Richard McElreath | Lightnews

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛

@rmcelreath.bsky.social

17K followers 1.3K following 1.2K posts

Anthropologist - Bayesian modeling - science reform - cat and cooking content too - Director @ MPI for evolutionary anthropology https://www.eva.mpg.de/ecology/staff/richard-mcelreath/

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Richard McElreath is an American professor of anthropology and a director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He is an author of the Statistical Rethinking applied Bayesian statistics textbook, among the first to largely rely on the Stan statistical environment, and the accompanying rethinking R language package. .. more

Psychology 22%

Sociology 21%

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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · Sep 19

If you hate statistics like I do, then you'll love my free lectures. Putting science before statistics, 20 lectures from basics of inference & causal modeling to multilevel models & dynamic state space models. It's all free, made with love and sympathy. 🧪 #stats www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 43m

oh yeah a good one. will add it to the queue

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 53m

Now I am watching "Elektra", bc it is also a Christmas movie. Elektra is literally resurrected and must fight to redeem the sins of her family. Oh this is such a bad movie. But it is Christmas.

still from the film "Elektra" starring Jennifer Garner. This movie is terrible, but Garner is such a sassy assassin that she almost (but not quite) makes it watchable

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7h

okay we are all tired of the debate over whether "Die Hard" is a Christmas movie. But have you considered "The Bourne Identity"? Jason Bourne is a Christlike figure who is resurrected and must atone for his sinful past. Also: There is a Christmas tree.

still from the 2002 film "The Bourne Identity" showing a Christmass tree illuminated with LED lights and Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) looking at the tree with his back to the camera

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 1d

rightward is his usual for sure

Reposted by Joanna Bryson, Richard McElreath

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 1d

There is an unfortunate error in this newly published @globalchangebio.bsky.social paper.

The caption for this image reads "upper panel with dragon icon symbolising all tetrapod" but this is incorrect. That is either a wyvern (with two wings and two legs) or it is not a tetrapod (6 limbs).

A graph depicting five panels with downward trends in suitable habitat area by year, with symbols indicating that each panel represents reptiles, mammals, amphibians, and birds. The symbol, in the top panel is a dragon.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 2d

An almost prefect florb

cat curled up in an almost perfect circle, with a dotted circle overlayed to show the circular precision

Reposted by Richard McElreath, Brendan Nyhan, Chris Hanretty , and 1 more Richard McElreath, Brendan Nyhan, Chris Hanretty, Hansraj Gautam

Michel Nivard @michelnivard.bsky.social · 5d

This smells distinctly like collider bias and/or selection bias and/or regression to the mean... You simply can't select teen prodigies, and world class athletes rom databases, and go run regressions without serious consideration of the selection process!

Mike Inouye @mikeinouye.bsky.social · 5d

"Most top achievers (Nobel laureates and world-class musicians, athletes, chess players) demonstrated lower performance than many peers during their early years. Across the highest adult performance, peak performance is negatively correlated with early performance" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Recent discoveries on the acquisition of the highest levels of human performance

Scientists have long debated the origins of exceptional human achievements. This literature review summarizes recent evidence from multiple domains on the acquisition of world-class performance. We re...

www.science.org

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 6d

I love these @jocelynanderson.bsky.social tufties, peak performance

joke cover of magazine "BQ" (Bird Quarterly) with a tufted titmouse looking powerful and tufty.

Text: TUFTED TITMOUSE, What Peak Performance Looks Like.

Text at bottom: PLUS Peanuts | Nests | String | Cats | Bird Friendly Spas | Watches

Reposted by Richard McElreath, Jan R. Boehnke

Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 6d

Our university press team asked me a few questions in regards to the new chair on Mental Health & Data Science. I sketch a bit of a vision on the importance of transdisciplinary work, and some obstacles to overcome.

www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025...

Transdisciplinary work is fantastic, but requires dedicated efforts from all sides to understand each other’

Eiko Fried has been appointed professor of Mental Health & Data Science. This combined chair neatly fits the view that understanding complex mental health issues require the integration of statistical...

www.universiteitleiden.nl

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

Yep that's the design. I'm so used to it, I was surprised Stata doesn't do it.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

Gamma is of course a very natural choice, because gamma-Poisson is conjugate pair

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

Gamma prior on the rate scale I guess, not the log scale. I guess that might be okay. The normal priors on log scale end up being log-normal on rate scale, so not so different fram gamma in many contexts.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

I recall someone, prob Doug Bates, complaining about this some years ago, when he wanted to write a better R interpreter.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

In R, in many contexts, missing values throw an exception or pass through to result vector. Like:

x <- c(2,0,NA,3)
ifelse(x>1,1,0)
[1] 1 0 NA 1

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

That's Stata code right? I don't know Stata that well, but original code would ideally fail or propogate missing values. I guess it doesn't work that way?

