Rubrics: A Method for Surfacing Values and Improving the Credibility of Evaluation

Background: The challenges of valuing in evaluation have been the subject of much debate; on what basis do we make judgments about performance, quality, and effectiveness? And according to whom? (Julnes, 2012b). There are many ways identified in the literature for carrying out assisted valuation (Julnes, 2012c). One way of assisting the valuation process is the use of evaluative rubrics. This practice-based article unpacks the learnings of a group of evaluators who have used evaluative rubrics to grapple with this challenge. Compared to their previous practice, evaluative rubrics have allowed them to surface and deal with values in a more transparent way. In their experience when evaluators and evaluation stakeholders get clearer about values, evaluative judgments become more credible and warrantable. Purpose: Share practical lessons learned from working with rubrics. Setting: Aotearoa (New Zealand). Intervention: Not applicable. Research Design: Not applicable. Data Collection and Analysis: Not applicable. Findings: They have found that while evaluative rubrics look beguilingly simple they are hard to do well. However, when done well, evaluative rubrics can substantially increase the use and credibility of evaluation.Keywords: Rubrics; values; valuation; stakeholder; validity; credibility; utilit

Reading Race: AI Recognises Patient's Racial Identity In Medical Images

Background: In medical imaging, prior studies have demonstrated disparate AI performance by race, yet there is no known correlation for race on medical imaging that would be obvious to the human expert interpreting the images. Methods: Using private and public datasets we evaluate: A) performance quantification of deep learning models to detect race from medical images, including the ability of these models to generalize to external environments and across multiple imaging modalities, B) assessment of possible confounding anatomic and phenotype population features, such as disease distribution and body habitus as predictors of race, and C) investigation into the underlying mechanism by which AI models can recognize race. Findings: Standard deep learning models can be trained to predict race from medical images with high performance across multiple imaging modalities. Our findings hold under external validation conditions, as well as when models are optimized to perform clinically motivated tasks. We demonstrate this detection is not due to trivial proxies or imaging-related surrogate covariates for race, such as underlying disease distribution. Finally, we show that performance persists over all anatomical regions and frequency spectrum of the images suggesting that mitigation efforts will be challenging and demand further study. Interpretation: We emphasize that model ability to predict self-reported race is itself not the issue of importance. However, our findings that AI can trivially predict self-reported race -- even from corrupted, cropped, and noised medical images -- in a setting where clinical experts cannot, creates an enormous risk for all model deployments in medical imaging: if an AI model secretly used its knowledge of self-reported race to misclassify all Black patients, radiologists would not be able to tell using the same data the model has access to

AI recognition of patient race in medical imaging: a modelling study

Background Previous studies in medical imaging have shown disparate abilities of artificial intelligence (AI) to detect a person's race, yet there is no known correlation for race on medical imaging that would be obvious to human experts when interpreting the images. We aimed to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the ability of AI to recognise a patient's racial identity from medical images. Methods Using private (Emory CXR, Emory Chest CT, Emory Cervical Spine, and Emory Mammogram) and public (MIMIC-CXR, CheXpert, National Lung Cancer Screening Trial, RSNA Pulmonary Embolism CT, and Digital Hand Atlas) datasets, we evaluated, first, performance quantification of deep learning models in detecting race from medical images, including the ability of these models to generalise to external environments and across multiple imaging modalities. Second, we assessed possible confounding of anatomic and phenotypic population features by assessing the ability of these hypothesised confounders to detect race in isolation using regression models, and by re-evaluating the deep learning models by testing them on datasets stratified by these hypothesised confounding variables. Last, by exploring the effect of image corruptions on model performance, we investigated the underlying mechanism by which AI models can recognise race. Findings In our study, we show that standard AI deep learning models can be trained to predict race from medical images with high performance across multiple imaging modalities, which was sustained under external validation conditions (x-ray imaging [area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) range 0·91-0·99], CT chest imaging [0·87-0·96], and mammography [0·81]). We also showed that this detection is not due to proxies or imaging-related surrogate covariates for race (eg, performance of possible confounders: body-mass index [AUC 0·55], disease distribution [0·61], and breast density [0·61]). Finally, we provide evidence to show that the ability of AI deep learning models persisted over all anatomical regions and frequency spectrums of the images, suggesting the efforts to control this behaviour when it is undesirable will be challenging and demand further study. Interpretation The results from our study emphasise that the ability of AI deep learning models to predict self-reported race is itself not the issue of importance. However, our finding that AI can accurately predict self-reported race, even from corrupted, cropped, and noised medical images, often when clinical experts cannot, creates an enormous risk for all model deployments in medical imaging. Funding National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, MIDRC grant of National Institutes of Health, US National Science Foundation, National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health, and Taiwan Ministry of Science and Technology

Rubrics: A Method for Surfacing Values and Improving the Credibility of Evaluation

Background: The challenges of valuing in evaluation have been the subject of much debate; on what basis do we make judgments about performance, quality, and effectiveness? And according to whom? (Julnes, 2012b). There are many ways identified in the literature for carrying out assisted valuation (Julnes, 2012c). One way of assisting the valuation process is the use of evaluative rubrics. This practice-based article unpacks the learnings of a group of evaluators who have used evaluative rubrics to grapple with this challenge. Compared to their previous practice, evaluative rubrics have allowed them to surface and deal with values in a more transparent way. In their experience when evaluators and evaluation stakeholders get clearer about values, evaluative judgments become more credible and warrantable. Purpose: Share practical lessons learned from working with rubrics. Setting: Aotearoa (New Zealand). Intervention: Not applicable. Research Design: Not applicable. Data Collection and Analysis: Not applicable. Findings: They have found that while evaluative rubrics look beguilingly simple they are hard to do well. However, when done well, evaluative rubrics can substantially increase the use and credibility of evaluation.Keywords: Rubrics; values; valuation; stakeholder; validity; credibility; utilit