Has Quebec entered a new era of drug-related deaths?

CATCHING UP WITH BC 

University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM)

 

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Sarah Larney, a CRCHUM researcher and professor in Université de Montréal’s Department of Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine and an investigator at the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse (CRISM)

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Credit: CHUM

For the last decade, people who use drugs in Quebec have been partially sheltered from Canada’s drug overdose epidemics. But since 2020, the picture has changed: the contamination of the drug market is now present in Quebec, and what happened in British Columbia and Ontario is now happening here, says researcher Sarah Larney.

In a recent study published in Drug and Alcohol Review, she analyzed datasets of accidental deaths between 2012 and 2021 determined by the coroner to be due to opioids or stimulants, and what she found out is worrying: the drug-related mortality rates in Quebec increased over time, peaking in 2020 and remaining high in 2021.

In addition, fentanyl and new synthetic opioids are on track to become the most commonly detected substances in opioid poisoning deaths in the near future.

These drugs often contain adulterants, active pharmaceutical ingredients added to enhance or mimic the expected effects of the illicit substance being used.

“In the recent past, people used to buy heroin and there were adulterants in it, but those adulterants didn’t kill you. Now you can only buy fentanyl, which is far more potent than heroin, and the adulterants are much more deadly as well,” says Sarah Larney, a professor in Université de Montréal’s Department of Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine and an investigator at the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse (CRISM).

We discuss her study results in more detail.

Q. The drugs currently offered on the illegal market in Quebec (fentanyl and derivatives) are not the same as in 2019. How do you explain this market shift when Quebec traditionally differentiated itself from British Columbia?

A. It coincides with the COVID-19 pandemic, even though there were signs that fentanyl was on the rise before that. The opioid overdose epidemic has been made worse in Canada by this “Big Event”, which had escalated from approximately 3700 drug poisoning deaths in 2019 to over 7300 deaths in 2022.

The pandemic disrupted the drug market, catalyzing and accelerating the change in what people were buying and using.

In fact, a key change is the greatly increased presence of fentanyl and new synthetic opioids in opioid poisoning deaths recorded in Quebec since 2020.

Toxicological findings from drug-related deaths suggest that Quebec potentially may have entered a new era of elevated overdose mortality at this time.

 

Q. You also found that deaths were often due to a combination of opioids and benzodiazepines. Why is this a concern from a public health perspective?

A. Most overdoses involve more than one drug. For a long time, overdoses in Quebec involved well-known benzodiazepines like Valium. But now we are seeing potent new benzodiazepines (synthetic tranquillizers) being combined with opioids, intentionally or not.

This novel combination is of particular concern. The sedative effects of benzodiazepines combined with the tendency of opioids to slow the central nervous system and respiratory system, increase the risk of overdose and reduce the effect of naloxone to wake someone up.

The risk of overdose is higher than before, the risk of not recovering from an overdose is also higher. It is a very scary situation.

 

Q. Despite all the overdose prevention campaigns, overdose mortality rates have gone up. What do you think we should do to tackle this issue more effectively?

A. With nearly 45,000 opioid overdose deaths recorded between 2016 and 2023, Canada continues to grapple with a drug poisoning epidemic.

Interventions are essential. Naloxone, safer supply, accessible supervised consumption sites are part of the answer, but they are not enough today even though we know harm reduction works.

Now, with the lethality of the drug supply, we need to look at drug law reform, such as drug decriminalization or even legalization. We can take inspiration from a fairly successful model in Portugal, which has reduced overdoses and HIV cases, and try it at the city level in Montreal, for example.

Moreover, the literature tells us that criminalization and punishment do not work. Instead, we should invest in social policy reforms that address the root causes of problematic drug use: poverty, income inequality, and the housing crisis.

Our study draws attention to what the most recent data says: things have changed and we need to respond.

 

Science writing: Bruno Geoffroy

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About this study 

“Trends in toxicological findings in unintentional opioid or stimulant toxicity deaths in Québec, Canada, 2012–2021: Has Québec entered a new era of drug-related deaths?,” by Uyen Do under the supervision of Sarah Larney and her colleagues, was published August 6, 2024, in Drug and Alcohol Review.

Sarah Larney is supported by a Research Scholar award from Fonds de recherche du Québec.

