III: Medium: Ask the Experts: Generating Question-Answer Pairs for Addressing Information Deficits about Vaccines

该项目旨在通过开发可扩展的管道来识别信息缺陷，从而支持决策。在这种情况下，赤字是指对可信信息的需求很高，但相应的供应很低的主题。该管道首先开发自动化方法，从在线资源中识别新出现的和现存的疫苗相关问题。创造概括的问题，举例说明所关注的问题，然后将问题与可信的答案相匹配。作为本研究的一部分，开发的技术将促进具有不断发展的知识基础的领域的决策，这些知识基础是对具有挑战性的问题的情境化答案。该研究将侧重于解决疫苗作为目标应用领域的信息缺陷。大流行和疫苗的快速发展导致公众提出了许多问题。例如，COVID-19疫苗导致的死亡人数是否超过所有其他疫苗的总和？随着有关疫苗的问题继续在网上传播，及时准确地回答这些问题是支持决策的关键。本研究的重点将是开发以下方法：(1)从社交媒体和博客等在线来源中识别新出现的和现存的疫苗相关问题，并使用一种新的分类法对其进行分类；(2)从文本中生成情境化问题，旨在解决具体的主张、担忧、知识差距和神话；(3)将问题与可信的答案进行匹配，或者将其推荐给能够开发新答案的专家。除了产生广泛适用的研究成果和知识制品外，该项目还将在一个疫苗问题专家咨询小组的指导下，制定一个面向公众的仪表板，旨在通过展示正在进行的关于疫苗的讨论并突出需要注意的领域，协助公共卫生和医疗专业人员。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to support decision-making by developing a scalable pipeline for identifying information deficits. In this context, deficits refer to topics where there is a high demand for credible information but the corresponding supply is low. The pipeline begins with developing automated methods for identifying emerging and extant vaccine-related concerns from online sources. The moves to the creation of generalized questions that exemplify the concerns and then match the questions to credible answers. The techniques developed as part of this research will facilitate decision-making in areas with an ever-evolving knowledge base of contextualized answers to challenging questions. The research will focus on addressing information deficits about vaccines as the target application domain. The pandemic and the rapid development of vaccines has resulted in many questions from the public. For example, has the COVID-19 vaccine led to more deaths than all other vaccines put together? As questions about vaccines continue to propagate in online communication channels, timely and accurate answers to them are key to supporting decision-making.The main thrusts of this research will be to develop methods for: (1) identifying emerging and extant vaccine-related concerns from online sources, such as social media and blogs, and categorizing them using a novel taxonomy; (2) generating contextualized questions from text aimed at addressing specific claims, concerns, knowledge gaps, and myths; and (3) matching the questions to credible answers when they exist, or otherwise recommending them to experts who can develop new answers. In addition to producing broadly applicable research results and knowledge artifacts, this project, guided by an expert advisory group on vaccinations, will develop a public-facing dashboard aimed at assisting public health and medical professionals by surfacing ongoing discussions about vaccines and highlighting the areas that require attention.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.