The former governor of Indiana is pleasantly surprised by Harvard

 Eric Holcomb taught a seminar at Harvard after stepping down as governor of Indiana.  He reports that he expected to find a woke hell, but instead found a thriving university.  He attributes that in part to President Trump's war on American universities in general and on Harvard in particular.

I was a red state governor. What I saw at Harvard surprised me.
The spirit of association remains alive in unexpected places.   By Eric Holcomb
Eric Holcomb, a Republican, was the governor of Indiana from 2017 to 2025.

"In January, I completed two terms as governor of Indiana. This fall, I did what all red state Republicans do (right?): spent a semester teaching at Harvard University. As someone who believes that restoring our communities is among America’s greatest challenges, my goal was to see if the foundation of an open-minded, problem-solving community still existed in a place far removed from my own cultural comfort zone. It does.

...

"I found a community that didn’t always agree but could still talk with each other and work together toward the greater good, which in Harvard’s case includes education, discovery and the development of ideas and technologies.

...

"What I’ve experienced may be a natural return to Harvard’s more moderate bearings, following noisy displays of intolerance by campus agitators in recent years. Or it may be due to the Trump administration’s forceful executive orders and fiscal pressure. Either way (and it’s probably both), let’s take the win and learn the broader lesson." 

Kate Ho (1972-2025)

 Kate Ho has passed away, tragically early.  I met her when she was a grad student at Harvard, who worked with Ariel Pakes.

Here's the Econometric Society announcement:

In Memoriam: Kate Ho 

"We are deeply saddened by the passing of Kate Ho, the John L. Weinberg Professor of Economics and Business Policy at Princeton University and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. Kate was a brilliant IO economist and scholar whose impact on the profession will resonate for many years to come.

Among her numerous achievements, Kate delivered the 2021 Fisher-Schultz Lecture of the Econometric Society and received the 2020 Frisch Medal for the best applied paper published in Econometrica over the previous four years, recognizing her pathbreaking work on contracting and insurer competition in health care markets. She served as Co-Editor of Econometrica from 2021 to 2025, contributing with extraordinary dedication and insight. She was also an elected member of the Council of the Econometric Society from 2021 to 2024 and served on many other Society committees. Beyond her professional excellence, Kate was an exceptionally kind, thoughtful, and collaborative colleague. We will miss her deeply.

We extend our heartfelt condolences to Kate’s family, friends, colleagues, and all who were fortunate enough to know her." 

Kidney exchange updates

 Here are three kidney papers and proposals that I've noted recently,  which will have implications for the growing interest in international kidney exchange on a global scale:

Klaassen MF., de Klerk M, Dor FJ.M.F., Heidt S, van de Laar SC., Minnee RC., van de Wetering J, Pengel LH.M. and de Weerd AE. (2025) Navigating a Quandary in Kidney Exchange Programs: A Review of Donor Travel versus Organ Shipment. Transpl. Int. 38:14804. doi: 10.3389/ti.2025.14804

Abstract:  In multicenter kidney exchange programs (KEPs), either the explanted kidney must be shipped, or the donor must travel to the transplanting center. This review describes the available data on these two approaches and formulates recommendations for practice. We searched for studies addressing organ shipment or donor travel in KEPs. Data were categorized into four domains: cold ischemia time (CIT), logistics, donor/recipient perspectives and professional perspectives. From 547 articles screened, 105 were included. Kidneys are shipped in most countries. Prolonged CIT due to shipment may increase the risk of delayed graft function, but does not seem to impact graft survival. Planning the shipment requires a robust logistical framework with guaranteed operating room availability. Donor travel is reported to be both emotionally and financially distressing for donors and exposes them to inconsistencies in donor evaluation and counseling across centers. Reduced willingness to participate in KEP when travelling was reported by 36%–51% of donors. Professionals generally support offering organ shipment to donors not willing to travel. In conclusion, the decision between donor travel or organ shipment should be tailored to local circumstances. Healthcare professionals should prioritize minimizing barriers to KEP participation, either by facilitating organ shipment or reducing the burden of donor travel. 

