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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25232 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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The experts in stellar mechanics are not the same experts commenting on HBD, COVID, gender, or economics.

If a working biologist tells me something about epidemiology or human biology, the person is educated in that discipline and knows what he’s talking about for the most part. If this person tells me that one cannot deduce the race of a patient from a brain scan, I would believe that he is telling the truth and knows his stuff. If Bill Nye (who’s an engineer by training) tells me the same, I don’t give it much weight because Bill Nye has no biological training. Of course, I’d ignore Dr. Faucci on UFOs, astrophysics, and mechanical engineering.

https://www.nibib.nih.gov/news-events/newsroom/study-finds-artificial-intelligence-can-determine-race-medical-images#

In a recent study, published in Lancet Digital Health, NIH-funded researchers found that AI models could accurately predict self-reported race in several different types of radiographic images—a task not possible for human experts. These findings suggest that race information could be unknowingly incorporated into image analysis models, which could potentially exacerbate racial disparities in the medical setting.

For their study, Gichoya and colleagues first wanted to determine if they could develop AI models that could detect race solely from chest x-rays. They used three large datasets that spanned a diverse patient population and found that their models could predict race with high accuracy—a striking finding, as human experts are unable to make such predictions by looking at x-rays. The researchers also found that the AI could determine self-reported race even when the images were highly degraded or cropped to one ninth of the original size, or when the resolution was modified to such an extent that the images were barely recognized as x-rays. The research team subsequently used other non-chest x-ray datasets including mammograms, cervical spine radiographs, and chest computed tomography (CT) scans, and found that the AI could still determine self-reported race, regardless of the type of scan or anatomic location.

I see no mention of anything to do with imaging the brain, but I wouldn't be surprised if it could be done, and would give it more than even odds. That would be less perplexing than being able to do it from mammograms, which are ghostly images of someone's tits, and that's well beyond my ability or any radiologist I know.

If a working biologist tells me something about epidemiology or human biology, the person is educated in that discipline and knows what he’s talking about for the most part. If this person tells me that one cannot deduce the race of a patient from a brain scan, I would believe that he is telling the truth and knows his stuff.

I can get the general principle but this is absolutely the last place that I would trust a working biologist. A working biologist that told you that it is possible to deduce the race of a patient from a brain scan would be a fired biologist in extremely short order - she's going to tell me what she needs to tell me in order to remain employed and able to talk to her friends and community. That claim may or may not be true, but the informational content of an expert telling me the socially mandated opinion/belief is zero, and I'm going to have to do my own research anyway. But more than that, I can't even pretend to respect a scientist who has to lie like this. Maybe I just have oppositional defiant disorder, but the idea of taking an expert seriously when I can just prove that they're knowingly lying about extremely important topics just galls me. What's the point in even talking with them if all I can possibly get is either them fired or a brand new prevarication?

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