@nachristakis
Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University. Sociologist. Network Scientist. Physician. Author of Apollo's Arrow; Blueprint; Connected; and Death Foretold. Director of the Human Nature Lab: https://humannaturelab.net
NEW: Pardon seekers are routinely being asked to pay $1m+ to lobbyists & lawyers claiming access to Trump, often with bonuses if clemency is granted.
I investigated the Trump Pardon Industrial Complex, & detailed the backstory behind 1 interesting pardon.
Call for Submissions: AI for Social Science Methodology (Yale)
• Keynote: @nachristakis.bsky.social
• Panel with editors of leading journals on publishing AI research
• Mentoring roundtables for early-career scholars
• Generous travel support
Discussion-driven, high-quality research.
What are some principles for developing a professional network as a young (or advanced) scientist? www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3ul...
This week's "For the Love of Science" vlog.
Bertrand Russell’s Advice For How (Not) to Grow Old: “Make Your Interests Gradually Wider and More Impersonal” www.openculture.com/2026/03/bert...
once-unimaginable cruelty
Want to learn about computational social science *for free* and identify new research partners across academic fields? Apply to one of the 2026 Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (described in yellow in the attached map) here: sicss.io/locations
In 1400, Oxford had a population of 6,000 and about 6 killings a year. Triple that of London and York.
Why was it so violent?
Students got off with impunity, as they had clerical privileges!
Nice evidence on institutions
As of 2025, this analysis of privacy policies indicates that every major AI company uses your private conversations to train their models by default. Every prompt, file, photo, personal detail: all of it feeds directly into model training. arxiv.org/pdf/2509.05382
“Breaking bad: How health shocks prompt crime” by S. Andersen et al., American Economics Journal:
Applied Economics, 2026
That's right. Worse than Pointless
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...
Images in Clinical Medicine Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis after Measles Infection Panels A and B: MRI of the head showing edema and restricted diffusion in the frontal lobes that involved the cortical ribbon and white matter and extended into the corpus callosum.
A 7-year-old boy was brought to a hospital with a 3-month history of cognitive deterioration and seizures. He had contracted measles at 7 months of age while living in an area where the infection is endemic. Read the full case details: nej.md/4qY4Ihk
#MedSky #NeuroSky #IDSky
Final version @nature.com of our paper describing unconventional multicellular development in a choanoflagellate inhabiting an extreme environment. A ton of new data since the first @biorxivpreprint.bsky.social preprint (which we've kept updating).
A brief 🧵 (carried over from the old place)
Breaking bad: the likelihood of a cancer patient committing a crime is 14% higher in the decade following their diagnosis than the baseline rate among people yet to develop the disease. www.economist.com/graphic-deta...
The incorrect idea that ”graphs only encode pairwise interactions“ has done a lot of damage, and will take a long time to repair.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
“I go to my fathers. In whose mighty company I shall not now feel ashamed.”
Moving recent rescue of a bull elephant from a sinkhole.
In #BLUEPRINTbook, I review how we can infer the social organization of mammoths from the fact that males were much more often found buried in tar pits than females: they were more solitary and had no other elephant to help.
From my library (among books on violence that complement ones on cooperation), this item suggests that there may be a parabolic relationship between bombing intensity and regime support in an adversary. But I’m no expert, and I don’t think we’ve seen regime change with bombing alone in my lifetime.
This map shows widely dispersed dots representing the guesses of US survey respondents about the location of Iran on a world map. 23% placed a dot in the correct area.
Where is Iran?
Each dot represents an American's guess.
pro.morningconsult.com/articles/can... 🌐
I had the incredible opportunity to meet Veddee and his wife for dinner in Seattle a few years ago at a non-profit fundraiser. He was so decent and charismatic (and in love with his wife). I liked him instantly.
Don’t worry. Soon, everyone here will be an expert on air wars in the Middle East.
“Whoever decided that a university speaker getting reimbursed for an Uber needs to complete the same supplier onboarding as a firm bidding on a $1M waste disposal contract: please rot in hell.”
Hanging with my friends and colleagues Orlando Patterson and Dan Lieberman at @harvard.edu in 2012. :-)
What is the best way to ask for a letter of recommendation?
Another short video in our vlog, For the Love of Science, regarding practical and conceptual aspects of science:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A7p...
The Nazis stopped Jewish doctors from practising, so thousands of them left the country (my great grandfather was one of them). So many left that this was a good natural experiment for estimating the causal effect of losing doctors on infant mortality (& thousands died)
And here is my favorite story of why it is wise to stay in touch with your advisors: reaching out to my @upenn.edu & @pennmedicine.bsky.social Internal Medicine residency program director, Dr. Donald Martin, after a decade of silence was..... awkward.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEJZ...
What is the best way to ask for a letter of recommendation?
Another short video in our vlog, For the Love of Science, regarding practical and conceptual aspects of science:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=1A7p...
Plus he’s a great guy.
After several years of work, my lab is starting to put out our first papers on learning in a unicellular organism (Stentor coeruleus).
Here we show evidence for a form of associative learning in Stentor:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
