Metrics in everything: My article on bioethics legislation in Germany

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Altmetrics loves my recent article on the strange phenomenon of bioethics legislation in Germany. Now these measures may be questionable and biased, but I’m happy nonetheless. Time for you to read it, too? It’s short, sweet, and open access. More generally, Altmetric has tracked 4,453,342 articles across all journals so far. Compared to these this…

German AfD politician: Immigrants could be shot at border if necessary

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Markus Pretzell, UKIP Fan, AfD supremo in NRW and newly minted sweetheart of the newly minted party leader, has a bright idea. In a public speech last week, he suggested to deter refugees at the German border by all means necessary, including the use of firearms. He has now repeated that statement in an interview…

Seehofer issues Merkel another ultimatum. So what?

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There is no doubt that Bavaria is struggling to accommodate the large numbers of refugees crossing the Austrian-German border every day. Bavaria’s infrastructure is already stretched, and, more importantly, the lack of co-ordination with the Austrians, the other German state governments, and the German federal government is nothing but baffling. There can also be no…

Polling accuracy: a Q&A with Kai Arzheimer and Jocelyn Evans | OUPblog

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Polling data is ubiquitous in today’s world, but it is is often difficult to easily understand the accuracy of polls. In a recent paper published in Political Analysis, Kai Arzheimer and Jocelyn Evans developed a new methodology for assessing the accuracy of polls in multiparty and multi-candidate elections.

Source: Polling accuracy: a Q&A with Kai Arzheimer and Jocelyn Evans | OUPblog

Oldies but goldies. For installing/updating the ado, checkout SSC. And here is even more background material on surveybias.

Scientific fraud, Soviet cosmonauts, fixed effects, comics: Links I liked

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Why Andre Gelman doesn’t use the terms “fixed” and “random”. If he doesn’t, we shouldn’t. Probably [contentcards url="http://t.co/3Hx29jse53"] PhD Comics: Overtime [contentcards url="http://t.co/OvTWTqYfTP"] Academic fraud in Political Science [contentcards url="http://t.co/ee0voTQ5tD"] Posters from the Soviet Space Age. [contentcards url="http://t.co/qn2Q3x4z18"] And finally, Fascinating longread on the LaCour affair [contentcards url="http://t.co/HlhC9PP3gX"]

On HoGeSa anniversary, minor clashes between right-wingers, “anti-fascists”, and police

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On the coattails of the Pegida anniversary, here is another far-right jubilee: A year on, self-declared hooligans have gathered once more for a “Hooligans against Salafists” (HoGeSa – those guys clearly love their acronyms) rally in Cologne. The two events could not have been more different. While Pegida is a largely regional weekly fixture that…