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In automated scientific fact-checking, machine learning models are trained to verify scientific claims given evidence. A major bottleneck of this task is the availability of large-scale training datasets on different domains, due to the required domain expertise for data annotation. However, multiple-choice question-answering datasets are readily available across many different domains, thanks to the modern online education and assessment systems. As one of the first steps towards addressing the fact-checking dataset scarcity problem in scientific domains, we propose a pipeline for automatically converting multiple-choice questions into fact-checking data, which we call Multi2Claim. By applying the proposed pipeline, we generated two large-scale datasets for scientific-fact-checking: Med-Fact and Gsci-Fact for the medical and general science domains, respectively. These two datasets are among the first examples of large-scale scientific-fact-checking datasets. We developed baseline models for the verdict prediction task using each dataset. Additionally, we demonstrated that the datasets could be used to improve performance measured by weighted F1 on existing fact-checking datasets such as SciFact, HEALTHVER, COVID-Fact, and CLIMATE-FEVER. In some cases, the improvement in performance was up to a 26% increase. The generated datasets are publicly available. © 2023 Association for Computational Linguistics.
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This commentary builds on Doreen Massey's thinking on the economy and relationality to ask: who gets to produce economic knowledge and whose lives does research make visible as economic matters of concern? These questions have been thrown into sharp relief as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the pandemic has highlighted the need for better infrastructures of care, it has also demonstrated that the mission of ‘saving the economy' from the ravages of COVID-19 has not centred the concerns of those who have experienced the crisis most acutely. Drawing inspiration from the various economic subjects who continue to make, re-make, and articulate the economy through regular shocks and crises – workers, caregivers, and people marginalized by identity or geography – this commentary makes a case for a public economic geography that rethinks who is taken seriously as an ‘expert' on the economy, and to what publics the field speaks. This, at its heart, is a radical rethinking of accountability, calling on economic geographers to ask: what should research do for whom, and how? [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Dialogues in Human Geography is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
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Background:The emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic has required a rapid acceleration of policy decision making, and raised a wide range of ethical issues worldwide, ranging from vaccine prioritisation, welfare and public health ‘trade-offs', inequalities in policy impacts, and the legitimacy of scientific expertise.Aims and objectives:This paper explores the legacy of the pandemic for future science-advice-policy relationships by investigating how the UK government's engagement with ethical advice is organised institutionally. We provide an analysis of some key ethical moments in the UK Government response to the pandemic, and institutions and national frameworks which exist to provide ethical advice on policy strategies.Methods:We draw on literature review, documentary analysis of scientific advisory group reports, and a stakeholder workshop with government ethics advisors and researchers in England.Findings:We identify how particular types of ethical advice and expertise are sought to support decision making. Contrary to a prominent assumption in the extensive literature on ‘governing by expertise', ethical decisions in times of crisis are highly contingent.Discussion and conclusions:The paper raises an important set of questions for how best to equip policymakers to navigate decisions about values in situations characterised by knowledge deficits, complexity and uncertainty. We conclude that a clearer pathway is needed between advisory institutions and decision makers to ensure ethically-informed debate.
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BACKGROUND: In areas of low physician density, especially as regards dermatologists in France, there is an increasing interest in tele-expertise. This is particularly the case in the Sarthe department, where the number of physicians continues to decline and access to care was further limited by the COVID 19 epidemic. STUDY DESIGN: We retrospectively collected data from tele-expertise requests submitted to Le Mans General Hospital by general practitioners via a dedicated platform between May 6, 2019, and April 9, 2021. RESULTS: Six hundred and forty three requests relating to 90 different diagnoses were recorded during this period. One hundred and thirty four patients (20% of requests) were invited to attend a face-to-face consultation within an average of 29â¯days. DISCUSSION: Through the use of tele-expertise at Le Mans Genreal Hospital it was possible to introduce a means of tackling the problem of the lack of dermatologists in the Sarthe department. Rapid responses enabled the number of consultation requests to be reduced, leading to fewer population displacements in the context of the present pandemic. CONCLUSION: These initial results are encouraging and confirm that tele-expertise seems a satisfactory option to optimize access to care for populations in areas of low physician density.
