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Main Authors: Patel, Ravi, Brayne, Angus, Hintzen, Rogier, Jaroslawicz, Daniel, Neculae, Georgiana, Corneil, Dane
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04068
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author Patel, Ravi
Brayne, Angus
Hintzen, Rogier
Jaroslawicz, Daniel
Neculae, Georgiana
Corneil, Dane
author_facet Patel, Ravi
Brayne, Angus
Hintzen, Rogier
Jaroslawicz, Daniel
Neculae, Georgiana
Corneil, Dane
contents Language models hold incredible promise for enabling scientific discovery by synthesizing massive research corpora. Many complex scientific research questions have multiple plausible answers, each supported by evidence of varying strength. However, existing language models lack the capability to quantitatively and faithfully compare answer plausibility in terms of supporting evidence. To address this, we introduce Retrieve to Explain (R2E), a retrieval-based model that scores and ranks all possible answers to a research question based on evidence retrieved from a document corpus. The architecture represents each answer only in terms of its supporting evidence, with the answer itself masked. This allows us to extend feature attribution methods such as Shapley values, to transparently attribute answer scores to supporting evidence at inference time. The architecture also allows incorporation of new evidence without retraining, including non-textual data modalities templated into natural language. We developed R2E for the challenging scientific discovery task of drug target identification, a human-in-the-loop process where failures are extremely costly and explainability paramount. When predicting whether drug targets will subsequently be confirmed as efficacious in clinical trials, R2E not only matches non-explainable literature-based models but also surpasses a genetics-based target identification approach used throughout the pharmaceutical industry.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_04068
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Retrieve to Explain: Evidence-driven Predictions for Explainable Drug Target Identification
Patel, Ravi
Brayne, Angus
Hintzen, Rogier
Jaroslawicz, Daniel
Neculae, Georgiana
Corneil, Dane
Machine Learning
Computation and Language
Language models hold incredible promise for enabling scientific discovery by synthesizing massive research corpora. Many complex scientific research questions have multiple plausible answers, each supported by evidence of varying strength. However, existing language models lack the capability to quantitatively and faithfully compare answer plausibility in terms of supporting evidence. To address this, we introduce Retrieve to Explain (R2E), a retrieval-based model that scores and ranks all possible answers to a research question based on evidence retrieved from a document corpus. The architecture represents each answer only in terms of its supporting evidence, with the answer itself masked. This allows us to extend feature attribution methods such as Shapley values, to transparently attribute answer scores to supporting evidence at inference time. The architecture also allows incorporation of new evidence without retraining, including non-textual data modalities templated into natural language. We developed R2E for the challenging scientific discovery task of drug target identification, a human-in-the-loop process where failures are extremely costly and explainability paramount. When predicting whether drug targets will subsequently be confirmed as efficacious in clinical trials, R2E not only matches non-explainable literature-based models but also surpasses a genetics-based target identification approach used throughout the pharmaceutical industry.
title Retrieve to Explain: Evidence-driven Predictions for Explainable Drug Target Identification
topic Machine Learning
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.04068