Jeroen van Baar, PhD

Great plan! I might take you up on that 😁

Interesting! Please keep me (everyone?) posted on your talk and share a video link if possible, because I'm trying to learn more about causal mediation at the moment. Would like to use it for a study, but only if justifiable... Thanks!

I’d say the opposite. Until tenure it’s one of the most uncertain careers. After tenure the balance between teaching and research depends on annual grant applications. Academics do tend to be uncertainty-intolerant of character, maybe that’s what’s causing the confusion ;)

Conspiracists are about to get a dose of reality Antivaxers, cranks and fantasists thrive in safe, stable societies but the days of consequence-free idiocy may be ending

Interesting read - 'Conspiracists are about to get a dose of reality' www.thetimes.com/article/b3bb...

The Long-Term Effects of Measles Vaccination on Earnings and Employment (May 2022) - The measles vaccine was introduced in 1963. Take-up of the vaccine in the United States occurred quickly and universally, leading to reductions in morbidity and mortality. New biological ...

“Measles vaccination alone is responsible for half a percent of all US income this year, $76.4 billion. That is just from the reduced disease burden, it doesn’t include reduced medical costs.” Via @emollick.bsky.social www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

This was a team effort with talented and driven colleagues from multiple countries. Funding was provided by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, who have long aided economic and social development in Moldova. Nobody is on BlueSky yet, but I'm sure they will be soon. FIN

These data provide input for targeted treatment efforts such as community mental health centers, which have been set up in the country in the last 5 years. Data also suggest that effective prevention of mental ill-health must consider the socioeconomic conditions in which we live.

There are limitations to the work. Data were collected during the covid-19 pandemic and while war already raged in neighboring Ukraine, so they may not generalize to other time periods. The symptom screeners are not clinical interviews. But the study provides good initial data where there were none.

As found worldwide, low-income participants (<2/3 of poverty line, 22% of population) had much worse mental health than high-income (>2x poverty line, 25% of pop.). The low-income group had nearly 2x higher odds of screening for depression, when controlling for education, employment & demographics.

Older adults (56–64y) had more anxiety and lower well-being than younger age groups. This contradicts data from other countries, where older age tends to go with better mental health. Suggests it's not an effect of aging itself but of idiosyncratic socioeconomic factors such as pensions.

We found that women had higher rates of depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and loneliness than men. For symptoms of depression and anxiety (internalizing disorders), this is also in line with findings in other countries such as the Netherlands and the United States.

Overall, about 20% of the population screened positive for depression and about 25% for anxiety. This is in line with observations around the same time in other Eastern-European countries. (www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....)

We used basic screeners for anxiety and depression (PHQ/GAD-2), for which a validated Romanian version is available. We also asked about socioeconomic living conditions and collected demographics.

Socioeconomic correlates of mental health in Moldova: A nationally representative door-to-door survey The mental health system in Moldova is transitioning toward a community-based model, which requires data on population mental health. This is the firs…

New paper. With a big group of colleagues from Moldova and the Netherlands, we ran the first representative mental health survey of the adult population in Moldova. Local interviewer teams went door-to-door in 2022 to include 1826 adults in the study. 🧪 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

EXCLUSIVE: NSF starts vetting all grants to comply with Trump’s orders Grantee accounts remain frozen, while union accuses NSF of ignoring rules governing peer review

This is not business as usual.

It’s not just a change in funding priorities going forward; it is the reneging on funding agreements and is profoundly disruptive for even those grants that will be found to be compliant.

Meanwhile, trainees who often live paycheck to paycheck are going unpaid.

bsky.app/profile/jero...

The Hidden Cost Of Unreliable Insurance Profit-driven health insurance may irreparably damage what it ought to aid: health.

I wrote about how it feels to be a UnitedHealthcare customer. New research confirms my hunch: broken trust isn't just frustrating, it's a health hazard. 🧪
jeroenvanbaar.substack.com/p/the-hidden...

The Collapse of Ego Depletion Science's Biggest Self-Control Failure

Roy Baumeister called ego depletion "one of the most replicable findings in social psychology." As someone who spent 20 years studying it—and ultimately had to admit it wasn't real—I have to respectfully disagree. Here's my perspective of what went so wrong.

NSF grantees - people who have already received their grants based on a previously funded and approved research proposal - are being told to stop any activities related to DEI and accessibility.
Call this what it is: government censorship of ongoing research projects.
www.opm.gov/policy-data-...

The silence from Dems is deafening.

We’re exhausted—looking for leadership and starting to feel desperate. Everything feels like it’s slipping away & electeds aren’t acknowledging it, let alone speaking on it.

@dougjones.bsky.social sounds like someone who’s actually read the room. More of this!

In all these cases, we could not fathom the outcome when the money was given. The grants probably appeared wasteful at the time. But they were critical to America’s dominance in the world. If you want to live in the light, don’t switch it off.

3) a forerunner of the internet itself, ARPANET, was developed with a grant from the Department of Defense. www.britannica.com/topic/ARPANET

2) the monoclonal antibody treatment Trump received for his covid-19 infection in 2020 was developed by Renegeron with a $611 million grant from the department of Health and Human Services, not to mention all the NIH-funded basic research that made it possible; www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_A...

1) our beloved AI chatbots only exists because of NSF-funded basic neuroscience research in the 1980s; www.goldengooseaward.org/01awardees/pdp

Now that the leader of the free world has put his boot on the garden hose of knowledge, some might be wondering why we spend our money on research anyway. At the risk of stating the obvious, here are a few examples: 🧪

It’s great for coming up with recipes based on what you have in your fridge. That’s been 80% of my use 🙌🏼

Congrats, looks awesome! I can't wait to read it (really need it right now actually)

Voor de Nederlandse volgers: een hilarisch accurate beschrijving van het ondergaan van een MRI-scan 😁🧪

Why I'm quitting the Washington Post Democracy can't function without a free press

Shame on the @washingtonpost.com, which at one time was beacon of the free press.

anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-qui...

Happy new year my fellow scientific travelers! May 2025 bring you much inspiration, growth, and fun. 🧪