ChatGPT is a new chat bot that uses AI to be able to allow you to kind of chat with it, interact with it, ask it questions. And so recently someone asked for me to do a video on how to use ChatGPT in scientific research. So that's what I'm gonna be covering today. The different ways to use it. It's a little bit of a tutorial, a little bit inspiration. And then in the end I'm gonna cover whether I. Ethical or not to use it in these ways. This is the website here, and to get access to it, all you have to do is scroll down and click Try ChatGPT. And if you don't have an open AI account, you are going to have to register and have an open AI account to be able to access it, but it is free to use right now in the research preview. You can use it. For as many times as you want. So it tells you a little bit about it here, but I'm specifically gonna walk through a few examples of how to use it. So the very first example I wanna talk about is what if you're trying to learn a new field? So for this example, I'm actually gonna go on a very different topic one that I did also during my PhD, but I'm gonna talk about obesity, reproduction, and lipid metabolism. So if I just wanted to know how does, what is obesity and how does it affect reproduction? That's what I'm gonna ask it. And so what it's gonna do is process what I said and try and give me good information back on that topic. And it was trained by data up till 2021. So you do need to realize that this isn't gonna be the most accurate data coming in like the most up to date. Like if you're trying to figure out if something's novel or not, this might not be able to tell you because it could have been done in the last year and then you would need to still go out and look for it. So that's one caveat to using. Okay, so it gave me kind of a small paragraph here. It says Obesity is a medical condition in which excess body fat is accumulated. . And then in terms of reproduction, obesity can affect both men and women and men. It leads to reduced sperm count and quality and decreased sex drive. And in women obesity can cause irregular cycles and make it more difficult to become pregnant during pregnancy. There's risk of complications as well. . So this was a study that I did with animal science when I was in grad school, and so this would be really important if I didn't even know how it could affect it to go ahead and have that background information. Another thing you can do is ask like very specific questions. So for example, if I didn't know what preeclampsia was, I could just ask it, what is preeclampsia? Okay, so it gave me a definition for what preeclampsia is. It's characterized by high blood pressure and protein in the urine, and it gives me some symptoms and all of this. So it's really helpful to really quickly get that information versus going and looking for literature reviews or Wikipedia or stuff like that to get really succinct information. So that's kind of like if you're in real early stages, learning your field, learning what different words means. So what if we go a little bit further and let's say we're trying to come up with research topics, research questions to ask, and we're really struggling with it. So can we ask chat, g p t for research questions? So what if I said, what can you suggest. Research questions around the topic of obesity and reproduction reproductive health. So it actually suggested like what, seven different research questions here. And these aren't actually, aren't bad. They are a little broad, but I think it's really interesting in like this one specifically, like how does obesity affect the outcomes of assisted reproductive techniques? I wouldn't have even thought of that one. And I don't know if there are papers out there on it or. Now one thing is that because this was trained on data up till 2021, it can't tell if these are actually novel. Can't tell if there's already research papers on it. Are they actually good research ideas to pursue or anything like that? And so if you wanna use one of these and you're wondering, should I actually pursue this? I would actually recommend Donna loading my 30 day research jumpstart guide. It gives you the steps to actually d. What research questions are actually worth pursuing. But if you're really struggling with coming up with research ideas, research questions to ask, I think this is actually a really good method to kind of start thinking about it. Cuz sometimes once you start thinking about it, like what is the relationship in obesity between obesity, infertility, and women and men? You might think, okay, what's that relationship? And then you might start thinking specific things as you learn about the field. Like, oh, I wonder what is the relationship between obesity and hormone levels, or something like that. So it can be a really good place to start to allow yourself to start getting. to your actual research question. I think honestly, any of these are way too broad for a, a single study like this could be like an overall, this is what our lab studies, but I, I think this is a good starting point. So now if we're doing this, can chat g p t, turn it into a hypothesis. So I'm gonna take this one cuz I just think this is a very interesting question to ask. So I'm just asking it, can it write a hypothesis for this research question? Because I know people. ask me a lot. This is my research question. Can you give me a hypothesis? And like, I'm not the person to be giving you hypotheses in your field, but maybe you could potentially use something like chat G P T for that. so it's giving us a hypothesis. Obesity is associated with decreased success, rate of assisted reproduction techniques such as IVF, due to its negative effects on reproductive health. So that would be the hypothesis, and then it actually goes one step further. So it tells us how we could test the hypothesis. This