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18 Nov, 6 tweets, 3 min read
🚨 Based on exclusive reporting by @BylineTimes and @allthecitizens, I created a new visualization of the COVID contracts being awarded to firms linked to the Evangelical Christian sect, the Plymouth Brethren.

🔎 Take a look: sophie-e-hill.com/post/pray-to-p…
In this map, I've broken up "government" into Central, Local, and NHS.
This gives a more granular picture and also highlights some local councils, like Bristol City Council, which have awarded contracts to multiple Brethren-linked companies.
Another interesting feature of this network is the importance of families, which makes sense given that Plymouth Brethren are encouraged to marry within the church. Most of the companies shown here have multiple individuals from the same family listed as directors.
Read the full piece in @BylineTimes 👇

Or dive right in to this forensic thread from @allthecitizens!

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More from @sophie_e_hill

Sophie Hill Profile picture
21 Nov
The Tories' 'chumocracy' over Covid contracts is destroying public trust.

Me in the @guardian 👇

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
In this piece, I try to take seriously the government’s argument that it was important to use “informal arrangements” in procurement given the urgent need to source PPE. Image
In response to which I make two points:

1️⃣ The “need for speed” does not mean we should throw basic anti-corruption principles out the window.

2️⃣ Based on the results, it is hard to believe that senior political figures were willing or capable of “pre-vetting” suppliers. ImageImage
Read 7 tweets
Sophie Hill Profile picture
9 Nov
This is a more wonky thread about how I made this visualization in #Rstats using the awesome visNetwork 📦...

sophieehill.shinyapps.io/my-little-cron…
First step is to create the underlying network data. We need one file of "nodes" - i.e. the people and organizations. And one file of "edges" - i.e. the connections between them.

I created these by hand, based on excellent investigate journalism: ImageImage
Now we can pull these together to create a network visualization!

You'll notice that I included a column for "type" in the nodes file. This allows me to use different icons for people vs firms vs political organizations. Image
Read 8 tweets
Sophie Hill Profile picture
9 Nov
The cronyism in this Tory government is so out-of-control that I honestly couldn’t keep track… so I combined my two main skills (puns and #Rstats) to create this interactive visualization.

Introducing… My Little Crony!

sophieehill.shinyapps.io/my-little-cron…
Explore and follow the links to read excellent reporting by folks @guardian, @openDemocracy, @BylineTimes, @GoodLawProject, @PeterKGeoghegan, @david_conn, @robevansgdn, @RussellScott1, @JolyonMaugham, @WritesBright, @gillplimmer1, @carolinejmolloy, etc.!

sophieehill.shinyapps.io/my-little-cron…
As a bonus, some rare archival footage of me creating this visualization:
Read 6 tweets
Sophie Hill Profile picture
3 Oct
Ep 2 of "Suspicious Activity" (a podcast on the #FinCENFiles by @pineapplemedia and @BuzzFeedNews) recounts how George Osborne lobbied US regulators NOT to prosecute senior execs at HSBC...

podcasts.podinstall.com/pineapple-stre…
... which is a brilliant illustration of "structural power" as developed by folks like @PepperCulpepper and @RaphaelJReinke, as well as @Cornelia_Woll's "collective power of inaction".

Check out the podcast and then follow-up with some further reading from #polisci! (a 🧵)
Culpepper & Reinke (2014) use the idea of "structural power" to compare and contrast the UK and US bank bailouts in 2008.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.11…
Read 11 tweets
Sophie Hill Profile picture
1 Oct
Harvard will continue employing David Kane, who has never published in a statistics journal and has a history of making basic stats errors, as Preceptor of Statistical Methods.

This isn't just failing upwards. This is affirmative action for racists.

thecrimson.com/article/2020/9…
The 🧾's:

In 2006, David Kane wrote a blog post on the Harvard @IQSS website, accusing the authors of a study published in Lancet of fraud.
The Lancet study, which estimated excess deaths in Iraq due to the war, involved a survey with a near 100% response rate.

Kane argued that this was indicative of fraud.

(Note: Kane's blog post is no longer available but it was quoted on @crookedtimber)
crookedtimber.org/2006/10/18/flo… Image
Read 23 tweets
Sophie Hill Profile picture
25 Sep
So it turns out that the Harvard instructor who invited Charles Murray to speak in his class also blogs under a pseudonym and... it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect... Image
Most of his posts involve him offering an in-depth commentary about events at Williams College, where he graduated from in 1988 but doesn't seem to have any current affiliation...
Here he is mocking a "Diversity, Inclusion, Race Equity" meeting

ephblog.com/2020/09/25/dir… Image
Read 10 tweets

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