10.31234/osf.io/dvfq7

We present the first version of the Visual Argument Structure Tool (VAST) which may be used for jointly visualizing the conceptual, logical and empirical relationships that structurally constitute arguments. The system incorporates some basic principles of structural equation modelling (SEM), but goes beyond SEM in important ways: It distinguishes between the features of objects and the names that may be used for those features. It also distinguishes several ways in which features may be related to one another (causation, conceptual implication, prediction, transformation, conclusion), and all of these from beliefs as to whether something IS the case and/or OUGHT to be the case. The system also accounts for multi-dimensionality, for different perspectives on the same issues, and allows for any degree of vagueness vs. precision deemed possible and/or necessary. The latter feature may make it particularly useful for visualizing narrative (“verbal”) components of argument structures, which are very common in the humanities but also in psychology. VAST may be used to increase the level of argument specification in these fields, which has been repeatedly called for. As for application, the system may be used to capture the structure of arguments in (e.g.) criminal investigations and media reports, but also of general worldviews and of debates. Visualizing argument structures this way is useful because it helps ensure comprehensiveness (i.e. any element and any combination of elements may be evaluated against all other elements), which facilitates the identification of contradictions, circularity, redundancy, and gaps that may otherwise be overlooked. It may also help improve on the accessibility of arguments to a wider audience.

Visual Argument Structure Tool (VAST)

10.31222/osf.io/4kw2n

We have developed a new technique of Feature Importance, a topic of machine learning, to analyze the possible causes of the Covid-19 pandemic based on country data. This new approach works well even when there are many more features than countries and is not affected by high correlation of features. It is inspired by the Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization procedure from linear algebra. We study the number of deaths, which is more reliable than the number of cases at the onset of the pandemic, during Apr/May 2020. This is while countries started taking measures, so more light will be shed on the root causes of the pandemic rather than on its handling. The analysis is done against a comprehensive list of roughly 3,200 features. We find that globalization is the main contributing cause, followed by calcium intake, economic factors, environmental factors, preventative measures, and others. This analysis was done for 20 different dates and shows that some factors, like calcium, phase in or out over time. We also compute row explainability, i.e. for every country, how much each feature explains the death rate. Finally we also study a series of conditions, e.g. comorbidities, immunization, etc. which have been proposed to explain the pandemic and place them in their proper context. While there are many caveats to this analysis, we believe it sheds light on the possible causes of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Analysis of feature influence on Covid-19 Death Rate Per Country Using a Novel Orthogonalization Technique

A quick visual summary of data on this week's article by @anthonybmasters & @d_spiegel The outlook is uncertain, although we have survived a variant once already (B.1.1.7). The data on the effect of variants is analysed as fast as it (reliably) arrives. https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiMDc5YWYxMDQtZTk3Ny00OTkyLWI1MjYtOTA2ZTFmNmM4YWRjIiwidCI6IjljNTAxMmM5LWI2MTYtNDRjMi1hOTE3LTY2ODE0ZmJlM2U4NyIsImMiOjh9&pageName=ReportSectionc43494eb8eb26ada4078…

In today's Weekly Stats Uncovered, @d_spiegel and I look at Public Health England technical briefings, the spread of B1.617.2, and secondary attack rates.Why is the new Covid variant spreading? | David Spiegelhalter and Anthony MastersThe virus is now in a race with the vaccines and the victor is increasingly uncertaintheguardian.com

· 3 Mayinteresting article on the perspectives of young/healthy people who don't plan on getting vaccinated and some ideas on how to change that byb @DKThomp https://theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/the-people-who-wont-get-the-vaccine/618765/

Seth Trueger@MDaware · 3 MayI'm not hopeless this is one of those "whether we think we can or we can't, we're right" situations twitter.com/MDaware/status…

by @apoorva_nyc

this truly is the blurst of times

Using these methods, we can estimate this key parameter without big new studies! This will help improve models and public health practice and help us decide how to safely move forward