hypothesis could be tested by conducting a study that compares the outcomes of I V F in obese and non-obese individuals and examining factors such as pregnancy rate, live birth rates, and complications. So, If, if you are having issues, being able to take your research question to a hypothesis, to an approach, running through some of this with chat G P T either can help inform y the study that you're trying to create or it can help you get in the mindset of being able to think. Cuz a lot of us. Do better when we think through examples. So if you can create those examples using chat g P T for your specific field, then you can start thinking better and it might make you better at doing this research. So what if we had another one and we, we have a research question we just don't know how to go about actually, Collecting data and like analyzing, testing our hypothesis for it. So let's say, how would I test the hypothesis that lipid concentrations in obese mothers affect placental function? So I'm just asking it how I would test this hypothesis. Okay, so it's given me kind of an approach here. So it's basically saying I need to conduct a study to examine the relationship between these two variables and that it could be. Done through a variety of different methods. So one is recruiting a sample of actually pregnant women which that's a lot of IRB work. Varying the levels with varying levels of obesity, cuz you can't. Cause obesity in, in humans and measure the lipid concentrations at different point. And then use imaging techniques to assess placental function. So that would be a great human version of the study. And then it says, another approach would be to conduct experiments on animal models where you manipulate the lipid concentrations in obese mothers and assess the impact of placental function. This can provide valuable insights. And help identify potential targets. So we actually did this study. This is what we did. We took mice, fed them specific diets, got the, created obese mice and then allowed them to mate. And analyze their placental function. And so it's important to control for other factors such as age, diet, and other medical conditions. And this is exactly what we did in our study. We made sure the mice were the same age, we, they were given the same diet and they were controlled for if they showed any other medical conditions, they were removed from the study. So this is actually really good initial approach. It's not giving you every single step, it's not giving you every test you need to perform, but if you're struggling and just trying to get there, , this is actually a good way to start thinking about how can you get there. So now let's assume that we did the study and we have a bunch of data. How can we use chat G p T to actually help us analyze that data? So there's a few different things that you can do. First way it can help you is actually to help you write code. So if you are someone who, like you, mainly use Excel and you maybe wanna start working in R or something and you're trying to analyze something, how can it help you write code for that? Okay, so I'm asking it to write our code to create a grouped bar chart with the mean of weight on the Y axis. Sex on the X axis and then the different bars, the different groups being treatment, and then also to add in standard error of the mean as error bars. So what it's gonna do is it's gonna say, here's an example, and it's saying Library Gigi plot two. So that is the library I would use as well. It's reading in the data here as a c s. , it's creating the mean weight with the aggregate weight by sex and treatment and setting it all here. And then it's calculating the standard error here, using the same type of function as above. And then it's creating the grouped bar chart here. So the mean weight, the. This is our aesthetics, our X access, Y access fill. It's adding a GM column, that's gonna be your bars, and then it's adding an error bar of the weight minus the s e m weight, and it's also dodging it. So this is really important to actually make sure your error bars line up whenever you're doing a grouped bar. , and then it kind of tells you what's going on here. So it's telling you what it's using to create this, and it says, you may need to adjust this to reflect your data. So then you can literally just copy this code, run it, put it in R, add in, change whatever names you need to change and run it. and it would actually generate your bar chart as you want it. So that can be really helpful. If you're just learning R and you wanna do certain things to actually have chat, G P T create your code now for long term. You can actually learn R through having it create your code and then messing with it. Long term though, this isn't gonna replace people who program an R because for me to do this, I could have created this code in probably the same amount of time that this did it because. , you just get faster at it as you keep writing it. And so that can be really helpful in that way. Let's do another thing though, where we're gonna ask it to find the means and we're gonna ask it to run a statistical test. So I'm gonna say, can you calculate the means of weights of two treat. Groups and tell if they are significantly different in our. So this is the example it gave, it told me what it, what I would need to do and then it gave me the code here. I don't know why it's telling me to do GG plot two cause we're not using it in this code. So that's a little odd. It's loading the data in calculating the mean weights and then it is. Also running a t test here, which is exactly what I would do if I was trying to do that. It can actually debug your code as well. So here's an example of a code I wrote. I know what's wrong with it, and I'm telling it. I wrote it, it isn't working. Can it tell me what's. It basically told me that this one