Inferential Interpretation Research Articles

Inferential Interpretations of Many-Valued Logics

Inferential Interpretations of Many-Valued Logics

사적자치와 공법적 제어의 조화

In principle, everyone is guaranteed freedom of contract. In principle, the contents of a real estate sales contract can also be freely determined by agreement between the seller and the buyer without state control. However, even if the contract is based on the civil law to which private autonomy is applied, there are some cases which could be also a subject to public law. For example, in accordance with ACT on report on real estate transaction (ARRET), the sales price of a real estate sales contract must be reported to the authority within 30 days from the date of conclusion of the sales contract. This is a kind of reporting obligation. Recently, it is common to conclude a provisional contract before concluding a real estate sales contract in Korea. Regarding this situation, namely provisional contract, there is a controversial case, in which a licensed real estate agent was fined for violating the reporting obligation. This is understood to be due to differences in perception of how to understand provisional contracts. In the controversial case, the authority judged the starting point of transaction in a report as the date of deposit of the provisional contract, not the date of conclusion of the main contract. The ARRET does not define the date of conclusion of a sales contract or provides a guideline for interpretation. The date of conclusion of the contract means the date on which the contract is actually concluded, not the date of written contract or the date on which the contract is drafted. Based on this date, the report must be made within the period. Regarding the date, there are several problems in the disposition of fine by the authority. First, fine for negligence are imposed for delay of reporting obligation, and the amount of fine actually imposed is due to false reports. Second, various contracts called provisional contracts cannot be identified as the same contract as the main contract. Third, there are cases in which reporting is impossible at the time an agreement on the sales contract is established. Imposing a fine for negligence is a kind of an intrusive administrative disposition that imposes certain obligations. Therefore, the legal basis for disposition must be clear, and extended or inferential interpretations are not permitted. Furthermore, the authority should judge more carefully whether the fundamental rights of the constitution are not violated or whether the legal basis for the disposition is clear when taking an intrusive administrative disposition against a private person.

A novel Bayesian adaptive design incorporating both primary and secondary endpoints for randomized IIB chemoprevention study of women at increased risk for breast cancer

BackgroundOur randomized controlled clinical trial will explore the potential of bazedoxifene plus conjugated estrogen to modulate breast tissue-based risk biomarkers as a surrogate for breast cancer risk reduction. This paper investigates the statistical design features of the trial and the rationale for the final choice of its design. Group sequential designs are a popular design approach to allow a trial to stop early for success or futility, potentially saving time and money over a fixed trial design. While Bayesian adaptive designs enjoy the same properties as group sequential designs, they have the added benefit of using prior information as well as inferential interpretation conditional on the data. Whether a frequentist or Bayesian trial, most adaptive designs have interim analyses that allow for early stopping, typically utilizing only the primary endpoint. A drawback to this approach is that the study may not have enough data for adequate comparisons of a single, key secondary endpoint. This can happen, for example, if the secondary endpoint has a smaller effect than the primary endpoint.MethodsIn this paper, we investigate a trial design called two-endpoint adaptive, which stops early only if a criterion is met for primary and secondary endpoints. The approach focuses the final analysis on the primary endpoint but ensures adequate data for the secondary analysis. Our study has two arms with a primary (change in mammographic fibroglandular volume) and secondary endpoint (change in mammary tissue Ki-67).ResultsWe present operating characteristics including power, trial duration, and type I error rate and discuss the value and risks of modeling Bayesian group sequential designs with primary and secondary endpoints, comparing against alternative designs. The results indicate that the two-endpoint adaptive design has better operating characteristics than competing designs if one is concerned about having adequate information for a key secondary endpoint.DiscussionOur approach balances trial speed and the need for information on the single, key secondary endpoint.

