







A re-analysis of Ciacci's (2024) "Banning the purchase of sex increases cases of rape: Evidence from Sweden" Journal of Population Economics reveals major issues. A year ago, reproducers Adema, Folke, and Rickne found coding errors driving the paper's key results. Let's unpack this in a 🧵
May 9, 2025 at 12:21 PM
Comment on “Banning the purchase of sex increases cases of rape: evidence from Sweden”
Journal of Population Economics -
Additional evidence on the effects of banning the purchase of sex on cases of rape in Sweden
I discuss (Ciacci J Popul Econ 37:37 2024) and provide additional results of a regression discontinuity in time model showing that the result that the ban affected cases of rape is not robust.

Debunking every Anti Transgender Argument Part 1: Trans Women in Women's Sport
Andreas De Block on Twitter / X
It took Nature three years to publish this rebuttal, which clearly demonstrates the fundamental flaws in the original paper. In the meantime, the paper's conclusions influenced scientific debate and policy decisions. Such delays in correcting flawed research do real damage. https://t.co/QI3Ei3PE70— Andreas De Block (@DeblockBlock) August 13, 2026
A Statistical Interrogation of “The Case for Causality, Part 1” by Rausch and Haidt – Matthew B. Jané
I don’t know anything about the literature on social media and mental health so my focus on this post is to interrogate the statistical approach taken by the article written by Zach Rausch and Jonathon Haidt (link here) and to some extent the original meta-analysis by Ferguson.

If You Want to Raise Birthrates, You Need to Fix Men
New evidence that patriarchy plus economic growth leads to declining birthrates
Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image This was definitely NOT on my bingo card for this year: European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen taking a moment between G7 meetings to promote the launch of the closed-source, for-profit network #WSocial. 🔗 : https://web.archive.org/web/20260617083436/https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rentzhog_kind-of-cool-to-see-ursula-von-der-leyen-ugcPost-7472769475885461504-hwct/ I fear this may be a harbinger of things to come: MANDATORY AGE VERIFICATION for social media across Europe. I hope I'm wrong on this. #privacy #SurveillanceCapitalism #EUBigTech
Sex Workers Describe the Instability—and Necessity—of OnlyFans
Creators of sexually explicit content talk about what it's like to rely on a platform that can just... change its policies, then change them back.

Why the Stockholm Declaration will never work
Abstract. The Stockholm Declaration calls for a moral reformation of scientific publishing—replacing commercial publishers with scholar-led journals, rewar

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men is a 2019 book by British feminist author Caroline Criado Perez. The book describes the adverse effects on women caused by gender bias in big data collection.

Elon Musk's Grokipedia Pushes Far-Right Talking Points
The new AI-powered Wikipedia competitor falsely claims that pornography worsened the AIDS epidemic and that social media may be fueling a rise in transgender people.

Update: We submitted the comment to the Journal of Population Economics, and today we got a desk reject with this motivation. However, we do not know their conclusion about the main results and why the paper was not retracted. Clearly, they do not hold. 1/4
Johanna Rickne
🚨 REPLICATION REPORT UPDATE: One year ago, a tweet by John Holbein alerted me, @ollefolke.bsky.social, and @jopieboy.bsky.social to a paper with a shocking result about Sweden’s law criminalizing the purchase of sex.🧵
🚨 REPLICATION REPORT UPDATE: One year ago, a tweet by John Holbein alerted me, @ollefolke.bsky.social, and @jopieboy.bsky.social to a paper with a shocking result about Sweden’s law criminalizing the purchase of sex.🧵
Good news, everyone! I have a short piece coming out in The Conversation on Monday that explains the main issues with this study. It's impossible for me to have the same media reach as the original press release. So I'd be extremely grateful if people could help me share it as widely as possible 🙏
G. Willow Wilson
Good news, everyone cnn.com/2026/05/14/health/arts-ageing…
The main changes that will happen is due to regulators being intensively focused on ‘protecting the children’. So more labels on adult content and more divisions between people who identify as minors and people posting adult content. They continue to add to the list - gov.uk/government/news/new-laws-to-t…
New laws to target online abuse and pornography
www.gov.uk