A poll for #MedTwitter Do you have media appearances, #SoMe activity, writing in forward facing magazines/websites included in your professional contract as a promotion lever or financial incentive?

In a review of existing research, psychological scientist David Rapp (Northwestern University) explains that people encode the inaccurate statements into memory because it’s easier than critically evaluating and analyzing what they’ve heard

Why We Fall Prey to Misinformation

When effectively implemented at scale, Test, Trace, Isolate (TTI) can contribute to controlling the UK COVID-19 epidemic, but only as part of a wider package of public health interventions, including physical and social distancing, control of infection procedures, outbreak investigation and control. TTI is most effective in breaking chains of transmission, and reducing the effective reproductive number (Re), when there is maximum: (i) speed, i.e., quick turn-around of both index case testing and contact tracing (and testing); (ii) compliance, i.e., a high proportion of people in each chain are willing and able to follow guidance; and (iii) coverage, i.e., identification of most chains through integration of consistent case data and real-time, high-precision population surveillance. Each of these three aspects of TTI needs careful attention, as do the trade-offs implicit in choices of how precisely to implement TTI in terms of who to test, trace and isolate, and when to do so. Based on our modelling work, we confirm that social distancing and self-isolation of symptomatic individuals and quarantine of their household contacts has a substantial impact on the number of new infections generated by each index case. We further show that adding contact tracing for extra-household contacts of confirmed cases to this broader package of interventions reduces the number of new infections otherwise generated by 5-15%. The upper end of this range represents scenarios where the overall test and trace period for contacts has been reduced from five days to three days. Furthermore, the level of compliance with TTI guidance strongly affects its usefulness, as there are many steps in the TTI system at which cases and contacts can be lost. Phone-based apps may be able to increase TTI speed and compliance but is likely to be an adjunct to a manual TTI system. Both incentives and clear messaging relating to TTI participation and compliance with isolation measures are also likely to be needed to maximize TTI’s effectiveness. TTI and surveillance systems are mutually beneficial, since TTI can capture important data on index cases and contacts, while surveillance can provide indications of who/where to target for testing, even when they are not part of an identified transmission chain. Finally, TTI will require substantial coordination across a wide range of organizations, including central and local government departments, PHE, the NHS and business groups. In particular, local integration of systems is likely to maximize ability to conduct the agile, locally differentiated outbreak management that may be needed as the epidemic evolves.

Test, Trace, Isolate

In the midst of all this, I've learned something very big about the role of expertise in today's world. It's only welcome if it's subordinate to the values and interests of the person to whom the advice is offered. Otherwise, it will be strongly rejected.

This questionnaire explores the barriers and enablers to pre-registration. Pre-registration is the practice of submitting a research plan to a public online repository, prior to the research being undertaken.

What are the barriers and enablers to pre-registration

10.1177/1089268020918844

As meta-analytic studies have come to occupy a sizable contingent of published work in the psychological sciences, clarity in the research and reporting practices of such work is crucial to the interpretability and reproducibility of research findings. The present study examines the state of research and reporting practices within a random sample of 384 published psychological meta-analyses across several important dimensions (e.g., search methods, exclusion criteria, statistical techniques). In addition, we surveyed the first authors of the meta-analyses in our sample to ask them directly about the research practices employed and reporting decisions made in their studies, including the assessments and procedures they conducted and the guidelines or materials they relied on. Upon cross-validating the first author responses with what was reported in their published meta-analyses, we identified numerous potential gaps in reporting and research practices. In addition to providing a survey of recent reporting practices, our findings suggest that (a) there are several research practices conducted by meta-analysts that are ultimately not reported; (b) some aspects of meta-analysis research appear to be conducted at disappointingly low rates; and (c) the adoption of the reporting standards, including the Meta-Analytic Reporting Standards (MARS), has been slow to nonexistent within psychological meta-analytic research.

An Empirical Review of Research and Reporting Practices in Psychological Meta-Analyses

10.1016/j.cogpsych.2020.101274

When making decisions in complex environments we must selectively sample and process information with respect to task demands. Previous studies have shown that this requirement can manifest in the influence that extreme outcomes (i.e. values at the edges of a distribution) have on judgment and choice. We elucidate this influence via a task in which participants are presented, briefly, with an array of numbers and have to make one of two judgments. In ‘preferential’ judgments where the participants’ goal was to choose between a safe, known outcome, and an unknown outcome drawn from the array, extreme-outcomes had a greater influence on choice than mid-range outcomes, especially under shorter time-limits. In ‘perceptual’ judgments where the participants' goal was to estimate the arrays’ average, the influence of the extremes was less pronounced. A novel cognitive process model captures these patterns via a two-step selective-sampling and integration mechanism. Together our results shed light on how task goals modulate sampling from complex environments, show how sampling determines choice, and highlight the conflicting conclusions that arise from applying statistical and cognitive models to data.

