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Crémieux Profile picture
Crémieux
@cremieuxrecueil
I write about genetics, 'metrics, and demographics. Read my long-form writing at https://t.co/8hgA4nNS2A.
50 subscribers
Nov 7 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I got blocked for this meager bit of pushback on an obviously wrong idea lol.

Seriously:

Anyone claiming that von Neumann was tutored into being a genius is high on crack. He could recite the lines from any page of any book he ever read. That's not education! 'So, what's your theory on how von Neumann could tell you the exact weights and dimensions of objects without measuring tape or a scale?'

'Ah, it was the education that was provided to him, much like the education provided to his brothers and cousins.' Image
Nov 6 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A new study just came out on this topic.

Using data from almost 14 million young people in England, they found that COVID—but not COVID vaccination—was broadly associated with heart problems.

The myocarditis bump (which is milder than real myocarditis) was also small.Image This study also provides more to differentiate viral myocarditis from vaccine """myocarditis""", which again, is mild, resolves quickly, etc., unlike real myocarditis.

To see what it is, first look at this plot, showing COVID infection risks by time since diagnosis: Image
Nov 6 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
This analysis falls flat when you look into these people or think about how so many other "vons" were not as brilliant.

Von Neumann's brilliance preceded formal education and any tutoring. His advanced math tutor noted that he was smarter than him from their first meeting!Image Von Neumann was noted to be eidetic by 3.

By 6 he could divide two 8-digit numbers immediately in his head.

He picked up multiple languages by 7, long before his similarly-instructed cousins and brothers.

By 8, he could do calculus.

His precocity *inspired* hiring a tutor. Image
Nov 4 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
What do studies say about "freezing the rent"?

Let's have a thread🧵

First thing's first: Most studies agree that rent controlled units have lower rents, but also the supply of rentable units goes down and un-controlled units see their rents increase.

Uh-oh! Image Rent control also means that fewer homes get built, and it means that housing quality drops.

After all, if you can't raise the rent, what incentive do you have to make everything sparkly and neat? Image
Nov 3 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
I'm not taking a stance on whether inflammation drives cancer, but I will say it's very true that GLP-1 drugs reduce inflammation—a lot!

Tirzepatide at any dose greatly reduced levels of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, two important inflammation markers: Image I have actually had people thank me for getting them on this stuff precisely because they had inflammation issues that these drugs *immediately* solved for them.

Here's an example I've posted before: this man's back pain was cured!

Oct 31 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
The CDC's new Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) didn't put out immunization guidance for 2025-26.

So some researchers got together and did the government's job for them. Here's what they found🧵

First, the RSV vaccine is great for preventing hospitalization! Image The next thing up is the flu vaccine.

These are still showing a touch lower efficacy than in previous years, but they're still

(1) good
(2) worth it
(3) even more worth it for infants and children Image
Oct 27 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
How rich are American workers?

Very!

After accounting for taxes, transfers, cost of living differences and so on, American workers make far more than their counterparts across the OECD. Image Is this just because Americans work more?

No. That has something to do with it for some comparisons, but it's not everything.

Americans are also more productive and they get to take home more of what they earn. Image
Oct 27 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Wow!

Across basically all of Europe, people at higher income levels are now *more likely* to become parents!

This is a stunning shift! Image Among men, this relationship goes a while back now, and in several places, the income gradient has gotten more extreme. Image
Oct 26 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Wolf packs are remarkably good at respecting each other's established borders. Image The project this data is from sometimes releases videos of how this plays out.

For example, here's a video of this playing out for a few wolves over a single day in Spring.
Oct 23 • 16 tweets • 7 min read
Air traffic control has a major problem in the pipeline.

ATCs are underpaid and overworked.

99% of control towers were understaffed in 2023 and the number of communication mishaps and near-misses between commercial aircraft skyrocketed.

I think the solution might be drones🧵 Image You might think: Wait, haven't drones been smashing into planes recently? How are they going to help?

That's true! I've attached some pictures of drone-related damage. It's real and getting worse, I'll give you that.