Particular flows and attracting sets

In this commentary, I expand on the analysis of the recent article "How particular is the physics of the Free Energy Principle?" by Aguilera et al. by studying the flow fields of linear diffusions, and particularly the rotation of their attracting sets in the presence of different types of solenoidal coupling. This analysis sheds new light on previous claims made in the FEP literature (and contested in the target article) that the internal dynamics of stochastic systems can be cast performing a gradient flow on variational free energy, and thus endowed with an inferential interpretation, i.e., as if internal states are performing inference about states external to the system. I express general agreement with the target article's statement that the marginal flow of internal states does not point along variational free energy gradients evaluated at the most likely internal state (i.e., the conditional mode). However, in this commentary I focus on the flow of particular states (internal and blanket states) and their variational free energy gradients, and show that for a wide but restricted class of solenoidal couplings, the average flow of these systems point along variational free energy gradients. This licenses a different but perhaps stronger re-description of the flow of particular states as performing inference, which importantly holds at arbitrary points in state space, not just at the conditional modes.

Bayesian analysis of changes in standing horizontal and vertical jump after different modes of resistance training

ABSTRACT Training interventions often have small effects and are tested in small samples. We used a Bayesian approach to examine the change in jump distance after different resistance training programmes. Thirty-three 18- to 45-year-old males completed one of three lower limb resistance training programmes: deadlift (DL), hip thrust (HT) or back squat (BS). Horizontal and vertical jump performance was assessed over the training intervention. Examination of Bayesian posterior distributions for jump distance estimated that the probability of a change above a horizontal jump smallest worthwhile change (SWC) of 4.7 cm for the DL group was ~12%. For the HT and BS groups, the probability of a change above the SWC was ~87%. The probability of a change above a vertical jump SWC of 1.3 cm for the DL group was ~31%. For the HT and BS groups, the probability of a change above the vertical jump SWC was ~62% and ~67%, respectively. Our study illustrates that a Bayesian approach provides a rich inferential interpretation for small sample training studies with small effects. The extra information from such a Bayesian approach is useful to practitioners in Sport and Exercise Science where small effects are expected and sample size is often constrained.

Line divisions as stylistic devices in poetry: Relevance, procedural encoding and ad hoc concepts

This article adopts a relevance-theoretic approach to the study of line divisions in non-metrical free verse poetry. The article argues that, when positioned at particular points within a poetic text's constituent structure, line divisions can take on procedural-like qualities, in that they perceptually highlight particular elements of the text's linguistically encoded material, thus steering the inferential interpretation process in particular directions. The article also argues that the procedural-like qualities of line divisions can interact with relevance-driven inference, and with the generic convention for interpreting poetic texts in a non-spontaneous fashion, to produce arrays of cognitive effects, which likely would not have been derived had the text been arranged in a less visuospatially segmented manner. Furthermore, the article suggests that the conceptual material relating to these effects may map back onto and adjust the text's lexically encoded content, affecting how particular elements of this content are narrowed and/or broadened, and thus the nature of the resulting ad hoc concepts.

Beyond ostension: Introducing the expressive principle of relevance

In this paper, I am going to cast doubt on an idea that is shared, explicitly or implicitly, by most contemporary pragmatic theories: that the inferential interpretation procedure described by Grice, neo-Griceans, or post-Griceans applies only to the interpretation of ostensive stimuli. For this special issue, I will concentrate on the relevance theory (RT) version of this idea. I will proceed by putting forward a dilemma for RT and argue that the best way out of it is to accept that the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure applies to certain non-ostensive stimuli, contrary to what is generally claimed within RT. In particular, I will argue that relevance theorists should accept that (ceteris paribus) non-ostensive emotional expressions in interactions guarantee a presumption of relevance such that they are interpreted through the relevance-theoretic comprehension procedure. This leads me to propose what I call 'the expressive principle of relevance'.

