Yes, worry about generalizing from data to population. But multilevel modeling is the solution, not the problem – Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

Robin Blythe on “If you decide to write about this paper in your blog, please don’t mention my name. It is important to me to remain anonymous. . . . exposure might harm me or my students.”October 19, 2026 10:55 AM
I am a bit confused about this post. The scientist was asked to review a PNAS paper and found several…
Dale Lehman on “If you decide to write about this paper in your blog, please don’t mention my name. It is important to me to remain anonymous. . . . exposure might harm me or my students.”October 19, 2026 10:32 AM
Since we don't have the details, I can only comment on the spirit of the communication. It is unfortunate that…
AAAnonymous on “If you decide to write about this paper in your blog, please don’t mention my name. It is important to me to remain anonymous. . . . exposure might harm me or my students.”October 19, 2026 10:25 AM
From a certain perspective pre-registration might not only provide some more transparency and clarity concerning research design and statistical analysis…
Andrew on OK, here’s a new scam. But I can’t figure out how it’s supposed to work.October 19, 2026 9:38 AM
$3000, $5000, either way it's not enough to afford a ticket to a conference with Gray Davis, Grover Norquist, and…
Joshua on Seeking to interview social scientists experimenting with LLM simulations of opinions or behaviorOctober 19, 2026 8:18 AM
Thanks Jessica. Outside of ethical issues as Dale refers to, I really don't see how scientists would get past the…
piglet42 on Columbia University says, “We believe in difficult conversations at Columbia—in a broad embrace of freedom of expression. It’s in our DNA.”October 19, 2026 6:57 AM
Why would anybody claim that the slogan "from the river to the sea - freedom and democracy" is a threat…
Eoin L on OK, here’s a new scam. But I can’t figure out how it’s supposed to work.October 19, 2026 6:38 AM
Could it be a variant of the recent Tai Chi scam? The idea is that the ad (or email in…
piglet42 on Why do we like wind chimes?October 19, 2026 6:07 AM
"Why do you like the sound of rain?"
dnm on “I write to seek your help and advice regarding a published article that my group and I believe is invalid and should be corrected or retracted.”October 19, 2026 5:17 AM
Apart from anything else, your correspondent should publish a comment on Pubpeer. This does not directly correct the scientific record,…
Andrew Whitelaw on OK, here’s a new scam. But I can’t figure out how it’s supposed to work.October 19, 2026 3:05 AM
Thanks for the views. I've also just received this email - but only offering 3000 USD. Obviously suffering from budget…
Daniel Klein on “I write to seek your help and advice regarding a published article that my group and I believe is invalid and should be corrected or retracted.”October 18, 2026 6:49 PM
Please consider submitting to Econ Journal Watch.
Kyle C on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 18, 2026 6:14 PM
That site doesn't offer a biased coin as such.
Nicolas Posner on Nicholas Goddamn RoerichOctober 18, 2026 5:04 PM
Very glad you wrote about him! I just popped up to the museum yesterday on your recommendation, absolutely magical! The…
Jonathan (another one) on Why do we like wind chimes?October 18, 2026 5:00 PM
What do you mean "we don't really like random words?" -- Claude
Jukka on Seeking to interview social scientists experimenting with LLM simulations of opinions or behaviorOctober 18, 2026 3:20 PM
Sure, and good luck. For the record: these so-called personas are one use case I know some of them are…
Jessica Hullman on Seeking to interview social scientists experimenting with LLM simulations of opinions or behaviorOctober 18, 2026 3:10 PM
That could be useful to get an overview of what people are thinking about when it comes to validation, but…
Andrew on “I write to seek your help and advice regarding a published article that my group and I believe is invalid and should be corrected or retracted.”October 18, 2026 1:44 PM
Jukka: They can publish their letter in a preprint archive; the difficulty is that the other paper is just sitting…
Jukka on Seeking to interview social scientists experimenting with LLM simulations of opinions or behaviorOctober 18, 2026 1:13 PM
"Specifically, we’re looking for researchers in academia or industry who are currently using LLM simulations in their work and could…
Jukka on “I write to seek your help and advice regarding a published article that my group and I believe is invalid and should be corrected or retracted.”October 18, 2026 1:09 PM
What gives? It is 2026; publish it in a "pre-print" archive?
Proxomitron on “I write to seek your help and advice regarding a published article that my group and I believe is invalid and should be corrected or retracted.”October 18, 2026 12:46 PM
I wonder if anything has happened in the past 2 years?
Anonymous on “I write to seek your help and advice regarding a published article that my group and I believe is invalid and should be corrected or retracted.”October 18, 2026 12:42 PM
A paper with no shared data, even anonymized, should receive no attention or credit. It's amazing they went to such…
Anonymous on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 18, 2026 12:15 PM
I hope you put in economics as an example of pseudoscience.