Reposted by Ian Hussey, Juan Rocha

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

I am just learning of this 2015 retraction, adding to my "science as amateur software engineering" files. Seems they classified missing values as obs outcome of interest (divorce). Classified 32% of sample divorced, rather than true 5%. retractionwatch.com/2015/07/21/t...

Here’s the original coding line:

replace event`i’ = 1 if delta_mct`i’ != 0 | spouse_delta_mct`i’ != 0

And here’s the corrected coding:

replace event`i’ = 1 if (delta_mct`i’ != 0 | spouse_delta_mct`i’ != 0) & delta_mct`i’ != . & spouse_delta_mct`i’ != .

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 7d

These openscience.nl grants are wonderful. Lavaan is a stand out in quality and impact.

Open software supports so much research in academia and industry, but exists in some unincentivized gray zone. At the same time, so much software is poorly documented and tested. Fix with recognition and support

rogier kievit @rogierk.bsky.social · 7d

I've used Lavaan almost every (work)day for 15 years, but this open source labour of love has never received proper institutional support. I'm delighted to be a small part of an 1.5M OpenScienceNL award, led by Jorgensen, to completely revamp and futureproof Lavaan www.openscience.nl/en/news/45-p...

Reposted by Dorothy Bishop, Brady T. West, Richard McElreath , and 3 more Dorothy Bishop, Brady T. West, Richard McElreath, Patrick S. Forscher, Andrew Livingstone, Jan R. Boehnke

rogier kievit @rogierk.bsky.social · 7d

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 8d

Should I teach my 16yo son pharmacokinetics so that he understands the lag at which alchohol metabolizes in the human body? Seems like the most rigorous approach

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 8d

At some point "som", which I think just means "body" in chromosom ("color-body"), morphed into meaning something like "huge science stuff"

Chromosom (1888 DE) > Genom (1920 DE) > Genome (1930 EN) > Exposome (20?? EN)

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 8d

Exposome as a concept in the abstract? Fine by me.
"We controlled for the exposome" -- get outta here.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 8d

I also think there is a deep connection between the MPG prestige economy and the abuse and bullying cases the society as faced in the last years. But that's a topic for another time maybe

Reposted by Ingo Rohlfing, Paul Nightingale, Jan R. Boehnke

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 8d

The Max Planck Society has begun an exploratory round table for open science. We are drafting some recommendations to leadership. Still a long way to go! But here are my notes on the most recent draft, just so you all know how I am trying to steer things.

Richard McElreath: It must not be overlooked that junior researchers DO NOT TRUST US. We, the directors, are a big part of the problem. We made this system, we remake it every year, and we benefit from it. What can we do to credibly signal our commitment to reform a corrupt research culture? My conversations with junior scientists in the society has taught me that directors are too often either indifferent or hostile to science reform. We cannot hope to convince our prize winning colleagues. Their egos are immune. But we can replace retirements with researchers who care more about integrity than their own prestige. This is important both for earning the trust of the junior researchers who really do the research in the MPG and for attracting excellent future directors and starting to earn the trust of the public. So I suggest two strong signals to our junior researchers (and the public): (1) we will reform recruitment and promotion at all levels to eliminate proxies like citation counts and journal brands in favor of reliability and sustainability; (2) we will make open science skills a core part of scientific training, through the graduate schools at a minimum, as conditions for the central funding. The most ambitious thing we could do, as hinted at in item 5 above, is to meaningfully invest in metascientific research. As the largest basic research organization in the world, the MPG is uniquely suited to studying research and its products from a broad perspective that includes the humanities, the sciences, and policy. Governments are already involved in science reform. Someone should study it in an organized and sustained way.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 8d

Ah the classic Austro-Hungarian confusion pipeline

Reposted by Richard McElreath

Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 8d

Exposome as a concept in the abstract? Fine by me.
"We controlled for the exposome" -- get outta here.

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 9d

hah exactly the contrast i want to make in this silly essay

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 9d

For those who don't know me, I am Bayesian. So very Bayesian

Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 9d

When I take train journeys, I sometimes write things. Things that I probably shouldn't publish

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