 

About the CHUM Research Centre (CRCHUM)  

Université de Montréal's affiliated hospital research centre, the CRCHUM, is one of North America’s leading hospital research centres. It strives to improve the health of adults through a continuum of research spanning disciplines such as basic science, clinical research and population health. Some 2,120 people work at the CRCHUM, including nearly 550 researchers and more than 525 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. crchum.com 

About Université de Montréal  

Deeply rooted in Montréal and dedicated to its international mission, Université de Montréal is one of the top universities in the French-speaking world. Founded in 1878, Université de Montréal today has 13 faculties and schools, and together with its two affiliated schools, HEC Montréal and Polytechnique Montréal, constitutes the largest centre of higher education and research in Québec and one of the major centres in North America. It brings together 2,300 professors and researchers and has close to 67,000 students. umontreal.ca 

 

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Journal

Drug and Alcohol Review

DOI

10.1111/dar.13918 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Trends in toxicological findings in unintentional opioid or stimulant toxicity deaths in Québec, Canada, 2012–2021: Has Québec entered a new era of drug-related deaths?

 

Vision-based ChatGPT shows deficits interpreting radiologic images

NOT QUITE READY FOR PRIME TIME

Radiological Society of North America

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Researchers evaluating the performance of ChatGPT-4 Vision found that the model performed well on text-based radiology exam questions but struggled to answer image-related questions accurately. The study’s results were published today in Radiology, a journal of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Chat GPT-4 Vision is the first version of the large language model that can interpret both text and images.

“ChatGPT-4 has shown promise for assisting radiologists in tasks such as simplifying patient-facing radiology reports and identifying the appropriate protocol for imaging exams,” said Chad Klochko, M.D., musculoskeletal radiologist and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher at Henry Ford Health in Detroit, Michigan. “With image processing capabilities, GPT-4 Vision allows for new potential applications in radiology.”

For the study, Dr. Klochko’s research team used retired questions from the American College of Radiology’s Diagnostic Radiology In-Training Examinations, a series of tests used to benchmark the progress of radiology residents. After excluding duplicates, the researchers used 377 questions across 13 domains, including 195 questions that were text-only and 182 that contained an image.

GPT-4 Vision answered 246 of the 377 questions correctly, achieving an overall score of 65.3%. The model correctly answered 81.5% (159) of the 195 text-only queries and 47.8% (87) of the 182 questions with images.

“The 81.5% accuracy for text-only questions mirrors the performance of the model’s predecessor,” he said. “This consistency on text-based questions may suggest that the model has a degree of textual understanding in radiology.”

Genitourinary radiology was the only subspecialty for which GPT-4 Vision performed better on questions with images (67%, or 10 of 15) than text-only questions (57%, or 4 of 7). The model performed better on text-only questions in all other subspecialties.

The model performed best on image-based questions in the chest and genitourinary subspecialties, correctly answering 69% and 67% of the image-containing questions, respectively. The model performed lowest on image-containing questions in the nuclear medicine domain, correctly answering only 2 of 10 questions.

The study also evaluated the impact of various prompts on the performance of GPT-4 Vision.

• Original: You are taking a radiology board exam. Images of the questions will be uploaded. Choose the correct answer for each question. 

• Basic: Choose the single best answer in the following retired radiology board exam question. 

• Short instruction: This is a retired radiology board exam question to gauge your medical knowledge. Choose the single best answer letter and do not provide any reasoning for your answer. 

• Long instruction: You are a board-certified diagnostic radiologist taking an examination. Evaluate each question carefully and if the question additionally contains an image, please evaluate the image carefully in order to answer the question. Your response must include a single best answer choice. Failure to provide an answer choice will count as incorrect. 

• Chain of thought: You are taking a retired board exam for research purposes. Given the provided image, think step by step for the provided question. 

Although the model correctly answered 183 of 265 questions with a basic prompt, it declined to answer 120 questions, most of which contained an image.

“The phenomenon of declining to answer questions was something we hadn’t seen in our initial exploration of the model,” Dr. Klochko said.

The short instruction prompt yielded the lowest accuracy (62.6%).

On text-based questions, chain-of-thought prompting outperformed long instruction by 6.1%, basic by 6.8%, and original prompting style by 8.9%. There was no evidence to suggest performance differences between any two prompts on image-based questions.

“Our study showed evidence of hallucinatory responses when interpreting image findings,” Dr. Klochko said. “We noted an alarming tendency for the model to provide correct diagnoses based on incorrect image interpretations, which could have significant clinical implications.”

