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Record W4200205619 · doi:10.17975/sfj-2021-009

Gaining the upper hand on COVID-19 misinformation

2021· article· en· W4200205619 on OpenAlexaffvenueabout
Alex Cen, Lara Parlatan

Bibliographic record

VenueSTEM Fellowship Journal · 2021
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicMisinformation and Its Impacts
Canadian institutionsWestern UniversityMcMaster University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMisinformationCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)PandemicPopularity2019-20 coronavirus outbreakQuarter (Canadian coin)Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)Internet privacyCoronavirusPsychologyComputer scienceMedicineHistoryDiseaseVirologySocial psychologyComputer securityOutbreakInfectious disease (medical specialty)

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

As the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic evolved, information about the virus also accumulated. However, accompanied by the quick emergence of factual information was an even greater abundance of false information. For example, by March 2020, videos containing non-factual information on COVID-19 accounted for over one-quarter of the most viewed videos on YouTube — greatly exceeding the popularity of factual videos released by governments and health professionals [1]. The World Health Organization declared this massive flux of misinformation surrounding COVID-19 an “infodemic”, where it is hard to distinguish between factual and non-factual information [2].

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.004
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.034
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: Not applicable
GenreCandidate signal: Commentary · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.040
Threshold uncertainty score0.133

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0040.034
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0050.002
Science and technology studies0.0060.007
Scholarly communication0.0110.013
Open science0.0010.012
Research integrity0.0040.005
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0400.010

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.

Opus teacher head0.096
GPT teacher head0.368
Teacher spread0.272 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designNot applicable
Domainnot available
GenreCommentary

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".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2021
Admission routes3
Has abstractyes

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