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COVID-19 , Physicians , Telemedicine , Male , Humans , Retrospective Studies , Hospitals, General , COVID-19/epidemiology , FranceABSTRACT
The pandemic has produced an abundance of medical misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories about the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Many of these narratives appear impervious to scientific evidence and indifferent to the authority of the state. This has resulted in ‘true believers' being cast as paranoid and irrational. In this article, we take a different approach by exploring the cultural appeal of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories about COVID-19. Drawing on qualitative analysis of two leading figures of the anti-vaccination movement – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joseph Mercola – we demonstrate how these influencers establish authority by staging indignation against a corrupt scientific establishment and positioning themselves as Truthers offering simple solutions to complex (wicked) problems. By conceptualising what we refer to as the Truther Playbook, we examine how anti-vaccine Truthers capitalise on existing grievances and conditions of low institutional trust to further solidify people's troubled relationship with institutional expertise while drawing attention to the structural conditions and social inequalities that facilitate belief in conspiracy theories. We contend that conspiracy theories offer not only offer alternative facts and narratives but are predicated on identification and in-group membership, highlighting the limits of debunking as a strategy to tackle disinformation. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of European Journal of Cultural Studies is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
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This paper provides an assessment of the skills needed for entry-level logistics professionals in Bangladesh's apparel industry and suggests the critical skill areas that require improvement. Two studies were conducted to get the responses from supply chain and logistics professionals who have direct interactions with entry-level logistics professionals in the workplace. In study 1, an Importance-Expertise Matrix (IEM) analysis was conducted to provide an assessment of the relative importance and expertise of 40 skill items and investigate the skill gaps. The results reveal that 27.5% of the skill items have a noticeable gap between their importance and expertise level, indicating further improvement is needed. In Study 2, a qualitative approach was used, and the findings reinforced those of Study 1 and offered new and important information about skill and knowledge requirements amid the COVID-19 pandemic. This research offers implications for the apparel industry, academia, policymakers, and training agencies in Bangladesh.
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In this article we discuss the nature of service user in-volvement in Higher Education (HE) social work program-mes in both England and Slovenia. This discussion is based on our experiences of supporting such programmes alongsi-de evidence derived from the literature. Firstly, we present a discussion of the effective development of service user involvement in the respective HEIs in our two countries. Se-condly, we explore how the involvement of experts-by -expe-rience in HEIs benefits the learning of social work students. Thirdly, we investigate how the emergence of Covid-19 has influenced the delivery of social work education and the involvement of service users in our respective social work programmes. We conclude by noting that our social work programmes have been forced to adapt to the needs of stu-dents in an online community and have embraced inclusive education. As a result of this, we suggest that the needs of experts-by-experience should inform the development of so-cial work education and that they should be consulted on how they choose to be involved in educational practice.
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This paper investigates the multiple meanings and functions of the pronoun "we" in COVID-19 public updates by British Columbia's acclaimed Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry in 2020. Our rhetorical case study shows how "we" contributes to Henry's relational ethos by attempting to foster a communal identity with her implied audience while also distinguishing public health expertise, actions, and authority from citizens' knowledge and actions. Ambiguous uses of "we" blur the line between the knowledge and responsibilities of "we" in public health and "we" as citizens. Overall, our rhetorical analysis demonstrates the significant but ambivalent role this pronoun can play in building relations of social trust among citizens, experts, and institutions within public health and science communication contexts and it suggests the importance of judicious pronoun usage when communicators strive to foster these relations.
