iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Today we finished five intensive and inspiring Summer School days at @w-u-r.bsky.social, where we explored how to characterize, analyse and manage the many risks facing agriculture and how to strengthen its resilience! Thanks to all participants 🙏

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AEA Data Editor @aeadata.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Lesson? I don't know about the econometrics - but don't use --quietly-- in #Stata ! (or "source()" without "echo=TRUE" in #R, or drop the ";" in #MATLAB). Good night, and good computing!

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

This cow chilling at the river Rhine here in @gemeentewageningen.bsky.social might just be my spirit animal of the day!

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Robert Finger @robertfinger.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

'Probabilistic Tillage Mapping at Scale: Fusing Predictions from a Theory-Based Agronomic Model and a Bayesian Neural Network' Joins us next week for a FRIES Seminar by Alexa Leyens, University of Bonn July 13 at ETH or via zoom ethz.zoom.us/j/61682523452 FRIES frieseth.wixsite.com/friesethz

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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

🚨 We still have spots available! 🚨 Interested in deepening your understanding of risk analysis, risk management, and resilience in agriculture? Join us in our WASS PhD Summer School at Wageningen University & Research!

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I accidentally emailed the wrong Stelios and was rewarded with the best reply of the year so far 😇 🫒🇬🇷❤️

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

I increasingly cross-check the full reference list of work submitted by students (BSc-MSc-PhD). Where in the past I would mostly do a random check and quick scanning of relevant literature, I now deliberately click and search myself to rule our hallucinated references.

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Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

The rise and fall of instrumental variables and twoway fixed effects. From: arxiv.org/abs/2501.06873

Figure showing the proliferation of methods used in NBER and CEPR working papers. Instrumental variables (IV) peak around 2010, twoway fixed effects (TWFE) five years later.

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Paolo Crosetto @paolocrosetto.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

🚨Today 4pm CET🚨 PCI Webinar: The Drain of Scientific Publishing: why publishing is becoming a burden for science and how to fix it An overview talk based on three papers on #ScientificPublishing, where it stands & how to fix it. Plus dad jokes and bad acronyms. peercommunityin.org/pci-webinar-...

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

A journal just sent me a review request. But we have a paper "with editor", i.e. stuck at the first stage after submission for 4 months now. Is it understandable that I request an update on that end first, before agreeing to do work for them? #notaskingforafriend

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

@planetmoney.bsky.social I love the latest episode on Replication games!! Definitely a most listen for any scientist podcasts.apple.com/be/podcast/p...

podcasts.apple.com

Don't hate the replicator, hate the game

Podcast Episode · Planet Money · 27 February · 36m

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Another banger by Paolo Crosetto, Pablo Gómez Barreiro, and Mark Austin Hanson! While special issues with guest editors are not a problem in themselves, journals that build a business model around then invites people to start gaming the system...

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

Very grateful to have received this ERAE Reviewer certificate. But I am passing this on to @khoavuumn.bsky.social in recognition of his unique commitment to our profession. Should have been his in the first place.

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

And now a podcast segment is out on the Food for Europe podcast frol the EU: podcasts.apple.com/be/podcast/f...

podcasts.apple.com

64. Agri-Food Days 2025: focus on food security

Podcast Episode · Food for Europe · 23/12/2025 · 22m

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David Schindler @david-schindler.de · 21/12/2025

Utrecht University abolishes its English language bachelor's program in economics and replaces it with a Dutch one. They told staff (~30% international) the week before Christmas. Layoffs seem likely now. Unwarranted lobotomy is the only word I can find for it... dub.uu.nl/en/news/econ...

dub.uu.nl

Economics programme in shock after sudden cancellation of English-taught track

The Bachelor's programme in Economics & Business Economics will only be offered in Dutch from 2029 onwards, the Executive Board announced on Tuesday. The news came as a complete surprise to the econom...

