Patrick S. Forscher

I became Senior VP at a multi-million dollar company at age 26. My salary was $600k. This was in 2018. How did I do it? Blacked out lines CEO (my dad) promoted me to SVP. There are no gimmicks. There are no shortcuts.

This is blackout poetry to me

Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

someone needs to invite me to do a keynote so i have an excuse to buy a ticket lol

even though i'm doing very different things since the last time i went to SPSP i feel a weird nostalgia about it and hope i can attend again someday. it must have been around 8 years since i've last gone

Wow this scoring chaos seems to be an extreme case of what I say about many ad hoc analyses: no derivation of method from a clear scientific theory, no assessment of statistical properties, and decades pass before someone notices. This happens in biology too, so let’s not pick on psychology only

Small sample size, but check out the 8/27 = 30% replication success rate in marketing 👀

The studies were not selected at random so interpretation is tricky but I think the differences in replication rates have something to do with the incentives created by social psych's historically close connection with popular science media

ideas.repec.org/p/osf/metaar...

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Based on the amazing FReD replication explorer, I finally have some evidence for the claim that the observed replication rate is lower in social than in disciplines like cognitive psychology

forrt.org/FReD-apps/ex...

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The FORRT Replication Database has received a massive overhaul (FReD 2.0): We double-coded and validated all data from scratch and extended it in the course of a one-year-partnership with the @cos.io. We just switched to a faster interface thanks to @lukaswallrich.bsky.social’s wizardry.

The social learning and development of intra- and inter-ethnic sharing norms in the Congo Basin Compared to other species, the extent of human cooperation is unparalleled. Such cooperation is coordinated between community members via social norms. Developmental research has demonstrated that ver...

🚨 New Paper Alert!

We investigated the developmental trajectories of intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic social norm acquisition among BaYaka and Bandongo in northern Rep. Congo, a community where inter-ethnic cooperation is common. We found that...

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Not sure what’s going on in cancer biology because I don’t know the field well but I’d wager there’s an interesting story there that links to history and incentives in some way

One thing that makes interpretation tricky is that the studies that make their way into replication projects are not sampled at random so it’s hard to draw firm conclusions about fields, but when you combine the replication findings with historical analysis I feel more confident

Even in the original replicability project in psychology, which covered mostly social & cognitive psychology, social psychology performed worse than cognitive psych

How Replicable Are Links Between Personality Traits and Consequential Life Outcomes? The Life Outcomes of Personality Replication Project - PubMed The Big Five personality traits have been linked to dozens of life outcomes. However, metascientific research has raised questions about the replicability of behavioral science. The Life Outcomes of Personality Replication (LOOPR) Project was therefore conducted to estimate the replicability of the …

Replicability is notably higher in some disciplines; see ex this on personality psychology pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30950321/

Download Vivaldi | Vivaldi Browser Download the latest version of the Vivaldi browser for Windows, Mac or Linux. Browse your way with a fully customisable browser packed with advanced features.

I'm trying out the Vivaldi browser - a descendant of Opera which was my absolute favourite browser in the 90s, and so far it's pretty cool!

so far it's snappy and customizable, no AI slop in sight, blocks trackers etc, and unyokes me from Google and Apple. freeware run by Norwegians

Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry, preprint claims Industry-linked studies were also more likely to focus on particular topics, suggesting these ties may be skewing the field

One of the issues that has come up again and again in my reporting on misinformation and social media is the massive influence social media companies have on research in the field.

Last night a preprint dropped that tries to get at this with some numbers. My piece in @science.org (and 🧪🧵 coming):

Patrick S. Forscher I'm trying to make behavioral science more robust, useful, and fair

I've accepted a new role at @busaracenter.bsky.social: Senior Behavioral Scientist.

In this role I will safeguard the quality of our work, identify places for behavioral science to play a role in development, and lead strategic partnerships.

See my updated personal website: patrickforscher.com

Average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" plotted over time

I started reading up on the whole "loneliness pandemic" narrative because this seems like a literature where the age-period-cohort problem may be relevant (or maybe it isn't?).

Here's data from Australia (HILDA), average agreement with the statement "I often feel very lonely" (SD of ca. 1.8).>

I mean I think there is a reason the replication crisis was so bad in social psychology and that reason very likely has something to do with incentives

osf.io/6hevp

“This is another Tuskegee” is not hyperbole. good reporting from IM

greatest steam update of all time, because of one unnecessary detail

Can’t recommend it enough

Best TikTok thing going is the two dudes trying food from every country without leaving NYC. If you haven’t seen them yet, it’s incredible. My favorite so far is last week’s. Legit got me emotional.

开放数据 | WARN-D机器学习比赛启动，寻找抑郁症预测最佳模型 WARN-D 项目开放抑郁症研究数据，诚邀各界团队参与机器学习比赛，寻找最具预测能力和临床价值的模型

We @chineseopensci.bsky.social wrote a brief Chinese introduction for this initiative: mp.weixin.qq.com/s/j8oTyoGtJ8...

WARN-D machine learning competition is live » Eiko Fried If you share one single thing of our team in 2026—on social media or per email with your colleagues—please let it be this machine learning competition. It was half a decade of work to get here, especi...

After 5 years of data collection, our WARN-D machine learning competition to forecast depression onset is now LIVE! We hope many of you will participate—we have incredibly rich data.

If you share a single thing of my lab this year, please make it this competition.

eiko-fried.com/warn-d-machi...

Explainers & tutorials are a great way to criticize current practices with a positive twist. Tailoring them to a specific substantive (!) subfield can greatly increase uptake. Forget about novelty; if some statistican said sth in the 70s but no one was around to hear it, say it again.>

Broadband internet access is really bad for adolescents' mental health.

Why?

"Broadband internet access [is] associated with increases in cyberbullying & body dissatisfaction among adolescent girls and a reduction in the likelihood that adolescent boys reported getting an adequate amount of sleep"

Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege Rather than publishing the findings or pursuing additional research, Meta called off further work.

In 2020, Facebook scientists worked to gauge the effect of deactivating one's account.

They found that people who stopped using FB for a week reported better mental health.

Rather than publishing/doing more research, Meta called off the research.

www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Bar chart of percentage of population aged 25-64 that can't speak a foreign language. UK is at the top. The chart design is confusing to say the least.

I saw this chart in the wild a few days ago and it's been on my mind because the longer I look at it, the more confused I become by it. 📊

I'm fairly sure it's AI generated for a few reasons...

A #DataViz thread 🧵

MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing There’s a stark difference in success rates between companies that purchase AI tools from vendors and those that build them internally.

MIT’s NANDA initiative found that 95% of generative AI deployments fail after interviewing 150 execs, surveying 350 workers, and analyzing 300 projects. The real “productivity gains” seem to come from layoffs and squeezing more work from fewer people not AI.