发现医学文献间的隐性关联： migraine与magnesium研究的启示

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《美国信息科学学会杂志》(Journal of the American Society for Information Science)于1989年11月发表了一篇名为“A Second Example of Mutually Isolated Medical Literatures Related by Implicit, Unnoticed Connections”的研究论文。作者Don R. Swanson探讨了医学文献中两个看似孤立的主题——偏头痛与镁的关联。尽管这两个领域的研究在公开文献中鲜有相互引用或交叉引用，但通过深入分析，Swanson揭示了它们之间存在着隐性且未被注意到的联系。论文的核心观点是，关于偏头痛和镁的研究在很大程度上彼此隔离，仅有少数例外。偏头痛和镁之间的关联并非由直接的实验或临床研究证实，而是通过间接的方式显现出来。具体来说，当特定子集的文献组合在一起时，这些隐含的联系变得明显。这种发现支持了一个假设：镁的缺乏可能是引发偏头痛的一个因素，这一观点在另一篇医学期刊上以互补文章的形式进行了探讨。 Swanson利用了一种先前描述过的试错搜索策略来挖掘出这个逻辑关联但不相互作用的文献例子，这与之前基于雷诺病和鱼油饮食的研究发现相呼应。这个案例强调了科学领域细分可能导致的文献内部未被察觉的关系普遍存在的可能性。换句话说，即使在看似孤立的学科中，也存在着潜在的、未被充分利用的知识联系。这篇论文的重要性在于，它不仅提醒我们关注学术界的信息孤岛现象，还提倡科研者在进行研究时拓宽视野，探索不同领域间可能存在的交叉点。通过这种方法，我们可以避免重复劳动，促进知识的整合和创新，从而推动医学科学的整体进步。同时，这也对信息检索和知识管理策略提出了新的挑战，即如何更有效地识别和链接这些分散的知识单元，以便于跨学科研究和合作。

Brief Communication

A Second Example of Mutually Isolated Medical Literatures

Related by Implicit, Unnoticed Connections

Don R. Swanson

Graduate Library School, University of Chicago, 1100 E 57th, Chicago, IL 60637

The biomedical literatures on migraine and magnesium

are mutually isolated to a high degree-with a few excep-

tions, they do not cite or refer to each other and are not

cocited. They are, however, related by unnoticed connec-

tions that become apparent when certain subsets of the two

literatures are brought together. These connections suggest

that magnesium deficiency may be a cause of migraine, a

thesis examined in a companion article published in a bio-

medical journal. A previously described trial-and-error

search strategy was used in discovering this second example

of logically related noninteracting literatures, a discovery

that lends significance to an earlier published example

based on Raynaud’s disease and dietary fish oil. The frag-

mentation of science into specialties suggests that unin-

tended and undiscovered relationships within the literature

cannot be uncommon. The goal of this. research is to develop

methods and strategies for finding such relationships.

In earlier articles, I developed the argument that, in

principle, new knowledge might be won by assembling

pieces already published but never before brought together

(Swanson, 1986a, 1986b, 1987, 1989). A prototype of one

possible structure underlying such a process was sug-

gested, a syllogism in which the two premises, “A causes

B” and “B causes C,” are separately known by two differ-

ent groups of researchers in different specialties, neither of

which knows about or cites the work of the other. If no

one person knows about the work of both groups, then the

implicit connection between A and C might be completely

unknown, but discoverable through reading the publica-

tions of both groups.

How to discover such pairs of logically related but mu-

tually isolated or noninteractive literatures is the central

problem addressed in this series of studies. An example

based on the literatures of Raynaud’s disease and dietary

Received October 9, 1987; revised December 9, 1987; accepted March

24, 1989

0 1989 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

fish oil was previously given, and a search strategy was

described (Swanson, 1986b, 1987, 1989). A second ex-

ample, based on migraine and magnesium and reported

here, lends weight to the first example, to the search pro-

cess used, to the common logical structure of the two

cases, and to the surmise that there must exist many such

pairs of specialized literatures related by implicit, unno-

ticed connections.

This study leads to a medical hypothesis, the plausibil-

ity of which I examine in a companion article that reviews

in depth the relevant medical literatures (Swanson, 1988).

Because that article is published in a biomedical journal,

the arguments put forward are available for critical analy-

sis by physicians and physiologists, and have profited from

suggestions by medical editors and referees. I now take up

problems appropriate for an audience of information scien-

tists -problems concerning the form and structure of the

argument, the corresponding citation pattern within the lit-

erature, and the search process used in identifying and

finding that literature.

To understand these problems it is helpful first to exam-

ine the main biomedical conclusions reached in the com-

panion article. Those conclusions, summarized as follows,

are based on an analysis of 65 journal articles on migraine

and 63 articles on magnesium (Swanson, 1988). For our

purposes here I assume that the biomedical aspects of the

analysis are not problematic. The conclusions about mi-

graine are numbered la through 1 la, and those on magne-

sium, lb through llb. A close relationship between each

a/b pair is apparent, a relationship in most cases similar to

the ABC syllogism mentioned earlier. Each pair is consis-

tent with, and suggests, the hypothesis that magnesium de-

ficiency may be a causal factor in migraine headache. The

following references are selected from the 128 articles ana-

lyzed in Swanson (1988) and will be further discussed.

1. (a) Spreading depression of cortical electrical ac-

tivity is thought to be implicated in the early

phase of a migraine attack (Gardner-Medwin &

Skelton, 1982).

JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE. 40(6):432-435, 1989

CCC 0002-8231/89/060432-04$04.00

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