551. The more people learn about terrorism, the smaller they perceive the threat of terrorism to be (Krause et al. 2022) 552. Harassment deters women and men from applying for jobs in workplaces where they are the gender minority (Folke and Rickne 2022) 553. People like music less when they think it was composed by […]
Category: science
How effective is nudging? #3
In a previous post, I discussed a study by Mertens et al. (2022) showing that the average effect size of nudging is large (i.e., a Cohen’s d of 0.45). In my post, I identified several limitations in the study that led me to conclude that the average effect size presented in the study most likely […]
25 interesting facts #22
526. A worldwide assembly size for a lower chamber could be approximately 2000 seats (Colomer 2014) 527. Consumer-posted photos on Yelp are strong predictors of restaurant survival (Zhang and Luo 2022) 528. More than two million km² of wilderness were lost from 2000 to 2018 (Mu et al. 2022) 529. The creme-heavy side is uniformly […]
Wolf attacks predict … far-right voting?
A new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, argues that ‘wolf attacks predict far-right voting’ – at least in Germany. The findings are statistically significant, the effect sizes are (too?) large, and there is even a pre-registration of the study. Yet, I see a few red flags (in addition to […]
The discussion section
Scientific studies tend to follow the same logical structure. Introduction, theory, method, results, discussion, conclusion. Easy-peasy. Sometimes the sections have other names or are merged together, e.g., “Discussion and concluding remarks”, and for the less serious journals (such as PNAS), they save the methodology for the footnote-size section at the end of the paper. I […]
The many causes of Brexit
In 2018, I wrote a critical blog post about a study that examined whether welfare reforms caused Brexit. The study, now published in American Economic Review, concludes “that the EU referendum could have resulted in a Remain victory had it not been for austerity”. (It is by the same researcher who tried to make people […]
25 interesting facts #21
501. Tigers have experienced little evolutionary pressure to evolve green coloration and they appear green to deer (because deer are dichromats) (Fennell et al. 2019) 502. In the United States, Holocaust survivors are more supportive of helping refugees (Wayne and Zhukov 2022) 503. There is a talisman effect in insurance, i.e., consumers who have an […]
25 interesting facts #20
476. The Øresund bridge between Denmark and Sweden increased the gender wage gap in the region (Bütikofer et al. 2022) 477. Gorbachev’s policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (official openness) led to the collapse of the Soviet regime (Kramer 2022) 478. Marriage inequality increased civil conflict in the Boko Haram insurgency (Rexer 2022) 479. In […]
Experiments and societal challenges
The randomised controlled trial is seen as the gold standard within the social sciences. I do not disagree. I love well-executed experiments with strong causal identification. If two studies, one experimental and one non-experimental, differ in their conclusions, there is no doubt which study I, all else equal, will side with. Most importantly, I often […]
25 interesting facts #19
451. In art auction markets, blue and red paintings generate higher bids (Ma et al. 2022) 452. Increasing group size reduces perceptions of danger (Tedeschi et al. 2021) 453. In 2019, only 54% of Americans agree that human beings developed from earlier species of animals (Miller et al. 2021) 454. Before numerical or written marks […]