Rob Calder talks to Professor Robert West about the Addiction Paper Authoring Tool (PAT). Professor West talks about how the PAT can improve the design and write-up phases of randomised controlled trials, about how the PAT saves time for reviewers and journals and about how using the PAT can make your research more discoverable. He also discusses the future of research publishing, how computer reading can save months or years on evidence synthesis and how this all relates to the Human Behaviour Change Project. There is also a small section on computers, humans and chess.
“The human element is always needed there as a reality check and sensibility check, good [artificial intelligence] systems will have those built in. But, the human is not having to do the grind. It would be like these days having bank clerks … using a calculator to work out your balance. So, it’s getting rid of all that stuff and freeing up the humans to do the clever stuff which is about the interpretation and about the strategic thinking”
The original article can be found here: West, R. PAT: an on‐line paper authoring tool for writing up randomized controlled trials. Addiction 2021; doi:10.1111/add.15508
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