TEXT-WORLDS IN MICHAEL SWAN’S POETRY: A READER’S PERSPECTIVE

The article highlights the role of world-building elements in the process of readers’ interpretation of poetic texts. According to Text World Theory (P. Werth, J. Gavins), elements that set temporal and spatial boundaries, specify objects and entities; elements that describe their qualities; and those that desceibe events, actions or states enable readers to construct their own text-worlds – mental representations of the discourse. This principle underpins our analysis of free verse poetry of Michael Swan, a contemporary British linguist and poet. His texts abound in references to objects, entities, spatial and temporal relationships in the world around us; often, they dominate in the verbal context of a poem. Such references are a characteristic feature of both narrative and metaphor-based poetry. World-building elements are perceived as especially foregrounded in the poems where no conclusion or attitude are explititly stated. There are the following types of world-builders in Michael Swan’s poems: units that denote God as the supreme being, persons, animals and birds, geographic objects, material objects, objects and phenomena in the world of nature, scientific objects and notions, phenomena of human spiritual life, temporal and spatial parameters. We also consider their attributes. Taken together, they illustrate Michael Swan’s general themes – the nature of reality and being, the conception of God, human beings in social and historical contexts, human psychology, human relationships with nature, art. Besides, Swan’s mimetic reflection of reality has a significant emotionl potential. A mini-experiment within the framework of this research shows that it is necessary to further develop students’ skills in inferential interpretation of poetry.

Effectiveness of Structured Teaching Programme on Knowledge and Knowledge on Practice regarding Partograph among Final Year Nursing Students at PPG College of Nursing, Coimbatore

Statement of The Problem: ‘Effectiveness Of Structured Teaching Programme On Knowledge And Knowledge On Practice Regarding Partograph Among Final Year Nursing Students At Ppg College Of Nursing, Coimbatore. Objectives of the study: 1) To assess the level of knowledge and knowledge on practice regarding Partograph among nursing students. 2) To implement structured teaching programme regarding Partograph. Among final year nursing students. 3) To evaluate the effectiveness of structured teaching programme on knowledge and knowledge on practice regarding Partograph 4) To find out the association between the knowledge and knowledge on practice of nursing students regarding Partograph with selected demographic variables. Methodology: Quasi- experimental, pre-experimental one group pre-test post-test design was adopted. Non-probability convenient sampling was used to select 60 samples. Structured questionaries and check list were used to assess the effectiveness of structured teaching programme on knowledge and knowledge on practice. The data gathered was analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistical method and interpretations were made based on the objectives of the study. Result: The post test for knowledge was 13.3. and post-test mean for knowledge on practice was 12.5. This result shows that there is an improvement in knowledge and knowledge on practice after the structured teaching programme. This is measured by the paired ‘t’ test. The ‘t’ value for knowledge is 19.18 and 14.17 is knowledge on practice with a significant at p <0.05so there was a significant difference between the overall pre-test and post-test knowledge and knowledge on practice in plotting the partograph.

Message Passing and Metabolism.

Active inference is an increasingly prominent paradigm in theoretical biology. It frames the dynamics of living systems as if they were solving an inference problem. This rests upon their flow towards some (non-equilibrium) steady state—or equivalently, their maximisation of the Bayesian model evidence for an implicit probabilistic model. For many models, these self-evidencing dynamics manifest as messages passed among elements of a system. Such messages resemble synaptic communication at a neuronal network level but could also apply to other network structures. This paper attempts to apply the same formulation to biochemical networks. The chemical computation that occurs in regulation of metabolism relies upon sparse interactions between coupled reactions, where enzymes induce conditional dependencies between reactants. We will see that these reactions may be viewed as the movement of probability mass between alternative categorical states. When framed in this way, the master equations describing such systems can be reformulated in terms of their steady-state distribution. This distribution plays the role of a generative model, affording an inferential interpretation of the underlying biochemistry. Finally, we see that—in analogy with computational neurology and psychiatry—metabolic disorders may be characterized as false inference under aberrant prior beliefs.

