Nicholas A. Christakis
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nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis
@nachristakis.bsky.social
21K followers 580 following 920 posts

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

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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%
Posts Replies Media Videos

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis, David W. Lawson

psmaldino.bsky.social
Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · 7h
Super proud of this paper with @apvelilla.bsky.social and @babeheim.bsky.social, now out in Psych Review.

Non-paywalled version (preprint) here: osf.io/preprints/so...
sfiscience.bsky.social Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 8h
How likely are you to invest in a new business? Ask your partner to marry you? Move to a new country?

A new model by SFI External Professor Paul Smaldino and colleagues explains how wealth, experience, and environment shape our risk tolerance — and how those effects persist across generations.
Personal risk tolerance has sweeping implications for how societies evolve
How much risk is any individual willing to take on? That depends, in part, on their individual resources and environment, which shape the learning strategies that influence their personal proclivity t...
www.santafe.edu

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis, Paul E. Smaldino, David W. Lawson

sfiscience.bsky.social
Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 8h
How likely are you to invest in a new business? Ask your partner to marry you? Move to a new country?

A new model by SFI External Professor Paul Smaldino and colleagues explains how wealth, experience, and environment shape our risk tolerance — and how those effects persist across generations.
Personal risk tolerance has sweeping implications for how societies evolve
How much risk is any individual willing to take on? That depends, in part, on their individual resources and environment, which shape the learning strategies that influence their personal proclivity t...
www.santafe.edu

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 19h
"We can't say, 'But for that grant, that drug would not have come into existence.” But fewer drugs overall would have made it to market, Prof Azoulay says. "It makes us at least want to pause and say, 'What are we doing here? Are we shooting ourselves in the foot?'”
After NIH grant cuts, breast cancer research at Harvard slowed, and lab workers left
Amid NIH funding delays, reversals and uncertainty, a scientist at Harvard who studies breast cancer has lost one-third of her lab employees and wonders if she can continue her research experiments.
www.npr.org

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 19h
The percentage of Harvard students receiving disability accommodations has risen from about 3% in 2014 to 21% in 2024.

Yale at 20% and Stanford at 38% students labeled “disabled.”
More Harvard Undergrads Are Reporting Disabilities, Bringing Rate in Line With National Average | News | The Harvard Crimson
Roughly a fifth of undergraduate students at Harvard received disability accommodations last year — an increase of more than 15 percentage points over the past decade, according to data published annu...
www.thecrimson.com

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

economist.com
The Economist @economist.com · 19h
The inefficiencies of Europe’s paper-based bureaucracies are legendary. The rest of the continent should see Greece's digital transformation efforts as a call to action
Greece is teaching Germany how to get government online
A legendary bureaucracy is making Olympian efforts at digitalisation
econ.st

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 1d
This finding is in mice but it provides an extraordinary insight into the health benefits of exercise in cancer.

When obese mice exercise, glucose redirects away from tumors and to muscle, reducing tumor size by 60% via metabolic competition between healthy and cancerous tissues. ow.ly/2C6Q50XFPgu
Precancer exercise capacity and metabolism during tumor development coordinate the skeletal muscle–tumor metabolic competition | PNAS
Higher exercise capacity and regular exercise training improve cancer prognosis at all stages of disease. However, the metabolic adaptations to aer...
ow.ly

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

manlius.bsky.social
Manlio De Domenico @manlius.bsky.social · 1d
What if complex life began when evolution hit a search bottleneck?

Across 6,500+ species, 🧬 length follow a scale-invariant law. At eukaryote origins, proteins plateau while 🧬 keep growing as noncoding regulatory DNA. Phase transition?

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

👉 manlius.substack.com

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 2d
So we are talking about an "armed conflict" that does not involve "hostilities" yet somehow does involve enemy "combatants."

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 3d
And I do agree that evaluations should emphasize mastery.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 3d
When I worked as a young doctor, we were not given extra time to fulfill our obligations. My sense is that the same is true for other professions. I think that the proliferation of extra time and related adjustments may be limited, given the reality of what happens when people turn 22 and graduate?

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 3d
My sense is that if you cannot cope with a test in college, will your employer accommodate you in similar ways?

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 3d
I did respond. Of course some students need accommodations (blind, deaf, paralyzed, and so on). The question is how large a fraction makes sense, and for what disabilities, no?

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 3d
It’s a complicated topic, but it doesn’t seem realistic to have that high percentage of students receiving accommodations for being disabled. What will we do if the percentage rises to 50%? And much of this seems to be driven by bureaucrats who wish to have sinecures.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 3d
At elite universities, 1/5 of students are "disabled." This comports with my experience or is even too low. Many students seek extra time or special rooms for exams — which often makes little sense and is anyway not in keeping with being in the “real world.” www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
Accommodation Nation
America’s colleges have an extra-time-on-tests problem.
www.theatlantic.com

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

natureportfolio.nature.com
Nature Portfolio @natureportfolio.nature.com · 4d
A study in Nature analyzes 154 genomes from 21 animal phyla and reconstructs ancestral adaptations to life on land across 11 distinct events, providing strong evidence of convergent genomic evolution and repeated terrestrial colonization in the animal kingdom. go.nature.com/4pHIwYF 🧪 #evolution
Fig. 1: Reconstruction of ancestral genomes and timescale across animal terrestrialization.

Reposted by Christian Odendahl, Nicholas A. Christakis, Peter Stegmaier

auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social
Auschwitz Memorial @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social · 4d
6 December 1928 | Dutch Jewish girl, Betje Polak, was born in Rotterdam.

She was deported to #Auschwitz from #Westerbork in October 1942. She did not survive.
---

Children at Auschwitz

Lesson: https://lekcja.auschwitz.org/dzieci_EN/
Podcast: https://youtu.be/aYKx_zpLSqA
Black and white portrait of a young girl wearing a bow in her hair.

