Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Tim Frasier

Andrew Gelman et al. @statmodeling.bsky.social · 1d

7 reasons to use Bayesian inference!
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/10/11/7...

7 reasons to use Bayesian inference! | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

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Tim Frasier @tfrasierdna.bsky.social · 1d

Leaf blowers are one of the most effective tools I've seen for turning your problem into someone else's problem.

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Hanbin Lee @epigenci.bsky.social · 3d

Our paper (Brieuc Lehmann is the first author) is now online in Genetics.

academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

On ARGs, pedigrees, and genetic relatedness matrices

Abstract. Genetic relatedness is a central concept in genetics, underpinning studies of population and quantitative genetics in human, animal, and plant se

academic.oup.com

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Tim Frasier @tfrasierdna.bsky.social · 10d

So sad to hear about the passing of Jane Goodall. She was a huge inspiration for me. I was lucky enough to see her give talk, and to meet here, many years ago. A huge loss.

Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 11d

Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91

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Jente Ottenburghs | Avian Hybrids @jenteo.bsky.social · 11d

New story on the Avian Hybrids blog!

The hidden effects of genetic purging in Galápagos Mockingbirds
avianhybrids.wordpress.com/2025/10/01/t...

Based on the Molecular Ecology study by Jakub Vlček, Sebastian Espinoza-Ulloa and their colleagues | #ornithology

The hidden effects of genetic purging in Galápagos Mockingbirds

Exploring patterns of genetic load across island populations.

avianhybrids.wordpress.com

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Pierre de Villemereuil @pdevillemereuil.bsky.social · 18d

In 2020, O Gaggiotti, J Goudet and I showed that Qst-Fst comparison was uncalibrated with high population structure.

During her PhD with us, Isa do O developed LogAV: a method that accounts for any population structure while testing for local adaptation :
journals.plos.org/plosgenetics...

A method for identifying local adaptation in structured populations

Species occupy diverse, heterogeneous environments, which expose populations to spatially varied selective pressures. Populations in different environments can diverge due to local adaptation. However...

journals.plos.org

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Environmental Politics @environmentalpol.bsky.social · 18d

New article from @stefcraps.com!

Ecological apologies: reckoning with grief, guilt, and multispecies justice.

doi.org/10.1080/0964...

ABSTRACT
Focusing on British artist Marcus Coates’s Apology to the Great Auk, a short film documenting an official apology to an extinct bird, this article explores the possibility and desirability of political apologies for anthropogenic species extinction. While the apology presented in the film fails to meet key criteria, it nonetheless offers something of political value. Coates’s work constitutes an audacious and innovative attempt to leverage ecological grief and guilt to counteract dominant discourses that devalue more-than-human life; to redraw the boundaries of the moral, legal, and political community; and to imagine a future of multispecies flourishing. By interpreting Apology to the Great Auk through the lenses of environmental transitional justice, bad environmentalism, and ecological prefiguration, the article demonstrates its potential as an artistic project, and the potential of ecological apologies more generally, to help us think and work towards care, justice, and moral repair beyond the human.

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Gregg Rosenthal @greggrosenthal.bsky.social · Sep 11

Week 2 mega preview with @patrickclaybon.bsky.social @jourdanrodrigue.bsky.social

- Buying more Jets stock
- Kyle Pitts SZN?
- The Titans defense: creditable
- Bo Nix trying stuff
- Puns. So many puns

🎧: landing.podtrac.com/nfldaily
📺: youtu.be/rxi0ko9dDp0?...

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Yun S. Song @yun-s-song.bsky.social · Sep 11

SINGER, our ARG inference method, is finally published and freely available online:

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

It was a long journey – 16 months from initial submission to acceptance. Is it just me, or has peer review gotten more arduous lately? 4+ rounds of review isn't so unusual these days...

