I'm not someone who publishes papers in Nature. I'm just not.
And it's not just this paper, of course. This is just the thing that caused me to reflect on my life and how absolutely bonkers this all still is for me.
First, I need to give props to @DG_Rand. He is an absolute hero. You know how some PI's just slap their name on work that has been done by junior collaborators? Not Dave. If anything, he takes LESS credit than he deserves. He's also just the best person.
But, anyway, back to me
I grew up on a farm in northern Saskatchewan. It failed & forced my parents to work several jobs. As a kid, I (and my 4 siblings) helped my parents do janitorial work from Grade 1 to Grade 9. This was not at all abnormal to me: On a farm you do chores, so that became our chores.
My parents, working class of course, had no conception whatsoever of academia. Nor did anyone else that I knew. I believe I'm the only person from my town (ever) with a PhD. I'm certainly the only person in my extended family (which is large) that has one.
The upshot of this is that I was not encouraged *at all* academically. Education was, at best, a route to paying bills. I didn't go to uni after graduating b/c the gov't wouldn't give me a proper student loan & my parents couldn't pay. Dad said I should work in the oil pipelines
When I finally went to uni, I paid every last cent myself. Partially through loans but also by working summers at a honey (bee) farm. At this point, I still had no concept of academia but knew I wanted to do something different. (these pics are representative of me back then)
I went to the closest university to where I grew up (never considered anything else -didn't know that was a thing). No one in my family had graduated from uni. When I moved to the city, I was legitimately frightened of strangers, having lived only in a tiny town. We didn't travel
Val Thompson at @usask is the 1st person to ever see academic potential in me (she was also the 1st person to enter my life who knew anything at all about academia). Valerie let me into her lab and I ended up doing an honors thesis there. She changed my life immeasurably.
Just to clarify, I don't at all begrudge those in my past who didn't encourage me academically. There was no concept of this. My parents, for example, valued me getting an education and supported all of my choices. But, like, becoming a professor or scientist? Not a known concept
My honours thesis was in 2009. Not that long ago! I didn't get into grad school the first year and so worked as Val's lab admin for a year. I learned so much. God, I owe Val so much. And also Jamie Prowse & Erin Metcalfe, grad students in the lab who taught me a lot.
In the following year, I was rejected at several places (e.g., UofT, UBC) but Jon Fugelsang & Derek Koehler took a chance on me at @UWaterloo. They gave me the freedom & guidance to grow. Ended up winning the dissertation awards. Ranked 1st overall in Canada for a Banting Postdoc
I ended up at Yale to work with @DG_Rand, which honestly scared the absolute shit out of me. I had success in grad school, but was still just a kid from Carrot River. I assumed they would all be crazy people. They weren't. They welcomed me, made me feel like one of them 😭
And now here I am. Not that far removed from being a cloistered small-town kid. I still, in many ways, am still that kid. But I published a paper in Nature? I'm having a hard time grasping this. Man, I've gotten so lucky.
Not sure what the point of this thread is, but if you take anything away from it, let it be that you should give "non-prototypical" people a chance.
Academics have so much opportunity to improve people's lives. Please don't take this responsibility lightly
You're all so amazing
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There has been a surge of behavioral research on misinformation & "fake news". To synthesize things, @DG_Rand & I wrote a systematic review: psyarxiv.com/ar96c
We take a cognitive/social psych perspective, but we tried to cast a wide net for the review. Feedback welcome!
Sorry to those who retweeted an earlier version of this tweet that I deleted because the image preview was too zoomed in
There's too much in the review to cover in a tweet thread, but here are some of the take-aways that we thought to be particularly important...
We're likely to face an unprecedented situation where the incumbent refuses to concede. Although it may not be necessary, things would certainly be easier if Republicans viewed the election as legitimate.
How uphill of a battle will this be? Well, I ran a study with @DG_Rand...
Study was run on Prolific & Lucid on Friday. In total, we have 509 Biden voters & 218 Trump voters. The samples are *not* nationally representative and a bit small. But, some fairly clear results came out.
A key initial Q is about people's priors. Do Trump voters believe it is *unlikely* that Biden won?
The answer is yes.
Reminder: This study was run on Friday when Biden was already well ahead & very likely to win. That he would win the popular vote was *never* in question.
The following may be of interest to those who use Prolific and/or Lucid for surveys.
Ran a study yesterday about election-related opinions (plus some other stuff - data is a bit depressing, coming tomorrow) using Lucid & Prolific's "nationally representative" sample function...
Both sources use quota-matching to filter people into studies who match U.S. demo's on age, gender, ethnicity, and (for Lucid) region. However, there were some notable differences and similarities between the samples.
(Note: Target N for each was 500, study was ~10 min long.)
I included a very simple initial attention/bot check: "Puppy is to dog as kitten is to _____?" with an open-ended text box to respond. This came at the very start. Two other fairly simple attention checks came later in the survey. We also asked directly if ppl responded randomly.
I do hope that someone is keeping a list of elected Republicans who a) supported Trump's baseless attacks on US democracy, b) said nothing, or c) repudiated him.
And for (c), if they did so *before* the election was called for Biden or after
Our paper "Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: Experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy nudge intervention" is now in press at Psych Science!
I’m super proud of this paper - but first, a thread on the results.
A key question is why people share misinformation on social media in the first place. If we can understand this, we might be able to develop interventions to slow it down. This becomes increasingly important in the context of a global pandemic.
Thought I would share the backstory behind this one, which I think is interesting. Pertains to open science... and also open-*minded* science. (See what I did there)
Wim's work was absolutely seminal to my initiation into the field. My first ever experiment (an undergrad research course) was an extension of his 2008 Cognition paper.
I was (still am) a very big fan.
BUT, my master's work ended up being quite critical of some of his claims..
We submitted it to Cognition & Wim reviewed it somewhat harshly, but also fairly. And I know it was him because he *signs his reviews* (here's the open science part)