Vaguely interesting (Dec 11)

(1)  “Right now the incentives are all wrong. Why not do a big-budget FMRI study? In many fields, this is necessary for you to be taken seriously. And it’s not like you’re spending your own money. Actually, it’s the opposite: at least within the university, when you raise money for a big-budget experiment, you’re loved, because the university makes money on the overhead. And as long as you close your eyes to the statistical problems and move so fast that you never have to see the failed replications, you can feel like a successful scientist.”

(2)  “Democratic support was becoming deeper but more narrow before the 2016 general election really got underway. That’s a sign that Clinton’s problems reflected the electoral drawbacks of the evolving Democratic coalition at least as much as her own inabilities as a candidate.”

(3)  “[T]he fraction of children who earn more than their parents [has] fallen from approximately 90% for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980s.”

(4)  High-dollar political donors are disproportionately rich, white men with conservative economic views.

(5)  “The long-term future of the U.S. involves rising diversity, rising inequality, and rising redistribution. The combination of these forces makes for an unstable and unpredictable system. Income stagnation and inequality encourage policies to redistribute wealth from a rich few to the anxious multitudes. But when that multitude includes minorities who are seen as benefiting disproportionately from those redistribution policies, the white majority can turn resentful.”