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Visualizing evidence-based disagreement over time: the landscape of a public health controversy 2002-2014.

ABSTRACT: Systematic reviews answer specific questions based on primary literature. However, systematic reviews on the same topic frequently disagree, yet there are no approaches for understanding why at a glance. Our goal is to provide a visual summary that could be useful to researchers, policy makers, and health care professionals in understanding why health controversies persist in the expert literature over time. We present a case study of a single controversy in public health, around the question: "Is reducing dietary salt beneficial at a population level?" We define and visualize three new constructs: the overall evidence base, which consists of the evidence summarized by systematic reviews (the inclusion network) and the unused evidence (isolated nodes). Our network visualization shows at a glance what evidence has been synthesized by each systematic review. Visualizing the temporal evolution of the network captures two key moments when new scientific opinions emerged, both associated with a turn to new sets of evidence that had little to no overlap with previously reviewed evidence. Limited overlap between the evidence reviewed was also found for systematic reviews published in the same year. Future work will focus on understanding the reasons for limited overlap and automating this methodology for medical literature databases.

SUBMITTER: Hsiao TK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8313017 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Visualizing evidence-based disagreement over time: the landscape of a public health controversy 2002-2014.

Hsiao Tzu-Kun TK Fu Yuanxi Y Schneider Jodi J

Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology. Association for Information Science and Technology 20201022 1

Systematic reviews answer specific questions based on primary literature. However, systematic reviews on the same topic frequently disagree, yet there are no approaches for understanding why at a glance. Our goal is to provide a visual summary that could be useful to researchers, policy makers, and health care professionals in understanding why health controversies persist in the expert literature over time. We present a case study of a single controversy in public health, around the question: " ...[more]

PMID: 34316510

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Project description:ObjectivesIn the early stages of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, chloroquine and its derivatives such as hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) were widely commented upon both within the scientific community and in the media. This paper explores the different factors that influenced public perceptions in France of the efficacy of HCQ as well as their evolution between April 2020 and June 2021.MethodsThis article draws on 5 surveys conducted among representative samples of the French population (projects COCONEL and TRACTRUST; quota method, n=1006; 1004; 2006; 1014 and 1005). We asked questions on the effectiveness of chloroquine against COVID-19. We also collected sociodemographic variables and attitudes toward politics and science.ResultsBetween April and June 2021, the proportion of respondents who believed in the efficacy of HCQ decreased rapidly from 35% to 14%. The proportion of respondents who believed that HCQ is ineffective rose gradually from 6% to 21%. After adjusting for the temporal effect, the logistic regression showed a very strong association between political orientation and the belief in the efficacy of HCQ. Respondents who felt closest to the more radical parties (far-right and far-left) were more likely to believe in the efficacy of HCQ than those who felt closest to the political center (O.R. 2.48 [1.95-3.15] and 1.87 [1.44-2.43]). The role of trust in the government and in science and of the degree of political engagement were investigated in the two waves conducted after the scientific consensus was established during the summer of 2020. High levels of trust in the government and in science and of politicization are associated with belief of HCQ proven inefficacy. Across the whole period, a majority of respondents were uncertain. Even in 2021, 41.5% stated that the data were insufficient to decide whether or not HCQ is effective and 25.2% stating that they did not know.ConclusionBecause media coverage of scientific controversies is higher in times of uncertainty than after these controversies have died down, the publicization of therapeutic promises can have lasting consequences on attitudes towards science and medicine.

Project description:The modern tools of chemistry excel at identifying a sample, but the cost, size, complexity, and power consumption of these instruments often preclude their use in resource-limited settings. In this work, we demonstrate a simple and low-cost method for identifying a sample based on visualizing how the sample changes over space and time in response to a perturbation. Different types of perturbations could be used, and in this proof-of-concept we use a dynamic temperature gradient that rapidly cools different parts of the sample at different rates. We accomplish this by first loading several samples into long parallel channels on a "microfluidic thermometer chip." We then immerse one end of the chip in liquid nitrogen to create a dynamic temperature gradient along the channels, and we use an inexpensive USB microscope to record a video of how the samples respond to the changing temperature gradient. The video is then converted into several bitmap images (one per sample) that capture each sample's response to the perturbation in both space (the y-axis; the distance along the dynamic temperature gradient) and time (the x-axis); we call these images "chronological fingerprints" or "chronoprints" of each sample. If two samples' chronoprints are similar, this suggests that the samples are the same chemical substance or mixture, but if two samples' chronoprints are significantly different, this proves that the samples are chemically different. Since chronoprints are just bitmap images, they can be compared using a variety of techniques from computer science, and in this work we use three different image comparison algorithms to quantify chronoprint similarity. As a demonstration of the versatility of chronoprints, we use them in three different applications: distinguishing authentic olive oil from adulterated oil (an example of the over $10 billion global problem of food fraud), identifying adulterated or counterfeit medication (which represents around 10% of all medication in low- and middle-income countries), and distinguishing the occasionally confused pharmaceutical ingredients glycerol and diethylene glycol (whose accidental or intentional substitution has led to hundreds of deaths). The simplicity and versatility of chronoprints should make them valuable analytical tools in a variety of different fields.

Dataset Information

Visualizing evidence-based disagreement over time: the landscape of a public health controversy 2002-2014.

Publications

Visualizing evidence-based disagreement over time: the landscape of a public health controversy 2002-2014.

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