Natural language generation of biomedical argumentation for lay audiences

Abstract

This article presents an architecture for natural language generation of biomedical argumentation. The goal is to reconstruct the normative arguments that a domain expert would provide, in a manner that is transparent to a lay audience. Transparency means that an argument's structure and functional components are accessible to its audience. Transparency is necessary before an audience can fully comprehend, evaluate or challenge an argument, or re-evaluate it in light of new findings about the case or changes in scientific knowledge. The architecture has been implemented and evaluated in the Genetics Information Expression Assistant, a prototype system for drafting genetic counselling patient letters. Argument generation makes use of abstract argumentation schemes. Derived from the analysis of arguments used in genetic counselling, these mainly causal argument patterns refer to abstract properties of qualitative causal domain models.

Identifying Argumentation Schemes in Genetics Research Articles

“…Finally, Green et al (2011) identified argumentation schemes in a corpus of letters written by genetic counselors. The argumentation schemes were used by a natural language generation system to generate letters to patients about their case.…”

Towards Creation of a Corpus for Argumentation Mining the Biomedical Genetics Research Literature

“…Our analysis of argumentation in genetic counseling (Green et al, 2011) and in the genetics research literature (Green and Schug, in preparation) has identified other (and more specific) argumentation schemes and critical questions than those listed in (Walton et al, 2008). Since some of the argumentation schemes we have identified are causal, lexical patterns of causality may be useful features for use in argumentation mining.…”

“…Argumentation schemes may describe nondeductively valid arguments, and their conclusions may be retracted when more information is obtained. For example, an abductive argumentation scheme, often used in genetic counseling (Green et al, 2011), is reasoning from observations to a hypothesized cause. Critical questions associated with argumentation schemes play an important role in evaluating argument acceptability (Walton et al, 2008).…”

“…Formal argumentation schemes describing arguments found in the corpus were defined (Green et al, 2011). Analyses of pragmatic features included rhetorical relations (Green, 2010a), ordering constraints and discourse markers (Green et al, 2011), point of view (Green 2005b), and use of probability expressions (Green 2010b). However, it was not a goal of that project to provide a publicly available corpus.…”

“…A corpus of genetic counseling patient letters was analyzed in several ways to design a computational model for generation of arguments from healthcare experts to patients (Green et al, 2011). An annotation scheme was developed to describe the conceptual model of genetic disease and inheritance communicated to patients (Green, 2005a).…”