Follmann and Fay look at a similar idea, focusing on the statistical details (https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.04.21251133v1…) and we focus on the epidemiologic assumptions (some nice synchronicity at work!)Vaccine Efficacy at a Point in TimeVaccine trials are generally designed to assess efficacy on clinical disease. The vaccine effect on infection, while important both as a proxy for transmission and to describe a vaccine’s total...medrxiv.org

We need some other assumptions too: stable epidemics, undetectable = uninfectious, and the vaccine effect has to be on catching the infection and the viral load

Now we add to that the fact that viral loads tell us something about transmissibility. This is a key assumption: we need to convert from measured viral load to how likely someone is to transmit

.@rebeccajk13 and @mlipsitch showed how to use that to estimate efficacy against prevalent infection (https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.25.21252415v1…).Interpreting vaccine efficacy trial results for infection and transmissionRandomized controlled trials (RCTs) have shown high efficacy of multiple vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 disease (COVID-19), but evidence remains scarce about vaccines’ efficacy against infection with,...medrxiv.org

BUT we describe ways to estimate this in the randomized trials we're running anyway, by adding a time point where we test trial participants for SARS-CoV-2

Understanding efficacy against transmission usually requires big community studies, which often don't have randomization

.@nataliexdean has explained these different measures in Duplos (https://twitter.com/nataliexdean/status/1360701856616493060…) and words (https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/03/05/understanding-the-spectrum-of-vaccine-efficacy-measures/…) building on @betzhallo's key work in the areaQuote TweetNatalie E. Dean, PhD@nataliexdean · 13 FebOkay Twitter, I think you will appreciate this. So @TheEconomist is not the only one who can make Version 2.0 of my vaccine sketches. Inspired by a tweet from @johnpmcdermott, I present vaccine efficacy with Duplos. (Original thread below for reference.) twitter.com/nataliexdean/s…

We want to understand how effective vaccines are on many scales: how well do they prevent death? prevent symptomatic disease? prevent asymptomatic infection? Here we focus on how well they prevent transmission.

New preprint up with @rebeccajk13 and @mlipsitch: https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.03.21256556v1…. Note: not yet peer reviewed! Brief summary:Estimating vaccine efficacy against transmission via effect on viral loadDetermining policies to end the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic will require an understanding of the efficacy and effectiveness (hereafter, efficacy) of vaccines. Beyond the efficacy against severe disease and...medrxiv.org

10.31234/osf.io/4ukmd

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused significant disruption and disturbance in the lives of individuals across the globe. Especially during the early parts of the pandemic, parents took on increased caregiving responsibilities with little to no guidance from federal organizations. Further, economic strain made it difficult for parents meet their children's physical and emotional needs. Much of the research that has examined parenting during COVID-19 has stemmed from survey data. However, self-presentation biases may prevent survey researchers from obtaining authentic and accurate experiences from parents. Therefore, this study examined parents’ sentiment and emotional wellbeing during COVID-19 using Reddit data—specifically, posts from the Mommit and Daddit subreddits. Data were scraped using Python, and analyzed in R. Sentiment analysis was conducted using the NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon (i.e., EmoLex). Results suggested mothers and fathers were less trusting and angrier in late-summer 2020 compared to 2019. Additionally, mothers were more negative in March 2020 compared to March 2019, and mothers’ anticipation increased from March 2020-April 2020 (which did not occur in 2019). This suggests mothers in particular may have experienced initial distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Future research should continue to monitor the emotional wellbeing of parents as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

Parenting During COVID-19: A Sentiment Analysis of Reddit Data

10.31234/osf.io/df9qw

Vaccines are highly effective for curbing the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Yet, millions of Americans remain hesitant about getting vaccinated, jeopardizing the collective benefits from potential herd immunity and our ability to end the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that brief video-based messages of encouragement addressing specific COVID-19 vaccine concerns increase vaccination intentions. Intentions, in turn, predict future vaccine uptake in our data. Our experiment also reveals that increased confidence in COVID-19 vaccines and perceived behavioral control to get vaccinated are the key psychological drivers influencing willingness to get vaccinated. Importantly, our messages only increased vaccination intentions among people who identify as conservative or moderates, while liberals are unaffected due to high levels of pre-existing vaccine acceptability. Our findings corroborate the real-world behavioral significance of vaccination intentions, and devise how even short, scalable online messages can provide governments and health authorities an inexpensive, yet effective tool for increasing COVID-19 vaccinations among populations most reluctant to get them.