######

Neetika Garg, Joe Habbouche, Elisa J. Gordon, AnnMarie Liapakis, Michelle T. Jesse, Krista L. Lentine,
Practical and ethical considerations in kidney paired donation and emerging liver paired exchange,
American Journal of Transplantation,
Volume 25, Issue 11,  2025, Pages 2292-2302,
ISSN 1600-6135,  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajt.2025.07.2459.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1600613525028382)
 

Abstract: Since the first kidney paired donation (KPD) transplant in the United States in 1999, the volume and scope of KPD has expanded substantially, accounting for nearly 20% of living donor kidney transplants in 2021-2022. This review article discusses the practical and ethical issues specific to paired donor exchange that patients, transplant centers, and exchange programs commonly encounter. Access to paired donor exchange and education of candidates regarding the potential benefits, risks, and logistics of KPD are important considerations. Transplant centers and patients must consider practical issues including wait times, allocation and matching strategies, assessment of organ quality, complex donors, cold ischemia time, and risks of broken chains. Protections available to donors from current KPD programs, the potential psychosocial effects, and the ethical concerns related to variable access and the proprietary nature of private exchange programs are also discussed. More detailed, timely data collection at a national level, and ability to merge national data with individual donor exchange registries will enable the analysis of the impact and outcomes of future trends in paired donation. KPD experience and key concepts may inform liver paired exchange, which has been used internationally to expand living donor liver transplantation and is emerging in the United States.

######

Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation (APKD) Launches Wish Upon a Donor: A Hope-Focused Advocacy Program Helping Kids Who Need Kidneys Find Living Donors

"TOLEDO, OHIO / ACCESS Newswire / December 9, 2025 / The Alliance for Paired Kidney Donation (APKD) is proud to announce Wish Upon a Donor, a groundbreaking program that amplifies the voices of families fighting for a better and brighter future for their child. While pediatric kidney patients cannot advocate for themselves, their parents can - and too often, they face this battle alone. Wish Upon a Donor helps families share their child's story, shining a light on their hopes, dreams, and urgent need for a living kidney donor.

...

"The onboarding process is fast and simple, taking just 10-15 minutes to complete, and finalized videos are sent to patients in just one to three days. Participation is free, and patients retain full control over how and where their stories are shared.

Wish Upon a Donor offers a range of support for families as they seek living donors, including:

Production of a personalized, high-quality video designed to reflect the patient's wishes, personality, and future - not just their disease

Dedicated campaign webpage to make it easy to convert interest into action

QR-coded postcards and magnets for sharing in local communities

Social media guidance to help families and supporters spread the word

Spanish- and English-language outreach materials for broader access

A living donor mentor to answer any non-medical questions about the process

"Wish buddy" volunteers to assist with video narration and/or sharing patient videos with a broader audience

When interest is generated through the Wish Upon a Donor campaign, APKD ensures both patients and transplant centers are effectively supported with guidance grounded in real-life experience from a dedicated living donor mentor. The organization manages all incoming donor inquiries, educates potential donors on the process, protections, and realities of living donations, and then refers qualified donors to an appropriate transplant center partner. APKD maintains communication and support throughout the evaluation and donation process. This approach empowers potential donors with education while easing the burden on transplant centers."
 

Abortions in the U.S. since state bans have been enacted

 It's hard to effectively ban something that is legal in neighboring jurisdictions.

The NYT has the story:

A Small Illinois City at the Center of a Seismic Shift in Abortion Access. 
Carbondale, Ill., a liberal enclave within driving distance of 10 states with abortion bans, has become a hub for the procedure. Last year there were nearly 11,000 abortions in this city of 21,000.   By Elizabeth Williamson

"Abortion is legal in Illinois, but the state is surrounded by others that have largely banned the procedure in the three years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. As a result, Illinois now leads the nation in out-of-state abortion patients. Carbondale, a college town in Illinois’s southern tip within driving distance of 10 states with abortion bans, has become a major abortion hub.

