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Brendan J. Kelly

@bjklab

infectious diseases / epidemiology / microbial ecology https://motionlab.site Philadelphia, PA, USA

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Latest posts by Brendan J. Kelly @bjklab

Interactive resources

With the power of OJS and Quarto, I’ve created a few interactive websites to illustrate trickier statistical concepts when teaching. Check them out (and adapt and copy as much as you want!)

With links to three different websites (accessible at the main link in the post)

Interactive resources With the power of OJS and Quarto, I’ve created a few interactive websites to illustrate trickier statistical concepts when teaching. Check them out (and adapt and copy as much as you want!) With links to three different websites (accessible at the main link in the post)

Finally got around to adding fancy links to my different interactive teaching websites for showing things like p-hacking, p-value interpretations, and (still-in-draft-form) DAGs at www.andrewheiss.com/teaching/ #rstats #QuartoPub #statsky

06.03.2026 22:15 👍 78 🔁 11 💬 1 📌 0

Love this South Jersey accent deep dive. A great watch... after you're done your homework. Thanks, @evanedinger.bsky.social

04.03.2026 03:14 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Announcing the third keynote speaker for StanCon 2026 We’re happy to share the third keynote speaker for StanCon 2026! StanCon 2026 will take place 17–21 August 2026 in Uppsala, Sweden. Kaitlyn Johnson, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Jo...

🔥 StanCon 2026 third keynote announced 🔥
Kaitlyn Johnson,
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
More information here
discourse.mc-stan.org/t/announcing...
@mc-stan.org

17.02.2026 09:28 👍 9 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 2
Preview
Group B Streptococcal Disease | NEJM Group B streptococcus commonly colonizes the human gastrointestinal and genitourinary tracts and is the single most common bacterial cause of invasive infection among newborns in the United States....

New review of Group B strep from the NEJM…

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.... #IDSky

26.02.2026 13:09 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Post image

New research article

Serotype-specific pneumococcal invasiveness: a global meta-analysis of paired estimates of disease incidence and carriage prevalence

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

#IDSky #ClinMicro #Streptococcus #IPD #OpenAccess #OA

23.02.2026 13:18 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
Diffusion Models in Simulation-Based Inference: A Tutorial Review Diffusion models have recently emerged as powerful learners for simulation-based inference (SBI), enabling fast and accurate estimation of latent parameters from simulated and real data. Their score-b...

Diffusion models & flow matching are reshaping simulation-based inference.

Thus, we wrote the first tutorial review on diffusion-based SBI. For an overview or a deep dive, check it out and let us know what you think:

arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2512.20685
Web: bayesflow-org.github.io/diffusion-ex...

02.01.2026 13:29 👍 20 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
The 80% power lie | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

The 80% power lie
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/02/19/t...

19.02.2026 14:36 👍 11 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 1
Sam Abbott (LSHTM): Composable probabilistic models can lower barriers to rigorous ID modelling
Sam Abbott (LSHTM): Composable probabilistic models can lower barriers to rigorous ID modelling YouTube video by Juniper Consortium Seminars

I had a great time talking at the Juniper seminar series last week about composable infectious disease models. Some very good discussion after the talk. The recording is now up!

youtu.be/FQYOqGnbJWA?...

16.02.2026 12:06 👍 24 🔁 3 💬 2 📌 3
The fifth annual Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition is open! | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

The fifth annual Cherry Blossom Prediction Competition is open!
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/02/11/t...

12.02.2026 01:24 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
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Bluesky Map Interactive map of 3.4 million Bluesky users, visualised by their follower pattern.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself!

bluesky-map.theo.io

I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

08.02.2026 22:59 👍 7205 🔁 2160 💬 659 📌 4581
StanCon 20206
International Conferene on Bayesian Inference and Probabilistic Programming
17-21 August, 2026
Uppsala, Sweden

StanCon 20206 International Conferene on Bayesian Inference and Probabilistic Programming 17-21 August, 2026 Uppsala, Sweden

Three weeks time to submit contributed talk abstract to StanCon 2026! You can also submit a poster abstract early, if you need to make early travel plans. There will be travel and accommodation support for students, too!

More information about submitting at www.stancon2026.org/abstracts/

04.02.2026 15:55 👍 6 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
Preview
The Crime of Witness | Fintan O’Toole Renée Good and Alex Pretti were murdered for daring to interfere with the Trump administration’s efforts to normalize abductions and state violence.

Fintan O’Toole @fotoole.bsky.social on the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti https://go.nybooks.com/4bmNB4F

29.01.2026 14:16 👍 30 🔁 10 💬 0 📌 5
Alfred Hitchcock's 1942 Saboteur (Scene)
Alfred Hitchcock's 1942 Saboteur (Scene) YouTube video by Molarkie

Watched #Saboteur last night -- #Hitchcock captured the internal battle between democracy and fascism in 1942. A reminder that American fascists were fighting against democracy even during WW2: youtu.be/-rtlkILRmEQ

26.01.2026 18:27 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

from what I can see, the video shows a beating followed by an execution.

