Talk (Work in Progress): Luis Lopez (MCMP)

Title:

Formalizing and Implementing Scope Validity: A Category-Theoretic Approach

Abstract:

There is a persistent problem in translational medicine: promising experimental results in animal models often fail to translate to clinical applications in humans. This ‘valley of death' is not merely a practical hurdle but a deep epistemological problem concerning the validity of our models. Researchers have long attempted to address this problem through different validity concepts—such as construct, face, and predictive validity. But, as Lara Keuck (2024) argues, these concepts are insufficient for assessing the "translatability" of research results because they poorly reflect the diverse manifestations and operationalizations of disease across different contexts. Keuck addresses this limitation by proposing scope validity—the degree of matching between how targets are operationalized in experimental settings and intended application contexts. This move represents a shift to a relational epistemology, which complements existing validity concepts by clarifying the background under which external validity is assessed. While Keuck’s relational framework provides a robust conceptual foundation, its central notion of ‘matching’ requires a formal, rigorous, and transparent implementation to be effective in scientific practice. This project tries to meet this need by developing a methodology rooted in category theory, which is inherently relational. We propose a knowledge representation framework aimed at capturing and specifying the ‘worldviews’ underlying target operationalizations and their comparisons. The expected result is a methodology—amenable to computational analysis—that translates Keuck's philosophical insights into rigorous tools and procedures for addressing translational medicine's core challenge. (No background in category theory is assumed).