Measurement of Natural Capital in academic journals

This article is based on the existing literature on the concept, categories, and natural variables of capital and aims to discuss natural capital, offering some points of view on the emerging rationality of specialized literature. In a preliminary stage, a systematic analysis and cumulative review were used to identify and select the variables to measure natural capital and, in this stage, 1856 articles were selected. The surveys were captured and the variables on the environmental resources used in the research were analyzed with the result of the reading concentrated on the variables. A content analysis was carried out to check the reading, consisted of (i) pre-analysis, (ii) analytical description and (iii) inferential interpretation, verification of the frequency of words per article. The concept of natural capital is necessary and acceptable, but it is not easy to understand it categorically or measure its value. It is an interdisciplinary issue and some schools of thinkers could be noticed. The messages about ecological characteristics are limited to the field of study mainly of qualitative water analysis. It was also possible to identify contents that conceptualize the Natural Capital based on sources of energy and agriculture. There is a search for indicators as ways to measure the environment that give rise the variables to Natural Capital to meet mainly the needs of the economy. The article highlights the probable performativity of the concept and, ultimately, how it can impact us and incorporates the discussion of Natural Capital in the accounting headings. This article is a cautionary note for those who use the concept of natural capital and offers considerations using examples in the literature. Based on the existing literature, the originality lies in the discussion that natural capital is not a neutral term and its framing is likely to have broader implications.

Long-Term Evaluation of Efficacy and Safety of Ofatumumab Added to Fludarabine & Cyclophosphamide in Subjects with Relapsed Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: Final Analysis of Complement 2 Trial

Long-Term Evaluation of Efficacy and Safety of Ofatumumab Added to Fludarabine & Cyclophosphamide in Subjects with Relapsed Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: Final Analysis of Complement 2 Trial

Baseline elaboration and echo-sounding at the adjective adverb interface

AbstractThe paper examines the semantic effects of modification in phrases combining verbs with so-called short adverbs in French, that is, adjectives (A) used as modifiers of the verb (V), as inaller direct‘to go direct’ (VA structures). For this purpose, a sample of over 3200 attested examples has been analyzed. Far from being simple verb modifiers in the sense of “manner” modification, the qualitative analysis shows that short adverbs also refer to other features of the event, e.g. participant, instrument, source, goal, result, circumstance, and the speaker’s attitude. These manifold modification scopes are then described by means of a newly created event-modification frame. The theoretical discussion of these results tackles the relationship between structure, construction, and baseline elaboration, constructions being conceived as cognitive developments of baseline VA structure. Baseline elaboration thus turns out to be a necessary complementary approach to construction grammar. However, neither construction nor baseline elaboration allows the full prediction of the meaning of a given VA structure since both ways of accessing meaning leave considerable space for inferential interpretation. The corpus also allows the quantification of the modified event features, that is, the frequency with which the slots of the frame are accessed by modification via VA structure. Quantification thereby provides the general modification profile of VA structures (as opposed to the individual modification profiling of a given VA structure in a single utterance).

Exact Renormalization Groups As a Form of Entropic Dynamics

The Renormalization Group (RG) is a set of methods that have been instrumental in tackling problems involving an infinite number of degrees of freedom, such as, for example, in quantum field theory and critical phenomena. What all these methods have in common—which is what explains their success—is that they allow a systematic search for those degrees of freedom that happen to be relevant to the phenomena in question. In the standard approaches the RG transformations are implemented by either coarse graining or through a change of variables. When these transformations are infinitesimal, the formalism can be described as a continuous dynamical flow in a fictitious time parameter. It is generally the case that these exact RG equations are functional diffusion equations. In this paper we show that the exact RG equations can be derived using entropic methods. The RG flow is then described as a form of entropic dynamics of field configurations. Although equivalent to other versions of the RG, in this approach the RG transformations receive a purely inferential interpretation that establishes a clear link to information theory.