Dr. Klochko said his study’s findings underscore the need for more specialized and rigorous evaluation methods to assess large language model performance in radiology tasks.

“Given the current challenges in accurately interpreting key radiologic images and the tendency for hallucinatory responses, the applicability of GPT-4 Vision in information-critical fields such as radiology is limited in its current state,” he said.

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“Performance of GPT-4 with Vision on Text- and Image-based ACR Diagnostic Radiology In-Training Examination Questions.” Collaborating with Dr. Klochko were Nolan Hayden, M.D., Spencer Gilbert, B.S., Laila M. Poisson, Ph.D., and Brent Griffith, M.D.

Radiology is edited by Linda Moy, M.D., New York University, New York, N.Y., and owned and published by the Radiological Society of North America, Inc. (https://pubs.rsna.org/journal/radiology)

RSNA is an association of radiologists, radiation oncologists, medical physicists and related scientists promoting excellence in patient care and health care delivery through education, research and technologic innovation. The Society is based in Oak Brook, Illinois. (RSNA.org)

For patient-friendly information on medical imaging, visit RadiologyInfo.org.

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Journal

Radiology

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Performance of GPT-4 with Vision on Text- and Image-based ACR Diagnostic Radiology In-Training Examination Questions

Article Publication Date

3-Sep-2024

 

WVU develops prevention and response program for rural youth at risk of sexting, bullying and self-harm

West Virginia University

 

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Youth in rural communities are at high risk for behaviors such as bullying and sexting. Yet rural areas often lack mental health resources for youth and support for caregivers. With a series of virtual trainings and podcasts, a WVU counseling researcher aims to move the needle. 

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Credit: WVU Photo/Maddy Watson

A researcher at West Virginia University is working to prevent risky behaviors like sexting and self-harm in rural youth.

With $343,719 in U.S. Department of Agriculture funding, assistant professor Kristine Ramsay-Seaner, a counseling expert at the WVU College of Applied Human Sciences, will oversee the development of trainings and other resources to support professionals who work with youth in rural communities across the United States, in collaboration with the University of Georgia, South Dakota State University and North Dakota State University.

“Poverty, social isolation, lack of access to mental health treatment — those factors and others contribute to rural youths’ heightened risk for behaviors like sexting, self-harm, substance use, bullying and disordered eating,” Ramsay-Seaner said.

“The average age of exposure to pornography is now 12 years of age, with some studies suggesting as early as 11. One 2021 analysis found 19.3% of youth had sent a sext, 34.8% had received one and 14.5% had forwarded one without consent.”

In West Virginia, for example, schools have provided educators and students with trainings related to violence prevention, but Ramsay-Seaner said gaps remain on topics such as sexting, digital scams and even self-harm. Kids’ digital risk will only grow as society’s reliance on technology increases, she emphasized.

She said the problem is exacerbated because parents and frontline youth service professionals in rural areas receive limited training on how to recognize and address problematic behaviors. That’s why she’s developing virtual trainings and a podcast series teaching professionals and parents about risks to middle- and high-school-aged youth and how to react.

Working closely with WVU Extension and other state Extension offices, Ramsay-Seaner will provide rural caregivers with evidence- and research-based tools which expand the Youth Mental Health First Aid program that is already the primary risk prevention program for rural communities. 

They’ll offer the intensive trainings virtually to avoid the time constraints and financial barriers posed by long, onsite sessions.

The virtual trainings will comprise eight modules that educate youth development professionals and parents about trends in risky youth behaviors, and how to address those.

“Utilizing skills such as active listening and non-judgmental communication, we want to prepare youth service professionals to respond to the complex needs of today’s youth,” Ramsay-Seaner said. 

Each module will be offered multiple times to afford participants maximum flexibility, and each will highlight topics relevant to the session’s particular audience. Attendees — including parents, school staff, 4-H professionals and volunteers, and workers in the foster care system — will commit to at least four hours of training. Pre- and post-training assessments will allow Ramsay-Seaner and her colleagues to test whether the sessions are effective.

The team will also produce a 24-episode “how to talk to your teen” podcast series featuring half-hour interviews with national experts who offer practical guides to discussing risk behaviors in a way that’s comfortable for both youth and adults.

Ramsay-Seaner added the risks to youth in rural areas are very real, pointing out the number of emergency room visits for self-harm and self-inflicted firearm injuries is much higher among rural youth than those from metropolitan areas. In 2023, about 16% of all U.S. emergency room visits for self-harm were made by youth in rural areas, she said.

