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Science is full of misleading findings—results that would not hold up if the study were attempted again under ideal conditions. In data-driven investigations, a big part of this could be the forking paths problem. Researchers make many decisions about how to analyze the data (leave out this subgroup, include that...

In 2001, Lant Pritchett asked, “Where has all the education gone?” From 1960 to 1990, countries around the world had achieved increases in educational attainment without the widely expected gains in income—a “micro macro paradox” where the person-level estimates of the return to education were nowhere to be seen in...

Note: This is meant to be an accessible introduction to causal inference. Comments appreciated. Let’s say you buy a basil plant and put it on the counter in your kitchen. Unfortunately, it dies in a week. So the next week you buy another basil plant and feed it a special...

Some people in my orbit suggested reading Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s book The Real Anthony Fauci. Here’s my story of wading through a few pages of the book and trying to understand the basis of the claims. My takeaway: there's a lot of sloppiness here, and several times the book’s...

“Per protocol analysis” is when medical trial researchers drop people who didn’t follow the treatment protocol. It is outrageous and must be stopped. For example: let’s say you want to know the impact of daily jogs on happiness. You randomly instruct 80 people to either jog daily or to simply...

Of Boys and Men is a new book about how the outcomes of American men and boys are lagging in several ways. Most of it concerns aggregate trends that are irrefutable, such as the gender gap in college graduation. But books like these are often useful for testable hypotheses rather...

Fiber is defined as the parts of plants that we can eat but not digest. We're always told to eat more of it. Why should we eat things we can't digest? There are many papers to point to. Fiber consumption is strongly associated with less cancer, less heart disease, and...