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

The renewed farmers’ protests today highlight the persistence of European agricultural policy tensions. Condemning the associated violence and destructive actions is necessary. At the same time, preventing its recurrence requires understanding why farmers mobilize in the first place.

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

It was amazing to take part in the 🌽 EU Agri-Food Days 🧑‍🌾 at the European Commission as a panelist in the policy session on "Building a resilient agri-food sector".

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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 09/12/2025

Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12...

Will you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course in the future?
No.

Why won’t you incorporate LLMs and AI prompting into the course?
These tools are useful for coding (see this for my personal take on this).

However, they’re only useful if you know what you’re doing first. If you skip the learning-the-process-of-writing-code step and just copy/paste output from ChatGPT, you will not learn. You cannot learn. You cannot improve. You will not understand the code.

In that post, it warns that you cannot use it as a beginner:

…to use Databot effectively and safely, you still need the skills of a data scientist: background and domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability.

There is no LLM-based shortcut to those skills. You cannot LLM your way into domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, or coding ability.

The only way to gain domain knowledge, data analysis expertise, and coding ability is to struggle. To get errors. To google those errors. To look over the documentation. To copy/paste your own code and adapt it for different purposes. To explore messy datasets. To struggle to clean those datasets. To spend an hour looking for a missing comma.

This isn’t a form of programming hazing, like “I had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow and now you must too.” It’s the actual process of learning and growing and developing and improving. You’ve gotta struggle.

This Tumblr post puts it well (it’s about art specifically, but it applies to coding and data analysis too):

Contrary to popular belief the biggest beginner’s roadblock to art isn’t even technical skill it’s frustration tolerance, especially in the age of social media. It hurts and the frustration is endless but you must build the frustration tolerance equivalent to a roach’s capacity to survive a nuclear explosion. That’s how you build on the technical skill. Throw that “won’t even start because I’m afraid it won’t be perfect” shit out the window. Just do it. Just start. Good luck. (The original post has disappeared, but here’s a reblog.)

It’s hard, but struggling is the only way to learn anything.

You might not enjoy code as much as Williams does (or I do), but there’s still value in maintaining codings skills as you improve and learn more. You don’t want your skills to atrophy.

As I discuss here, when I do use LLMs for coding-related tasks, I purposely throw as much friction into the process as possible:

To avoid falling into over-reliance on LLM-assisted code help, I add as much friction into my workflow as possible. I only use GitHub Copilot and Claude in the browser, not through the chat sidebar in Positron or Visual Studio Code. I treat the code it generates like random answers from StackOverflow or blog posts and generally rewrite it completely. I disable the inline LLM-based auto complete in text editors. For routine tasks like generating {roxygen2} documentation scaffolding for functions, I use the {chores} package, which requires a bunch of pointing and clicking to use.

Even though I use Positron, I purposely do not use either Positron Assistant or Databot. I have them disabled.

So in the end, for pedagogical reasons, I don’t foresee me incorporating LLMs into this class. I’m pedagogically opposed to it. I’m facing all sorts of external pressure to do it, but I’m resisting.

You’ve got to learn first.

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Robert Finger @robertfinger.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

New paper in Nature Communications🥳 Our paper ’Expected effects of a global transformation of agricultural pest management’ led by Niklas Möhring is now online Open Access www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Always cool to see these kinds of Wrapped-style summaries. I particularly like the Emoji overview as well 😀

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Michael Ralph @michaelcralph.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

I talk with my Research Methods students about publishing during the semester... and I was had a difficult time explaining why I personally avoid Frontiers similar to MDPI. I will have less difficulty this coming year. From: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Experience Wageningen University & Research from anywhere in the world! Join our Virtual Open Day to watch programme presentations, chat live with students and advisers, and get an inside look at real student life in Wageningen. 📅 4 December 2025 🌍 15:00 - 21:00 CET 💻online

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

End of year reading by David Spiegelhalter and @lionelpage.bsky.social. Very much looking forward to digging in!

