It would be an exaggeration to say you'll never again read a news article overhyping a medical breakthrough. But, thanks to researchers at the University of Copenhagen, spotting hyperbole may one day get more manageable.
In a new paper, Dustin Wright and Isabelle Augenstein explain how they used NVIDIA GPUs to train an exaggeration detection system to identify overenthusiastic claims in health science reporting.
The paper comes amid a pandemic that has fueled demand for understandable, accurate information. And social media has made health misinformation more widespread.
Research like Wright and Augenstein's could speed more precise health sciences news to more people.
Read the full paper here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.13493.pdf.
A Sobering Realization' Part of the reason why things in popular journalism tend to get sensationalized is some of the journalists don't read the papers they're writing about, Wright says. It's a bit of a sobering realization.
It's hard to blame them. Many journalists need to summarize a lot of information fast and often don't have the time to dig deeper.
University of Copenhagen researcher Dustin Wright. That task falls on the press offices of universities and research institutions. They employ writers to produce press releases - short, news-style summaries - relied on by news outlets.
Shot On That makes the problem of detecting exaggeration in health sciences press releases a good few-shot learning use case.
Few-shot learning techniques can train AI in areas where data isn't plentiful - there are only a few items to learn from.
It's not the first time researchers have put natural language techniques to work detecting hype. Wright points to the earlier work of colleagues in scientific exaggeration detection and misinformation.
Wright and Augenstein's contribution is to reframe the problem and apply a novel, multitask-capable version of a technique called Pattern Exploiting Training, which they dubbed MT-PET.
The co-authors started by curating a collection that included both the releases and the papers they were summarizing.
Each pair, or tuple, has annotations from experts comparing claims made in the papers with those in corresponding press releases.
These 563 tuples gave them a strong base of training data.
They then broke the problem of detecting exaggeration into two related issues.
First, seeing the strength of claims made in press releases and the scientific papers they summarized. Then, identifying the level of exaggeration.
Teacher's PET They then ran this data through a novel kind of PET model, which learns much the way some second-grade students learn reading comprehension.
The training procedure relies on cloze-style phrases - phrases that mask a keyword an AI needs to fill - to ensure it understands a task.
For example, a teacher might ask a student to fill in the blanks in a sentence such as I ride a big ____ bus to school.
Researchers Dustin Wright and Isabel Augenstein created complementary pattern-verbalizer pairs for a main task and an auxiliary task. These pairs are then used to train a machine learning model on data from both tasks (source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.13493.pdf). If they answer yellow, the teacher knows they understand what they see. If not, the teacher knows the student needs more help.
Wright and Augenstein expanded on the idea to train a PET model to both detect the strength of claims made in press releases and to assess whether a press release overstates a papers' claims.
The researchers trained their models on a shared computing cluster, using four Intel Xeon CPUs and a single NVIDIA TITAN X GPU.
As a result, Wright and Augenstein were able to show how MT-PET outperforms PET and supervised learning.
Such technology could allow researchers to spot exaggeration in fields with a limited amount of expertise to classify training data.
AI-enabled grammar checkers can already help writers polish the quality of their prose.
One day, similar tools could help journalists summarize new findings more accurately, Wright says.
Not Easy To be sure, putting this research to work would need investment in production, marketing and usability, Wright says.
Wright's also realistic about the human factors that can lead to exaggeration.
Press releases convey information. But they also need to be bold enough to generate interest from reporters. Not always easy.
Whenever I tweet about stuff, I think, how can I get this tweet out without exaggeration,' Wright says. It's hard.
You can catch Dustin Wright and Isabella Augenstein on Twitter at @dustin_wright37 and @IAugenstein. Read their full paper, Semi-Supervised Exaggeration Detection of Health Science Press Releases, here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2108.13493.pdf.
Featured image credit: Vintage postcard, copyright expired.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
David Dvir, 2D founder (left), Sundeep Reddy (center), and Jean-Marc Bouchut (right), both of Zeiss...
23/07/2026
Screen Australia announces new national documentary accelerator program 23 July 2026
Screen Australia has today announced the Above the Line Documentary Accel...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
22/07/2026
An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app
Marc Levoy July 22, 2026
0 Comments
At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...
22/07/2026
Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...
22/07/2026
Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Brie Clayton July 21, 2026
0 Comments
Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...
22/07/2026
AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back
Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026
0 Comments
A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...
22/07/2026
From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Thr...
22/07/2026
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang today visited the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, to commission an NVIDIA DGX GB300 system - bringing one...
22/07/2026
A poisoned spy, a secret war, and a small English city contaminated by a deadly chemical weapon. Available on Sky Documentaries from 4 AugustWednesday 22 July 2...
22/07/2026
Audio at Parity: Comscore Launches Transcript-Level Targeting and Measurement wi...
22/07/2026
Arvato Systems and Lobster Enter into a Partnership and Combine the Integration Platform and Managed Services
Flexible integration solutions for cloud, hybrid...
It would be an exaggeration to say you'll never again read a news article overhyping a medical breakthrough. But, thanks to researchers at the University of Copenhagen, spotting hyperbole may one day get more manageable.