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The statistical community mobilised vigorously from the start of the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, following the RSS's long tradition of offering our expertise to help society tackle important issues that require evidence-based decisions. This address aims to capture the highlights of our collective engagement in the pandemic, and the difficulties faced in delivering statistical design and analysis at pace and in communicating to the wider public the many complex issues that arose. I argue that these challenges gave impetus to fruitful new directions in the merging of statistical principles with constraints of agility, responsiveness and societal responsibilities. The lessons learned from this will strengthen the long-term impact of the discipline and of the Society. The need to evaluate policies even in emergency, and to strive for statistical interoperability in future disease surveillance systems is highlighted. In my final remarks, I look towards the future landscape for statistics in the fast-moving world of data science and outline a strategy of visible and growing engagement of the RSS with the data science ecosystem, building on the central position of statistics.
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The article analyzes the reasons for the important effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has become the catalyst for long-overdue decline in the authority of expert knowledge. The author claims that widespread access to information and scientific data results in the collapse of universal and monopolistic expert-scientific hierarchies of knowledge of a large society, controlled by the state. Scientific experts, who acted as the historical heirs of priests and shamans, have lost their privileged access to sacred knowledge, made public by the media and the Internet. This resulted in severe damage to the key function of expertise - legitimization of the political order and power elites. Experts without the status of agents of the state have become indistinguishable from ordinary citizens. The example of discussions between Waxers and Anti-Waxers shows that both sides are able to put forward convincing scientific arguments that rhetorically do not allow the authorities to bring the discussion about the effectiveness of vaccinations down to a completely unobvious dispute between enlightened state experts and uneducated obscurantists. It is in the most developed Western states where one can see a strong civil dissident movement that distrusts or calls into question the disciplinary regimes of collective coexistence, legitimized by the paternalistic rhetoric of concern from political elites. Accordingly, the elites in the background situation of strengthening the practices of heterarchy, post-truth and postmodernism can no longer rely on the usual metanarratives of the Enlightenment, which allowed them to monopolize the discourse of science in the name of progress and unconditional good, building hierarchies of knowledge-power convenient for their priorities. Since science, knowledge and information have long became public domain, the line between elites, experts and citizens in the field of access to science has become almost indistinguishable. The actual political problem is that the situation of collision of different paradigms, opinions and data is exactly the normal state of science, which is now transferred to the field of public discussions following the final secularization of science. Thus, the institution of expert knowledge turns into an unnecessary link in a situation of equal access of all interested parties to scientific data;to an institution that hardly would efficiently perform the functions of scientific legitimation of socially significant decisions in the foreseeable future.
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A health justice approach requires a progressive critique of expertise. This article considers two recent high-profile cases - the mask mandate and medication abortion -- to understand how we should think the mobilization of expertise in the context of public health law. Following from this, the article offers news ways to better understand how to think of the relationship between health law, expertise, and politics.
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Abortion, Induced , Female , Pregnancy , Humans , Politics , Public HealthABSTRACT
During a public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, a credible and easy-to-access information portal is highly desirable. It helps with disease prevention, public health planning, and misinformation mitigation. However, creating such an information portal is challenging because 1) domain expertise is required to identify and curate credible and intelligible content, 2) the information needs to be updated promptly in response to the fast-changing environment, and 3) the information should be easily accessible by the general public;which is particularly difficult when most people do not have the domain expertise about the crisis. In this paper, we presented an expert-sourcing framework and created Jennifer, an AI chatbot, which serves as a credible and easy-to-access information portal for individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jennifer was created by a team of over 150 scientists and health professionals around the world, deployed in the real world and answered thousands of user questions about COVID-19. We evaluated Jennifer from two key stakeholders' perspectives, expert volunteers and information seekers. We first interviewed experts who contributed to the collaborative creation of Jennifer to learn about the challenges in the process and opportunities for future improvement. We then conducted an online experiment that examined Jennifer's effectiveness in supporting information seekers in locating COVID-19 information and gaining their trust. We share the key lessons learned and discuss design implications for building expert-sourced and AI-powered information portals, along with the risks and opportunities of misinformation mitigation and beyond. © 2023 Owner/Author.
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The Disease of Expertise, is a poem composed by poet, playwright, musician and researcherTawona Sitholé. Within the poem,Sitholé challenges the contemporary constructs of modernity, knowledge, and knowledge production in the scope of globalized economies. Utilizing Covid-19 and the corresponding global pandemic as a backdrop into the inquiry of knowledge, and economic development Sitholé incorporates his own lived experience and local knowledge to highlight contemporary issues relating to globalization, structural inequities, and questions of knowledge within the Global South.