"Last year three clinics in this city of 21,000 provided close to 11,000 abortions, almost all for women from other states. The numbers, provided by the clinics, account for nearly a third of all out-of-state abortions in Illinois. 

,,,

"The clinics have already drawn protests as well as intervention efforts from Coalition Life, a St. Louis-based anti-abortion group that stations “sidewalk counselors” outside Carbondale’s clinics.

...

"In states without total bans, there were 1,038,100 clinician-provided abortions in 2024, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. The number includes 155,000 abortions for patients who had crossed state lines. Overall, the number of abortions in the country has slightly increased since the Dobbs decision, largely because of medication abortions."

 

Why I Chose to Get E. Coli. — by Josh Morrison

 Josh Morrison is a glutton for (effective) altruism: he's a nondirected kidney donor (who founded the advocacy organization WaitlistZero), and he's an advocate of human challenge trials for vaccines, who founded the organization OneDaySooner.  He reports his own recent experiences as a challenge trial participant, in MedPage Today:

Why I Chose to Get E. Coli. — Human challenge trials can accelerate medical innovation  by Josh Morrison

" challenge trials have been essential for scientific advancements that may not have been possible (or would have taken much longer) with traditional studies. Challenge studies were crucial to developing malaria vaccines. The correlates of protection they established for influenza immunology are still used to license flu vaccines today, and they played an important role in discovering the origins of both ulcers and yellow fever.

"The E. coli vaccine study I joined was at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Vaccine Development (CVD). Two of my friends had been in studies at the CVD and had positive experiences overall. I felt like the E.coli vaccine in particular was an important one, so I decided it was time for me to participate too.

"To start, half the participants received the first vaccine in the series and half got a placebo. These initial shots and their associated follow-up were part of eight appointments over 3 months. At our appointments, we had our vitals checked and, in some cases, we had our blood collected or received another vaccine. At appointments the week after a vaccination, we'd provide a stool sample. The study culminated in a 9-day quarantine in Baltimore where were we were exposed to the infectious agent: It was time to drink the E. coli.

"The E. coli was suspended in a bicarbonate solution and tasted like Gatorade without the sugar or flavoring. I remember chuckling nervously as I drank it alongside my fellow participants. It was such an odd experience; I felt like an astronaut counting down for liftoff. 

...

"People's motivations for being in the study included the money (about $4,500). But most of my fellow participants were also excited about the chance to be part of important research and were motivated by the novelty of the experience.

...

"

This was the first challenge study I've participated in, despite having been connected to the field for 5 years. I run 1Day Sooner, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of challenge study volunteers. Some of my colleagues have been challenged in Shigella, Zika, Malaria, COVID, and Salmonella studies. But I never have because I live in New York and I'm not aware of any institutions in New York that run challenge studies. That may sound surprising, but there are only about 30 challenge studies globally each year, and the U.S. is a relative laggard compared to Europe.

"You might be wondering, would I participate in another one? I would, though I'd prefer something outpatient that didn't require a strict quarantine."

 

 

Disagreement in Science: Missing Women by David Klinowski

 Here's an study of women in science that explores a novel angle.

David Klinowski; Voicing Disagreement in Science: Missing Women. The Review of Economics and Statistics 2025; 107 (6): 1743–1753. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01322 

Abstract: This paper examines the authorship of post-publication criticisms in the scientific literature, with a focus on gender differences. Bibliometrics from journals in the natural and social sciences show that comments that criticize or correct a published study are 20% to 40% less likely than regular papers to have a female author. In preprints in the life sciences, prior to peer review, women are missing by 20% to 40% in failed replications compared to regular papers, but they are not missing in successful replications. In an experiment, I then find large gender differences in willingness to point out and penalize a mistake in someone's work. 

 

 

 

Tom Stoppard (1937 –2025)

 Tom Stoppard, the great English playwright, passed away last week. I saw many of his plays, including his last one, about his apparently late in life discovery that he was Jewish, and that his immediate family had fled Czechoslovakia ahead of  the Nazis, while most of the rest had perished, with a few exceptions.

