Envisioning the future of the AI research ecosystem
Editorial
PNAS Nexus. Volume 3, Issue 2, February 2024
Sethuraman Panchanathan
Extract
The time to think critically about how we responsibly and equitably develop and deploy AI is now.
Artificial intelligence is set to transform innovation, science, and society. The complexity of AI lies in integrating data, software, models, and, most importantly, human knowledge and talent. The responsibility lies with all of us to safely integrate AI systems into society and the research ecosystem. As director of the U.S. National Science Foundation, I am acutely aware of the pivotal role our agency plays in fostering AI research and development that accelerates scientific discovery, adheres to ethical and equitable best practices, and upholds our democratic values. We envision that the future AI research ecosystem will be defined by several characteristics: democratized access to computational power, data, sophisticated software, and models across academia, industry, and small businesses; interdisciplinary collaboration across the humanities, physical sciences, social sciences, and engineering disciplines; and global governance frameworks setting standards for international collaboration.

A Research Framework to Improve Health Disparity Evidence Gaps in Value Assessments
Current Opinion 12 December 2023 Pages: 253 – 259
PharmacoEconomics, Volume 42, Issue 3 March 2024
T. Joseph Mattingly II
Abstract
A value assessment is intended as a tool for evaluating healthcare treatments to gauge value and inform decisions. Economic value assessments typically incorporate a cost-effectiveness analysis, focusing on costs and health outcomes important to payers, missing important information to ensure existing markets optimize resource allocation. Despite frequent calls for more explicit consideration of health equity impacts in value assessments, health economists continue to develop models informed by traditional cost and quality-of-life data that do not capture differences experienced by health disparity populations. This conceptual paper proposes a research framework to enhance data collection and analysis to address these gaps and better quantify the value of a health innovation, and better assess how a new intervention impacts health disparities. The framework comprises three distinct phases that build on one another: (1) contextualization of lived experiences for disadvantaged communities; (2) individual-level quantification of health disparities for cost and quality-of-life measures; and (3) quantifying community-level impacts.

Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research
Perspective 06 Mar 2024
Nature, Volume 627 Issue 8002, 7 March 2024
Lisa Messeri, M. J. Crockett
Abstract
Scientists are enthusiastically imagining ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) tools might improve research. Why are AI tools so attractive and what are the risks of implementing them across the research pipeline? Here we develop a taxonomy of scientists’ visions for AI, observing that their appeal comes from promises to improve productivity and objectivity by overcoming human shortcomings. But proposed AI solutions can also exploit our cognitive limitations, making us vulnerable to illusions of understanding in which we believe we understand more about the world than we actually do. Such illusions obscure the scientific community’s ability to see the formation of scientific monocultures, in which some types of methods, questions and viewpoints come to dominate alternative approaches, making science less innovative and more vulnerable to errors. The proliferation of AI tools in science risks introducing a phase of scientific enquiry in which we produce more but understand less. By analysing the appeal of these tools, we provide a framework for advancing discussions of responsible knowledge production in the age of AI.

Barriers to Decolonizing Global Health: Identification of Research Challenges Facing Investigators Residing in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Viewpoint
Global Health: Science and Practice February 2024, 12(1):e2300269; https://doi.org/10.9745/GHSP-D-23-00269
Nana Anyimadua Anane-Binfoh, Katelyn E. Flaherty, Ahmed N. Zakariah, Eric J. Nelson, Torben K. Becker and Taiba Jibril Afaa
The practice of global health is plagued by power structures favoring high-income countries. Efforts to decolonize global health must consider the systemic limitations that LMIC investigators face at local, national, and international levels.

The PhenX Toolkit: Recommended Measurement Protocols for Social Determinants of Health Research
PROTOCOL
Current Protocols in Human Genetics First published: 05 March 2024
Cataia L. Ives, Michelle C. Krzyzanowski, Vanessa J. Marshall, Keith Norris, Myles Cockburn, Keisha Bentley-Edwards, Dinushika Mohottige, Keshia M. Pollack Porter … See all authors
Abstract Health disparities are driven by unequal conditions in the environments in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age, commonly termed the Social Determinants of Health (SDoH). The availability of recommended measurement protocols for SDoH will enable investigators to consistently collect data for SDoH constructs. The PhenX (consensus measures for Phenotypes and eXposures) Toolkit is a web-based catalog of recommended measurement protocols for use in research studies with human participants. Using standard protocols from the PhenX Toolkit makes it easier to compare and combine studies, potentially increasing the impact of individual studies, and aids in comparability across literature. In 2018, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities provided support for an initial expert Working Group to identify and recommend established SDoH protocols for inclusion in the PhenX Toolkit. In 2022, a second expert Working Group was convened to build on the work of the first SDoH Working Group and address gaps in the SDoH Toolkit Collections. The SDoH Collections consist of a Core Collection and Individual and Structural Specialty Collections. This article describes a Basic Protocol for using the PhenX Toolkit to select and implement SDoH measurement protocols for use in research studies.