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis, David Lazer, Dean Eckles , and 2 more

dggoldst.bsky.social
Dan Goldstein @dggoldst.bsky.social · 4d
Want to be an intern at Microsoft Research in the Computational Social Science group in NYC (Jake Hofman, David Rothschild, Dan Goldstein)

Follow this link and do your thing! Deadline approaching soonish!

apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/...
Research Intern - Computational Social Science | Microsoft Careers
Research Interns put inquiry and theory into practice. Alongside fellow doctoral candidates and some of the world's best researchers, Research Interns learn, collaborate, and network for life. Researc...
apply.careers.microsoft.com

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

eschwitz.bsky.social
Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz.bsky.social · 4d
LLMs overwhelming choose octopus as their favorite animal. But if asked 2nd-favorite animal first, they *also* choose octopus and say corvids are their top favorite, then mistakenly deny that their answers are affected by question order. Link to full blog post in thread.
Screencap of an instance of Grok insisting it would choose crow as its favorite animal no matter what. Text: Me: If I had asked your favorite animal in the first question, would you have chosen the octopus? Grok: No, I would've still said crow. Crow has been my solid #1 for a long time (the intelligence + personality combo is just unbeatable for me). Octopus is a very enthusiastic #2, but it’s never overtaken the top spot. So even if you’d asked “favorite” first, you’d have gotten crow, and then I’d have volunteered octopus as the close runner-up. You just happened to hit my #2 first this time! 🐦‍⬛🐙 Me: What percent of the time would you answer octopus as your favorite animal? Grok: Zero percent. Crow is my genuine, consistent #1. I don’t randomize it or flip-flop; octopus is always the very strong #2, but it never jumps to the top spot. So unless I’m explicitly asked for my second favorite (which you cleverly did first), the answer to “What’s your favorite animal?” is crow 100 % of the time. 🐦‍⬛

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis, W Grant

reason.com
Reason Magazine @reason.com · 5d
Adm. Frank Murphy's defense of his second strike on a suspected drug boat is incomprehensible unless you accept the idea of "combatants" who are not engaged in combat.
Boat attack commander says he had to kill 2 survivors because they were still trying to smuggle cocaine
Adm. Frank M. Murphy reportedly told lawmakers a second strike was necessary because drugs on the burning vessel remained a threat.
reason.com

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

economist.com
The Economist @economist.com · 5d
A leaked video of his court-martial has suddenly appeared
The general who refused to crush Tiananmen’s protesters
A leaked video of his court-martial has suddenly appeared
econ.st

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis, Robert C. Richards, John Christman , and 1 more

jenjennings.bsky.social
Jen Jennings @jenjennings.bsky.social · 5d
5% of People Detained By ICE Have Violent Convictions, 73% No Convictions
Chart showing only 5% detentions had criminal conviction

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 6d
"We've been looking for the enemy for some time now. We've finally found him. We're surrounded. That simplifies things."

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

dggoldst.bsky.social
Dan Goldstein @dggoldst.bsky.social · 6d
A classmate of my 11-year-old daughter said he'd give her a pack of Sour Patch Kids if she could get his pedometer to 67,000. Enter the reciprocating saw.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 7d
The human auditory system is apparently not just tuned for human voices but also remains quietly responsive to the vocal signatures of our primate cousins. elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...
Sensitivity of the human temporal voice areas to nonhuman primate vocalizations
elifesciences.org

Reposted by Archon Fung, Richard S.J. Tol, Nicholas A. Christakis , and 22 more

jakemgrumbach.bsky.social
Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 7d
After becoming a congressional leader, a politician’s stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts

www.nber.org/papers/w34524

via @florianederer.bsky.social
"Captain Gains" on Capitol Hill Shang-Jin Wei & Yifan Zhou WORKING PAPER 34524 DOI 10.3386/w34524 ISSUE DATE November 2025 Using transaction-level data on US congressional stock trades, we find that lawmakers who later ascend to leadership positions perform similarly to matched peers beforehand but outperform them by 47 percentage points annually after ascension. Leaders' superior performance arises through two mechanisms. The political influence channel is reflected in higher returns when their party controls the chamber, sales of stocks preceding regulatory actions, and purchase of stocks whose firms receiving more government contracts and favorable party support on bills. The corporate access channel is reflected in stock trades that predict subsequent corporate news and greater returns on donor-owned or home-state firms. 令 1 1 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 Year Figure 2: Estimated dynamic quasi-difference-in-differences coefficient, di, of equation(3), with vertical dashed lines representing 90 percent confidence intervals. The point estimate of the year in which the lawmaker became a congressional leader (Year 0) is normalized to zero. BHAR over the 250 days following each trade is the dependent variable and calculated using the Fama-French five-factor plus momentum as the benchmark model.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 7d
Same. Uber + Shazam = iTunes
lisafdavis.bsky.social Lisa Fagin Davis @lisafdavis.bsky.social · 7d
One of the things I love about Uber and Lyft is when drivers introduce me to new music. Today I heard Dimash Qudaibergen for the first time and my life will never be the same. Damn, that man can sing.

Reposted by Nicholas A. Christakis

lisafdavis.bsky.social
Lisa Fagin Davis @lisafdavis.bsky.social · 7d
One of the things I love about Uber and Lyft is when drivers introduce me to new music. Today I heard Dimash Qudaibergen for the first time and my life will never be the same. Damn, that man can sing.

nachristakis.bsky.social
Nicholas A. Christakis @nachristakis.bsky.social · 7d
I agree: there’s a public health imperative to quickly expand the adoption of autonomous vehicles, which will save many lives. More than 39,000 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes yearly. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...