Andrew Gelman wasn't impressed by the paper: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/07/03/historical-journal-records-reveal-a-surge-of-methodological-disto

Andrew Gelman wasn't impressed by the paper: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/07/03/historical-journal-records-reveal-a-surge-of-methodological-distortions-in-recent-decades/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/07/03/historical... "But they don’t really have any measure of entire societies or depression. The above note by Schmidt discusses why the Google books collection cannot be characterized as a measure of entire societies. There are also problems with the depression measurement. Here’s what it says in the PNAS article: For example, the 3-gram “I am a” captures a labeling and mislabeling distortion, regardless of its context or the precise labeling involved (“lady,” “honorable person,” “loser,” etc.). These same n-grams were in earlier research shown to be significantly more prevalent in the language of individuals with depression vs. a random sample (17). Note 17 points to this preprint, which states: Here, we show that individuals with a self-reported diagnosis of depression on social media express higher levels of distorted thinking than a random sample. How do they define “distorted thinking”? [W]e define a clinical lexicon of 241 n-grams that a panel of clinical psychologists deemed to form a schema involved in the expression of a particular type of distorted thinking according to CBT theory and practice. For example, “I will never” would be implicated in the expression of a cognitive distortions such as Catastrophizing or Fortune-telling, whereas “I am a _” would be used to express a Labeling and Mislabeling distortion. This is like a parody of clinical psychology, reminiscent of those sitcom moments when the busy suburban dad is persuaded to go to a shrink, and everything he says on the couch is interpreted as some sort of neurosis. Only this case, instead of everything being a coded statement about his mother, everything’s a coded statement about a cognitive distortion. “I am a statistician.” “There you go with those Labeling and Mislabeling distortions again!”"