The play tells the story of three generations of assimilated Jews. You, the audience, of course know how it will end, but they don't, and they are optimistic that their current troubles will soon pass.  It's an eerie feeling to watch that play amidst the world's current uncertainties. 

The NYT tells his story through that final play.

When Tom Stoppard Confronted His Background in His Final Play
The playwright, who learned about his Jewish heritage late in life, addressed it in the Tony Award-winning drama “Leopoldstadt.”   By Marc Tracy

"Stoppard’s final play, too, contained characters whose fates were tragically preordained. The rest is silence." 

Binding early decision in college admissions: "Go early, or go somewhere else"

 There was a time when only football coaches and presidents had news-making salaries at colleges and universities.  Now top admissions officers--i.e. sales managers--are the subject of this NYT story:

Meet the Millionaire Masters of Early Decision at Colleges
The enrollment chiefs at Tulane and the University of Chicago attracted many early applicants. Now both of them earn a lot of money. By Ron Lieber

"The University of Chicago was where fun went to die. Tulane University was where you could die from too much fun.

"Neither place liked its reputation, but in 2016, both felt confident enough in changes on their campuses that they started offering an early decision option for student applicants. Apply by November (or January for the “Early Decision II” option) and get an answer weeks later. You just had to agree to attend if you got in.

"Within a handful of years, two-thirds of Tulane’s first-year class had taken the deal. The University of Chicago found so much success that it recently added an opportunity to apply even earlier, in some cases before the senior year of high school has even begun.

"The enrollment chiefs who made this all happen also found success.

"According to federal filings from 2023, Chicago’s vice president for enrollment and student advancement, James G. Nondorf, received $967,000 over a year from the university and “related” organizations. At Northeastern University, the executive vice chancellor and chief enrollment officer, Satyajit Dattagupta, got $1.079 million in compensation after decamping in 2022 from Tulane, where he had a strong run in a similar role."

...

"James Murphy, who works with Class Action, an advocacy organization, recently ranked schools on this early decision advantage — the difference in admissions rates between early decision and the “regular” round, when applicants get an answer later. Northeastern ranked first, with an early decision advantage that was over 11 times as large. Tulane was second, and its figure was over five times. "

Ludwig Amadeus Minelli (5 December 1932 – 29 November 2025), leader of Dignitas assisted suicide organization

 The Washington Post has the story

Ludwig Minelli, founder of leading assisted suicide group, ends his life at 92.  Dignitas, which Mr. Minelli founded, has helped thousands of people to die, some from countries where assisted suicide is illegal.  By Maham Javaid

 "Ludwig Minelli, who became a leader of the death-with-dignity movement as the founder of Dignitas, a Swiss organization with more than 10,000 members that provides and advocates for access to assisted suicide, died Saturday, ending his life through the process he helped promote. He was 92 and would have celebrated his 93rd birthday on Friday.

...

"Mr. Minelli, a lawyer specializing in human rights, was the general secretary of Dignitas, which since 1998 has helped thousands of people from around the world, including from countries where assisted suicide is illegal, to die. 

...

"Mr. Minelli and his group claimed responsibility for major milestones in the field of assisted death. In 2011 the European Court of Human Rights confirmed the right and freedom of a competent individual to decide on the manner and the time of their own end of life. In 2022, the German Federal Constitutional Court declared a law that made providing professional assistance in suicide impossible in Germany was unconstitutional. The same year, Austria also revoked a blanket prohibition on assisted suicide.

"In recent years, Australia, Canada and New Zealand have shifted their stance on assisted dying.