AAAnonymous on “I write to seek your help and advice regarding a published article that my group and I believe is invalid and should be corrected or retracted.”October 18, 2026 9:42 AM
This seems to be a recurring thing, e.g. see the recent post dated oct. 15th 2026 on this blog, and…
Gregory C. Mayer on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 18, 2026 8:30 AM
Andrew-- Having taught a class on "Science & Pseudoscience", which includes elements of probability and magic, I know that the…
AAAnonymous on A plan to replicate the Loftus and Palmer (1974) experiment on false memoriesOctober 18, 2026 5:45 AM
As a result of a recent new blog post by Zwaan about this project dated oct. 15th 2026, I just…
Carlos Ungil on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 17, 2026 6:00 PM
> even if an appropriate probability is 1/1000, it’s still no shocker for it not to happen in 2000 games.…
Anoneuoid on The problem is noise, not N: why increasing the sample size isn’t all that.October 17, 2026 4:21 PM
The usual thing is to split your data by date into training/validation/test. Lockbox that test data. 1) Fit your model…
Jean-Paul Fischer on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 17, 2026 4:04 PM
I calculated the probability of the event 27\7\7, assuming a normal distribution of the three scores (which seems more realistic…
Chuck Jackson on Why do is it so hard to get a cell phone number with no 0’s or 1’s?October 17, 2026 2:00 PM
Hmm. I think that the initial 1 restriction was in place well before direct distance dialing was implemented. IIRC, the…
AAAnonymous on Why do we like wind chimes?October 17, 2026 1:49 PM
Quote from the blog post: "You know your question, “why do we like to listen to music over and over…
Bob Carpenter on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 17, 2026 1:28 PM
As Andrew knows, I love these little case studies. Every leaf of every tree, as they say. Remember we're assuming…
Eric C on The problem is noise, not N: why increasing the sample size isn’t all that.October 17, 2026 1:10 PM
Hi Andrew, this comment struck a chord with me as it is exactly one of the many problems I am…
Raghu Parthasarathy on Why do we like wind chimes?October 17, 2026 1:02 PM
I like wind chimes! I know nothing about them, but I'd guess that the notes aren't random but are probably…
Elmir Omerovic on JAMA rules of engagement on causal and predictive languageOctober 17, 2026 12:36 PM
For what it’s worth, JAMA’s editors have been moving on this, even if the boilerplate Andrew received still carries the…
Matt Skaggs on JAMA rules of engagement on causal and predictive languageOctober 17, 2026 10:43 AM
I didn't notice the link to the Kennaway 2015 paper in the previous thread. It is pertinent to me because…
O.Grouch on The revelation came while hearing a background music version of Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida” at a Mr. Steak restaurant in ColoradoOctober 17, 2026 10:17 AM
Nothing is worse than the Kars-4-Kids jingle. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
Olaf Zimmermann on Why do we like wind chimes?October 17, 2026 9:30 AM
It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years" (Tom Lehrer)
Will on Why do we like wind chimes?October 17, 2026 9:23 AM
I hate wind chimes and I resent neighbors who use them because they ruin what otherwise would be the pleasant…
Dale Lehman on Seeking to interview social scientists experimenting with LLM simulations of opinions or behaviorOctober 17, 2026 8:28 AM
The idea of substituting LLM output for human behavior seems totally misguided to me. At some point (perhaps already), and…
Bob Carpenter on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 17, 2026 2:04 AM
I felt bad about not calculating marginal variances and correlations. (vs-stan) lebron$ python dispersion.py == All games == N mean…
Jessica Hullman on Seeking to interview social scientists experimenting with LLM simulations of opinions or behaviorOctober 16, 2026 10:58 PM
Yes, good questions. Substitution isn't always the goal people have in mind -- there are settings where one might use…
Ryan Brill on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 16, 2026 10:03 PM
Use Poisson Limit Theorem to calculate this courtside. Lambda ≈ np = 2000 • 1/2000 = 1, then P(number of…
Joshua on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 16, 2026 8:40 PM
uh...I didn't mean to imply that statisticians aren't people. Sorry about that.
Joshua on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 16, 2026 8:22 PM
``` Let's assume that Simmons is a stand-in for a reasonably intelligent person for whom sophisticated statistics is a bit…
Andrew on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 16, 2026 8:12 PM
Wins thread.
Bob Carpenter on How surprising is it that LeBron averaged 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists in his career but never had one game where he had 27 points, 7 rebounds, and 7 assists?October 16, 2026 7:39 PM
0.0009 (1 in 1100) is the posterior mean estimate based on a simple compound multivariate normal-Poisson model. 90% central interval…
Andrew on Seeking to interview social scientists experimenting with LLM simulations of opinions or behaviorOctober 16, 2026 7:07 PM
Joshua: I discussed that issue in this recent post, It’s fine to use computer-generated survey responses—if you don’t care about…
Joshua on Seeking to interview social scientists experimenting with LLM simulations of opinions or behaviorOctober 16, 2026 6:45 PM
Jessica - Not to jump ahead of the results of your work, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my…
Andrew on Seeking to interview social scientists experimenting with LLM simulations of opinions or behaviorOctober 16, 2026 5:50 PM
Better still, have the LLM create the output, write the paper, submit it to SSRN---if you're not sure on this…
Jessica Hullman on Seeking to interview social scientists experimenting with LLM simulations of opinions or behaviorOctober 16, 2026 5:24 PM
thanks, I'll check it out.