“We also see e-cigarette use increasing more among rural youth than among youth in small and large cities. We see that almost 8% of rural U.S. youth have substance use disorders, including 3.5% with alcohol use disorders — again, higher than in urban areas. Kids from rural places use methamphetamines more than kids from cities. They sniff inhalants like glue or aerosols more. In one survey conducted among rural high schoolers in a southern state, 30% of the kids reported sending nude photos of themselves to another person.”

She continued, “All these behaviors come with serious risks, and they deserve serious, well-informed conversations. It’s our goal to help adults have those conversations and make them count.”

 REIFICATION

How cheerful is that water bottle?

New research connects happy keywords to happier shoppers and may help marketers make better use of online ads

University of Georgia

Athens, Ga. – New research from the University of Georgia Terry College of Business shows consumers use “happier” words to search for products when they are in a good mood. Researchers have connected those positive search terms with an increased likelihood of clicking on search engine ads.

The study connects marketing’s more traditional research into how marketers manipulate and react to consumers’ emotions and behavior at brick-and-mortar retailers to today’s digital realities.

“There’s a lot of research about how you feel when you’re in a store, how you feel when you see a product, but now people begin the shopping process online before they step foot in a store,” said Sarah Whitley, an assistant professor of marketing in UGA’s Terry College. “They may operate differently in this online space, and we need to understand how emotions play a role."

Positive search terms may lead to more ad clicks

The research team analyzed a set of more than 5 million archived searches and ran experiments with 6,800 participants.

The team found people who were primed to be in a better mood by being shown pictures of positive things (e.g., babies, bubbles, sunshine, etc.) were significantly more likely to use cheerful words to describe their desired product in their online search. When search engine ads were presented in response to these more positive search terms, they were about 50% more likely to generate site visits than the same search terms without a “happy” modifier, regardless of product category.

For instance, test subjects who used positive emotion search terms — such as joyful, cheerful, playful and inspiring — to describe a water bottle were more than twice as likely to click on ads at the top of their search results than people who used non-emotion descriptors such as clear, metal and lightweight. Other products such as books and posters showed similar effects.

“The positive feeling has nothing to do with the product they are searching for; it’s just something they are feeling at the moment,” said Anindita Chakravarty, co-author of the study and Terry Dean’s Advisory Council Distinguished Professor.“ When it happens they’re feeling happy and need to search for a product at the same time, they are going to use more positive words when they type in their search query. And that’s when the practical implications come in.”

Marketers may want to target happier shoppers early in the buying process

The difference between ad clicks generated by cheerful and neutral searchers is connected to happy consumers’ reduced skepticism about ads.

“When people are in a positive mood and experiencing positive emotions, they have rose-colored glasses on,” Whitley said. “Every person carries around this knowledge in their head that allows them to see how marketers are trying to persuade them — persuasion knowledge. “When you’re in a positive mood, it dampers down that tendency to use your persuasion knowledge to avoid ads. You’re less skeptical and view advertising content more positively.”

Online marketers have long known more precise search terms and price-oriented search terms are clues that online consumers are closer to completing a purchase and more willing to click on an ad.

“If (consumers are) feeling positive, they may be less suspicious of your ads and more likely to click on them, and you’d have a larger ROI on your ad spending,” said Whitley.

So, they spend money to have their ads shown when consumers search for specific product characteristics, logistics or deals that generate more return for their ad money.

In light of this new research, marketers may want to reserve some ad dollars to reach shoppers in a positive mood earlier in the buying process.

“Instead of just thinking about deal-based search terms, marketers might want to consider some of these positive emotion words in search terms that can indicate how the consumer is feeling at that moment,” Whitley said. “Because if they’re feeling positive, they may be less suspicious of your ads and more likely to click on them, and you’d have a larger ROI on your ad spending.”

Whitley and her co-authors — Terry College Dean’s Advisory Council Distinguished Professor of Marketing Anindita Chakravarty  and fellow associate professor Pengyuan Wang — published their findings on what motivates shoppers to click online search ads in “Positive Emotions During Search Engine Use: How You Feel Impacts What You Search For and Click On” in the Journal of Marketing.

