Year: 2026
Type: letter
Abstract: Commentators on ref.1 argue that a rapid and strong social connectivity increase is not supported by data (2).Their critique focuses on data presented in Fig. 1E (1).To find out if close friendship ties, strong enough to aect the opinions of friends, increase over time, we compiled available surveys that meet carefully chosen selection criteria, specified in SI Appendix (1).The commentators present datasets that do not match these criteria to conclude that our results are unsupported.We discuss this problematic reasoning along with their arguments.
Authors: Stefan Thurner, Markus Hofer, Jan Korbel
Language: English
Subfield: Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Austrian Science Fund
Awards: G6114833071, G7554602934
OpenAlex ID: W7128475679