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As misperceptions undermine the factual basis for public debate, they pose a serious challenge to expert knowledge and the democratic legitimacy of public policy informed by expert evidence. In this paper, we theorize that in times of politicization and polarization of expertise, endorsement of expert information by a minipublic can serve to legitimize expert correction and render it more persuasive in the eyes of individuals. In developing our theoretical argument, we focus on the effect of a minipublic on individuals in the wider public – those who did not participate in such institutions. To test our theoretical predictions, we designed, pre-registered and fielded two experiments in the US (N = 2168) and one experiment in Ireland (N = 1125), during two different waves of COVID-19. The results show that minipublic endorsement significantly increases the uptake of expert information among (nonparticipating) citizens. Furthermore, when an expert correction explicitly asserts a scientific consensus, it is as effective as the minipublic endorsement. The findings have implications for the research on misperceptions, expertise and deliberative institutions. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Political Communication is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)
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Introduction: Different measures to prevent and control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 have been implemented in German schools. Decisions regarding such measures should be informed by evidence regarding their effectiveness, and their unintended consequences for health and society. A multi-stakeholder panel was convened to develop an evidence- and consensus-based guideline for school measures, using the novel WHO-INTEGRATE framework. Developing a guideline to inform decision-making outside of the clinical realm during a public health emergency was unprecedented in Germany. This study aims to identify lessons learnt for similar endeavours by addressing the following research question: What were the strengths and weaknesses of the guideline development process as perceived by the different groups involved? Methods: Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted virtually. We recruited participants aiming to include the perspectives of all groups contributing to the guideline development, including both panel members (scientists, practitioners, school family and observers) and the guideline secretariat. For analysis, we carried out deductive-inductive thematic qualitative text analysis according to Kuckartz, structuring findings using a category system. Results: Due to time pressure, the guideline secretariat was heavily involved not only in synthesising the evidence but also in developing and drafting recommendations. Participants critically reflected on certain methods-related decisions, including the development of draft recommendations and application of the WHO-INTEGRATE framework by scientists only. The full potential of the framework might not have been harnessed. Participants' understanding of relevant and valid evidence varied, and the available evidence base was limited. Participants represented different types of expertise, notably expertise informed by scientific evidence and expertise grounded in lived experience, influencing their involvement in the guideline development process and discussions during meetings. Conclusion: Developing an evidence- and consensus-based public health guideline in only three months was challenging, notably because of the involvement of a broad range of stakeholders and the use of a novel Evidence-to-Decision framework, both unprecedented in Germany. Learning from this process with a view to "institutionalising" the development of public health guidelines and refining methods can contribute to more evidence-informed public health decision-making in Germany and beyond, in general and during a public health emergency.
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COVID-19 , SARS-CoV-2 , Humans , Public Health , Consensus , COVID-19/prevention & control , SchoolsABSTRACT
PurposeThis study aims to examine whether clients' degree of digitalization and audit firms' expertise in information technology (IT) influence audit quality (AQ).Design/methodology/approachData of Chinese A-share firms listed on the primary board of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2011 to 2019 are taken as the sample. All the data are obtained from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research. Clients' digitalization is determined using the keywords "AI technology,” "blockchain,” "cloud computing,” "big data technology” and "digital technology.” Auditor firm's digital expertise is determined by the proportion of higher IT expertise. As the proxy for AQ, this study uses audit fees, given that its quantum reflects the effort auditors expend that in turn affects the AQ.FindingsA fixed-effect regression model shows that clients with high digitalization attain AQ. This study also finds a significant and positive coefficient of audit fees, indicating that AQ is high in the same situation if an audit firm's IT is mature and developed. Furthermore, results confirm the moderating effect of clients' digitalization and auditors' expertise and on AQ. Auditors' expertise in IT mitigates the audit risk and increase AQ.Originality/valueFindings can enhance AQ and corporate governance literature by clarifying how external audits must evolve through digitalization and incorporating newly developed digital tools such as big data, analytics, artificial intelligence and robotic process automation. This study also provides important insights regarding how the development of new digital tools allow the audit profession to perform as a corporate governance mechanism.
