Which Evidence Settles Which Claim: The AlphaCitation Proposition Taxonomy and Evidence-Authority Standard

An answer about a medicine bundles separate claims: that it is approved, for whom, available, paid for, effective, safe, better than a competitor, recommended. Each claim except the recommendation can be settled only by the classes of evidence this standard names for it, in force on the claim's date; a claim about when an event took place is settled by the record of that event (Rule 7). For approval, indication, availability, reimbursement, health technology assessment, the regulator's safety statements and claims that AI answers changed, that means evidence that speaks for the market the claim is about: the market the answer states, else the one the question states, else the one the deploying system declares, and never one inferred from the user. For availability, a licensed pharmacy's listing dated the claim's date settles only that the pharmacy listed the product for sale that day, which settles a claim that the medicine is not available anywhere in the market and only supports a claim that it is available across it; two of its listings that both show it for sale, one dated before and one after the claim's date, each within three days of it, support at most. For trial, efficacy, safety-finding, safety-signal and comparative claims, it means international evidence; a safety signal never establishes that the medicine causes the effect. For a guideline or formulary claim, it means the named guideline or formulary, within its own scope. A recommendation is never settled: it is judged through the claims it rests on.

A conclusion may rest only on a source that settles; without one, the claim is unknown, never false.

An invitation to review. A specification becomes a standard only when people who did not write it test it. Label the 100 sentences of the human-labelling packet in the classification benchmark (doi:10.5281/zenodo.23602110), run your own classifier on the benchmark and publish the result, or send a case the standard classifies or judges wrongly to analyst@alphacitation.com. Reviewers are acknowledged by name, by role or not at all, as they choose, and are asked to declare any employment by, or interest in, a pharmaceutical manufacturer.