"Dignitas has participated in nearly 4,200 accompanied suicides since Mr. Minelli founded the group in 1998, the group reported in 2024. More than a third of those people lived in Germany, and there were over 600 people each from France and Britain. The group says it has more than 10,000 members. "

#########

Here is the statement/obituary from Dignitas: Passing of a pioneer and warrior 

Scientists and policy makers with feet of clay

 A recent article in The Lancet talks about the checkered career of the late James Watson (1928-2025), who participated in great science (the DNA double helix), wrote about it in popular terms that had some vulgar elements (The Double Helix), and later in life had troubling, unscientific thoughts on race and gender. This made me think of yesterday's post, which touched on the Statement from the American Economic Association concerning Larry Summers. 

Here's the Lancet piece: 

James D Watson: a cautionary tale by Philip Ball  

It begins:

"There was always going to be a complex reckoning in the obituaries of James D Watson (1928–2025), the American geneticist who co-discovered the structure of DNA. For many years, Watson was one of the most influential figures in modern biology—Director, then President and Chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York, USA, from 1968 to 2007, and the key motive force behind the Human Genome Project. He was also notorious for his attitudes towards women, especially Rosalind Franklin (1920–58), and for his comments on race, which led to a precipitous fall from grace in the past two decades. Watson enjoyed playing the role of provocateur, proudly claiming that his Chicago heritage made him inclined to speak his mind frankly no matter who it upset. The popular image of Watson now is of a great scientist who held controversial views. That, however, lets everyone too easily off the hook." 

 And here are the two concluding paragraphs:

"But this is also a cautionary tale about how science comports itself. Watson's 2007 interview was hardly a revelation to those who knew him; he had been making bigoted comments for years. In the Esquire interview in that same year he said “some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified”. And yet there had been a continual turning of a blind eye: he was seen as “outspoken”, “colourful”, and “controversial”. In Watson's heyday, the scientific community tended to indulge such behaviour so long as the perpetrator was sufficiently eminent. Even after the disastrous interview in The Sunday Times, some considered Watson's reputation should shield him from repercussions. When a talk at the Science Museum in London was cancelled in 2007, Richard Dawkins complained about “the hounding, by what can only be described as an illiberal and intolerant ‘thought police’, of one of the most distinguished scientists of our time”. It can sometimes look as though the biggest crime in science is to create an unseemly fuss, especially on a topic deemed “political”. That Elon Musk, who is a fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), gave a Nazi salute, or that Stephen Hawking FRS attended soirées on Jeffrey Epstein's private island, are seen primarily as sources of embarrassment best passed over quickly.
 

"Perhaps times are changing. When Watson turned up at the event marking the 75th anniversary of Schrödinger's What Is Life? in Dublin, Ireland, and was given an impromptu toast by the organisers, there were dumbfounded glances all around the tables at the thought that we were expected to raise our glasses. Scientists are starting to confront difficult behaviour—but we still have some way to go before acknowledging that it can taint not only the practice of science but also its substance too. "

########## 

 We have had to think about fine figures with feet of clay at least since Daniel (33-34) interpreted for King  Nebuchadnezzar his dream about a statue with "a head of fine gold, its breast and its arms were of silver, its belly and thighs were of copper.  Its legs were of iron, and its feet were partly of iron and partly of clay."

 

AEA Survey of hiring plans of U.S. Economics Departments (and an unrelated unprecedented AEA announcement about Larry Summers)

 Here's the latest survey of the job market for new PhD economists:

To: Members of the American Economic Association
From: AEA Committee on the Job Market: John Cawley (chair), Elisabeth “Bitsy” Perlman, Al 
Roth, Peter Rousseau, Wendy Stock, and Stephen Wu
Date: December 1, 2025
Re: Survey of hiring plans of U.S. Economics Departments 

 

 

 

################

Also on the AEA website is this unprecedented announcement:

    Announcement      December 2, 2025

Statement from the American Economic Association

"The American Economic Association (AEA) has accepted Lawrence H. Summers' voluntary resignation from membership and, pursuant to the AEA's Policies, Procedures, and Code of Professional Conduct, has imposed a lifetime ban on his membership. In addition, effective immediately, the AEA has imposed a lifetime prohibition on Mr. Summers' attending, speaking at, or otherwise participating in AEA-sponsored events or activities, including serving in any editorial or refereeing capacity for AEA journals. The AEA condemns Mr. Summers' conduct, as reflected in publicly reported communications, as fundamentally inconsistent with its standards of professional integrity and with the trust placed in mentors within the economics profession. Consistent with longstanding AEA practices and to protect the integrity and confidentiality of AEA processes, the AEA will not comment further on individual matters or the specific considerations underlying this determination.