Robust and accurate Bayesian inference of genome-wide genealogies for hundreds of genomes - Nature Genetics

SINGER is a method for creating ancestral recombination graphs to understand the genealogical history of genomes. The method has increased speed, and thus scalability, without sacrificing accuracy.

doi.org

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Dr Susan D Blum @susandblum.bsky.social · Sep 11

This new book, The Ungraded Classroom, edited by Carlo Ricci and Gina Riley (with a foreword by @susandblum), has just been published! It has many examples, beautifully and honestly presented, of ways educators have included ungrading in their classrooms. www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQHZKJZ...

The Ungraded Classroom: Feedback, Reflection, and Authentic Learning

The Ungraded Classroom: Feedback, Reflection, and Authentic Learning [Ricci PhD, Carlo, Riley PhD, Gina] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Ungraded Classroom: Feedback, Reflection, and Authentic Learning

www.amazon.com

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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · Sep 3

Wow, Florida at it again… planning to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, even for schoolkids. Don’t let the facts of decades of preventing outbreaks and protecting public health get in the way.

DeSantis administration pushes to eliminate all vaccine mandates in Florida • Florida Phoenix

School children, college students, and even nursing home residents would no longer have to be vaccinated against infectious diseases and viruses if Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo and his boss, ...

floridaphoenix.com

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The Innocence Project @innocenceproject.bsky.social · Sep 2

Ever wonder what a day in the life of an Innocence Project lawyer is like? Take a moment to read this @reuters.com profile of Director of Strategic Litigation Chris Fabricant and learn about the everyday challenges our legal team faces. www.reuters.com/practical-la...

Public Interest Profile | Practical Law The Journal | Reuters

M. Chris Fabricant, Innocence Project

www.reuters.com

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Olivier Gimenez 🦦 @oaggimenez.bsky.social · Sep 2

How do wildlife populations respond to human pressures, and how can we better predict these responses to guide conservation? Here, we review current modelling approaches and highlight new opportunities, with case studies.

🔗 Open access: doi.org/10.1111/ele....

🙌🙏 @cassiespeakman.bsky.social

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Mattan S. Ben-Shachar 🎗️🇮🇱🇺🇦 @mattansb.msbstats.info · Aug 31

I finally tried out {priorsense}📦 with #Stan #rstats and it's awesome!

Fed it a simple model I use for teaching, and found some (minor) prior-data conflicts. The powerscale_plot_dens() function really helps in understanding how "bad" the conflict is.

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Mark @ferl67.bsky.social · Aug 29

Alberta, Canada

The Handmaid's Tale among more than 200 books to be pulled at Edmonton public schools

Internally distributed list obtained by CBC shows more than 200 books slated for removal
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The Handmaid's Tale among more than 200 books to be pulled at Edmonton public schools | CBC News

A list confirmed by CBC News shows titles like The Handmaid's Tale and Brave New World are among books to be pulled. The development comes after a policy from Alberta's education minister outlines new...

www.cbc.ca

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Dr. Arun Sethuraman @arunsethuraman.bsky.social · Aug 28

At this point, I bet you can bottle horse dewormer, call it CureAll, and sell it on pharmacy shelves, and there would be no consequence. Oh wait! They already do that, with endorsement from a dude with worms in his brain!

John Greally @greally.bsky.social · Aug 28

And this beauty.

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Dr. Arun Sethuraman @arunsethuraman.bsky.social · Aug 28

Errrmm 🤦🏾‍♂️

Carmelo Ferrai @carmeloferrai.bsky.social · Aug 27

@magnanilab.bsky.social

What a hell is that? 🤪

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Ming Tommy Tang @tommytang.bsky.social · Aug 27

Bioinformatics workbook
bioinformaticsworkbook.org/#gsc.tab=0

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Ming Tommy Tang @tommytang.bsky.social · Aug 26

Free course: Intro to Computational Biology by Mike Love, author of DESeq2.
biodatascience.github.io/compbio/

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Reposted by Tim Frasier

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · Aug 25

Ever stared at a table of regression coefficients & wondered what you're doing with your life?

