election corner
Should science stay out of partisan politics?
Serkan Gurbuz/AP
In a post-Covid-era election, with trust in science and scientists lower than ever, should scientific journals be making presidential endorsements?
STAT's Anil Oza takes a look at how Nature, Science, JAMA, NEJM, and others have treated the election, what their reasoning is, and why — though always political — experts say science shouldn't be partisan. Read more here.
On a similar subject, don't miss STAT's First Opinion Podcast with Scientific American editor-in-chief Laura Helmuth and chief opinion editor Megha Satyanarayana (a former STATian herself), who explain why the magazine chose to endorse Harris.
And if you missed our special edition of the D.C. Diagnosis newsletter earlier this week on what to expect in health care whichever way the presidential election goes, you can read it here. Our D.C. team will have another special edition next Wednesday after the election, so sign up today! (It's free!)
generative AI
Dr. Google: Better than nothing
In a perspective in NEJM, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's faculty member Isaac Kohane argues that we should conduct clinical trials comparing ChatGPT medical advice not against doctors, but against something more realistic: Not going to the doctor.
Kohane couldn't find a primary care doctor to recommend to a new colleague, even in doctor-heavy Boston, due to the (somewhat artificially created) doctor shortage. Medicine is increasingly turning to AI to alleviate the shortage by employing tools that save doctors time, but that's just the tip of the iceberg of AI in medicine, he argues.
Patients are already using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude 3 to ask about their health symptoms. Instead of assuming patients will take the chatbots' caveat and ask a medical professional, "shouldn't we be comparing health outcomes achieved with patients' use of these programs with outcomes in our current primary-care-doctor–depleted system?" he asks.
Read more in STAT about how hospitals are training residents to think about ChatGPT, how well it works for diagnosing patients, and a Microsoft executive's warning that ChatGPT shouldn't be used for diagnosis.
health care
When doctors judge patients
Surveys indicate that most adults admit to hiding information about everything from their exercise habits to their medication regimens from their doctors. While it's easy to say that people should just be more forthcoming, Samantha Kleinberg, Farber chair professor of computer science at Stevens Institute of Technology, says that her research shows that the onus lies with doctors, who do judge their patients negatively.
Kleinberg says doctors need to change their mindsets to focus on empathy and education, allowing patients to share more freely. Not only is open communication important for patients' health, but it can also help uncover unexpected side effects of medicines, as was the case with the discovery that the drug combination fen-phen caused heart damage.
Read more on Kleinberg's findings in this STAT First Opinion.
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