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Volume 5 Issue 12, December 2021

Understanding resistance to medical AI

Previous research has shown that patients are reluctant to use medical artificial intelligence (AI). Cadario et al. find that this reluctance is due to people perceiving algorithms as a ‘black box’, coupled with an illusory sense of understanding medical decisions made by humans. Brief interventions that target subjective understanding of medical AI increase people’s willingness to use it.

See Cadario et al.

Cover image: Dejapong l. Suwaratana. Cover design: Bethany Vukomanovic.

Editorial

  • Retractions are a key tool for maintaining the integrity of the published record. We need to recognize and reward researchers, especially early-career researchers, who do the right thing in coming forward with a request to retract research that cannot be relied upon due to honest error.

    Editorial

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Correspondence

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Comment & Opinion

  • Discovering an error that leads to retraction is a harrowing experience, especially for early-career researchers. Joana Grave shares the story of the retraction of her first published paper and how community support helped her through this challenge.

    • Joana Grave
    World View
  • Subjective experience of the topic of study can bring passion and creativity to cognitive research. Micah Allen describes this as a double-edged sword, as he recalls witnessing how subjective feeling overrode hard data. But there are ways in which researchers can benefit from subjectively informed research, while guarding against its pitfalls.

    • Micah Allen
    World View
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News & Views

  • Scientific progress depends on researchers updating their beliefs when new evidence arises. McDiarmid and colleagues show that psychologists adjust their beliefs after seeing new results from a replication project. While updating is less than a Bayesian model would justify, it is not undermined by personal investment.

    • Michael Gordon
    • Thomas Pfeiffer
    News & Views
  • A key question in human evolutionary genetics is whether and how natural selection has shaped the human genome. A new study by Song and colleagues uses GWAS data to examine evidence for the effects of polygenic adaptation in complex traits at different time scales.

    • Oscar Lao
    News & Views
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Reviews

  • Although intellectual humility is a prerequisite for credible science, it is rarely practised. Hoekstra and Vazire make recommendations on how to increase intellectual humility in research articles and highlight the crucial role of peer reviewers in promoting intellectually humble manuscripts.

    • Rink Hoekstra
    • Simine Vazire
    Perspective
  • The coming years are likely to see slowing economic growth, which has significant consequences for developed democracies. This Perspective by Burgess et al. considers the implications of slowed growth and proposes a guided civic revival approach to addressing challenges.

    • Matthew G. Burgess
    • Amanda R. Carrico
    • Steve Vanderheiden
    Perspective
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Research

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