The AEA is committed to upholding the highest standards of professional conduct and to fostering a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all members of the economics community.  The AEA affirms its expectation that all members adhere to the AEA Code of Professional Conduct and the AEA Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, and Retaliation, and remains dedicated to maintaining professional environments in which economists of all backgrounds can participate fully, and with dignity and respect."

 
 

Interview with Joel Mokyr: "I'm Not Sure Democracy Will Survive"

 Joel Mokyr, the Dutch-Israeli-American 2025 Nobel Laureate in Economics for his work on the history of technology, is interviewed in Haaretz.  He's worried about democracy, but still optimistic about technology.

'I'm Not Sure Democracy Will Survive': Israeli 2025 Nobel Laureate Fears for the West's Future  by Guy Rolnik

“I can envision a world where democracy and the legal institutions we know and cherish do not survive, while technological progress continues. And some argue that this may really be what we need, because the greatest technological challenge we face today is climate change – and it's very hard right now to claim that democracies are handling it well. By contrast, China has been manufacturing electric cars endlessly, they've been manufacturing solar panels, they've been addressing climate change."  

Would you want your daughters to live in a technologically advanced but undemocratic world?

 
"No, but I'm not sure I can prevent it. Democracy is a modern product. Most societies in the past, including those that produced Newton, Galileo and Spinoza, were not democratic societies. The notion of democracy never occurred to them. This idea was born – or at least revived – in the Enlightenment, in the 18th and 19th centuries, and even then, it took many years for democracy to become the most common form of government. 
"Democracy isn't something that keeps evolving – there have been very serious setbacks. Between the two world wars, many countries pulled back from democracy, putting in place some form of dictatorship. Even France, which protected its democracy – as soon as the Germans arrived it all collapsed. So democracy is a fragile system. I'm not sure democracy will survive, but I'm sure technological advances will."

...

“ How worried are you about the future of Israel? 

 
"This is a difficult question. The Middle East is a huge graveyard for prophecies. Compared to the Israel you were raised in during the 1950s and 1960s, its geopolitical situation is better than ever. The threat from Arab countries, which was very real in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, is practically gone. Almost all Arab countries have accepted its existence. The countries hostile to us are, in fact, Muslim non-Arab countries – which is a kind of sad progress. 
"The big problem – the huge gorilla in the room – is what nobody addresses: Israel needs to learn that it cannot succeed in doing what South Africa tried and failed to do. You cannot live indefinitely as an occupying army without morally destroying the country from within."

Lucky By Design: book talk by Judd Kessler tomorrow

 

Mark your calendar for Tuesday, December 2, from 3:30–5 PM: Wharton Professor Judd Kessler will be visiting Stanford to deliver a talk about his new book, Lucky by Design. 

 

Location: Gunn Building (SIEPR), Koret-Taube Conference Center (KT130)

Note: A free copy of Lucky by Design will be available for each of the first 100 attendees!

 

RSVP

 

More about the event and Lucky by Design:

Wharton professor Judd Kessler discusses his new book, “Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want.”

 

Judd pulls back the curtain on the hidden markets that determine who gets what in everyday life. Unlike familiar markets that you might learn about in your economics class — where what we get depends on how much we’re willing to pay — hidden markets do not rely on prices: you can’t buy your way into a better position. Instead, what you receive hinges on the rules by which the market operates, and the choices you make in them.

 

What are the tricks for getting reservations at the hottest restaurants, live-event tickets, job offers, and spots in elite preschools and selective colleges? What about finding a soulmate on a dating app or receiving a life-saving organ transplant? How can policymakers design these markets better?

