Crowdsourced Identification of Possible Allergy-Associated Factors: Automated Hypothesis Generation and Validation Using Crowdsourcing Services.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Hypothesis generation is an essential task for clinical research, and it can require years of research experience to formulate a meaningful hypothesis. Recent studies have endeavored to apply crowdsourcing to generate novel hypotheses for research. In this study, we apply crowdsourcing to explore previously unknown allergy-associated factors. OBJECTIVE:In this study, we aimed to collect and test hypotheses of unknown allergy-associated factors using a crowdsourcing service. METHODS:Using a series of questionnaires, we asked crowdsourcing participants to provide hypotheses on associated factors for seven different allergies, and validated the candidate hypotheses with odds ratios calculated for each associated factor. We repeated this abductive validation process to identify a se

SUBMITTER: Aramaki E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5449648 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature