Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhao, Xingmeng, Niazi, Ali, Rios, Anthony
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.12799
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866910364928573440
author Zhao, Xingmeng
Niazi, Ali
Rios, Anthony
author_facet Zhao, Xingmeng
Niazi, Ali
Rios, Anthony
contents Chemical named entity recognition (NER) models are used in many downstream tasks, from adverse drug reaction identification to pharmacoepidemiology. However, it is unknown whether these models work the same for everyone. Performance disparities can potentially cause harm rather than the intended good. This paper assesses gender-related performance disparities in chemical NER systems. We develop a framework for measuring gender bias in chemical NER models using synthetic data and a newly annotated corpus of over 92,405 words with self-identified gender information from Reddit. Our evaluation of multiple biomedical NER models reveals evident biases. For instance, synthetic data suggests female-related names are frequently misclassified as chemicals, especially for brand name mentions. Additionally, we observe performance disparities between female- and male-associated data in both datasets. Many systems fail to detect contraceptives such as birth control. Our findings emphasize the biases in chemical NER models, urging practitioners to account for these biases in downstream applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2212_12799
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Comprehensive Study of Gender Bias in Chemical Named Entity Recognition Models
Zhao, Xingmeng
Niazi, Ali
Rios, Anthony
Computation and Language
Chemical named entity recognition (NER) models are used in many downstream tasks, from adverse drug reaction identification to pharmacoepidemiology. However, it is unknown whether these models work the same for everyone. Performance disparities can potentially cause harm rather than the intended good. This paper assesses gender-related performance disparities in chemical NER systems. We develop a framework for measuring gender bias in chemical NER models using synthetic data and a newly annotated corpus of over 92,405 words with self-identified gender information from Reddit. Our evaluation of multiple biomedical NER models reveals evident biases. For instance, synthetic data suggests female-related names are frequently misclassified as chemicals, especially for brand name mentions. Additionally, we observe performance disparities between female- and male-associated data in both datasets. Many systems fail to detect contraceptives such as birth control. Our findings emphasize the biases in chemical NER models, urging practitioners to account for these biases in downstream applications.
title A Comprehensive Study of Gender Bias in Chemical Named Entity Recognition Models
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.12799