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Many volumes have been devoted to intuitive but misguided ideas about how learning works. This is as true in the use of educational technologies in higher education as it is in other related fields of educational research. As we (hopefully) emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, educational technologies are poised to feature more heavily in post-secondary education into the future. There is a substantial incentive for bad actors to provide oversimplified solutions to complex problems. These neat solutions may seem attractive to sector and institutional leaders looking for solutions to the morass of wicked problems the pandemic has inflamed. The pages of this journal and others provide a venue for world-class research on the use of educational technologies in higher education. Despite this enormous volume of high-quality work, misconceptions and oversimplified notions of learning with technology persist. Much has been made of weird ideas about learning but, with higher education facing an increasingly uncertain digitally-mediated future, there is significant risk that these ideas could have a profound influence on the global higher education sector into the future.
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In this article we discuss the nature of service user involvement in Higher Education (HE) social work programmes in both England and Slovenia. This discussion is based on our experiences of supporting such programmes alongsi-de evidence derived from the literature. Firstly, we present a discussion of the effective development of service user involvement in the respective HEIs in our two countries. Se-condly, we explore how the involvement of experts-by-expe-rience in HEIs benefits the learning of social work students. Thirdly, we investigate how the emergence of Covid-19 has influenced the delivery of social work education and the involvement of service users in our respective social work programmes. We conclude by noting that our social work programmes have been forced to adapt to the needs of students in an online community and have embraced inclusive education. As a result of this, we suggest that the needs of experts-by-experience should inform the development of social work education and that they should be consulted on how they choose to be involved in educational practice. © 2022, University of Zagreb. All rights reserved.
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The Covid-19 pandemic has given further centrality to science within the public debate. But it has also acted as a great multiplier for pseudoscientific (conspiracy) theories. This exploratory study investigates the determinants of pseudoscientific beliefs in five European countries, using data from a survey conducted in May 2021. The concept of pseudoscience is theoretically framed and then operationalised by constructing a Pseudo-scientific Beliefs Index (PBI). Results show that exposure to scientific information does not ‘protect' against unsound scientific claims, if not complemented by a correct understanding of the division of scientific labour. Pseudoscientific views are strongly associated with distrust of official science. But, in the context of today's information abundance, even more relevant is the spread of epistemological populism, which fosters reliance on alternative sources and the pseudo-expertise of ‘alternative scientific authorities'. The embrace of ‘alternative scientific facts' is also associated with electoral support for populist parties. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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Developing countries like Nepal face challenges in accessing health services due to sparse distribution in communities, difficult geographic terrain, limited transportation, poverty, and lack of health human expertise in rural areas. The COVID-19 pandemic added woes to the wound. To address this gap, the Hospital for Children, Eye, ENT, and Rehabilitation Services adopted an innovative approach to remote rural patient care using telehealth and artificial intelligence in close coordination with IT professionals and healthcare professionals. We developed a deep learning-based disease prediction model that incorporates telemedicine with AI for screening and diagnosing Eye and ENT diseases using nonspecialist health workers. Deep learning-based disease prediction models in Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) and Glaucoma added quality specialized services to telehealth. This paper presents the adoption of digital innovations and the incorporation of telehealth to tackle various diseases. To predict DR, 61,458 colorful retinal photographs from fundus photography and 1500 for Glaucoma were used. To reduce the biases, EyePACS data sets were also incorporated. Inception V3 transfer learning model was used for DR and employed DenseNet architecture for Glaucoma. An accuracy of more than 90 %in both models was achieved. Accurate specialized diagnosis, better medical care, patient monitoring, limited specialized hospital visits, and easier with shorter wait times are now possible. In the future, this successful model can be replicated nationally and in other developing countries. © 2022 IEEE.