Public Understanding of Science Blog

 By Justin C. Cheung and Shirley S. Ho. Image source: ChatGPT Artificial intelligence (AI) is very popular nowadays, from ChatGPT, Apple Intelligence, to digital twin systems, and even autonomous drones. In academia, another term is gaining considerable traction: Explainable AI (XAI) .  XAI is a concept that refers to how well the algorithmic decisions (or behaviors), and the underlying algorithmic model can be understood by lay end-users. It helps people comprehend how AI behaves, which as research has shown, can greatly improve trust and thereby behavioral acceptance. In risk-laden AI applications such as autonomous passenger drones, XAI is all the more important because it has great potential to mitigate unwarranted concerns. At the core of our study , we examined the effects of perceived explainability in autonomous drone algorithms on trust factors. We delineated trust in three dimensions, namely performance (how well the AI operates), purpose (how well the AI’s obj...

 By Rod Abhari and Emőke-Ágnes Horvát.  Whether science is seen as “self-correcting” or “broken” depends in part on how the public understands retractions. Scientific retractions are increasingly used to correct the scientific record. Last year, over 10,000 academic articles were retracted, marking an all-time high. But while scientists may see retractions as an assurance of scientific integrity when a scientific topic has been the subject of political controversy, the public may see them as evidence of incompetence or even corruption.  Our recent article , available online in Public Understanding of Science, examined social media posts of the most discussed retracted COVID-19 articles in order to better understand the relationship between scientific retractions and the politicization of science.  When Retractions Failed In May 2020, The Lancet published a study concluding that hydroxychloroquine—a drug promoted by then-President Donald Trump—was ineffective a...

By Joop de Boer and Harry Aiking.  Photo credit: Unsplash  “Viruses have been produced in government laboratories to control our freedom”.  Conspiratorial anti-science beliefs such as the previous statement mix two related categories of unwarranted beliefs and attitudes: That of conspiratorial ideas and that of anti-science attitudes. The very existence and diffusion of such beliefs highlights an opposition between “the common people” versus “the social elite,” including academics, scholars, and experts, but this opposition shows itself in a variety of ways.  The beliefs combine a mistreatment of the people with an image of science that seriously contradicts the cultural values of intellectual autonomy, egalitarianism, and commitments to the welfare of others. In European countries, the importance of these values is associated with national wealth and women’s political representation. Hence, characteristics of both individuals and countries are important to clarify t...

By Alice Fleerackers and Chelsea Ratcliff. Photo credit: cclogg   New study finds that over 50% of readers misunderstand the term “preprint” when they see it mentioned in a news story. A news story describing a novel blood test for Alzheimer diagnosis. An analysis of how Donald Trump is redefining the word felon . A deep dive into a promising new approach to building AI models. These three seemingly different news stories have one thing in common. They report findings from preprints —research articles that are publicly available but haven’t yet been peer reviewed or published by a journal. If you’ve never heard of preprints before, you’re not alone. Our new study suggests that more than half of readers are confused when they see the word preprint mentioned in a news story. For most people in our study, this held true even when they read a news story that included an explanation of the term. In fact, we found that over three-quarters of people who were shown an explanation...