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Sometimes, you have to fire shots as a reviewer #EconSky 📈📉

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

Bonus panel here: www.smbc-comics.com/comic/stats-3 #smbc

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Josh McCrain @joshmccrain.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

new paper by Sean Westwood: With current technology, it is impossible to tell whether survey respondents are real or bots. Among other things, makes it easy for bad actors to manipulate outcomes. No good news here for the future of online-based survey research

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Alexander Wuttke @kunkakom.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

The billions of research funds channeled into the pockets of Elsevier and other commercial publisher in return for very little actual value is one of academia's big inefficiencies that will eventually be replaced by more attractive Community-run alternatives

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Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing: a 🧵 1/n Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820 Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/... Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below.

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time.

1. The four-fold drain

1.2 Time
The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce,
with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure
1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material
has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs,
grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for
profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time.
The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million
unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of
peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting
widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the
authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many
review demands.
Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of
scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in
‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow
progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to
volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier,
local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with
limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging
with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks
intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below:

1. The four-fold drain
1.1 Money
Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for
whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who
created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis,
which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024
alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit
margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher
(Elsevier) always over 37%.
Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most
consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial
difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor &
Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American
researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The
Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3
billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised
scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers
first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour
resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

2025 Gorilla update 👋🦍: One student found the gorilla this time around (see details in thread below). BUT, I have an AI-related update that is too good not to share ... #EconSky 📉📈

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

I concur that it is super insightful! I expect much more work leveraging these kinds of approaches in the future, there is a lot of untapped potential by exploring text data (which was tedious in the past)

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Andy Kostrub @andrewkostrub.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Updating my LEGO White House

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Exiting moment for any economist: when your kids learn about money in school 😁 #econsky

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Had the privilege to catch Refused on their goodbye tour yesterday. What a blast! It’s rare to see a band with such energy, style blending, and political and audience engagement 11/10 #RefusedAreReallyFckingDead

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C. Jänicke @cjaenicke.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Just published 🌱: We dug into 16 million+ field records across Central Europe to find out what drives farmers’ crop rotation choices. Turns out past cropping, agronomic advice, and legume prices matter a lot and legumes are likely to play a much bigger role in the future👉 doi.org/10.1016/j.ag...

doi.org

Redirecting

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

The only kind of gang activity we get to see around #Wegeningen

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Richard Tol @richardtol.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

All is not well at Elsevier richardtol.substack.com/p/fraud-and-...

richardtol.substack.com

Fraud and cover-up

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Great use case of ClaudeAI or ChatGPT: to transfer equations from a textbook to PowerPoint slides I just take a picture and ask for Latex code that can be plugged into the equation editor and converted into a perfect vector-based equation!

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Bluesky @bsky.app · 08/09/2025

v1.108 is rolling out today 🚚 Now live, at long last: Bookmarks, aka Saved Posts. For all those posts you'll definitely plan to come back to! Update the app and give it a try. The button is right down there 👇

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Greatly looking forward to the next AgEconMeet session with Marc Bellemare in two weeks

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Tatyana Deryugina @tderyugina.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Today's ChatGPT use case: give it Stata code and have it draft a methodology section based on it. A straightforward yet somewhat time-consuming task to do manually. Bonus: if the writeup doesn't match what you THINK you did, it may be due to an error in your code that you didn't catch. #EconSky

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

Just received a physical copy of the dissertation of one of my own PhD students via the internal mail system … from the other side of the building 🤣 (one elevator ride away). Gotta love bureaucracy 👏

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Final day of the #EAAE2025! Kicking it off with an organized session on analyzing farmers’ voices in the farmer protests. Great way to showcase the work we did in DE-FR-BE-NL in a great team led by Doris Läpple

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Very cool keynote by prof Anna Dreber about the replicability crisis and potential solutions 🙏 #EAAE2025

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Yann de Mey @yanndemey.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

We had a nice session this morning about “What the EAAE can do for early career agecons”! #EAAE2025

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