Sebastian Karcher

Recommend recent (2020-to date) monographs that use ethnography as a method. I'm looking for books that examine empirical cases where data collection is done (completely or partially) using ethnography, NOT ethnography textbooks.

Beyond the Lines by Sarah E. Parkinson | Paperback | Cornell University Press Beyond the Lines explores the social underpinnings of rebel adaptation and resilience. How do rebel groups cope with crises such as repression, displacement, and fragmentation? What explains changes.....

Oh and obviously
Beyond the Lines by Sarah E. Parkinson @separkinson.bsky.social Cornell University Press share.google/KGxkErJHgS33...

Up to Heaven and Down to Hell A riveting portrait of a rural Pennsylvania town at the center of the fracking controversy

Up to Heaven and Down to Hell | Princeton University Press share.google/qcVNkSzbAuYT...

Also interesting methodologically when read with Jerolmack's pieces.on masking & transparency in ethnography

FWIW, we're desk rejecting a _lot_ (>70%) (and for full transparency, have at times been struggling to return those as quickly as we want in the last 3 months -- sorry for that to everyone reading along) but that means even a 1st round R&R means you're looking at decent odds for pub

2/2 It's technically _possible_ that there is a bunch of rejected articles with more rounds, but the whole team has a strong commitment against that so I'd be shocked, plus I see all appeals and there's been none after a 2nd round R&R & I'd expect authors to be pissed & appeal

I can ask for full data but I just looked at the last 6 pieces published and all of them have exactly 2 rounds of reviewer comments and that's also what I've seen any other time I looked at review history for an article edited by our team.
1/2

I think people talking about antimatter in the 1920s&30s were probably pretty disturbed and I think it's _a lot_ crazier than a country going away or so

How do you define that exactly?
Reviewers see the article only once or that they see it only twice (initial submission and R&R)?
At APSR, we almost always decide after 2nd set of reviews (i.e. when reviewers have seen requested revision).
Otoh I don't think anyone gets accepted after 1st reviews

1/2: Kenyon College had a great time competing for the 1st time in the Hamilton Lugar/ILSA Undergraduate International Moot Competition. We learned a lot & thoroughly enjoyed the competition problem….

Week 1: "Say embedded one more time..."

I've seen this improve with the memory md file it now writes (I think that's new?) I've also been more explicit in telling it to keep good notes on specific things. Both have helped, though still an issue

I'm sure they got that from daycare. Frick'n Miles'* fault.

*actual name may vary

The Linter for Zotero plugin will flag duplicates immediately in import. Not perfect (which would be preflight detection and Zotero has talked about that), but helps

Tonight on Substack Live, I’m joined by Andrew Thrasher to unpack the 287(g) program and what makes immigration enforcement data so difficult to interpret. We’ll talk about how these programs work, what the numbers actually show, and why careful analysis matters.

buff.ly/ojl0Nrg

🧵on my new paper "Synthetic personas distort the structure of human belief systems" w Roberto Cerina I'm v excited about...

🚨 Do synthetic samples look like human samples?

We compare 28 LLMs to the 2024 General Social Survey (GSS) to find out + develop host of diagnostics...

Similarly maddening to me that Emma Booth discusses how library workers have to constantly badger Ex Libris to improve metadata in Ex Libris Alma. We are paying for this product! Why isn't there more pressure exerted on Ex Libris to keep us as customers?! #CopimConference

Your friends at the ANES would appreciate your proposals for new content that we will pilot immediately after the 2026 midterm elections. Please see the announcement at the following link and submit your ideas! electionstudies.org/anes-announc...

I'm guessing this happened because someone at DHS couldn't believe there's more than one E. Aghayeva in the US (there probably _is_ one with a student visa rescinded in 2016, seems unlikely to be her). So now having a rare but not unique foreign-ish name is a legal risk. *sigh*

This is a dramatic update to the NIH Data Management and Sharing Plan template, effective for applications submitted for due dates on or after May 25, 2026.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

When people have asked me about thoughts on AI & qualitative data, this has been at the top of my list. Sobering to see proof of concept.
Lots of research needed on what (de-identified?) human subject data we can still publish under which conditions.

You should be listening to @scopeconditions.bsky.social

Elite move. #RStats

I assume they invalidated drivers licenses where they had a record for a previous sex change? And of course at a traffic stop, cops can just run your license & see it's suspended

I have said this before, but eliminating programs that teach a lot of students but don’t have many majors is like a restaurant not buying flour in its grocery delivery because people aren’t ordering flour on the menu.

I think it’s less selection and more measurement error among low quality respondents. A mix of yeasaying and random/haphazard responding which will tend to overestimate relatively rare attitudes and behaviors.

🚨 Please share widely! 🚨

I'm hiring a postdoc (from Aug 1) to help build a new research program on politically sustainable immigration policies at Notre Dame.

Looking for a social scientist with strong quant skills, familiarity with new computational tools, and interest in public-facing research.

From time to time I mutter about a secret project that involves benchmarks and historical language models. Here's a formal announcement of the Schmidt Sciences grant. Other PIs include @dmimno.bsky.social , @lauraknelson.bsky.social, @andrewpiper.bsky.social, and @mattwilkens.bsky.social. And +

You should be listening to @scopeconditions.bsky.social

Academic friends: do you have grad students working on survey methods questions (ones we can help answer with Survey 160 data)? Please share with them this fellowship opportunity. Applications for first round are closing soon. www.survey160.com/survey-160-r...

Benchmark comparison of for-loops versus apply()/sapply() in 3 different versions of R (2.5.0, 3.0.0, 4.2.0) Benchmark comparison of for-loops versus apply()/sapply() in 3 different versions of R (2.5.0, 3.0.0, 4.2.0) - output.txt

So many myths around loops in R as Juli said. Some specialized functions like rowMeans() are indeed faster but the *apply() family is not. A while ago, I did some benchmarking across R versions: gist.github.com/wviechtb/83e...