 

Judd has spent a career studying and designing these very markets. Now, he reveals insights about how they work, how to maneuver in them, and how to tip the scales in your favor.

####### 

Earlier post about this book:

Monday, August 11, 2025  Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want, by Judd Kessler

 

 

Women in Thoracic Surgery,

 The NYT reports on the second annual meeting of Women in Thoracic Surgery, a group for the less than 10 percent of heart and lung surgeons in the United States who are women, one of the smallest percentages of any surgical specialty. 

Female Cardiothoracic Surgeons, Unlocking the Male Fortress
Less than 10 percent of heart and lung surgeons in the United States are women.  By Elisabeth Bumiller 

 "Women make up about 30 percent of surgeons in the United States overall, and a little less than 40 percent of all physicians.

...

"“Cardiothoracic surgery had a reputation, which is fading but probably not gone, as the toughest, meanest and the most macho specialty,” said Dr. [Leslie] Kohman, 76...

...

"The women say the good news today is that some 500 women have been certified as thoracic surgeons in the United States, although there are less than that in active practice — still, enough for them to hold a conference. (The terms “thoracic” and “cardiothoracic” are used interchangeably to refer to doctors who operate on the organs in the chest cavity.) 

#########

My sense, incidentally, is that cardiothoracic surgery is not a growing specialty, as a lot of the work that they used to do is now done by interventional cardiologists, who can access the heart by threading devices through blood vessels. 

When I last studied the thoracic surgery fellowship match, it  was because (unlike the resident match) there were no couples participating in it, so it could serve as a control for  that aspect of the resident match (this was in the paper  Roth, A. E. and Elliott Peranson, "The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design," American Economic Review, 89, 4, September, 1999, 748-780.

Today the fellowship match for thoracic surgery is run jointly with vascular surgery.

 

Gift to deceased donor family (generous ex-post, but illegal ex-ante)

 What is generous ex-post but illegal ex-ante?

Cleveland.com has the story: 

Bernie Kosar gives large check to donor’s family days after life-saving liver transplant   By  Molly Walsh

"CLEVELAND, Ohio — Former Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar marked Thanksgiving by donating $25,000 to the family of the organ donor who saved his life, just days after he was discharged from University Hospitals following a successful liver transplant." 

Facing up to face transplants: Pioneering transplants and their pioneering patients

The history of transplantation involves not only pioneering surgeons, but also pioneering patients.  Face transplants are yet another complex case. 

 The Guardian has this (skeptical) story:

Face transplants promised hope. Patients were put through the unthinkableTwenty years after the first face transplant, patients are dying, data is missing, and the experimental procedure’s future hangs in the balance   Fay Bound Alberti 

"On 27 November 2005, Isabelle received the world’s first face transplant at University Hospital, CHU Amiens-Picardie, in northern France. The surgery was part of an emerging field called vascularized composite allotransplantation (VCA), that transplants parts of the body as a unit: skin, muscle, bone and nerves.

...

"The case for face transplants seemingly made, several teams scrambled to perform their nation’s first. The US saw the first partial face transplant (2008), then the first full one (2011); the first African American recipient (2019); the first face and double hand transplant combined (2020); the first to include an eye (2023). There have been about 50 face transplants to date, and each milestone brought new grants, donations and prestige for the doctors and institutions involved.

...

"Add to this picture a set of ethical challenges: face transplants take otherwise healthy people with disfigured faces and turn them into lifetime patients.

...

"In the US, now the world’s leader in face transplants, the Department of Defense has bankrolled most operations, treating them as a frontier for wounded veterans while private insurers refuse to cover the costs.

"With insurance unwilling to pay until the field proves its worth, surgeons have been eager to show results. A 2024 JAMA Surgery study reported five-year graft survival of 85% and 10-year survival of 74%, concluding that these outcomes make face transplantation “an effective reconstructive option for patients with severe facial defects”.

"Yet patients like Dallas tell a different story. The study measures survival, but not other outcomes such as psychological wellbeing, impact on intimacy, social life and family functioning, or even comparisons with reconstruction. 