Video-based messages to reduce COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and nudge uptake

10.31234/osf.io/puqvs

In light of psychology’s ‘theory crisis’, multiple authors have recently argued that adopting the formalization of theories and/or formal modelling is a necessary or useful step towards stronger psychological theory. In this article, I instead argue that formal modelling cannot solve the core problem the psychological ‘theory crisis’ refers to, which are the currently high degrees of contrastive and holistic underdetermination of our theories by our data. I do so by first introducing underdetermination as an explanatory framework for determining the evidential import of research findings for theories, and showing how both broader theoretical considerations and informal assumptions are key to this process. Then, I derive the aforementioned core problem from current theory crisis literature and tentatively explore its possible solutions. Lastly, I show that formal modelling is neither a necessary nor sufficient solution for either contrastive or holistic underdetermination, and that its uncritical adoption might instead worsen the crisis.

Psychology's Theory Crisis, and Why Formal Modelling Cannot Solve It

10.31234/osf.io/ux3fc

Past research indicates that people judge repeated statements as more true than new ones. An experiential consequence of repetition that may underly this “truth effect” is processing fluency: processing statements feels easier following their repetition. Here, we examine the effect of merely instructed (i.e., not experienced) repetition on truth judgments, which we compared to the effect of factual repetition. In two preregistered experiments (N=468), we found a larger truth effect for factual repetition compared to instructed repetition. However, we also found a non-experiential contribution to truth judgments: statements instructed to be repeated were judged more true than those instructed to be new. Experiment 2 further clarified that adding a repetition status tag in the factual repetition condition did not impact truth judgments. Moreover, for both experienced and instructed repetition, the effect on truth was qualified by subjective recognition. We discuss the mechanisms that can explain the impact of instructed repetition on truth and its implications for a better understanding of the truth effect.

Truth by Repetition … without repetition: Testing the effect of instructed repetition on truth judgments

10.1103/PhysRevE.104.014307

We consider a population that experienced a first wave of infections, interrupted by strong, top-down, governmental restrictions and did not develop a significant immunity to prevent a second wave (i.e., resurgence). As restrictions are lifted, individuals adapt their social behavior to minimize the risk of infection. We explore two scenarios. In the first, individuals reduce their overall social activity towards the rest of the population. In the second scenario, they maintain normal social activity within a small community of peers (i.e., social bubble) while reducing social interactions with the rest of the population. In both cases, we investigate possible correlations between social activity and behavior change, reflecting, for example, the social dimension of certain occupations. We model these scenarios considering a susceptible-infected-recovered epidemic model unfolding on activity-driven networks. Extensive analytical and numerical results show that (i) a minority of very active individuals not changing behavior may nullify the efforts of the large majority of the population and (ii) imperfect social bubbles of normal social activity may be less effective than an overall reduction of social interactions.

Self-initiated behavioral change and disease resurgence on activity-driven networks

10.31234/osf.io/gx87e

Vaccine equity is not working because besides the role played by the fascists and the authoritarian regimes in denying vaccine access to their population, also, it is behind the cloak of human rights that the western countries are not sharing the knowledge of production and manufacturing of the basic life-saving technologies in the times of pandemic. The G7 Summit pledged to donate one billion vaccine doses, but the world requires solidarity, not charity. Emphasis on human rights, social justice, and saving the lives of people over the profit of pharmaceutical companies is the need of the hour.

