Machine Learning in Medicine -- Journal Club

The use of machine learning techniques in biomedical research has exploded over the past few years, as exemplified by the dramatic increase in the number of journal articles indexed on PubMed by the term "machine learning", from 3,200 in 2015 to over 18,000 in 2020. While substantial scientific advancements have been made possible thanks to machine learning, the inner working of most machine learning algorithms remains foreign to many clinicians, most of whom are quite familiar with traditional statistical methods but have little formal training on advanced computer algorithms. Unfortunately, journal reviewers and editors are sometimes content with accepting machine learning as a black box operation and fail to analyze the results produced by machine learning models with the same level of scrutiny that is applied to other clinical and basic science research. The goal of this journal club is to help readers develop the knowledge and skills necessary to digest and critique biomedical journal articles involving the use of machine learning techniques. It is hard for a reviewer to know what questions to ask if he/she does not understand how these algorithms work.