is, My filter, my treatment is not correct, so I don't need to use the equal sign. I need to use n the other way to be. This is the more efficient way to be able to do this is the code it provided. The other way is I need to have actually two equal signs. So this a single equal sign and R is an assignment. Two equal sign is a bull in. So that would be the other way to solve that code. And then down here it's telling me that there's an issue with my select because I need to. DF and then select. This is the same thing that I wrote up here. So there's not actually an issue with that, but it's pulling it in as an issue, which is interesting. So that is all for coding, basically gonna help you write code and help you debug code. The other thing it can also help you do is determine what kind of statistical test you're using. So I've created a scenario here that is just I have three treatment groups and 25 lipid concentrations for each sample in a treatment group. How should I compare these to see if it's statistically different or higher in one group than. So the answer it gave me is basically I need to do a one-way analysis of variants or an Inova, which is what we did when we had this data. And then it tells me how to do it in arm. . And the reason it's telling me R is because it knows what I've already asked it. So it knows that I'm asking for code an R. So it's gonna give me code an R when it's trying to give me an example of that code. And then it's telling me what it did down here is basically what's going on. So those are some different ways you can use it for data analysis. So now we did all of our data analysis. Now it's time to write our research paper. How can we start using it to write our research paper? So the first way I would suggest using. Is to help you, like if you are just staring at a blank page how it can help you get started. , I'm telling it. I'm writing a research article and I'm telling it what I'm writing it about. And then I ask, can you write an intro, an introduction paragraph for me? So this wrote a pretty good intro paragraph. The first sentence is all about significance, and if you're wondering how to write like an entire research article, I'll leave a link to a video below that I did on that. , but, but always you start with significance as your first sentence. Then this is more significance, how it affects, and then we're moving into the impacts of reproductive health, pregnancy. Like it flows actually very, very well. And then I would, I wouldn't put this in my first introduction. I would move that, like after I go through background, like information and all of that stuff. But overall, this is, it gives you a starting point. Would you publish this? Maybe not, but at least it starts giving you something to edit, something to think about when you're trying to create this. And as we're going through this, I'll also leave my scientific research paper checklist in the description below as well. So then the next thing you can do is ask it to enhance your. So, for example, I have this abstract that was published, and I'm gonna ask it up here. Can you rewrite this abstract to make it easier for people to understand? Now, this, it's not a scientist, right? Like I would, I could use this as a structure and then I would probably go back in and add these more specific things into this specific paragraph here. You can always hit try again if you don't like it, and it'll get, generate a new version. So this time it gave me a new rewrite of it that I could use instead. So it's a good way to generate ideas for how to do things. The final thing I'm gonna ask it to do is suggest some titles. I know titling a research article can be really, really difficult, and I'm not even gonna pretend that I'm really good at it. So I'm gonna say, can you suggest some titles for this? Abstract so we can remember the previous abstract that I gave it, and now I can ask it to suggest some titles to get me started thinking about it. So they are, it generated a few different options that I could use or at least start thinking about to get started on it. So the final question is, is any of this ethical? Like, is this the same as just hiring someone to write your thesis? And I would say no. Honestly, all of the things that I'm asking it to do, I could easily ask a lab mate the same types of questions and it would be considered completely ethical to do that. So like I could ask a lab mate, what's a good research question? Or do you think this is a good research question? Can you help me workshop something? All of these things are either enhancing what you've already done or they're giving you a starting point where you still need to do more to complete the research. So in my view, the ways that I have mentioned today, none of them are unethical to do when you're in grad school or a researcher in general. As technology gets better, it's good for us to allow it to help us become more efficient in our research, and it actually can help us develop better because it's giving us examples that other people would have to take time and effort to give us those same types of examples. Now, one thing that I, that I haven't brought up for using chat g p t for is summarizing research articles and things like that. And honestly, there's a reason, and that's because it's, it, it won't do it. It actually will not do it because it's not hooked up in the right ways. And I've tried it before and it's just like, It won't do it unless you actually give it to it. So if you want to summarize research articles, I really suggest checking out either Paper Digest that I will leave over here, or size based co-pilot. I'll leave a video here that dives into that. If this was helpful, please like it and subscribe to get more videos on how to become a more efficient researcher. I hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.