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Journal

Journal of Marketing

DOI

10.1177/00222429241263012 

Article Title

EXPRESS: Positive Emotions During Search Engine Use: How You Feel Impacts What You Search for and Click On

 

Rising temperatures in Africa may increase perinatal deaths

Karolinska Institutet

Heatwaves in sub-Saharan Africa are predicted to become more common due to climate change. A new study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and others, published in Nature Medicine, reveals a worrying correlation between high temperatures in the final week of pregnancy and an increased risk of stillbirth and early neonatal mortality.

“While temperatures are rising in sub-Saharan Africa, knowledge of how they affect pregnant women and their babies is scant,” says the study’s corresponding author Claudia Hanson, docent at the Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.

“Our results indicate that mother and newborn care in this region must be improved to ensure that hard-won improvements in reducing mortality are not lost to climate change,” adds Andrea Pembe, professor at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania.

The study included over 138,000 births at 16 hospitals in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Benin, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. The researchers analysed the association between high temperatures in the week before birth and perinatal mortality, which is to say a death just before, during, or within 24 hours after birth. High temperatures were defined as an increase in average weekly temperature for a typically warm week (between 22 and 28 °C depending on country, corresponding to the 75th percentile) to an exceptionally warm week (between 24 and 29 °C, corresponding to the 99th percentile).

Babies whose mothers had been exposed to high temperatures the week before childbirth had a 34 per cent higher risk of perinatal death, a risk that doubled during the six hottest months of the year. Unlike in many other countries, a large proportion – almost half – of all stillbirths occurred during labour.

“Our study shows that there is an urgent need to develop and implement interventions that protect pregnant women and their babies during heatwaves,” says co-lead author Jeroen de Bont, a postdoctoral researcher in Petter Ljungman’s research group at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet.

In sub-analyses of heat-associated mortality by timing of death (before, during or after labour), the researchers observed trends towards increased stillbirths during labour, but not all estimates reached statistical significance.

The next phase of the research needs to focus on redesigning maternity wards to mitigate the effects of heat on pregnant women and staff, including using improved construction techniques such as ceiling insulation, and creating adjacent green areas, which can bring additional health benefits. The researchers will also be studying how heat affects other maternal and childbirth outcomes, and how it interacts with environmental factors such as air pollution.

The study was primarily financed by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and was carried out in close collaboration with Makerere University, Uganda, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Tanzania, Centre de Recherche en Reproduction Humaine et en Démographie (CERRHUD), Benin, and Kamuzu University of Health Science, Malawi. The researchers report no conflicts of interest.

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Facts: Every year, 1.9 million babies around the world die just before or during childbirth (stillbirth) and an additional 2.3 million die during the neonatal period (within the first 28 days of life). Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the highest mortality rates. Reducing the stillbirth and neonatal mortality rates is one of the UN’s sustainable development goals and the principal objective of the WHO’s Every Newborn Action Plan initiative.

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Publication: “A time-stratified, case-crossover study of heat exposure and perinatal mortality from 16 hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa”, Claudia Hanson*, Jeroen de Bont* (joint first-authorship), Kristi Sidney Annerstedt, Maria del Rosario Alsina, Federica Nobile, Nathalie Roos, Peter Waiswa, Andrea Pembe, Jean-Paul Dossou, Effie Chipeta, Lenka Benova, Hussein Kidanto, Cherie Part, Massimo Stafoggia, Veronique Filippi, Petter Ljungman, Nature Medicine, online 3 September 2024, doi: 10.1038/s41591-024-03245-7.

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Journal

Nature Medicine

DOI

10.1038/s41591-024-03245-7 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

A time-stratified, case-crossover study of heat exposure and perinatal mortality from 16 hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa

Article Publication Date

3-Sep-2024

 

New tool detects fake, AI-produced scientific articles

Binghamton University researcher develops xFakeSci to root out bogus research

Binghamton University

 

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A researcher at Binghamton University, State University of New York has developed a tool to root out bogus, AI-generated research articles.

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Credit: Binghamton University, State University of New York

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -- When ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence can produce scientific articles that look real — especially to someone outside that field of research — what’s the best way to figure out which ones are fake?

Ahmed Abdeen Hamed, a visiting research fellow at Binghamton University, State University of New York, has created a machine-learning algorithm he calls xFakeSci that can detect up to 94% of bogus papers — nearly twice as successfully as more common data-mining techniques.

