Evidence triangulator: using large language models to extract and synthesize causal evidence across study designs
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Health strategies increasingly emphasize both behavioural and biomedical interventions, yet the complex and often contradictory guidance on diet, behavior, and health outcomes complicates evidence-based decision-making. Evidence triangulation across diverse study designs is essential for balancing biases and establishing causality, but scalable, automated methods for achieving this are lacking. In this study, we assess the performance of large language models in extracting both ontological and methodological information from scientific literature to automate evidence triangulation. A two-step extraction approach—focusing on exposure-outcome concepts first, followed by relation extraction—outperforms a one-step method, particularly in identifying the direction of effect (F1 = 0.86) and statistical significance (F1 = 0.96). Using salt intake and blood pressure as a case study, we calculate the Convergency of Evidence and Level of Convergency, finding a strong excitatory effect of salt on blood pressure (942 studies), and weak excitatory effect on cardiovascular diseases and deaths (124 studies). This approach complements traditional meta-analyses by integrating evidence across study designs, and enabling rapid, dynamic assessment of scientific controversies. Triangulation uses at least two research methods to investigate and analyze the same research question to enhance the robustness and reproducibility of conclusions. Here, the authors demonstrate an automated approach utilizing large language models to systematically extract and quantitatively integrate causal evidence from various study designs.
Source: Nature Communications
Authors: Xuanyu Shi, Wenjing Zhao, Ting Chen, Chao Yang, Jian Du
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $6,990
OpenAlex ID: W4413094313