Maggie Koerth-Baker
Senior Science Reporter at @FiveThirtyEight. Nieman Fellow. Science and society = my jam. Occasional cute kid stories. She/Her.
Last synced from Twitter 813d ago
Media Bubbles Aren’t The Biggest Reason We’re Partisans
Maybe you call it a bubble. Maybe you call it a silo. Maybe you just call it an echo chamber. But whatever metaphorical, narrow and enclosed space you prefer, t…
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
So you know how we're all using social media and cable news to isolate ourselves in partisan news bubbles?
Yeah. Turns out there's a lot of evidence suggesting that's not actually happening.
15d
Why Partisans Look At The Same Evidence On Ukraine And See Wildly Different Things
One man’s vandalism is another’s political dissent. Back in 2012, researchers from Kent State University presented survey respondents a hypothetical news story:…
We’ve Been Fighting The Vaping Crisis Since 1937
Before there were vapes, there was sulfanilamide. One of the first great medicines of the antibiotic era, sulfanilamide was a miracle drug at a time when curing…
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
Hey! Remember the vaping lung disease crisis? A lot has gone down this week, but that's still a serious ongoing issue ... and it reflects even older issues with how our country manages consumer protection and safety.
28d
Here’s The Best Place To Move If You’re Worried About Climate Change
This summer, we asked readers to send us their climate change questions. A lot of those questions sat squarely under umbrella topics we expected: how climate sc…
The World Isn’t Ready For Climate Refugees
You can batten the hatches against a storm, but bureaucracy is harder to ride out. Last week, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record made a direct h…
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
The US won't give Bahamian survivors of Hurricane Dorian temporary protection status. Unfortunately, leaving climate refugees in political limbo is par for the course worldwide.
41d
A Virtual Iowa Caucus Would Have Been A Hacking Nightmare
When the Democratic National Committee put the kibosh on plans for virtual caucuses in Iowa and Nevada, they may have pissed off the people who saw the event as…
No, Bringing Back Mental Institutions Won’t Stop Mass Shootings
I have a mental health problem. A couple of them, actually. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is the big one. I was diagnosed at 26 and take medication d…
Jeffrey Epstein, my very, very sick pal
A very weird interview with Stuart Pivar about Epstein, his science parties, his "pathology," and the industrial scale of it all.
Can We Prevent Mass Shootings By Preventing Suicide?
Imagine a doctor who wanted to treat a broken leg with chemotherapy. Or treat cancer with a cast. Just because cancer and broken legs are both things that happe…
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
"Many of these mass shootings are angry suicides."
What happens when suicide (the most common type of gun violence) overlaps with mass shootings (one of the least common types).
62d
No Terrorist Is A ‘Lone Wolf’
“How do we stop these people?” the president says, referring to immigrants and refugees crossing the southern U.S. border. “Shoot them,” a voice calls from the …
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
It takes a village to produce a "lone wolf" terrorist.
Social science is showing that lone actors are never truly acting alone. Violent rhetoric and the communities that support it help create individual violent acts.
78d
Bielefeld conspiracy - Wikipedia
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
Everything is awful but at least the Bielefeld Conspiracy is still hilarious.
79d
We Don’t Really Know How Stressed Americans Are About Climate
The Midwest has been drenched by rain and beset by floods. California is bracing for wildfires after several years of record-breaking burns. Hurricane season is…
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
“You’ve probably seen all kinds of anecdotal reports of anxiety associated with climate change,” my source said. “But there’s not much concrete data we can refer to.”
Climate anxiety is complicated. And that means you can't rely on it for climate action
90d
Uh, You Should Read FaceApp's Truly Wild Terms of Service Agreement Before You Use It
Every few years, digital photo gimmick app FaceApp finds a way to return to the public consciousness with a new round of “here’s what I’d look like if I was…
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
Reading this, I'm thinking, "Somebody just gave this company massive rights to an image of Ryan Gosling without Gosling's permission."
98d
How Weird Is Andrew Yang’s Tech Policy? Only About As Weird As America’s.
The American relationship with technology is a complicated one.
What Questions Do You Want Answered About Climate Change?
We're here to help.
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
Climate change (and how to deal with it) can make us all feel a little lost. We at @FiveThirtyEight would like to help. We're starting a new Q&A column around climate and we're letting your questions shape what the series becomes!
107d
A Cheat Sheet On Tonight’s Debaters’ Climate Positions
The Democratic primary candidates are basically all starting from the same big picture position on climate: it’s real, we need to address it now and the Green New Deal is a good way forward. (John Hickenlooper would disagree with that last bit, but...
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
Boy, that's a lot of people on stage. Here's where they all stand on climate
118d
First 2020 Democratic Debate, Night 1: Live Analysis
Live coverage of the first night of the first Democratic presidential primary debate, hosted by NBC in Miami, FL.
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
It's easy to feel like the #DemDebate candidates' climate positions are kind of indistinguishable from one another. fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/firs…
Here's a cheat sheet thread to help you out
119d
We Can Predict Where Measles Will Happen. Why Don’t We?
At the end of February, a team of researchers submitted a paper to the medical journal The Lancet that predicted the top 25 U.S. counties most at risk for measl…
The Anti-Vaxxer Movement Isn’t Really Growing
To insist it is distorts our view of public health.
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
This is good reading by @danengber. Measles cases are up in the US, but that doesn't necessarily mean US vaccine refusal is up.
121d
When Trying To Save The World Also Trashes It
Mauricio Urbina was trying to save the planet on the day he realized he was simultaneously destroying it. A biologist who studies the bodies of fish and other s…
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
Bioscience and medical research - alone - could be responsible for 2% of global plastic waste. So now what?
126d