Don't get me wrong, Davide, I really want this stuff to work. What we really need is evidential stuff, not leave things to intuitions.
On 2 February 2010 04:15, Danny Ayers <danny.ay...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 2 February 2010 03:29, Davide Zaccagnini <dav...@landcglobal.com> wrote: >> I was rather trying to lighten a little concerns over possible 'semantic >> drift' as new ontologies are applied over or in addition to those specified >> by the first author of the graph. No doubt the first formalization must be >> free from ambiguity and 'ignorance', but in the real clinical IT word >> chances are that subsequent transpositions of that graph (through queries or >> mappings) will not change semantics significantly > > For sure. But if we are wrong with our analyses in the first place, we > should expect lousy results. At a human scale that's rather bad news. > > >> Davide >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Danny Ayers [mailto:danny.ay...@gmail.com] >> Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 9:11 PM >> To: Davide Zaccagnini >> Cc: Peter Ansell; Andrea Splendiani; John Madden; w3c semweb HCLS; Eric >> Prud'hommeaux >> Subject: Re: When does a document acquire (web) semantics? >> >> I'm sorry Davide, but your description seems to put this stuff at an >> unambiguous level, but we all know that's not true. The practitioners >> may use a good fact base (in the uk it's a booklet called mims) but >> when the scalpel hits, it's a judgement call. Wrapping such human >> things into software isn't going to get us anywhere without careful >> thought. I suppose what I'm saying is we have to allow for ignorance >> in these systems, which is virtually impossible to express, even in >> OWL. >> >> On 2 February 2010 02:54, Davide Zaccagnini <dav...@landcglobal.com> wrote: >>> In a clinical IT system actionable data (diagnoses, allergies, medications >>> etc) are typically quite unambiguous at the application level. Similarly, >>> information in documents is almost always clear to a physician who reads >>> it. This is to say that for most clinical documents the ontology that can >>> be imposed to formalize meaning (SNOMED for instance) is typically stable >>> and well agreed upon. And so are the possible mappings from one ontology to >>> another, among those commonly used in healthcare. The story gets way more >>> complicated for data to be used in research, but the good news is that most >>> medical terminologies can be applied to a document with good chances that >>> the resulting graph will be understood, accepted and used by applications >>> and users. At least for the most commonly used clinical data. >>> inb >>> Davide >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: public-semweb-lifesci-requ...@w3.org >>> [mailto:public-semweb-lifesci-requ...@w3.org] On Behalf Of Peter Ansell >>> Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 6:41 PM >>> To: Andrea Splendiani >>> Cc: John Madden; w3c semweb HCLS; Eric Prud'hommeaux >>> Subject: Re: When does a document acquire (web) semantics? >>> >>> I agree completely! >>> >>> Cheers, >>> >>> Peter >>> >>> On 2 February 2010 09:26, Andrea Splendiani >>> <andrea.splendi...@bbsrc.ac.uk> wrote: >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> I think there are two aspects related to semantics. >>>> One is interpretation (like: the world is flat by Mark). And this is in >>>> the ontology or, if you want, even in queries. >>>> But there is also the fact that you "name" things when you expose a >>>> resource. The resource itself, or some info in more detail. >>>> This naming is based on some common grounding without which you cannot >>>> apply ontologies or queries. >>>> >>>> my 0.1 cents >>>> >>>> ciao, >>>> Andrea >>>> >>>> On 1 Feb 2010, at 18:30, John Madden wrote: >>>> >>>>> We had an interesting call in TERM today. One of the topics I would like >>>>> to boil down to the question "When does a document acquire its >>>>> semantics?" or, "when does a document come to mean something?" >>>>> >>>>> I argued the (admittedly intentionally) radical view that documents have >>>>> no semantics whatsoever until a reader performs an act of interpretation >>>>> upon the document, which in the Semantic Web world would be the same as >>>>> attributing an RDF/OWL graph to the document. >>>>> >>>>> Even if the author of the document attributes a a particular RDF/OWL >>>>> graph to her won document, I argued that this graph is not privileged in >>>>> any way. That others could justifiably argue that the author's own >>>>> RDF/OWL graph is incomplete, or flawed, or irrelevant, or even incorrect. >>>>> And the same is true of any subsequent interpreters (i.e. authors of >>>>> RDF/OWL graphs that purport to represent the "meaning" of the same >>>>> document). >>>>> >>>>> Eric argued a really interesting point. He argued (and Eric, correct me >>>>> if I'm interpreting you wrong here), that semantics instead come into >>>>> existence (or perhaps *can* come into existence) at the point when >>>>> somebody executes a SPARQL query on a set of RDF/OWL graphs. That is to >>>>> say, maybe I'm wrong and semantics doesn't even come into existence when >>>>> somebody attributes an RDF/XML graph to a document; but rather it only >>>>> comes into existence when somebody queries across (possibly) many graphs >>>>> of many different people. >>>>> >>>>> What do you think? >>>>> >>>>> John >>>> >>>> --- >>>> Andrea Splendiani >>>> Senior Bioinformatics Scientist >>>> Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, UK >>>> andrea.splendi...@bbsrc.ac.uk >>>> +44(0)1582 763133 ext 2004 >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> http://danny.ayers.name >> > > > > -- > http://danny.ayers.name > -- http://danny.ayers.name
