Rob Cavanaugh

This is fantastic!

There is something funky - I get the error “could not find function is_null()”. Looks like it’s an rlang export?

Within-person factorial experiments, log(normal) reaction-time data | A. Solomon Kurz Causal inference with the GLMM, Part 1

New #rstats blog up!

solomonkurz.netlify.app/blog/2025-07...

This is the first in a new series discussing causal inference with experimental data using multilevel models. My basic case is g-computation is the way to go.

Which Kind of Science Reform What hope is there for science reform, if we can't agree on what to reform? Right now, principles are more important than practices.

How can we reform science? I have some ideas. But I am not sure you’ll like them, because they don’t promise much. elevanth.org/blog/2025/07...

So grateful for this amazing work! Very timely presenting on guideline adherence at CAC weeks ago. Here’s guideline adherence to 2 of your guidelines in US community based care (Red=not adherent). Many assumptions but I suspect a reasonable approximation.

a scatterplot showing that folks with kids who spend enough days on vacation achieve unheard of levels of relaxation.

(for the record, love the latter scenario where if you spend long enough on vacation, and you have kids, you might enter a sort of relaxation enlightenment)

gets messy where

relaxation = ifelse(relaxation < median(relaxation), 0, 1) ?

or something like:

exp((1 - kids)*1*vacation) ?

(amazing by the way...I think I might need to go re-run some old models)

I love this take but I’m skeptical this is a pervasive view (at least in my subfield). curriculum, practice, and reviewers all take a lot of take time to change behavior

Yes! Modelbased and parameters are part of my standard workflow. So simple to put the formatted output in a flextable —> word doc or reference output using inline syntax to automate results sections. Saves me loads of time and reduces manual errors.

Wow I had no idea. Thanks!!

Ah I remember that post! Yes I think perhaps something like reducing contrasts to treatment and effects coding, noting others exist, and moving on to marginal effects might be a good compromise.

Essentially, most of this: debruine.github.io/faux/article...

Sooo I should just swap out my lectures on contrasts for marginal effects right??

I think Ellyn Riley is/was recently looking for a post doc

Had a great time sharing about our test-retest, #multimodal #communication #aphasia & peer dataset at the University of Technology Sydney Graduate School of Health seminar series today. Join AphasiaBank (totally free) and get full access to our data! aphasia.talkbank.org/access/Engli...

a cartoon of homer simpson holding a card ALT: a cartoon of homer simpson holding a card

Funding curves for K and F mechanisms

(Warning: the new F mechanism "curve" is a lot)

Hey #rstats friends. I’m looking for examples of papers or posts that do a really really good job unpacking/writing about/explaining statistical results. Not just technically correct but also clear. Bonus points for using marginal effects. What’s your go to exemplar for students new to research?

Amazing thanks!

I’ve made this point but rarely do revisions address the issue. Usually authors back off causal phrasing (“we’re just looking at associations so this doesn’t apply”). Or the authors aren’t familiar with causal inference ideas and it’s not a helpful reference. How do you usually frame your comment?

Reviewer notes: That’s a very nice mediation analysis you have there. It would be a shame if something happened to it. Mediation analysis has gotten a lot of flak, including classic titles such as “Yes, but what’s the mechanism? (Don’t expect an easy answer)” (Bullock et al., 2010), “What mediation analysis can (not) ...

New blog post! In which I explain the issue with mediation analysis and sketch out one way to deal with the underlying causal inference problem -- in just a bit over 1,000 words!

If you have never found the time to read up on this, now is your chance.

www.the100.ci/2025/03/20/r...

Cool! Were you just playing choose your own adventure everyday via dice roll?

thanks! This is a really interesting approach. Really helpful to see

Bsky/Academia friends - any suggestions on time tracking software? Criteria: I want to spend as little time as possible actually tracking my time. Bonus if integrated with outlook. Doesn’t need to be exact. I’m just hoping for a reasonable estimate of research/teaching/service breakdown.

And I write "hey did you try slopes?" And you write "they didn't converge" and then the paper is accepted.

VA Research Funding Slashed Though not as prominent as the NIH, VA researchers play a major role in advancing basic health science. Hundreds of projects have been cut.

NIH cuts are getting the press, but VA research is getting slashed too. What do we lose when VA research goes away? Here's some greatest hits: The nicotine patch, invention of the cardiac pacemaker, first successful liver transplant, development of the CAT/CT scan

prospect.org/health/2025-...

OGC Memo re Trump DEI and SFFA 2025 02 20.pdf | Powered by Box

DEI initiatives are still legal.

Universities need to stand their ground.

A Friday gift to your university's General Counsel Office - courtesy of an all star lineup of civil rights lawyers and scholars. You're going to want to read this.

Reviewer notes: Avoid any ambiguity about analysis aims For any central statistical analysis that you report in your manuscript, it should be absolutely clear for readers why the analysis is being conducted in the first place – that is, the analysis goal s...

New blog post!

Sometimes, when reviewing a manuscript, it's really unclear to me what precisely the authors are trying to do -- which makes it hard to evaluate the work properly.

So, here's some advice for how to ensure that readers don't get lost.
www.the100.ci/2025/02/17/r...

Indirect Costs at NIH . . . I wasn’t planning on spending part of a Saturday writing about cost accounting principles and the like, but NIH-world was hit with a doozy of a policy announcement on Friday night:

Great analysis of the indirect cost rate announcement by @stuartbuck.bsky.social

Noisy-channel language comprehension in aphasia: A Bayesian mixture modeling approach - Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Individuals with “agrammatic” receptive aphasia have long been known to rely on semantic plausibility rather than syntactic cues when interpreting sentences. In contrast to early interpretations of th...

🚨 New open-access paper out now in PB&R: link.springer.com/article/10.3...

We (w/ Ted Gibson, @swathikiran.bsky.social) explore how individuals with aphasia interpret sentences & whether their comprehension difficulties stem from increased expectations of noise in language input. 🧵👇

Agreed DAGs with time varying effects take me much longer to wrap my head around!

In case anyone is wondering, I did ask GPT and I don’t think it quite has a handle on DAGs yet.