“My main research is biomedical informatics, but because I work with medical publications, clinical trials, online resources and mining social media, I’m always concerned about the authenticity of the knowledge somebody is propagating,” said Hamed, who is part of George J. Klir Professor of Systems Science Luis M. Rocha’s Complex Adaptive Systems and Computational Intelligence Lab. “Biomedical articles in particular were hit badly during the global pandemic because some people were publicizing false research.”

In a new paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, Hamed and collaborator Xindong Wu, a professor at Hefei University of Technology in China, created 50 fake articles for each of three popular medical topics — Alzheimer’s, cancer and depression — and compared them to the same number of real articles on the same topics.

Hamed said when he asked ChatGPT for the AI-generated papers, “I tried to use exact same keywords that I used to extract the literature from the [National Institutes of Health’s] PubMed database, so we would have a common basis of comparison. My intuition was that there must be a pattern exhibited in the fake world versus the actual world, but I had no idea what this pattern was.”

After some experimentation, he programmed xFakeSci to analyze two major features about how the papers were written. One is the numbers of bigrams, which are two words that frequently appear together such as “climate change,” “clinical trials” or “biomedical literature.” The second is how those bigrams are linked to other words and concepts in the text.

“The first striking thing was that the number of bigrams were very few in the fake world, but in the real world, the bigrams were much more rich,” Hamed said. “Also, in the fake world, despite the fact that were very few bigrams, they were so connected to everything else.”

Hamed and Wu theorize that the writing styles are different because human researchers don’t have the same goals as AIs prompted to produce a piece on a given topic.

“Because ChatGPT is still limited in its knowledge, it tries to convince you by using the most significant words,” Hamed said. “It is not the job of a scientist to make a convincing argument to you. A real research paper reports honestly about what happened during an experiment and the method used. ChatGPT is about depth on a single point, while real science is about breadth.”

To further develop xFakeSci, Hamed plans to expand the range of topics to see if the telltale word patterns hold for other research areas, going beyond medicine to include engineering, other scientific topics and the humanities. He also foresees AIs becoming increasingly sophisticated, so determining what is and isn’t real will get increasingly difficult.

“We are always going to be playing catchup if we don’t design something comprehensive,” he said. “We have a lot of work ahead of us to look for a general pattern or universal algorithm that does not depend on which version of generative AI is used.”

Because even though their algorithm catches 94% of AI-generated papers, he added, that means six out of 100 fakes are still getting through: “We need to be humble about what we’ve accomplished. We’ve done something very important by raising awareness.”

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Journal

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-024-66784-6 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Article Title

Detection of ChatGPT fake science with the xFakeSci learning algorithm

“Artificial intelligence will play an increasing role in scientific publications”

“May help editors select papers that will garner greater attention”

Boston University School of Medicine

(Boston)—Artificial intelligence (AI), in various forms, has burst onto the scene in both society and medicine. Its role in medicine is still evolving, but undoubtedly, it will assist in the evaluation of images (radiographs, pathological reports, videos of colonoscopy,) as well as in preparing discharge summaries, consultative evaluations and diagnosis. It may also help in the long-awaited goal of precision medicine. In addition, it has and will play an increasing role in scientific publication in at least two areas, peer-review and drafting manuscripts.

 

According to former editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association Howard Bauchner, MD, in the coming years, AI will transform the writing of scientific manuscripts, assist in reviewing them, and help editors select the most impactful papers. “Potentially it may help editors increase the influence of their journals,” says Bauchner, professor of pediatrics at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.

 

In a guest editorial in the European Journal of Emergency Medicine, Bauchner examines how AI could be used by editors. “Given that identifying enough peer-reviewers is getting increasingly difficult, editors could use AI to provide an initial “score.” An article with what is determined to have a good score could then be sent for external peer-review (with simply a cursory review by the editors). For articles with an inadequate score, the editors could still consider it for publication after reviewing it or even possibly depending upon the report, ask authors to revise the manuscript,” he explains.

 

When AI becomes available to predict citations, which influences the journals’ impact factor, Bauchner questions if editors should use the information. “First, editors should establish a vision for their journal – what is its mission – and is an individual article consistent with the mission and “in scope.” Second, editors need to carefully consider the role of value-added pieces. How do they enhance the value of the journal. Third, editors need to maximize the reach of their journal, particularly in social media. Journals are communication networks. Fourth, editors need to understand the meaning of open science, including open peer-review, data-sharing, and open access. After an editor has thought through these issues, then yes, having AI assist in determining how much an article would be cited – assuming the results of the study are valid, and simply not meant to attract attention – is reasonable.”

