DPI scaling (the system was using 200%). If I override the DPI settings for Rgui, then things are nice and crisp. Is this common knowledge?

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

Owning a house is how I personally verified the Second Law of Thermodynamics: If you stop adding energy, money, and time into it, everything falls apart.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Whenever I read 'battery of questionnaires', I think of ...

Cartoon picture of an artillery fun shooting a bunch of questionnaires at a person with the words "A BATTERY OF QUESTIONNAIRES" at the top.

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Given that John Watts studied psychology, you can't tell me that the band name Fischer-Z is not actually based on Fisher's r-to-z transformation (and that the 'fish's head' pun was invented later).

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

For people in #academia -- What's the oldest email in your inbox that you still plan to respond to at some indeterminate timepoint in your life? (in other words: Please make me feel better about my inbox of shame)

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

The plotannotate package (#RStats) is now on CRAN: cran.r-project.org/package=plot... The package allows users to annotate base R graphics plots with freehand drawing, symbols, and text. This is useful for teaching (e.g., to visually explain certain plot elements) and creating quick sketches.

cran.r-project.org

plotannotate: Annotate Plots

Interactively annotate 'base R graphics' plots with freehand drawing, symbols (points, lines, arrows, rectangles, circles, ellipses), and text. This is useful for teaching, for example to visually exp...

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Would somebody using #Rstats under macOS be so kind and do the following: x11() plot(1) getGraphicsEvent(onKeybd=function(key) return(key)) then click on the plot, and hit control-f (and the same with control-b and control-i) and tell me what it shows in the console?

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Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

Anna J. Lücke @annajluecke.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Happy to finally share the preprint for our work on how affective inertia differs within-days and overnight (with Stacey Scott, Martin Sliwinski, Josh Smyth, @wviechtb.bsky.social chtb.bsky.social‬ and @aneubauer.bsky.social) 1/4

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Marc J. Lajeunesse @lajeunesselab.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Interested in research synthesis, meta-analysis, systematic reviews, methodology, software, guidelines, best practices? 😀 📊 This #YouTube channel is really the best spot to learn and meet our community! 👇

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Reposted by Wolfgang Viechtbauer

Christel Hellberg @christelh.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Planning to do a systematic review? Do watch this very informative presentation first! Julian Higgins talks about improper use of: PRISMA reporting guideline I-squared statistics Test for asymmetry in funnel plots Random effects model #ESMARConf2025 m.youtube.com/watch?v=wRA0...

m.youtube.com

ESMARConf2025: Keynote - Misunderstandings and misuses of commonly-cited methods... - Julian Higgins

YouTube video by ESMARConf

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I love auto translations. "The Tasmanian-led approach to random-effects meta-analysis". 😕 Didn't know that there was a Tasmanian school for meta-analysis! Learning something new every day. #ESMARConf2025

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Super interesting talk by James Pustejovsky (@jepusto.bsky.social) and Martyna Citkowicz at #ESMARConf2025 on the metaselection package, which provides cluster-robust inference methods and clustered bootstrapping to account for dependencies in selection models: youtu.be/2qGcVeEqtBY

youtu.be

ESMARConf2025: Tutorial metaselection: Meta-analytic selection models with... - James Pustejovsky

YouTube video by ESMARConf

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

#ESMARConf2025 is live (www.youtube.com/@esmarconf), starting with a talk by @asanchez-tojar.bsky.social on "Practising what we preach: Rethinking standards in meta-analysis for ecology and evolution". At 11am CEST, I will give a talk on how to visualize the amount of heterogeneity in forest plots.

youtube.com

ESMARConf

About ESMARConf The Evidence Synthesis Hackathon’s (https://www.esmarconf.org) Evidence Synthesis & Meta-Analysis in R Conference (#ESMARConf2025) will take place on 11th-13th of June 2025. ESMARConf ...

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Wolfgang Viechtbauer @wviechtb.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

On Thursday evening during my weekly live stream on R and statistics, I will do something meta-analysis related in connection with #ESMARConf2025. Further details about my live streams can be found here: www.wvbauer.com/doku.php/liv...

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