Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Nov:188:109894.
doi: 10.1016/j.radonc.2023.109894. Epub 2023 Sep 1.

Potential of ChatGPT in facilitating research in radiation oncology?

Matthias Guckenberger  1 , Nicolaus Andratschke  1 , Maiwand Ahmadsei  1 , Sebastian Matthias Christ  1 , Astrid Elisabeth Heusel  1 , Sandeep Kamal  1 , Tiuri Ewout Kroese  1 , Esmée Lauren Looman  1 , Sabrina Reichl  1 , Eugenia Vlaskou Badra  1 , Jens von der Grün  1 , Jonas Willmann  1 , Stephanie Tanadini-Lang  1 , Michael Mayinger  2
Affiliations
Free article

Potential of ChatGPT in facilitating research in radiation oncology?

Matthias Guckenberger et al. Radiother Oncol. 2023 Nov.
Free article

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the potential of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT in supporting young clinical scientists with scientific tasks in radio oncological research.

Materials and methods: Seven scientific tasks were to be completed in 3 h by 8 radiation oncologists with different scientific experience working at a university hospital: creation of a scientific synopsis, creation of a research question and corresponding clinical trial hypotheses, writing of the first paragraph of a manuscript introduction, clinical trial sample size calculation, and clinical data analyses (multivariate analysis, boxplot and survival curve). No participant had prior experience with an AI chatbot. All participants were instructed in ChatGPT v3.5 and its use was provided for all tasks. Answers were scored independently by two blinded experts. The subjective value of ChatGPT was rated by each participant. Data were analyzed with regression-, t-test and Spearman correlation (p < 0.05).

Results: Participants completed tasks 1-3 with an average score of 50% and 4-7 with 56%. Scientific experience, number of original publications and of first/last authorships showed a positive correlation with overall scoring (p = 0.01-0.04). Participants with little to moderate scientific experience scored ChatGPT to be more helpful in solving tasks 4-7 compared to more experienced participants (p = 0.04), with simultaneously presenting lower scorings (p = 0.03).

Conclusions: ChatGPT did not compensate for differences in scientific experience of young clinical scientists, with less experienced researchers believing false AI-generated scientific results.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; ChatGPT; Radiation oncology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: [Dr. Andratschke reports personal fees from AstraZeneca, personal fees from Debiopharm, grants, personal fees and nonfinancial support from ViewRay, grants and personal fees from Brainlab, outside the submitted work. Dr. Tanadini-Lang reports that her husband works at Varian Medical Systems. The other authors report no conflicts of interest.].

LinkOut - more resources