Fwd: Evidence for backing statements

Sorry to be resending.

For some reason, this didn't get to the list the first time around.

Cheers,
Bill

Begin forwarded message:

> From: William Bug <William.Bug@DrexelMed.edu>
> Date: May 19, 2007 7:11:32 AM EDT
> To: Eric Neumann <eneumann@teranode.com>
> Cc: "Chris Mungall" <cjm@fruitfly.org>, "Dan Brickley"  
> <danbri@danbri.org>, "Matt Williams"  
> <matthew.williams@cancer.org.uk>, "public-semweb-lifesci hcls"  
> <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: Evidence for backing statements
>
> On May 18, 2007, at 7:40 PM, Eric Neumann wrote:
>
>> am I correct to assume that within HCLS, all RDF statements we are  
>> considering are not facts, but assertions, that may in the future  
>> be proven false, but never proven true?
>
> I am very excited to hear this will be a W3C focused activity.   
> Statistical techniques of all sorts - Bayesian especially - are  
> critical data reduction and analysis tools driving interpretation  
> in all areas of biomedical science and clearly there needs to be  
> some way for representational techniques to interoperate with the  
> derived probabilistic analyses.  My tendency is toward the sort of  
> link Chris Mungall mentioned earlier, whereby the statistics is  
> linked indirectly, as opposed to being intrinsic to the represented  
> assertions.
>
> I agree with your proposal, except for the closing statement.
>
> It's not clear to me under what circumstances the following  
> assertions given as an OWL "defining" relations would be useful to  
> consider as something other than fact:
> 	"All viable eukaryotic cells have functional mitochondria located  
> inside them"
> 	"Presynaptic vesicle fusion in neurons leads to release of small  
> molecule and neuropeptide neurotransmitters into the extracellular  
> space."
>
> Establishing facts such as this obviously have more than a  
> pedagogical purpose.  They are an important part of the network of  
> assertions used to drive inference, and - as facts - they need to  
> be accorded a different role in the inferencing process than  
> assertions that cannot be established as "universals".
>
> I'm probably being overly naive in stating this view.  If that is  
> so, I welcome others with greater in depth knowledge of the logical  
> formalisms and implemented tools to explain why one would not want  
> to make this distinction between the superset of RDF assertions and  
> that subset expressing established fact.  This is a subset whose  
> absolute size continues to grow - though its relative size compared  
> to all assertions is clearly decreasing at a much faster rate given  
> all the high-throughput experimental techniques introduced in the  
> last 30 years.
>
> Having said this, I do agree it would be very much mutually  
> beneficial for members of the HCLS IG to provide use cases for this  
> uncertainty reasoning group to examine.
>
> Cheers,
> Bill
>
>
> Bill Bug
> Senior Research Analyst/Ontological Engineer
>
> Laboratory for Bioimaging  & Anatomical Informatics
> www.neuroterrain.org
> Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy
> Drexel University College of Medicine
> 2900 Queen Lane
> Philadelphia, PA    19129
> 215 991 8430 (ph)
> 610 457 0443 (mobile)
> 215 843 9367 (fax)
>
>
> Please Note: I now have a new email - William.Bug@DrexelMed.edu
>
>
>
>



Bill Bug
Senior Research Analyst/Ontological Engineer

Laboratory for Bioimaging  & Anatomical Informatics
www.neuroterrain.org
Department of Neurobiology & Anatomy
Drexel University College of Medicine
2900 Queen Lane
Philadelphia, PA    19129
215 991 8430 (ph)
610 457 0443 (mobile)
215 843 9367 (fax)


Please Note: I now have a new email - William.Bug@DrexelMed.edu