24.01.2026 16:06 👍 1282 🔁 279 💬 23 📌 14
Preview
StanCon 2026 Deadline for tutorial and workshop in one week Hi everyone, The submission deadline for contributing tutorials and workshops is one week from now, on the 28th of January. Tutorial Tutorials provide hands-on learning experiences to help attendee...

StanCon 2026 tutorial and workshop deadlines in one week:
discourse.mc-stan.org/t/stancon-20...
@mc-stan.org

21.01.2026 09:20 👍 8 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
Video thumbnail

When works become public domain, anyone can reimagine and reuse them.

🚂 The Little Engine That Could can be freely reinterpreted—like this video marrying pages of the 1930 book to a Librivox audio recording. 📚+🎤

Learn more ⤵️
blog.archive.org/2026/01/01/w...

#PublicDomainDay

10.01.2026 03:45 👍 414 🔁 80 💬 0 📌 7

And we're live, Lecture A1 is online. Introduction to Bayesian workflow, generative models, estimands, estimators, estimates, error checking, beginnings of probability theory and Bayesian updating. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztbY...

06.01.2026 11:02 👍 199 🔁 64 💬 2 📌 5
Preview
State-of-the-Art Review: Infectious Diarrhea This State of the Art Review describes a multidisciplinary approach to the care of people with diarrhea, considering both infectious and non-infectious eti

Great overview of current knowledge.

Many patient factors impact the management of people w/ presumed infectious diarrhea. Therefore, multispecialty engagement optimizes access, linkage to care, and judicious use of diagnostics and therapeutics…

academic.oup.com/cid/article/... #IDSky

02.01.2026 15:20 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Incremental development and testing:  Black cat adoptions

Even when we know the final statistical model that we want to use for inference, we should not try to write it directly. It is better to develop simpler, incremental models and test each with synthetic data. This helps us to avoid the frustration of trying to debug a complex model. Large models can and usually do fail in multiple ways, due to a poison salad\subjindex{poison salad} of coding errors, misspecification, and estimation challenges.
%
Being smart means working smart. By starting with a simple, minimal model and adding one feature at a time, we have a better chance of knowing which portion of the model code is responsible for an error, misspecification, or poor convergence.

This case study builds the target statistical model in several steps, while using synthetic data simulation to help construct and test each incremental model. This helps us construct the model, notice and evaluate alternative implementations, and better understand how the model performs.

This case study also provides an example of survival analysis with censoring. This kind of problem is commonplace---there are observations that are only partially observed, and we need to use all the information, even if only partial. Bayesian implementation provides two different ways to implement censored observations, by using cumulative distributions corresponding to the ordinary data model or by treating each censored value as partially observed and imputing it using the data model. Neither approach is always superior, and each helps us understand the model better. We'll show you both. 

Another benefit of this kind of example is the generative model of the sample and the statistical model necessarily differ. We often say Bayesian models are generative, they can be used to simulate observations. And that's true. But it isn't always true of every aspect of the model. In the case of censored values, the censoring is part of the observation m…

Incremental development and testing: Black cat adoptions Even when we know the final statistical model that we want to use for inference, we should not try to write it directly. It is better to develop simpler, incremental models and test each with synthetic data. This helps us to avoid the frustration of trying to debug a complex model. Large models can and usually do fail in multiple ways, due to a poison salad\subjindex{poison salad} of coding errors, misspecification, and estimation challenges. % Being smart means working smart. By starting with a simple, minimal model and adding one feature at a time, we have a better chance of knowing which portion of the model code is responsible for an error, misspecification, or poor convergence. This case study builds the target statistical model in several steps, while using synthetic data simulation to help construct and test each incremental model. This helps us construct the model, notice and evaluate alternative implementations, and better understand how the model performs. This case study also provides an example of survival analysis with censoring. This kind of problem is commonplace---there are observations that are only partially observed, and we need to use all the information, even if only partial. Bayesian implementation provides two different ways to implement censored observations, by using cumulative distributions corresponding to the ordinary data model or by treating each censored value as partially observed and imputing it using the data model. Neither approach is always superior, and each helps us understand the model better. We'll show you both. Another benefit of this kind of example is the generative model of the sample and the statistical model necessarily differ. We often say Bayesian models are generative, they can be used to simulate observations. And that's true. But it isn't always true of every aspect of the model. In the case of censored values, the censoring is part of the observation m…

Prior predictive distribution of waiting times for the first adoption model (without
censoring). Each curve is a survival plot for an individual prior simulation. Black curves correspond
to black cats. Orange curves correspond to all other cat colors.

Prior predictive distribution of waiting times for the first adoption model (without censoring). Each curve is a survival plot for an individual prior simulation. Black curves correspond to black cats. Orange curves correspond to all other cat colors.

