Jan 23, 2025 09:42 PM
We're doing AI phrenology again
https://gizmodo.com/were-doing-ai-phreno...2000553600
EXCERPT: The latest entry into the AI phrenology portfolio comes from a group of economics professors who say they’ve developed a method for algorithmically analyzing a single photo of a person’s face in order to calculate their personality and predict their educational and career outcomes.
Other recent academic forays into AI phrenology—like algorithms that purport to predict a person’s sexuality or the likelihood they will commit a crime based on their facial features—have been widely criticized and debunked. Investigations have also shown that commercial AI tools that claim to measure personality traits are extremely unreliable...
Why did the FDA ban Red Dye #3
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-did...red-dye-3/
EXCERPT: They are basically saying, we are banning Red No. 3 despite the fact that the science says it is safe at the approved level of exposure. They point out later that Red No. 3 is not widely used in food so higher levels of exposure are unlikely. This is a horrible precedent.
This decision on Red No. 3 turns the relationship between toxicity research and regulations on its head. If Red No. 3 can be banned based upon exposure levels 24 thousand times greater than the highest allowed human exposure, and a mechanism that is relevant in rats but not in humans, then you can get almost anything banned...
Some researchers 'dope' their data – A look back at the cheating scandals of 2024
https://www.sciencenorway.no/fraud-resea...24/2454619
EXCERPTS: Most athletes are honest. Researchers are too. But some athletes dope. And some researchers manipulate their data. [...] When an athlete or researcher achieves good results, the sports team and the university celebrate. There are financial incentives as well. Winners receive funding – athletes through sponsorships, researchers through grants for further research. Institutions benefit too...
AI-generated junk science is a big problem on Google Scholar, research suggests
https://gizmodo.com/ai-generated-junk-sc...2000549900
EXCERPTS: AI-generated scientific research is polluting the online academic information ecosystem, according to a worrying report published in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review.
[...] The way Google Scholar pulls research from around the internet, according to the recent team, does not screen out papers whose authors lack a scientific affiliation or peer-review; the engine will pull academic bycatch—student papers, reports, preprints, and more—along with the research that has passed a higher bar of scrutiny.
The team found that two-thirds of the papers they studied were at least in part produced through undisclosed use of GPTs. Of the GPT-fabricated papers, the researchers found that 14.5% pertained to health, 19.5% pertained to the environment, and 23% pertained to computing...
https://gizmodo.com/were-doing-ai-phreno...2000553600
EXCERPT: The latest entry into the AI phrenology portfolio comes from a group of economics professors who say they’ve developed a method for algorithmically analyzing a single photo of a person’s face in order to calculate their personality and predict their educational and career outcomes.
Other recent academic forays into AI phrenology—like algorithms that purport to predict a person’s sexuality or the likelihood they will commit a crime based on their facial features—have been widely criticized and debunked. Investigations have also shown that commercial AI tools that claim to measure personality traits are extremely unreliable...
Why did the FDA ban Red Dye #3
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/why-did...red-dye-3/
EXCERPT: They are basically saying, we are banning Red No. 3 despite the fact that the science says it is safe at the approved level of exposure. They point out later that Red No. 3 is not widely used in food so higher levels of exposure are unlikely. This is a horrible precedent.
This decision on Red No. 3 turns the relationship between toxicity research and regulations on its head. If Red No. 3 can be banned based upon exposure levels 24 thousand times greater than the highest allowed human exposure, and a mechanism that is relevant in rats but not in humans, then you can get almost anything banned...
Some researchers 'dope' their data – A look back at the cheating scandals of 2024
https://www.sciencenorway.no/fraud-resea...24/2454619
EXCERPTS: Most athletes are honest. Researchers are too. But some athletes dope. And some researchers manipulate their data. [...] When an athlete or researcher achieves good results, the sports team and the university celebrate. There are financial incentives as well. Winners receive funding – athletes through sponsorships, researchers through grants for further research. Institutions benefit too...
AI-generated junk science is a big problem on Google Scholar, research suggests
https://gizmodo.com/ai-generated-junk-sc...2000549900
EXCERPTS: AI-generated scientific research is polluting the online academic information ecosystem, according to a worrying report published in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Misinformation Review.
[...] The way Google Scholar pulls research from around the internet, according to the recent team, does not screen out papers whose authors lack a scientific affiliation or peer-review; the engine will pull academic bycatch—student papers, reports, preprints, and more—along with the research that has passed a higher bar of scrutiny.
The team found that two-thirds of the papers they studied were at least in part produced through undisclosed use of GPTs. Of the GPT-fabricated papers, the researchers found that 14.5% pertained to health, 19.5% pertained to the environment, and 23% pertained to computing...
