Nicholas A. Christakis
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nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis
@nachristakis.bsky.social

Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University. Sociologist. Network Scientist. Physician. Author of Apollo's Arrow; Blueprint; Connected; and Death Foretold. Director of the Human Nature Lab: https://humannaturelab.net .. more

Nicholas A. Christakis is a Greek American sociologist and physician known for his research on social networks and on the social, economic, biological, and evolutionary determinants of human welfare. He is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University, where he directs the Human Nature Lab. He is also the co-director of the Yale Institute for Network Science. .. more

Public Health 23%
Physics 18%

“A thousand years, this city has stood. Now, at the whim of a madman, it will fall.”

Yes the engagement is better. And bluesky now is an adequate replacement of Twitter as a source of scientific information. Still, I wish more scientists and organizations would move here from there.

NEW: 6 federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned today because of DOJ's push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and the department’s reluctance to investigate the shooter
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/u...
Six Prosecutors Quit Over Push to Investigate ICE Shooting Victim’s Widow
www.nytimes.com

The Barbary slave trade involved the capture of 35K-1M Europeans and selling them at slave markets in the Barbary states of North Africa. Europeans were captured in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to Ireland.
Barbary slave trade - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
The epitome of a “Kavanaugh Stop.”

“[CBP] sometimes makes brief investigative stops to check immigration status…. If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a US citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go.”

History will remember Brett.
ICE kidnap 17-year-old U.S. citizen working at Target then dump him bleeding and crying miles away in a Walmart parking lot… 🤬

Multiple monkeys are on the loose in St. Louis. And AI generated images are complicating the effort to find them.

apnews.com/article/monk...
Monkeys are on the loose in St. Louis and AI is complicating efforts to capture them
Multiple monkeys are on the loose in St. Louis. And AI generated images are complicating the effort to find them.
apnews.com

Zoom adds a feature?

"Will skip." Now this is a fine use of predictive algorithms.
This network analyzer is very efficient and allows you to find interesting accounts, eg. people followed by lots of the people you follow (but not you).

bsky-follow-finder.theo.io

(Reposting this for folks who have joined Bsky more recently)
Q: "Do you believe that deadly force was necessary?"

Trump: "It was highly disrespectful of law enforcement. The woman and her friend were highly disrespectful of law enforcement…Law enforcement should not be in a position where they have to put up with this stuff."

The morphospace lives on.
Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
WSJ investigation: In the past 6 months ICE agents have fired at vehicles 13 times, leading to:

* 8 people shot
* 5 of which were U.S. citizens
* 2 died
* no victims drew a weapon

The playbook: Agents box in a vehicle, block attempts to flee, then fire

www.wsj.com/us-news/vide...
Videos Show How ICE Vehicle Stops Can Escalate to Shootings
A WSJ visual investigation found that the Minneapolis ICE killing is one of 13 incidents where federal immigration agents have used deadly force against civilians in vehicles since July.
www.wsj.com

And here is Prof. Arthur Galston's response, verbatim, to the challenge of coping with the abuse of one's scientific work.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUL0...
The Galston Answer
YouTube video by For the Love of Science
www.youtube.com

Oppenheimer said "I am become Shiva, the destroyer of worlds." But what if your scientific work is used in (less extreme) harmful ways? How should a scientist cope with this?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoAg...
What to Do if Your Work is Abused
YouTube video by For the Love of Science
www.youtube.com

A Kavanaugh stop lasting 25 days in jail?
ICE releases Maryland woman attorneys say is US citizen after 25 days in detention

"A young woman, whose family says she was born in Laurel and is a U.S. citizen, was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody Wednesday after 25 days in detention"

www.thebanner.com/community/ic...
ICE releases Maryland woman attorneys say is US citizen after 25 days in detention

"A young woman, whose family says she was born in Laurel and is a U.S. citizen, was released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody Wednesday after 25 days in detention"

www.thebanner.com/community/ic...
The seven circuits to resolve the issue - the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 10th, & 11th - all agree that the First Amendment protects the right to record police in public. The 8th, which covers Minnesota, hasn't joined yet but very likely would. My piece at @thedispatchmedia.bsky.social last fall.
DHS Says Videotaping ICE Agents Is Illegal. Federal Courts Disagree.
Filming law enforcement serves important goals central to a free republic.
www.cato.org

Thanks for the kind words.

Our new vlog

For the Love of Science

has weekly updates on the craft of science

at YouTube (youtube.com/@NAChristakis) or on Instagram (instagram.com/p/DTQbdgvAN-T/).

This week's installment:

What to Do if Your Work Is Abused
and
The Galston Answer
For the Love of Science
Weekly videos about the craft of science. A Human Nature Lab science outreach effort.
youtube.com

Still, a scientist should not avoid doing work that might be used for bad ends for fear that it might be abused. The primary commitment of a scientist is to the truth.

Here is the full reading of what my teacher, the botanist and Yale professor Arthur Galston, had to say about this challenge scientists can face, long ago, when he found that his work on plant hormones was unexpectedly used in Agent Orange:

The Galston Answer

youtube.com/watch?v=nUL0...
The Galston Answer
YouTube video by For the Love of Science
youtube.com

The solution to the challenge of others abusing one's scientific discoveries is to stay engaged. The work of a scientist doesn't stop upon publication.

I faced this challenge (of others abusing my work) when our paper on the social contagion of obesity appeared in 2007. People (and headlines) said you should "ditch your fat friends." I didn't expect this negative framing, or the death threats. I was very troubled by this.
www.nejm.org

New "For the Love of Science" short vlog:

What to Do if Your Work Is Abused

What should scientists do if their work is used for bad purposes?

youtube.com/watch?v=KoAg...
What to Do if Your Work is Abused
YouTube video by For the Love of Science
youtube.com