[Phenoscape] Re: [go] evidence code ontology

[Sue Rhee]

Yes, a great point. I think the ECO is more for the latter than the 
former. Also I now realize that the Source of Evidence is less 
appropriate because that has a certain connotation of referring to the 
act of creating evidence, which ECO is not about. I also learned from 
Barry that the definition of assay in OBI includes the data, which 
should certainly not be a part of ECO. Actually I don't think data 
should be a part of OBI ontology either, but more like annotations.

Sue

Hilmar Lapp wrote:
>
> On Feb 5, 2008, at 7:44 PM, Sue Rhee wrote:
>
>> Actually I don't agree with the ECO representing evidence types, 
>> contrary to the name of the ontology and the term names. Perhaps the 
>> 'inferred from' should probably be omitted from term names and the 
>> ontology renamed as Evidence Source Ontology.
>
> But aren't the act of creating evidence, and the act of using evidence 
> to make an inference two different things?
>
> In my understanding of it, ECO would be aiming to conceptualize the 
> possible acts of making an inference. It seems to me that you could 
> use the same evidence to make different kinds of inferences (though I 
> admit that describing those would require further thought). At present 
> it also seems that the trust in an evidence is synonymous with the ECO 
> term - though in reality the same evidence could be weakly or strongly 
> supporting different assertions.
>
> Just some thoughts.
>
>     -hilmar

-- 
Sue Rhee
Staff Scientist
Carnegie Institution, Department of Plant Biology
260 Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305
Email: (650) 325-1521 x251
Fax: (650) 325-6857