Maternal and perinatal health research during emerging and ongoing epidemic threats: a landscape analysis and expert consultation (7 March, 2024)
Mercedes Bonet, Magdalena Babinska, Pierre Buekens, Shivaprasad S Goudar, Beate Kampmann, Marian Knight, Dana Meaney-Delman, Smaragda Lamprianou, Flor Muñoz Rivas, Andy Stergachis, Cristiana M Toscano, Joycelyn Bhatia, Sarah Chamberlain, Usman Chaudhry, Jacqueline Mills, Emily Serazin, Hannah Short, Asher Steene, Michael Wahlen, Olufemi T Oladapo
BMJ Global Health, March 2024 – Volume 9 – 3
Abstract
Introduction
Pregnant women and their offspring are often at increased direct and indirect risks of adverse outcomes during epidemics and pandemics. A coordinated research response is paramount to ensure that this group is offered at least the same level of disease prevention, diagnosis, and care as the general population. We conducted a landscape analysis and held expert consultations to identify research efforts relevant to pregnant women affected by disease outbreaks, highlight gaps and challenges, and propose solutions to addressing them in a coordinated manner.
Methods
Literature searches were conducted from 1 January 2015 to 22 March 2022 using Web of Science, Google Scholar and PubMed augmented by key informant interviews. Findings were reviewed and Quid analysis was performed to identify clusters and connectors across research networks followed by two expert consultations. These formed the basis for the development of an operational framework for maternal and perinatal research during epidemics.
Results
Ninety-four relevant research efforts were identified. Although well suited to generating epidemiological data, the entire infrastructure to support a robust research response remains insufficient, particularly for use of medical products in pregnancy. Limitations in global governance, coordination, funding and data-gathering systems have slowed down research responses.
Conclusion
Leveraging current research efforts while engaging multinational and regional networks may be the most effective way to scale up maternal and perinatal research preparedness and response. The findings of this landscape analysis and proposed operational framework will pave the way for developing a roadmap to guide coordination efforts, facilitate collaboration and ultimately promote rapid access

The Climate – Education Research Framework
ODI Research reports 04 March 2024
The linkages between climate change and education are vast. On the one hand, climate change has direct impacts on education through exposure to physical hazards like flooding or extreme heat, but education also enables people to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Understanding this bidirectional relationship is critical, as it will help us absorb the most acute climate impacts while enabling us to understand how climate change impacts students, educators, and educational infrastructure.
The Climate-Education Research Framework (CERF) is a systematic approach to understanding this relationship. The framework offered by CERF is grounded in systems-thinking. By helping disentangle the complex interactions between climate change and education, this framework can help guide and inform the design of scalable policies and actions for improving climate and educational outcomes.
:: The Climate – Education Research Framework Download PDF

Public Consultations Watch :: Global Calls for Input/Public Comment/RFIs
GE2P2 Global – 07 Mar 2024 – Issue 14
:: Monitoring public consultations/calls for input/RFIs across focus areas including health, human rights, humanitarian action, education, heritage, and sustainable development…an indicative and not an exhaustive digest.
:: Striving to respond to these opportunities where experience and prior analytical/advisory work suggests that a meaningful contribution can be developed.
:: Individuals and organizations/institutions interested in collaborating are welcome to contact David R Curry, GE2P2 Global Foundation, at david.r.curry@ge2p2global.org.

Trust in scientists and their role in society across 67 countries

OSF Pre-prints  Last edited: February 05, 2024 :: Viktoria Cologna, Niels G. Mede, Sebastian Berger, John Besley, Cameron Brick, Marina Joubert, Edward Maibach, Sabina Mihelj, Naomi Oreskes, Mike S. Schäfer, et al.

Abstract Scientific information is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in science can help decision-makers act based on the best available evidence, especially during crises such as climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists. Here we interrogated these concerns with a pre-registered 67-country survey of 71,417 respondents on all inhabited continents and find that in most countries, a majority of the public trust scientists and think that scientists should be more engaged in policymaking. We further show that there is a discrepancy between the public’s perceived and desired priorities of scientific research. Moreover, we find variations between and within countries, which we explain with individual- and country-level variables, including political orientation. While these results do not show widespread lack of trust in scientists, we cannot discount the concern that lack of trust in scientists by even a small minority may affect considerations of scientific evidence in policymaking. These findings have implications for scientists and policymakers seeking to maintain and increase trust in scientists.

The Technical Advisory Group on the Responsible Use of the Life Sciences and Dual-Use Research meets for the first time – WHO
WHO Departmental News – 30 January 2024
The Technical Advisory Group on the Responsible Use of the Life Sciences and Dual-Use Research (TAG-RULS DUR) was established in November 2023 to provide independent advice to WHO including technical and strategic advice relevant to the monitoring and mitigation of biorisks, advances in the life sciences and related technologies, the governance of dual-use research and the responsible use of the life sciences.

The TAG-RULS DUR members have expertise in a range of areas including, but not limited to, the following:

• oversight of dual-use research and dual-use of concern (DURC), knowledge, information, methods, products or technologies;
• biorisk mitigation and management, biosafety and biosecurity;
• emerging areas of research and technologies in biology and the life sciences (for example, but not limited to, synthetic biology, genome editing, virology, infectious diseases, bioinformatics, neurosciences) and associated disciplines (for example, but not limited to, chemistry, artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies);
• governance of emerging technologies;
• risk communication and disinformation;
• ethics, international law, policy and governance and other relevant social science domains, related to the responsible use of the life sciences, dual-use research and pandemic prevention, preparedness and response;
• foresight;
• monitoring and evaluation related to global health security; and
• One Health approach to the responsible use of the life sciences and dual-use research.

The composition of the TAG respects an adequate distribution of technical expertise, geographic and gender distribution. The members serve in their personal capacities, from a broad range of disciplines relevant to the TAG-RULS DUR areas of work.

This meeting, held on 24 January 2024, provided the opportunity to meet virtually for the first time; to discuss the current and upcoming project activities on the responsible use of the life sciences and dual-use research; and to share members’ perspectives and priorities on the work ahead. A report of this meeting will be published.