Very excited to share this gentle introduction to another way of making sense of statistical models (w @vincentab.bsky.social)
Preprint: doi.org/10.31234/osf...
Website: j-rohrer.github.io/marginal-psy...

Models as Prediction Machines: How to Convert Confusing Coefficients into Clear Quantities

Abstract
Psychological researchers usually make sense of regression models by interpreting coefficient estimates directly. This works well enough for simple linear models, but is more challenging for more complex models with, for example, categorical variables, interactions, non-linearities, and hierarchical structures. Here, we introduce an alternative approach to making sense of statistical models. The central idea is to abstract away from the mechanics of estimation, and to treat models as “counterfactual prediction machines,” which are subsequently queried to estimate quantities and conduct tests that matter substantively. This workflow is model-agnostic; it can be applied in a consistent fashion to draw causal or descriptive inference from a wide range of models. We illustrate how to implement this workflow with the marginaleffects package, which supports over 100 different classes of models in R and Python, and present two worked examples. These examples show how the workflow can be applied across designs (e.g., observational study, randomized experiment) to answer different research questions (e.g., associations, causal effects, effect heterogeneity) while facing various challenges (e.g., controlling for confounders in a flexible manner, modelling ordinal outcomes, and interpreting non-linear models).

Figure illustrating model predictions. On the X-axis the predictor, annual gross income in Euro. On the Y-axis the outcome, predicted life satisfaction. A solid line marks the curve of predictions on which individual data points are marked as model-implied outcomes at incomes of interest. Comparing two such predictions gives us a comparison. We can also fit a tangent to the line of predictions, which illustrates the slope at any given point of the curve.

A figure illustrating various ways to include age as a predictor in a model. On the x-axis age (predictor), on the y-axis the outcome (model-implied importance of friends, including confidence intervals).

Illustrated are
1. age as a categorical predictor, resultings in the predictions bouncing around a lot with wide confidence intervals
2. age as a linear predictor, which forces a straight line through the data points that has a very tight confidence band and
3. age splines, which lies somewhere in between as it smoothly follows the data but has more uncertainty than the straight line.

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Olivier Gimenez 🦦 @oaggimenez.bsky.social · Aug 20

hbr.org/2025/02/the-...

The Case for Sabbaticals — and How to Take a Successful One

A sabbatical — defined here as an intentional extended leave from your job-related work — may seem out of reach for many workers. But if you can swing it, the potential payoff is enormous. In fact, ta...

hbr.org

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Dr. Arun Sethuraman @arunsethuraman.bsky.social · Aug 19

Excited for this year's lineup of fabulous speakers, including @bielleogy.bsky.social, @catalicu.bsky.social, and others at the @calstate.bsky.social Virtual Bioinformatics Webinar series! I hope that you'll join us - Friday's at noon Pacific. Deets in the flyer.

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Dr Mark E Hauber @thecowbirdlab.bsky.social · Aug 14

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Genetic purging in an island-endemic pigeon recovering from the brink of extinction - Communications Biology

genomic sequencing of the critically endangered red-headed wood pigeon reveals a low frequency of deleterious mutations despite high homozygosity, suggesting that historical inbreeding may have purged...

www.nature.com

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · Aug 13

The team of Ph.D. level experts in ChatGPT apparently doesn't include any anatomists.

Grade F level diagram of an ostrich skeleton. The pelvis is labelled as a humerus, and sternum appears to be labeled as the pelvis.

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The Carpentries @carpentries.carpentries.org · Aug 13

📢 The Carpentries is in Forbes!

Our Directors @drkariljordan.bsky.social @erinstellabecker.bsky.social were interviewed by @jdrakephd.bsky.social for Forbes on The Carpentries' decision to withdrew from the $1.5M science grant due to new federal DEI rules: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Nonprofit Refuses $1.5M Science Grant Due To New Federal DEI Rules

A coding nonprofit turned down a $1.5M NSF grant after new DEI restrictions, highlighting the clash between federal policy and scientific community values.

www.forbes.com

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