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 863d ago
Drunken raccoon staggers through German Christmas market, passes out | DW | 08.12.2019
The tipsy raccoon apparently couldn't hold back from having a good time at Erfurt's Christmas market. However, the furry creature's daytime drinking binge ended in grisly fashion.
1
Maggie Koerth-Baker
Mood.
20h
Does Knowing Whom Others Might Vote For Change Whom You’ll Vote For?
Laws limiting when opinion polls can be published before an election are pretty common.
1
Maggie Koerth-Baker
When we at
@FiveThirtyEight give you the results of opinion polls, are we inadvertently changing the outcomes of the election?
7d
How To Fight With Your Family At Thanksgiving
Set down the bowl of mashed potatoes. Don’t raise up that drumstick in anger. And, no, we’re pretty sure the solution to getting along with your family this Tha…
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
Don’t raise your drumstick in anger, it’s @FiveThirtyEight’s evidence-based guide to holiday political conflict.
15d
Is there any data that says secondhand car seats aren't safe?
Manufacturers and retailers suggest car seats expire every six years or so. But what if that's not true?
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
This may well be the most controversial story I'll share this year. @Marketplace reporting suggests industry reps and certified car seat experts are wrong: There's nothing unsafe about an old car seat.
23d
It’s Gettin’ Hot In Here, So Be A Sawtail Fish
This summer, we asked readers to send us their climate change questions. And they did. We received many, many, many climate change questions. So many, in fact, …
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
Who is winning climate change? Maybe this fish. Depending on what you mean by "win".
24d
Why Nonprofits Can’t Research Gun Violence As Well As The Feds
How many Americans are shot but not killed each year? I can’t really tell you exactly. You’d think gunshot injuries would be easy to count, but as we’ve reporte…
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
Lots of nonprofits are funding gun violence research that the federal government doesn't do. Here's why that's not a great trade
28d
How To Understand Natural Disasters In A Climate Change Age
Fires, floods, polar vortexes and hurricanes — every season brings another disaster seemingly linked to climate change. But natural disasters happened before c…
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.
65d
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.
78d
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.
91d
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.
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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).
112d
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.
128d
Bielefeld conspiracy - Wikipedia
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Maggie Koerth-Baker
Everything is awful but at least the Bielefeld Conspiracy is still hilarious.
129d
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
140d
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."
148d