News

What the data science press and forums are saying · updated
From the press
Silver Bulletin (Nate Silver) ·

Could Minnesota spoil the blue wave?

You’ve heard a lot about Michigan. But Democrats may have bigger problems in states where voters don’t trust their governance.
Newsweek ·

Senators Hit With Bad Injury News on New Young Star

Ottawa Senators star forward William Eklund is going to be out indefinitely after suffering an ankle injury.
Retraction Watch ·

‘Cerebral torment’: IOP retracts nearly 100 conference papers for tortured phrases

IOP Publishing has retracted nearly 100 papers from three of its conference proceedings after the articles were flagged for containing tortured phrases. Tortured phrases are rephrasings and synonyms…
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (Andrew Gelman) ·

Digital twins version 2.0: The skeptics speak up

This is Jessica. Several years since the earliest research papers on the topic came out, the idea of using LLMs to simulate human behavior like survey responses or experiment outcomes (“silicon…
Junk Charts ·

The art of curation

Design choices and trade-offs
Silver Bulletin (Nate Silver) ·

FLIPR 2026 midterm election forecast

Silver Bulletin's prediction for every Senate, House, and gubernatorial election in 2026.
Newsweek ·

Lions HC Dan Campbell's Immediate Reaction to Hearing About Mike Ditka's Death

Lions head coach Dan Campbell learned about Mike Ditka's death during a press conference and shared his immediate reaction.
Retraction Watch ·

OpenAI withdraws three preprints a day after releasing 722 manuscripts on unsolved math problems

Less than 24 hours after OpenAI posted over 700 preprints describing major math results by an internal AI model, the company has withdrawn three of the manuscripts for errors. On Oct. 6, OpenAI…
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (Andrew Gelman) ·

Thinking more seriously about the design of exploratory studies: A manifesto

I came across this post from 2016 which I still think is important. The idea is that there should be some guidelines for experimental design, not just for “confirmatory” studies that produce…
Silver Bulletin (Nate Silver) ·

How popular is Donald Trump?

Silver Bulletin approval ratings for President Trump — and all presidents since Truman.
Newsweek ·

Patriots Hit With 4 Injury Blows for Crucial Raiders Game

The New England Patriots will be without four of their players against the Las Vegas Raiders due to injuries.
Retraction Watch ·

A paper suggested a paleontologist’s fossil was forged. He wants it retracted.

Nicholas Longrich would like to set the record straight. The paleontologist at the University of Bath in England and his colleagues described what they believed to be a new species of marine reptile…
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (Andrew Gelman) ·

Getting better causal inferences by using more information (my talk at Stanford this coming Wed)

It’s the political economy seminar at Stanford business school, Wed 14 Oct at noon in room M109: Lagged regression, difference in differences, two way fixed effects, regression discontinuity, placebo…
Silver Bulletin (Nate Silver) ·

Who’s ahead on the generic congressional ballot?

Our constantly-updating tracker of polls for the most important indicator in the race for Congress.
Newsweek ·

Trump Strikes Diesel Deal With Putin to Bring Down Prices Ahead of Midterms

Trump announces a deal with Putin to boost Russian diesel supplies as the Treasury clears a path for global sales.
Retraction Watch ·

Wildlife journal issues corrections for missing ethics statements

In what one sleuth called a “systemic failure,” a wildlife journal has issued corrections to a handful of papers not for an error in the articles but to include an item that wasn’t: ethics…
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (Andrew Gelman) ·

What’s the deal with the RMET (“the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test”)?

Dan Luu writes: Have you ever looked into the RMET? [This is something called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test, which I’d never heard of until receiving this email. — AG] I’d like to get some…
Silver Bulletin (Nate Silver) ·

How popular is the Iran War?

