Detect a Statement That No Participants Took Part — .detect_no

Search a paper or paperlist for sentences stating that no human or animal subjects took part in the study: "no human subjects were involved", "did not involve human participants", "no animals nor human participants were involved", or that people took part "not as subjects" (PsyArXiv dq96z_v2: "The professionals described their own work as collaborators in the projects, not as subjects recruited for a study."). Such a statement overrides .detect_live_data() in the ethics_check module.

Usage

.detect_no_participants(paper)

Arguments

paper: a paper object or paperlist object

Value

a data frame of matching sentences (same structure as text_search())

Details

A negation near a participant phrase is not enough: "No participants were excluded", "only children without G6PD deficiency were enrolled" and "No participants were minors" report studies with participants. In 17 local collections (13,706 papers), a negation in the three words before a participant phrase would have changed the verdict of 18 papers, 6 of them wrongly; these patterns, which require "human" or "animal" (or "not as subjects"), matched 15 statements, all of papers without participants, and in the 85 PsyArXiv reports only dq96z_v2's.