Lars Erik Berntzen

Toward the end of his two-volume Treatise on the Venom of the Viper, published in 1781, the Tuscan naturalist Deluxe Fontana declared: "I have made more than 6000 experiments; I have had more than 4000 animals bit; I have employed upwards of 3000 vipers and may have been deceived; some essential circumstance may have escaped me: I may have neglected some other, not thinking it necessary; my consequences may have been too general, my experiments too few in number. In a word, I may very easily have been mistaken, and it would be almost impossible that I should never have been so in a matter so difficult, so obscure, and likewise so new."

Fontana thinking his 6000+ experiments may not have been enough to feel confident in his conclusions in the 18th century while we expect our singular experiments and their standalone replications to do wonders some 250 years later... (excerpt from the intro of Jutta Schickore's About Experiment)

Cabbage genetics - Works in Progress Magazine How a single unappetizing shrub became dozens of different vegetables.

Meet your greens. Fascinating read
worksinprogress.co/issue/sculpt...

When Political Pivots Shift Behaviors but Not Beliefs: Evidence from Trump’s Position Reversal over Facemasks during the COVID-19 Crisis - Bartholomew A. Konechni, 2026 Political leaders play a potentially important role shaping behaviors and beliefs during crises. In the pandemic, a number of high-status politicians, notably l...

What happens when politicians pivot during a crisis?

I examine Trump’s July 2020 mask pivot. It increased Republican mask use, closing 40% of the partisan gap.

But paradoxically, beliefs about masks' efficacy didn’t change.

doi.org/10.1177/0003... @asanews.bsky.social #Trump #PublicHealth

How rightwing rhetoric has risen sharply in the UK parliament – an exclusive visual analysis In the past five years, MPs’ attitudes in the House of Commons towards immigration have swung harder to the right than at almost any other time in the last century

This is a truly exceptional analysis of British parliamentary speeches on immigration by @theguardian.com showing we are living in a uniquely nativist era.

If you are teaching any kind of statistics, probability or modeling classes, you'll love this website. Contains dozens of interactive simulations of random processes, with sliders, different visualizat options, and full numeric log ouput: www.randomservices.org/random/apps/...

Our article with @honoratam.bsky.social on ✨motivated causal judgements✨ is out in @polpsyispp.bsky.social!

When something bad happens, whose actions produced the outcome and who bears responsibility? It depends much more on the identity of the actors than on the details of the situation.

In the past, Republicans had more trust in scientists than Democrats. This is no longer the case.

In POQ, Schulam et al. identify demographic changes in political parties as a source of polarized trust in the scientific community.

Read now: doi.org/10.1093/poq/...

It must be very hard to publish null results Publication practices in the social sciences act as a filter that favors statistically significant results over null findings. While the problem of selection on significance (SoS) is well-known in theory, it has been difficult to measure its scope empirically, and it has been challenging to determine how selection varies across contexts. In this article, we use large language models to extract granular and validated data on about 100,000 articles published in over 150 political science journals from 2010 to 2024. We show that fewer than 2% of articles that rely on statistical methods report null-only findings in their abstracts, while over 90% of papers highlight significant results. To put these findings in perspective, we develop and calibrate a simple model of publication bias. Across a range of plausible assumptions, we find that statistically significant results are estimated to be one to two orders of magnitude more likely to enter the published record than null results. Leveraging metadata extracted from individual articles, we show that the pattern of strong SoS holds across subfields, journals, methods, and time periods. However, a few factors such as pre-registration and randomized experiments correlate with greater acceptance of null results. We conclude by discussing implications for the field and the potential of our new dataset for investigating other questions about political science.

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.

This is the core issue
bsky.app/profile/ryan...

Opinion | We’re Seeing the Weakness of a Strong State

“Visible state violence against sympathetic civilians was the beginning of the end for Jim Crow. It may be a turning point now, too.” Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/o...

Home - C-REX – Center for Research on Extremism Read this story on the University of Oslo's website.

Yesterday marked 10 years since C‑REX was founded. This thread highlight what the center has done — research, PhDs, datasets, events, policy engagement and international partnerships. THREAD 🧵 www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/

Two new articles in Party Politics

With
@gessler.bsky.social

Measuring party positions and issue salience with mass media and manifesto data"
doi.org/10.1177/1354...

With Hanspeter Kriesi
"Restructuring party systems in Northwestern Europe"
doi.org/10.1177/1354...

Feedback very welcome!

A bar chart displays annual homicide victimisation rates per million people by age group and sex in five-year categories from birth to age 90+. Dark blue bars represent male victims, and light blue bars represent female victims. Male victimisation rates are highest between ages 15–34, peaking at over 30 per million. Female rates remain lower across all ages but rise among those aged 85 and over. The male rate declines steadily after age 34. The data source is the Home Office Homicide Index, based on 99.9% of homicides where victim age and sex were known. A legend distinguishes male and female bars.

Bar chart showing homicide victimisation rates per million people in England and Wales by age group and ethnicity, based on data from the Home Office Homicide Index. The chart is divided into five panels by ethnicity: All victims, Asian, Black, Mixed/Multiple, and White victims. Each panel displays vertical bars for age groups in ten-year intervals from 0 to 80+, with darker bars indicating lower or equal homicide rates compared to the total population of the same age, and red bars indicating higher rates. A stepped line overlays each panel, showing the homicide rate for all ethnicities for reference. The chart highlights significantly higher homicide rates among young Black victims at all ages, peaking at over 100 victims per million at age aged 20–29. Other ethnic groups generally show lower or comparable homicide rates to the overall population, with slight increases among certain age groups. The data is based on the 95.1% of homicides for which both age and ethnicity were known.