Silver Bulletin approval ratings for the ongoing conflict.
Newsweek ·

GOP's Best Pickup Opportunity May Be in Democratic Stronghold Oregon

New poll shows Tina Kotek and Christine Drazan neck-and-neck, with Republicans eyeing Oregon's first governor's win since 1982.
Retraction Watch ·

Editor-in-chief resigns amid probes of alleged citation manipulation, data errors

The editor-in-chief of The Egyptian Rheumatologist has resigned following claims of questionable citation practices and improper peer review at the journal. At least three publishers are also…
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (Andrew Gelman) ·

Our continuing struggles with the Monster model

tl;dr. We’re still stuck. It was 30 years ago that Frédéric Bois, Jiming Jiang, and I published our paper on hierarchical modeling for toxicology. It was a successful paper–it’s been cited over 400…
Silver Bulletin (Nate Silver) ·

The left’s fortunes have been rising. Will 2028 be AOC’s moment?

Still Counting EP5 is out! Here’s why I chose Ocasio-Cortez in our 2028 Democratic primary draft.
Newsweek ·

Turning Point’s Quiet Takeover of American Campus Politics

While Washington fights over the next election, Turning Point USA is building a political movement that could shape the next generation.
Retraction Watch ·

Weekend reads: China intensifies crackdown on misconduct; AI flooding medical journals with ‘meaningless’ research; Sham scientific societies

If your week flew by — we know ours did — catch up here with what you might have missed. The week at Retraction Watch featured: We’re honored to be the subject of a paper published this week:…
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (Andrew Gelman) ·

Survey Statistics: 2 different uses of simulated data

Last month Andrew wrote: I use simulated data to understand how a model works; it can be viewed as a form of mathematical analysis, a way of working out the implications of a set of assumptions. I…
Silver Bulletin (Nate Silver) ·

2026 ELWAY NFL projections: Week 5

Team ratings, playoff and Super Bowl odds, and forecasts of every upcoming game from Silver Bulletin's exclusive NFL model.
Newsweek ·

Student Loan Forgiveness Could Triple Tax Bill for Many Borrowers: Report

Between 2 million and 3 million Americans could face a student loan "tax bomb" over the next decade.
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (Andrew Gelman) ·

Hey—we’re hiring two postdocs!

I’ll post more formal ads soon, but, very briefly: One project is on generalization for causal inference with a focus on education research, following up on MRPW: Regression, poststratification, and…
Silver Bulletin (Nate Silver) ·

QBERT 2026 NFL quarterback ratings

Our advanced statistical ratings on every quarterback’s past, present, and future are back for the new NFL season.
Newsweek ·

Rewriting Nostalgia: Inside Air Jordan's 30th Anniversary of 'Space Jam'

Jordan designers discuss the 30th anniversary of Space Jam, the anniversary collection's heritage details and modern updates.
Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science (Andrew Gelman) ·

Bayesian Workflow code is at the Bayesian Workflow website!

Bayesian Workflow isn’t just a free pdf, it’s also an ecosystem of worked examples with code. Over and over in the book we go through examples really carefully—God is in every leaf of every tree—it’s…
On the forums
Why memorize NumPy and pandas syntax to get a junior ML/AI job?
r/learnmachinelearning · 14 · 21 Discussion
Polars 2.0 released with the streaming engine, out-of-core processing and first-class SQL support
r/datascience · 114 · 4 Tools
ASOS have been hacked and a threat was sent to customers: “Dear Asos DPO and IT, we have fully compromised the Snowflake instance.”
r/dataengineering · 126 · 25 Discussion
How should I learn ML
r/learnmachinelearning · 5 · 4
Model Selection Technique for Causal Inference
r/datascience · 62 · 38 Analysis
Data Engineer is adamant on streamlining all transformations in Python instead SQL
r/dataengineering · 153 · 122 Rant
Someone tell from where to...?
r/learnmachinelearning · 9 · 9 Question
What's the process to request cloud architecture in your company?
r/datascience · 24 · 17 Discussion
How agentic are you, really
r/dataengineering · 55 · 101 Discussion
Overhyped ideas in machine learning
r/learnmachinelearning · 35 · 20 Discussion
Medallion architecture: what the business sees vs. what we deal with
r/dataengineering · 328 · 13 Meme
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