PreCheck: Understanding Press Release Exaggeration (PRE) of Scientific Research

新闻稿的准确性对公众理解科学和公众对科学研究的信任起着至关重要的作用。然而，在新闻稿中发现了几种类型的夸张，例如根据相关发现做出因果声明，以及从动物研究对人类进行推断。这些夸大其词导致错误信息通过社交媒体和主流媒体向公众传播。这个项目通过使用机器学习和人工智能中的最先进技术，进一步加深了我们对学术研究成果可能如何错误地传达给政策制定者和公众的理解。这个项目提供了对微观和宏观两个层面的深入了解。在微观层面上，该项目精确地考察了夸张发生的时间和地点。在宏观层面上，该项目将研究随着时间的推移以及跨领域和跨机构的夸大现象的普遍性。这些发现将为提高新闻稿作为科学传播的重要渠道的质量提供有益的见解。这项研究将为研究机构发布的新闻稿中的夸张提供大规模的、细致入微的理解。该项目开发了一个名为PreCheck的NLP和深度学习工具，它将自动检查新闻稿夸张，具体地说，PreCheck将把主要学术新闻稿门户网站EurekAlert！上的新闻稿链接到PubMed上的原始研究文章，然后使用机器学习和NLP技术来审查关于两种主要夸张类型的每份新闻稿：相关发现的因果声明和动物研究对人类的推断。一旦在个别新闻稿层面上发现夸大，将进行汇总分析，以回答有关新闻稿夸大的现状和趋势及其与研究领域和研究机构的关系的研究问题。研究结果将与各研究机构的新闻官员分享，讨论研究结果及其对通过新闻稿传播科学研究的影响。此外，PreCheck将公开，以便科学传播者可以进行他们自己的传播，科学消费者可以有一种方法来衡量研究中潜在的夸大。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The accuracy of press releases plays a critical role in the public’s understanding of science and public trust in scientific research. However, several types of exaggeration have been found in press releases, such as making causal claims from correlational findings and inference to humans from animal studies. These exaggerations cause misinformation to be spread to the public through both social media and the mainstream media. This project furthers our understanding of how scholarly research findings may be miscommunicated to policymakers and the public by using state-of-the-art techniques in machine learning and artificial intelligence. This project provides an in-depth understanding at both micro- and macro-levels. On the micro-level, the project examines precisely when and where exaggeration occurs. On the macro-level, the project will examine the prevalence of exaggeration over time and across domains and institutions. These findings will provide useful insights for improving the quality of press releases as an important channel for science communication. This research will provide a large-scale, nuanced understanding of exaggerations in press releases issued by research institutions. The project develops a NLP and deep learning tool called PreCheck, which will automatically checking press release exaggeration, Specifically, PreCheck will link the press releases in EurekAlert!, the major academic press release portal, to the original research articles in PubMed, and then use machine learning and NLP techniques to examine each press release regarding two major types of exaggeration: causal claims of correlational findings and inference to humans from animal studies. Once exaggerations can be identified at the individual press release level, aggregated analyses will be done to answer research questions regarding the status and trend of press release exaggeration and its relationship with research areas and research institutions. The study results will be shared with press officers from various research institutions to discuss the research findings and their implications for communicating scientific research through press releases. In addition, PreCheck will be made publicly available so that science communicators can perform their own communication and science consumers can have a way to measure potential exaggeration in research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.