The answer lies in drone communication.Image
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Oct 22 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
The story of peanut allergy is entering its final chapter.

Nowadays, we are beating back both peanut and other food allergies, and all it took was telling parents the right thing to do🧵 Image The story begins in 2000, when the American Academy of Pediatrics decided to issue some simple advice to parents: Have your kids avoid peanuts early in life. Don't expose them until they're at least three!Image
Oct 21 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The CEOs managing Sweden's biggest companies tend to be smarter, taller, and to have better personalities. Image The highest-paid CEOs in Sweden also tend to be taller, smarter, and to have better personalities. Image
Oct 21 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Individuals with higher genetically predicted intelligence tend to end up working more prestigious jobs. Image They tend to be more emotionally stable, healthier, satisfied with life, richer, and educated too. Image
Oct 19 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
Boobtech is amazing.

It's an area that the rest of medicine could look to as an example.

The professionals making bigger, more realistic breast implants are simultaneously improving affordability, safety, and quality at a rapid rate🧵 Image Consider one of the most recent improvements in boobtech: the Mia.

The Mia is the first successful "injectable" breast implant.

It cuts down scarring, complications, surgery time and cost, and it looks and feels more realistic than earlier implants. Image
Oct 18 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
This should be considered *far* more alarming than the polls about political violence.

Two-thirds positive views towards an evil ideology that has killed tens of millions and cannot work is *very* bad. Image It doesn't really matter if, at the end of the day, they're actually tepid towards socialism. This is like 66% of people saying Hitler was OK.

Source: news.gallup.com/poll/694835/im…

And an article qualifying how we understand support for political violence: cremieux.xyz/p/lets-not-ove…
Oct 17 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This is not true and there has never been a reason to believe it.

When we do have raw data for anywhere, we see that there's consistent scoring over time, not massive intelligence gains.

If we do not take measurement invariance seriously, we will be seriously misled. Image I actually think it is exactly Noah's sort of post that helps to keep the culture of scientific fraud in academia and elsewhere alive.

Noah is smart enough and has been told enough to know better, and he still wrote something that he can't support.

But it's a popular message.
Oct 14 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Where did that human capital go?

After the Counter-Reformation began, Protestant Germany started producing more elites than Catholic Germany.

Protestant cities also attracted more of these elite individuals, but primarily to the places with the most progressive governments🧵Image Q: What am I talking about?

A: Kirchenordnung, or Church Orders, otherwise known as Protestant Church Ordinances, a sort of governmental compact that started cropping up after the Reformation, in Protestant cities. Image
Oct 7 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
What predicts a successful educational intervention?

Unfortunately, the answer is not 'methodological propriety'; in fact, it's the opposite🧵

First up: home-made measures, a lack of randomization, and a study being published instead of unpublished predict larger effects. Image It is *far* easier to cook the books with an in-house measure, and it's far harder for other researchers to evaluate what's going on because they definitionally cannot be familiar with it.

Additionally, smaller studies tend to have larger effects—a hallmark of publication bias! Image
Oct 6 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Across five different large samples, the same pattern emerged:

Trans people tended to have multiple times higher rates of autism. Image In addition to higher autism rates, when looking at non-autistic trans versus non-trans people, the trans people were consistently shifted towards showing more autistic traits. Image
Oct 6 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
Across 68,000 meta-analyses including over 700,000 effect size estimates, correcting for publication bias tended to:

- Markedly reduce effect sizes
- Markedly reduce the probability that there is an effect at all

Economics hardest hit: Image Even this is perhaps too generous.

Recall that correcting for publication bias often produces effects that are still larger than the effects attained in subsequent large-scale replication studies.Image
Oct 5 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Neat new article from @Scientific_Bird.

It argues that one of the reasons there was an East Asian growth miracle but not a South Asian one is human capital.

For centuries, South Asia has lagged on average human capital, whereas East Asia has done very well in all our records. Image It's unsurprising when these things continue today.

We already know based on three separate instrumental variables strategies using quite old datapoints that human capital is causal for growth. That includes these numeracy measures from the distant past.

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