Posterior predictive distributions of waiting times for the first adoption model (without
censoring). Each curve is a survival plot for an individual posterior simulation. Black curves
correspond to black cats. Orange curves correspond to all other cat colors.

Posterior predictive distributions of waiting times for the first adoption model (without censoring). Each curve is a survival plot for an individual posterior simulation. Black curves correspond to black cats. Orange curves correspond to all other cat colors.

Including the old black cat adoptions survival analysis example as a case study in the forthcoming Bayesian Workflow book. This is presented as a whole incremental workflow with simulation, validation, and model comparison. Just now went through code and extra-commented and cleaned. Getting close!

27.12.2025 08:20 👍 80 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 0

We're doing the final sprint, and I think we're able to send the PDF of the forthcoming Bayesian Workflow book to the publisher in the next two weeks (500+ pages), which would mean it would be published some time next year

16.12.2025 17:21 👍 123 🔁 9 💬 3 📌 3
Preview
American food safety could be headed for a breakdown More Americans will be exposed to foodborne illness as a result of this year's funding cuts, food safety experts predict

American food safety could be headed for a breakdown. Story by @sarah-todd.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2025/12/22/a...

22.12.2025 16:33 👍 89 🔁 51 💬 8 📌 18

Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things

15.12.2025 20:41 👍 3989 🔁 1275 💬 132 📌 276
course schedule as a table. Available at the link in the post.

course schedule as a table. Available at the link in the post.

I'm teaching Statistical Rethinking again starting Jan 2026. This time with live lectures, divided into Beginner and Experienced sections. Will be a lot more work for me, but I hope much better for students.

I will record lectures & all will be found at this link: github.com/rmcelreath/s...

09.12.2025 13:58 👍 659 🔁 235 💬 12 📌 20
Perspective 
"The net effect would be to disadvantage the people the FDA exists to protect, including millions of Americans at high risk from serious infections." 

"A Threat to Evidence-Based Vaccine Policy and Public Health Security at the FDA" by R.M. Califf et al.

Perspective "The net effect would be to disadvantage the people the FDA exists to protect, including millions of Americans at high risk from serious infections." "A Threat to Evidence-Based Vaccine Policy and Public Health Security at the FDA" by R.M. Califf et al.

Twelve former commissioners of the FDA express concern that the agency’s recent moves will undermine a regulatory model designed to ensure vaccine safety, effectiveness, and availability. Read the full Perspective: nej.md/48Ova76

03.12.2025 22:10 👍 26 🔁 17 💬 2 📌 2
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Modelling Like an Experimentalist Dahlin et al. (2024) apply experimental thinking to a model of mosquito-borne disease transmissions.

"Validate With Simulated Truth: A first habit is to test whether an analytical pipeline can recover known conditions."

Very good advice below. So much COVID nonsense (e.g. 'immunological dark matter') basically came down to a non-identifiable model that hadn't been properly tested.

09.11.2025 21:18 👍 49 🔁 6 💬 3 📌 2

Pseudomonas aeruginosa has big slug energy. #IDsky #MicroSky

29.10.2025 19:59 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Effectiveness of Nirmatrelvir/Ritonavir or Molnupiravir Use in Immunocompromised Patients on B-Cell–Depleting Therapy With COVID-19: A Target Trial Emulation Study This target trial emulation study assessed nirmatrelvir/ritonavir and molnupiravir effectiveness in COVID-19 patients receiving B-cell–depleting therapy. N

A study of COVID therapeutics in immunocompromised individuals on B-cell depleting therapy!!!

Nirmatrelvir/ritonavir significantly more effective than no rx (HR 0.56) molnupiravir w non significant trend to improved outcomes (HR also 0.56)… #IDSky #covid

academic.oup.com/cid/advance-...

25.10.2025 13:53 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
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On an Arctic archipelago, frozen soil may preserve a hidden history of viruses Scientists are hunting for ancient RNA in Svalbard’s permafrost, hoping to shed light on the evolution of viral diseases

I am fascinated by how viruses evolve - and not just since #SARSCoV2 has shown us at the global stage how consequential virus evolution can be for us.
In my new story in @science.org I got to explore how researchers are probing deeper into the past with old RNA virus genome.
So a 🧪 thread…

18.10.2025 10:02 👍 215 🔁 76 💬 4 📌 6
Post image

💻Join online! 🎧
Süßmilch Lecture at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)
Putting Science Before #Statistics
🗣️Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ MPI-EVA Leipzig
📅Oct 21, 2025
🕒3 pm CEST
✏️Sign up now:
https://ow.ly/uxfc50Xb5Yx

15.10.2025 08:00 👍 20 🔁 8 💬 2 📌 1

Is a healthy microbiome one that is rich in phages? 🦠 Excited to share our paper out in Lancet Microbe with @bkoskella.bsky.social & @dholtappels.bsky.social where we test whether virome diversity can be used a broad signature of microbiome health 📈

10.10.2025 13:12 👍 63 🔁 26 💬 2 📌 1