Glossary
Partial-word, boolean (AND, OR, NOT) and "exact phrase" searches are supported.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Selection Bias | Distortion caused when the people or data studied are not representative of the population the conclusions are applied to. Science General |
| Selective Reporting | Selective reporting happens when researchers or authors choose which study results, outcomes, or whole studies to share based on how positive, significant, or favorable the findings are. Public Trust |
| Self Checking | Some AI systems generate several answers and flag disagreements, or have a second pass verify claims against sources before the answer is shown. Artificial Intelligence |
| Self-Sealing Belief | A belief structured so that no evidence can count against it: contrary evidence is reinterpreted as part of the deception, and the absence of evidence is taken as proof of a cover-up. Antiscience |
| Self-sealing reasoning | Reasoning in which any evidence against a belief is reinterpreted as evidence for it, such as treating a debunking as proof of a cover-up. Science Literacy |
| Self-supervised learning | Training in which a model creates its own learning signal from unlabeled data, for example by predicting missing or next words in text. It is how large language models are pre-trained. Artificial Intelligence |
| Sensitivity | The ability of a test to correctly identify those who have a condition (the true positive rate). Science General |
| Seroconversion | The development of detectable antibodies in the blood after vaccination or infection. Vaccines |
| Serology | Measurement of antibodies and other immunological properties present in blood serum. Vaccines |
| Serotype | A distinct variety of a bacterium or virus defined by its surface antigens. Some vaccines, such as pneumococcal vaccines, protect against multiple serotypes. Vaccines |