Identifying and Responding to Health Misinformation on Reddit Dermatology Forums With Artificially Intelligent Bots Using Natural Language Processing: Design and Evaluation Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Reddit, the fifth most popular website in the United States, boasts a large and engaged user base on its dermatology forums where users crowdsource free medical opinions. Unfortunately, much of the advice provided is unvalidated and could lead to the provision of inappropriate care. Initial testing has revealed that artificially intelligent bots can detect misinformation regarding tanning and essential oils on Reddit dermatology forums and may be able to produce responses to posts containing misinformation. OBJECTIVE: To analyze the ability of bots to find and respond to tanning and essential oil-related health misinformation on Reddit's dermatology forums in a controlled test environment. METHODS: Using natural language processing techniques, we trained bots to target misinformation, using relevant keywords and to post prefabricated responses. By evaluating different model architectures across a held-out test set, we compared performances. RESULTS: Our models yielded data test accuracies ranging 95%-100%, with a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) fine-tuned model resulting in the highest level of test accuracy. Bots were then able to post corrective prefabricated responses to misinformation in a test environment. CONCLUSIONS: Using a limited data set, bots accurately detected examples of health misinformation within Reddit dermatology forums. Given that these bots can then post prefabricated responses, this technique may allow for interception of misinformation. Providing correct information does not mean that users will be receptive or find such interventions persuasive. Further studies should investigate this strategy's effectiveness to inform future deployment of bots as a technique in combating health misinformation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".