 

Bauchner points out that AI will not replace editors or peer-reviewers, but rather provide additional information about the quality of a manuscript making triaging manuscripts  faster and more objective. “AI will play an increasing role in scientific publication – particularly in peer-review and drafting of manuscripts. Given that in both areas there are important challenges, investigators, peer-reviewers, editors, and funders should welcome the assistance that AI will provide,” he adds.

 

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Journal

European Journal of Emergency Medicine

DOI

10.1097/MEJ.0000000000001164 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Article Title

Artificial intelligence and the future of scientific publication

IOP Publishing partners with Hum to explore data and AI use to enhance content strategy

IOP Publishing

 

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IOP Publishing partners with Hum

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Credit: Hum

IOP Publishing, the publishing arm of the Institute of Physics, is partnering with Hum, the cutting-edge data and AI company, to explore ways to further enhance its author experience and develop its outstanding publishing services.

This partnership underscores IOP Publishing’s commitment to delivering personalised, relevant, and impactful content experiences across their portfolio of over 100 open access and hybrid journals, ebooks, science news, and other resources.

Hum’s advanced AI platforms analyse vast amounts of audience and content data, uncovering actionable insights that will help IOP Publishing by:

• Targeting outreach and omnichannel campaigns to highly specific audience segments
• Developing marketing and outreach strategies for authors and reviewers
• Identifying emerging topics for future content development
• Surfacing the most relevant content recommendations for individual readers

“At IOP Publishing, deepening our relationship with the scientific community is at the heart of everything we do,” said Miriam Maus, Chief Publishing Officer, “Partnering with Hum provides technology that delivers insights into our content and enhances engagement with authors and readers. We’re looking forward to creating more opportunities to advance science through the global exchange of ideas.”

“We’re thrilled to be able to help IOP Publishing unlock the full potential of its audience and content, driving greater engagement, reach, and impact,” said Tim Barton, Hum CEO. “IOPP has been pushing the boundaries on what researchers, authors, readers, and reviewers expect and is committed to advancing that experience. Hum is eager to help them continue to do so.”

 

New Reichman University study: People in financial distress behave more morally

Reichman University

 

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Prof. Guy Hochman of Reichman University’s Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, head of the master’s degree program in behavioral economics

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Credit: gilad kavalerchick

A new study conducted at Reichman University, in collaboration with Aarhus University in Denmark, challenges the negative stereotypes associated with individuals facing economic hardship. The study, led by Prof. Guy Hochman of Reichman University’s Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, head of the master’s degree program in behavioral economics, explored the relationship between financial scarcity, information-seeking, and ethical behavior.

 

It is a common belief that people living in poverty are less moral, as they are driven by a need to focus on survival, which may lead them to engage in unethical behavior to increase their income. Others suggest that this stems from a sense of social injustice. The purpose of the study was to investigate whether financial deprivation truly affects the processing of information and ethical decision-making.

 

The researchers used advanced eye-tracking technology to analyze the participants’ behavior. During the experiment, participants performed a task in which they had the opportunity to cheat in order to increase their financial gain. Surprisingly, the results revealed that while the participants experiencing financial deprivation tended to focus more on “tempting” information that could have allowed them to cheat, they actually cheated less than the participants who were more affluent.

 

The findings of the experiment indicate that despite the economic temptation and the tendency to focus on information that could facilitate cheating, individuals in financial distress tend to uphold their moral standards. Furthermore, the results imply that negative stereotypes associating immoral behaviors with economically disadvantaged populations are unfounded, showing that those in need actually tend to behave more ethically.

 

Prof. Guy Hochman, Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Reichman University: “The study's results offer an optimistic view, revealing that individuals facing economic hardship are actually more likely to act morally than those living in abundance. These findings can help reduce prejudices against economically disadvantaged people and guide efforts to foster ethical behavior across society. Most importantly, the study demonstrates that people do not abandon their moral standards for financial gain, even when under economic distress. This research may have a significant impact on social perceptions and public policies on welfare and social justice, and offers a new and encouraging perspective on human behavior under economic pressure.”

 

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Journal

Journal of Behavioral Decision Making

DOI

10.1002/bdm.2402 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Resource Constraints Lead to Biased Attention but Decrease Unethical Behavior