Vaccine Equity and G7 Summit

10.1136/bmj.n1702

Europe-wide, covid secure travel is finally here . . .Unfortunately, many people in the UK aren’t eligible so can’t take advantage of this.Because of Brexit?Indirectly. As the UK has left the EU, it now has separate systems and regulations and its citizens lost the right to free movement. Meanwhile, the EU has launched a digital covid certificate to facilitate free movement, which will be issued and recognised by all EU states.How does it work?The certificate contains a QR code showing that the bearer has been fully vaccinated and tested negative for, or recently recovered from, covid-19.1 Fully vaccinated EU citizens will be exempt from travel related testing and quarantine across the region 14 days after having received their last dose.1 Only UK residents who are citizens of EU member states living here may be eligible for one.Sounds like the NHS covid passThis is a different system so is not automatically recognised by the EU, although some individual EU countries, including Spain and Greece, are accepting the NHS covid pass.2 The technologies behind the two systems are similar, so the EU and the UK are working on a mutual recognition agreement before the peak summer holiday season kicks in.Great, so can we book a cheap August break in the Med?Not so fast. Check which vaccine you had first. If it’s AstraZeneca then you should be covered, but you’ll need to check the batch numbers to be sure.I think it was 4120Z001 . . .Sorry, looks like you will be holidaying in Cornwall this year, if you can find any accommodation you can afford.3 Unfortunately batch numbers 4120Z001, 4120Z002, and 4120Z003 are Covishield which is not recognised by the EU.But isn’t all AstraZeneca recognised?Unfortunately not. While the two vaccines are identical, Covishield was made at the Serum Institute in India rather than in the UK or EU. EU member states only recognise vaccines that received EU marketing authorisation. The European Medicines Agency hasn’t approved Covishield because the EU isn’t receiving any Covishield doses.Bureaucratic nonsense!Maybe, but there is still hope. Individual EU member states can decide to recognise other vaccines,1 and the World Health Organization has approved Covishield for emergency use. Some countries already accept other vaccines—for example, Greece accepts China’s Sinovac, Russia’s Sputnik V, and several others.

Sixty seconds on . . . EU covid certificates

Despite group-level information is known to affect behavioural responses in social networks, very few models account for it. In this work we introduce the Multiscale Voter Model (MVM), that relies on network geometry to incorporate homophilic influences at different scales. We use numerical simulations to monitor the evolution of MVM dynamics in synthetic geometric networks and several real data sets. We identify a transition between a final stage of the dynamics with mixed binary opinions to one of full consensus, depending on the composition and size of the groups as well as their strength of influence. Strikingly, groups made of more diverse and less affine nodes promote eventual consensus. Contrarily, groups reflecting similarities between nodes, as captured by the latent geometry of the networks, yield to metastable clusters of same opinion which hinder the transition to general agreement. Finally, we study in detail the phenomenon of opinion segregation and discover that opinion clusters admit a visual interpretation. Spatial patterns observed in the underlying hyperbolic space of networks portray opinion domains and lead to new insights in opinion polarization dynamics.

Multiscale opinion dynamics on real networks

Source: New Statesman

Vaccines work, people

10.31234/osf.io/yt872

Loneliness (i.e., the distressing feeling that often accompanies the subjective sense of social disconnection) is detrimental to mental and physical health, and deficits in self-reported feelings of being understood by others is a risk factor for loneliness. What contributes to these deficits in lonely people? We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to unobtrusively measure the relative alignment of various aspects of people’s mental processing of naturalistic stimuli (specifically, videos) as they unfold over time. We thereby tested whether lonely people actually process the world in idiosyncratic ways, rather than only exaggerating or misperceiving how dissimilar others’ views are to their own (which could lead them to feel misunderstood, even if they actually see the world similarly to those around them). We found evidence for such idiosyncrasy: lonely individuals’ neural responses during free viewing of the videos were dissimilar to peers in their communities, particularly in brain regions (e.g., regions of the default-mode network) in which similar responses have been associated with shared psychological perspectives and subjective understanding. Our findings were robust even after controlling for demographic similarities, participants’ overall levels of objective social isolation, and their friendships with each other. These results suggest that being surrounded predominantly by people who see the world differently from oneself may be a risk factor for loneliness, even if one is friends with them.

Lonely individuals process the world in idiosyncratic ways

With vaccination campaigns underway in some countries while others weigh the options, Nature looks at the evidence for vaccinating younger people.

Should children get COVID vaccines? What the science says