David Loughran

David Loughran

David Loughran is Praedicat's Senior Vice President of Product & Chief Economist. Prior to joining Praedicat as a founding member, David was Senior Economist at the RAND Corporation where he served as principal investigator for a diverse portfolio of empirically-driven, policy-relevant research in the areas of insurance, labor markets, demography, and energy.

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Looking around the corner with ChemMeta
Looking around the corner with ChemMeta 4856 3227 David Loughran

As many of you who follow us may know, Praedicat was incubated within the RAND Corporation prior to its launch in 2012. RAND is the world’s largest non-profit think tank…

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Diesel, opioids, and the conservation of regulatory and litigious energy
Diesel, opioids, and the conservation of regulatory and litigious energy 500 281 David Loughran

Regulatory and litigious energy is created when a large number of individuals are harmed or perceived to be harmed. Once created, that energy is typically conserved following a path of…

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Minibrain technology is advancing rapidly and raising ethical concerns
Minibrain technology is advancing rapidly and raising ethical concerns 500 497 David Loughran

Scientists are growing increasingly sophisticated three-dimensional miniature brains and other organs (“organoids”) — stomachs, kidneys, livers, prostate glands, pancreases — in order to understand disease processes and formulate more effective…

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Aggregating public and scientific opinion
Aggregating public and scientific opinion 500 317 David Loughran

Many of us love a good political horse race. The Associated Press, though, recently issued new guidelines for reporting on pre-election polling that seeks to deemphasize that type of election coverage. Among…

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The social and genetic factors that drive susceptibility
The social and genetic factors that drive susceptibility 500 261 David Loughran

As a labor economist I’ve long been interested in the question of what makes some individuals more susceptible to adverse outcomes than others. Everyone has “bad luck” from time to…

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What might smartphones, gambling, sex, and exercise have in common? Behavioral addiction
What might smartphones, gambling, sex, and exercise have in common? Behavioral addiction 500 262 David Loughran

In early January, two major Apple stockholders, JANA Partners, LLC and the California State Teacher’s Retirement System, sent a letter to Apple urging the company to address the possibility that overuse of…

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When scientific controversy grants free speech protection
When scientific controversy grants free speech protection 222 140 David Loughran

Monsanto scored a victory in a California federal court on Tuesday in its years-long battle over the State of California’s decision to list glyphosate—the main ingredient in the company’s widely-applied…

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Childhood obesity is not trending downward as previously thought
Childhood obesity is not trending downward as previously thought 500 323 David Loughran

Public health researchers reported discouraging findings on Monday: The rate of obesity among U.S. children remains stubbornly high and has actually increased among the youngest children ages 2-5. According to…

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California joins three other states in proposing age restrictions on tackle football
California joins three other states in proposing age restrictions on tackle football 500 324 David Loughran

All states have youth sports concussion safety laws that require schools, interscholastic athletic associations, and often youth sporting organizations to follow “concussion protocols” in an effort to protect children from…

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Could warning labels reduce sugar consumption (and the threat of sugar litigation)?
Could warning labels reduce sugar consumption (and the threat of sugar litigation)? 500 250 David Loughran

Scientists are generally convinced that over-consumption of sugar increases the risk of a variety of adverse health outcomes such as obesity and diabetes, and it is also generally accepted that…

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Monkey cloning could significantly advance our understanding of environmental contributors to disease
Monkey cloning could significantly advance our understanding of environmental contributors to disease 500 281 David Loughran

Scientists announced a biomedical breakthrough last Wednesday with the first successful cloning of a primate.  Ethical issues abound, but the scientific community is excited by the possibility that the ability…

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