Apparent inconsistency in ontology: electron microscopy doesn't use photons or neutrons.

[paulmillar]

PaNET contains the term electron microscopy, which uses a Wikipedia article on electron microscopes as a definition. This is (more or less) fine.

However, following the super-class hierarchy leads to the top-most term: photon and neutron technique.

In other words, all instances of "electron microscopy" are also instances of "photon and neutron technique".

The problem here is that (to the best of my knowledge) electron microscopy is an imaging technique that makes use of electrons. The images it provides are obtained without using either photons or neutrons.

Therefore, the above super-class seems inappropriate.

If this really is a problem then there seems to be (at least) three ways to fix this:

1. the top-most term ("photon and neutron technique") could be broadened to include other scientific techniques (e.g., "scientific technique"),
2. an additional top-most term is introduced, leaving "photon and neutron technique" as-is,
3. the top-most term is removed, leaving the four "defined by ..." classes as top-most within the ontology.

I have no strong opinion, but I suspect 1. or 3. would be the easiest to implement.

[paulmillar]

Just a quick update. It has been pointed out that we cannot simply rename a concept, as this would break backwards compatibility.

So, I guess the best solution would involve:

• introducing a new term (e.g., "scientific technique")
• updating the four "defined by .." classes so they have this new term as a super class
• somehow retiring the current top-level term ("photon and neutron technique") from the ontology, perhaps marking it as deprecated or removing it.