Each week, about 12 people are killed in homicides in England and Wales. But who is most likely to be killed?

This thread summarises what we know about who is most likely to be a victim of homicide.

🧵

Explaining Attitudes Towards Climate Action in Germany: AfD vs. the Greens, the East vs. the West, Wind vs. Solar Energy This article analyses the drivers of individual-level support for – and opposition to – renewable energy in general, as well as wind and solar power specifically. We focus on the crucial case of Ge...

Our first joint article with the PhD researchers of my research group @rexklima.bsky.social has just been published! 🎉

"Explaining Attitudes Towards #Climate #Action in Germany: AfD vs. the Greens, the East vs. the West, Wind vs. Solar Energy" is now out.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... (1/4)

🧵New preprint: Adults often agree with their ingroup even when evidence says otherwise. Why?

To find out, we studied kids, who show the same tendency but *before* political identities take hold. With developmental data, we can see the basic psychological ingredients.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

1/11

Do Americans judge acts of partisan political violence impartially? No. We show that Democrats and Republicans exhibit clear partisan bias: both see the same violent act as more justified when it targets the other party than when it targets their own side.

osf.io/preprints/so...

#polisky

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵

Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

New publication with @turnbulldugarte.com in @psrm.bsky.social! 🧵

We study whether citizens’ liberal values are selective: do people support policies based on who promotes them?

Short answer: Yes, and it's driven by ethnic out-group disidentification. (1/11) 👇

doi.org/10.1017/psrm...

Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science (3-4 years) (291366) | University of Oslo Job title: Postdoctoral Fellow in Political Science (3-4 years) (291366), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Friday, February 6, 2026

Interested in pursuing a career in climate governance, policy or politics research? Do you have a relevant PhD degree in political science, public administration or international relations? Then you should check out this opportunity!

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Long-term effects of pregnancy and childbirth on sleep satisfaction and duration of first-time and experienced mothers and fathers AbstractStudy Objectives. To examine the changes in mothers’ and fathers’ sleep satisfaction and sleep duration across prepregnancy, pregnancy, and the pos

I maintain that this is an excellent benchmark for d-type effect sizes:

Sleep satisfaction & duration declined with childbirth & reached a nadir during the first 3 months postpartum, with women more strongly affected (satisfaction d = -0.79, duration minus 62 min, d = -0.90)>

Abstract of the article "The rise of populism and the new cleavage" by Hanspeter Kriesi. Published online first, as part of the 50th Anniversary Special Issue "Debating European Politics: Advances and Perspectives".

The 1️⃣article of our 5️⃣0️⃣Anniversary Special Issue "Debating European Politics: Advances and Perspectives" is out!🎉

"The rise of populism and the new cleavage" by Hanspeter Kriesi, describing contemporary populism is likely to be a temporary phenomen.

🔗https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2025.2591874

BJPolS abstract about a study on the effects of authoritarianism in the former German Democratic Republic, focusing on gender disparities in education and authoritarian values post-reunification. The text emphasizes methodological approach and historical analysis.

From October 2025 -

The Gendered Persistence of Authoritarian Indoctrination - cup.org/3WCwC5v

- Nourhan A. Elsayed, @hannohilbig.bsky.social, @riazsascha.bsky.social & @dziblatt.bsky.social

#OpenAccess

Why moderate voters choose extreme candidates: voter uncertainty as a driver of elite polarization Abstract. Representative democracy depends on elected officials reflecting voters’ policy preferences. Yet, US elected officials are more ideologically ext

Partisan voters can reward candidates who stick to the party line even on unpopular issues. Under uncertainty, voters infer that ideologically rigid candidates are also more likely to back the party's other, more popular positions academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

A critique of our (w/ @bertous.bsky.social) paper “Instrumentally inclusive” has just been published.

Our response is under review (see below on process) but we feel obliged to share our draft for balance since the comment has been released without the response.

osf.io/rn6h3/files/...

Staying Power: Unpacking Seniority as a Gendered Informal Institution in Parliament Abstract. Political seniority—commonly understood as accumulated parliamentary tenure—is an underexamined informal institution that structures access to po

New article by @rmuriaas.bsky.social and I: While seniority can benefit all parliamentarians and serve as a powerful resource, it does not confer power equally. Women face structural barriers to accessing seniority, and even when they attain it, their legitimacy and influence remains contested.

Asymmetric Influence: Politicians Can Fuel but Not Dampen Conflict Research from the deeply polarized United States suggests that the impact of elite communication is asymmetrical: antagonistic messages often heighten divisions, while positive appeals fail to dampen...

My new article with @leberntzen.bsky.social out in @scandpolstud.bsky.social!

Can politicians calm conflict as effectively as they can inflame it?

Our experimental evidence from Norway suggests that they cannot.
🧵

„the importance of sample size stemmed from small effect sizes across studies (perhaps smaller than researchers may have anticipated), highlighting a tension between commonly used power calculi and determining what constitutes a “meaningful effect.“

Thrilled to share my new article in Political Psychology: “The psychology of political attitudinal volatility.” In it, I attempt to answer why do some people change their political views more than others? Open access at: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
@ispp-pops.bsky.social

Thanks, James!