Guest post by Jeff Mosenkis of Innovations for Poverty Action.

Adapted from flickr.com/tinkerszone

• In a revealing and moving interview, two researchers describe their research into the lives of Americans living on $2/day. They find multitudes outside the social safety net, including evidence of the poor being actively discouraged from applying for federal aid they’re entitled to so the state can keep it:

Rae McCormack, after months and months of having nothing and being in very dangerous double-up situations, went in and applied for TANF, and her caseworker told her, “We don’t have enough to go around for everyone. Come back next year.” She took that as a no, but the caseloads in Ohio in particular are quite low.

Rural areas, where aid is low and access to transportation is poor, have it worst, and they describe how people exploit others just to survive:

The not-quite-so-poor wind up preying on the extreme poor to get by leading to real material hardship that’s probably outside most people’s sense of what ought to go on in America.

• Today (Friday, noon eastern) the authors of the reproducibility project, which tried to replicate 100 psychology studies, will be doing a reddit “Ask Me Anything.”
• The World Bank Development Impact Blog can save you a year of grad school now with curated lists of posts on methodology (attrition, power calcs, and the like)  and measurement & survey design.
• On the Gates’ Impatient Optimists blog, a Kenyan scientist offers a missing view on the Worm Wars from inside a country dealing with worms.

And from SMBC Comics (via Rohit) have a tough ethical problem? Let an economist help: