Alexis Karamanos

How the UK’s dependency on cars slows down the economy Clogged up Britain

“Moving to a situation where cars are not considered the fastest and most convenient mode of transportation will take ambition and imagination. But the alternative is a very expensive dependency, which clogs up the UK economy.”

theconversation.com/how-the-uks-...

YouTube video by freeCodeCamp.org Harvard CS50’s Intro to R Programming – Full University Course

Harvard R Programming Course 👇🏼

www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_3I...

#rstats

Made with #RStats and #QuartoPub (with a tiny bit of JavaScript helping out 🤩) 👇

File on 4 Investigates - Multi-Cancer Testing - Hype or Hope? - BBC Sounds Could multi-cancer detection tests help improve earlier diagnosis for NHS patients?

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Multi cancer detection tests

Till we've better evidence definitely more hype than hope in my view

Good show @debscohen.bsky.social

From doing science to saving science Science and scientists are under assault. From denial of vaccines to climate change, political leaders are increasingly sacrificing democracy as well as science on the altar of populism and authoritar...

Scientists must learn to join larger pro-democracy and people's movements, coalitions. Our science training may not have prepared us for such work, but we can no longer sit in the safety of our labs and expect the world to get better

My book review @thelancet.com

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Abolishing the two-child benefit limit would be a great investment | British Politics and Policy at LSE Abolishing the Two-Child Benefit limit and overall Benefit Cap is good policy not just for ethical reasons but because investment in children pays off.

As well as the moral case for lifting children out of poverty, there’s a powerful economic case for abolishing the two-child cap. blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

Listen to the Reith Lectures -very good even in the censored version. Please boost the Streisand effect.
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

A map of Germany consisting of hexagons. Each hexagon is filled by color according to the share of people aged between 15 and 24. Eastern Germany shows much lower shares, while many western and southern areas have noticeably more young people.

This hex-map breaks down the share of 15-24 year-olds in Germany and the regional contrast is hard to miss.

Eastern Germany shows much lower shares except for larger cities, while many western and southern areas have noticeably more young people.

#30DayMapChallenge Day 25: Hexagons #ggplot2

The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care? The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity

I’ve written a piece on the curious lack of media and political interest in the issues faced by our national @britishlibrary.bsky.social. This is strange given we live in a world where ideas, knowledge and research are a long-term source of innovation and insight
www.cityam.com/the-british-...

🧵 1/ Our new study, @jamanetworkopen.com from MAGNET4EUROPE funded by @horizoneu.bsky.social shows physician burnout & turnover remain alarmingly high in 6 European countries + US. Nearly 30% of European physicians and 24% in the US intend to leave their hospital within a year.

Performance Tracker 2025: NHS | Institute for Government NHS performance is improving, but a complex and haphazardly planned reform package might slow progress.

Wes Streeting’s chaotic and incoherent approach to reforming #NHS

NHS England’s abolition was abysmally handled + management cuts in ICBs

Worse nothing the Govt has done addresses the ongoing exodus of GP partners, of shift hospital to community

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

The Politics and Profit of Disinformation in Public Health Disinformation is a coordinated or deliberate effort to knowingly circulate misinformation (i.e., false information) to gain money, power, or reputation. While most public health research has focused ...

Huge thanks to @markpetticrew.bsky.social @kristinakim.bsky.social @marcozenone.bsky.social @maizie333.bsky.social for partnership on a new review article: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

@lhgp.bsky.social @uoe-sps.bsky.social @socsocmed.bsky.social @adphuk.bsky.social @felly500.bsky.social

A pretty entertaining gallery of misleading visualizations + discussion

www.vislies.org/2024/gallery/

(already a year old, but I only discovered it through this year's VIS conference)

Excellent book by Ginafranco Pacchioni, The Overproduction of Truth, about how science has changed during his lifetime and how rapid expansion has created many problems
global.oup.com/academic/pro...
#misconduct #hyperproductivity #publishing #citations

Where was it?

Trump’s university backlash drives US researchers towards Europe EU grant applications hit record in 2025 amid surge in interest from American academics

‘ERC grants aimed at early career researchers saw a 22 per cent increase in applicants compared with last year, with a record 4,807 proposals. Nearly 250 of those came from outside Europe, including 169 from the US — nearly triple the 2024 figure.’
on.ft.com/490NR8k

Yes! This is much better than all the stupid "make November more miserable" initiatives

New tutorial out! 🚀 Learn how to chat with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini inside R using the {ellmer} package.

Covers safe API setup, workflow integration, and structured outputs for text + images.

👉 alfredohs.com/posts/ellmer...

#RStats #LLMs #DataScience

Too much social media gives AI chatbots ‘brain rot’ Large language models fed low-quality data skip steps in their reasoning process.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Join us on November 18 - 9 am PT | 12 pm ET | 6 pm CET, for 8th Reproducibility Rounds: 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡?. Registration at: stanford.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Applied Machine Learning Using mlr3 in R by Bernd Bischl, Raphael Sonabend, Lars Kotthoff and Michel Lang
#RStats
https://bigbookofr.com/chapters/machine%20learning.html#applied-machine-learning-using-mlr3-in-r

Reminds me of this…

The Trump Supremacy Opponents in disarray, allies in line, followers enthralled — the US president is already on his way to building a new world order

Definitive, devastating piece from @edwardluce.bsky.social. Must read
on.ft.com/4qoZJHn

How safe are UK research institutions from politicisation? - Impact of Social Sciences New research finds the arm's length bodies that underpin UK research run the risk of politicisation unless they are put on a firmer footing.

How safe are UK research institutions from politicisation?
@chrischirp.bsky.social & have have written a new blog for LSE on our report

blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsoci...

This is a terrific blog by @samfr.bsky.social built around his own recent interface as a patient with the NHS.

And how a one day procedure became three, meaning nurses, doctors & HCPs having to repeat actions avoidably, not least for want of more beds, with personnel directed at supporting them.

Debt trap nation: How England is failing homeless mothers and children We owe it to women and mothers to shift the national conversation on homelessness and debt, say academics Katherine Brickell and Mel Nowicki.

‘One in 38 single mothers are homeless, they represent one-third of all households in temporary accommodation’
@kbrickell.bsky.social on her new book Debt Trap Nation - pleased we were able to support her research
www.bigissue.com/opinion/debt...

oooh this looks awesome! I’ve been having my students do this with a ton of mutate()s and with lots of tinkering, like this evalsp25.classes.andrewheiss.com/example/synt... but this seems a ton easier #rstats