Elucidating the differential impact of extreme-outcomes in perceptual and preferential choice

BackgroundScoping reviews are a relatively new approach to evidence synthesis and currently there exists little guidance regarding the decision to choose between a systematic review or scoping review approach when synthesising evidence. The purpose of this article is to clearly describe the differences in indications between scoping reviews and systematic reviews and to provide guidance for when a scoping review is (and is not) appropriate.ResultsResearchers may conduct scoping reviews instead of systematic reviews where the purpose of the review is to identify knowledge gaps, scope a body of literature, clarify concepts or to investigate research conduct. While useful in their own right, scoping reviews may also be helpful precursors to systematic reviews and can be used to confirm the relevance of inclusion criteria and potential questions.ConclusionsScoping reviews are a useful tool in the ever increasing arsenal of evidence synthesis approaches. Although conducted for different purposes compared to systematic reviews, scoping reviews still require rigorous and transparent methods in their conduct to ensure that the results are trustworthy. Our hope is that with clear guidance available regarding whether to conduct a scoping review or a systematic review, there will be less scoping reviews being performed for inappropriate indications better served by a systematic review, and vice-versa.

Systematic review or scoping review? Guidance for authors when choosing between a systematic or scoping review approach

10.1186/s12874-018-0611-x

10.1126/science.abc6197

Masks and testing are necessary to combat asymptomatic spread in aerosols and droplets

Reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2

While the pandemic has dealt travel a severe blow, some hope it can be an opportunity to introduce slower, fairer, more sustainable holidays

‘Things have to change’: tourism businesses look to a greener future

How the free press worldwide is under threat

Exclusive: Australian researchers query origin of data used for Lancet study, but stress there is no evidence drug is a safe or effective treatment

Questions raised over hydroxychloroquine study which caused WHO to halt trials for Covid-19

South Korea re-imposes some coronavirus restrictions after spike in new cases

Macmillan warns of ‘ticking time bomb’ with evidence of treatment being delayed and cancelled due to Covid-19

Cancer undiagnosed 'for nearly 2,000 people in UK every week'

Citizens Advice warns of lack of safety net for many of the 2.5 million ordered to shield at home

UK's most vulnerable people at risk of losing 60% of their income

A medical study in France suggests even mild cases of coronavirus infection, not requiring hospital treatment, produce antibodies in almost all patients, with the body’s defences against the virus increasing during the weeks of recovery.

French tests show even mild coronavirus illness leads to antibodies

All participants reported an increase in concern after reading articles about Triclosan. But participants in the stress group — who had higher levels of cortisol — were less influenced by the articles, showing a smaller increase in concern than those in the control group. They were also less likely to share alarming information in their messages to other participants. The bigger the increase in cortisol, the smaller the increase in concern. But those who reported subjective feelings of stress — even if unrelated to the task at hand — were both more concerned and more likely to share alarming information.

We’re Less Likely To Spread Alarming Information While Experiencing Physiological Stress

10.17863/CAM.52489

This paper presents an economic model of an epidemic in which susceptible individuals may engage in costly social distancing in order to avoid becoming infected. Infected individuals eventually recover and acquire immunity, thereby ceasing to be a source of infection to others. Under non-cooperative and forward-looking decision making, equilibrium social distancing arises endogenously around the peak of the epidemic, when disease prevalence reaches a critical threshold determined by preferences. Spontaneous, uncoordinated social distancing thus acts to flatten the curve of the epidemic by reducing peak prevalence. In equilibrium, social distancing stops once herd immunity sets in, but acts to extend the duration of the epidemic beyond the benchmark of a non-behavioral epidemiological model. Comparative statics with respect to the model parameters indicate that the curve becomes flatter (i) the more infectious the disease is and (ii) the more severe the health consequences of the disease are for the individuals.

Equilibrium Social Distancing

10.1038/s41567-020-0929-2

Automated learning from data by means of deep neural networks is finding use in an ever-increasing number of applications, yet key theoretical questions about how it works remain unanswered. A physics-based approach may help to bridge this gap.

Understanding deep learning is also a job for physicists

10.1126/science.abb6144

We can exploit randomized controlled trials, compartmental models, and spillovers.

Which interventions work best in a pandemic?

Black, Asian and minority ethnic people in England are 54% more likely to be fined under coronavirus rules than white people, it can be revealed.

BAME people fined more than white population under coronavirus laws

Bishop and Gray conclude that, while the ethical challenges of gathering and, in particular, sharing social media data, are considerable, there is in fact much to learn from existing ethical frameworks, and there are already good resources available (see above). There is still a need for training around big data, research ethics and integrity which should be “practical, case-based and interactive”. The focus should not be on the individual researcher however and their undoubted responsibilities; institutions must be good and proper stewards of the data under their control which is, of course, emphasised by GDPR legislation which will serve to enforce greater consistency across Europe.

The Ethics of Online Research

That the future is unknown there can be little doubt but the fact that it is in our hands to invent it is something that we need to take to heart (Batty, 2018). In the spirit of the theories and tools that we profess to research in the pages of this journal, we need to consider the myriad of networks that compose the contemporary city and work out how these will change as the pandemic is managed. Many nodes and links in these networks will change.

10.1177/2399808320926912

The Coronavirus crisis: What will the post-pandemic city look like?

A deadly ‘checkerboard’: Covid-19’s new surge across rural America