...

"It’s a double-bind. Without proof of success, face transplants are experimental. And because the procedures are experimental, patients’ long-term needs aren’t covered by grants, leaving patients to carry the burden

...

"Which path will face transplants take? The numbers are already slipping – fewer procedures since the 2010s as outcomes falter and budgets shrink. And unless the field raises its standards, enforces rigorous follow-up, and commits to transparent, systematic data sharing that actually includes patients and their families, there’s no way to demonstrate real success. Without that, face transplants aren’t headed for evolution or stability; they’re headed straight for the dustbin of medical history." 

Congestion and signaling in the job market, as the ratio of applications to positions continues to rise

 Aki Ito, at Business Insider, writes about how the number of job applications per position is growing, and how there's some exploratory use of signaling of interest through job sites that allow a small number of such signals.

How tech broke the job market
Applying to a job in 2025 is the statistical equivalent of hurling your resume into a black hole. By Aki Ito

"To see how bad it's gotten, I asked Greenhouse, one of the leading providers of hiring software, to take a look at their data. Last quarter, the average job opening received 242 applications — nearly triple the amount in 2017, when the unemployment rate was at a comparable level.

 

"Nobody's happy with the current situation," says Greenhouse CEO Daniel Chait. "Something broke in the technology." 

"This isn't the first time a market's grown so overcrowded it stopped functioning. Economists even have a name for it: congestion. Big markets hold the promise of creating better matches, but they also tend to devolve into total chaos.

"Congestion is the bane of a lot of markets," says Alvin Roth, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Stanford who's helped design programs to better match students with schools, organ donors with patients, and hospitals with new doctors. "Successful marketplaces have to fight hard to defeat congestion."

...

"The forces that make it cheap to send more applications are working faster than the forces that allow you to quickly process many applications," says Roth. "We're deep into congestion."

...

[There is] "a new website where candidates can manage their applications to Greenhouse's clients. There, it introduced a feature called Dream Job, which lets people mark one application a month as a job they especially want. The idea is that recruiters don't just want qualified applicants. They want to know — amid the sea of people applying with a single click — who's actually serious enough that they'd likely accept an offer.

"Online daters might recognize the concept as the "rose" on Hinge or the "super like" on Tinder — gestures borrowed from a landmark study in market design. Dream Job launched in June, and the early data is promising: Employers have been five times more likely to hire Dream Job applicants than standard ones.

"Other intermediaries of the job market are trying their own fixes. LinkedIn, for instance, introduced its own "rose," called Top Choice, to its premium members (Top Choice candidates, the platform says, are 43% more likely to get a recruiter message). It also shows people whether they're a high, medium, or low match for the roles they view ("try exploring other jobs," it gently advises low-match candidates). And this year it's been testing daily limits on Easy Apply submissions."
 

Modern warfare: going into battle with laptops

 Defense One has the story

How the Army’s most tech-forward units are practicing for war
A two-week exercise simulated island battles—and put some 75 new technologies to the test. By Jennifer Hlad 

"The exercise involved 75 experiments and incorporated every U.S. service branch plus seven partner nations. It kicked off with soldiers from the 11th Airborne Division’s 2nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team flying from Alaska to the island of Hawaii, where they parachuted into a training area with close-air support from the Hawaii Air National Guard. It included a nighttime long-range maritime air assault mission and another mission that flew four HIMARS aboard C-17s from Hawaii to Wake Island, unloaded them for a simulated raid, and then flew them back again.

...

"Hours before they watched the simulated enemy attack, Mingus and Bartholomees climbed into a Black Hawk helicopter at Fort Shafter, flying over mountains and pineapple fields to reach the Kahuku training area. There, standing next to a new infantry squad vehicle draped in camouflage netting, a captain in wrap-around sunglasses and a fighting load carrier reported that the vehicle was able to produce enough power to charge multiple laptops, drones, Starlink receivers, and more for two weeks without “any outside sustainment.”