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Patrick Blanchenay

@pblanchenay

Snr Advisor for Knowledge, Evaluations and Research at Norwegian Church Aid (Oslo). Opinions not my employer's. Making aid impact better documented, and aid work more evidence -based. Previously assistant prof (teaching) at U. Toronto; OECD. PhD Economics.

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Latest posts by Patrick Blanchenay @pblanchenay

The "can this be a solution?" meme with the base R pipe

The "can this be a solution?" meme with the base R pipe

Can this be a solution?

12.03.2026 20:29 πŸ‘ 39 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
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Another day, another stupid Excel chart.

12.03.2026 22:02 πŸ‘ 1901 πŸ” 424 πŸ’¬ 13 πŸ“Œ 14
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Any sufficiently advanced file-drawer is indistinguishable from p-hacking

12.03.2026 09:21 πŸ‘ 73 πŸ” 14 πŸ’¬ 8 πŸ“Œ 6

It's hard to maintain websites. /s

12.03.2026 06:35 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I’m not worried about AI taking away all the jobs. As long as someone needs to check the β€œI am not a robot” box, humans will be needed.

11.03.2026 18:34 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
a man with curly hair has the words he looks petrified below him ALT: a man with curly hair has the words he looks petrified below him
11.03.2026 10:55 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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At the turn of the millennium, 2.2 billion people in the world lived in extreme poverty. In international statistics, this means they survived on less than $3 per day (in today’s money).

In the two decades that followed, this number more than halved. You can see this decline in the chart.

10.03.2026 13:45 πŸ‘ 56 πŸ” 18 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 3

In turn, the journal builds a reputation for offering high quality peer-review, and being hard to publish, therefore offering high quality work.
You can finetune the cap so that it's only binding for mass producers.

09.03.2026 20:37 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Wouldn't it be easy for prestigious journals (as a signal of prestige) to actually cap the number of submissions by a given author over, say, a year? Authors have an incentive to only submit their best paper there, which require them to think self critically instead of mass-producing.

09.03.2026 20:37 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Pretty sure this is someone who SHOULD have used AI.

Instead, it sounds like what you get when you just use next word suggestion on the Android keyboard.

09.03.2026 20:21 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Very complete.

09.03.2026 20:13 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
a man in a blue shirt and tie is pointing at a board with papers on it . ALT: a man in a blue shirt and tie is pointing at a board with papers on it .
09.03.2026 13:00 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

If the costs of refereeing are also going down.... Someone should create the Journull.

09.03.2026 07:09 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

One potential upside as the cost of writing a paper goes to zero: null results might finally get written up

09.03.2026 06:34 πŸ‘ 21 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

Can't make an evolutionary omelet without breaking a few eggs.

08.03.2026 11:34 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Just a pointer that Copilot can actually remove passwords on certain Excel files. Worth trying to avoid the whole unzip, clean, rezip.

08.03.2026 09:08 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Authored? Produced? Generated? Published?

07.03.2026 08:44 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Over the Top: when Stallone turns the hat backwards

Over the Top: when Stallone turns the hat backwards

How I feel turning on "extended thinking"

07.03.2026 04:43 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Preview
a man is talking to a group of people while standing in front of a tree . ALT: a man is talking to a group of people while standing in front of a tree .
07.03.2026 07:00 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Aid organisations in disarray.

06.03.2026 21:50 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
i love data, me too meme

i love data, me too meme

04.03.2026 00:34 πŸ‘ 190 πŸ” 43 πŸ’¬ 11 πŸ“Œ 11
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Wheat Field with the Alpilles Foothills in the Background - 1888
https://botfrens.com/collections/46/contents/14510

20.02.2026 06:53 πŸ‘ 100 πŸ” 21 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

Meth cooking is a healthcare failure. #breakingbad

05.03.2026 14:41 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
Santa climbs in a window, sees a letter written to him from a small child who is sleeping. The letter reads β€œobserve the counter factual”. After reading this Santa tries to shoot the child.

Santa climbs in a window, sees a letter written to him from a small child who is sleeping. The letter reads β€œobserve the counter factual”. After reading this Santa tries to shoot the child.

πŸŽ…

04.03.2026 07:24 πŸ‘ 16 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
Screenshot of the "Does that use a lot of energy?" online app

Screenshot of the "Does that use a lot of energy?" online app

Hannah Ritchie has built a fun little tool where you can compare energy usage of various products and activities.

This is super helpful imho, because it's so hard to develop intuitions even just about the scales involved here.

hannahritchie.substack.com/p/does-that-...

03.03.2026 09:27 πŸ‘ 154 πŸ” 66 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 5
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Kirill, whoever you are, I owe you one.

03.03.2026 13:52 πŸ‘ 55 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0

I heard there was a secret code
That purged effects of survey mode
But you don’t really care for bias, do ya

03.03.2026 12:32 πŸ‘ 50 πŸ” 8 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 1

The actual solution is to take causal inference seriously in research designs; and weigh the possibility of misinterpretation strongly in the decision to accept a study or not.

03.03.2026 12:59 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I mean sure, but this is not enough; many still interpret associational and predictive language as causal.
If you write an article showing that "blueberry consumption can predict incidence of cardiovascular diseases", news outlets and Instagram influencers WILL tell you to eat more blueberries.

03.03.2026 12:57 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
Email from LinkedIn titled "View Princeton University jobs and your next steps".

Email from LinkedIn titled "View Princeton University jobs and your next steps".

I hope you all find someone in life who believes in you the same way LinkedIn believes in me.

03.03.2026 12:39 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0