Los espejos del yo: Existencialismo y metaficción en la narrativa de Unamuno by Luis Álvarez-Castro

Reviewed by: Los espejos del yo: Existencialismo y metaficción en la narrativa de Unamuno by Luis Álvarez-Castro Brian J. Cope Álvarez-Castro, Luis. Los espejos del yo: Existencialismo y metaficción en la narrativa de Unamuno. Salamanca: U of Salamanca P, 2015. Pp. 265. ISBN 978-1-58871-163-2. Los espejos del yo: Existencialismo y metaficción en la narrativa de Unamuno examines an interrelated cross section of Unamuno's literary production through the lens of reader-response theory and is the author's second monograph on Unamuno. In effect, the study explores the place of the reader in the hermeneutical labyrinths constructed by Unamuno in six key works: Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, Niebla, Abel Sánchez, Cómo se hace una novela, Don Sandalio, jugador de ajedrez, and San Manuel Bueno, mártir. In the introduction, Álvarez-Castro establishes the study's general focus on the relationship between author, text, and reader. The critical framework that he builds seamlessly integrates the relatively scant but valuable criticism that has examined the role of the reader in Unamuno's novels from a reader-response perspective. One noteworthy strength of the study, in fact, is the way that it develops in careful dialogue with the scholarly criticism in general. Another is the way that it brings to light a profitable connection between two incongruent lines of inquiry in the scholarship on Unamuno: metafiction and existentialism. Álvarez-Castro acknowledges that, individually, these lines have received ample attention, and he makes a persuasive case for seeing in reader-response theory a generative space for examining their interconnectedness. In chapter 1, Álvarez-Castro recounts Unamuno's interest in Herostratus, the fourth century BCE arsonist who destroyed the Temple of Artemis hoping to acquire everlasting fame. Herein lies the root of Álvarez-Castro's critical inquiry: to understand the ways in which Unamuno's profound desire to achieve immortality through his writing left an indelible mark on his literary production in terms of structure, style, and theme. The bulk of this chapter offers an enlightening critique of Unamuno's professed motivation for writing. In the process, it highlights a salient contradiction in Unamuno's aesthetic outlook. On the one hand, Unamuno asserts his own autonomy as reader, but on the other, he pioneers a metafictional approach that, beginning with Niebla, essentially predetermines the reader's inferential interpretation of his novels' storylines. One strength of this chapter is the way that Álvarez-Castro uses theorists like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault to provide perspective on Unamuno's obsession with achieving [End Page 681] immortality through literature. Another is the exposition of the original and evocative concept of "chantaje existencial." Chapter 2 examines Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho as the theoretical cocoon from which gestate Unamuno's heterodox ideas on literature and the role of the reader as co-creator of the text's meaning. The subjective commentary on the existential themes that Unamuno crafts as he reads Cervantes's masterpiece attests to his view of literature as a phenomenological experience that flouts the commonplace assumption of the text as a vessel containing the author's meaning. Unamuno's style of metafiction that arises in Niebla and evolves thereafter in subsequent works shares Cervantes's knack to place the burden of understanding on the reader but also exhibits originality in how it prefigures the reader's reception of the story. In chapter 3, Álvarez-Castro examines the ambiguity surrounding Augusto Pérez's demise in Niebla and alleges that the reader is made to play a game of existential extortion ("chantaje existencial") by virtue of the metafictional structure of the text. By participating in the extortion, the reader receives a payoff of sorts—existential validation—and, in the process, becomes the vehicle through which Unamuno's desire to perpetuate his own existence is fulfilled. Although at times very insightful, Álvarez-Castro's argument is premised on an unsupported assumption of the reader's cognitive dissonance and is unduly reductive in scope. In chapter 4, Álvarez-Castro argues that through metafiction Unamuno successfully situates the reader not as the recipient but rather as the originator of the text's truth. His reading of...

Risk as an Explanatory Factor for Researchers’ Inferential Interpretations

Logical reasoning is crucial in science, but we know that this is not something that humans are innately good at. It becomes even harder to reason logically about data when there is uncertainty, because there is always a chance of being wrong. Dealing with uncertainty is inevitable, for example, in situations in which the evaluation of sample outcomes with respect to some population is required. Inferential statistics is a structured way of reasoning rationally about such data. One could therefore expect that using well-known statistical techniques protects its users against misinterpretations regarding uncertainty. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. Researchers often pretend to be too certain about the presence or absence of an effect, and data are analysed in a selective way, which impacts the validity of conclusions that can be drawn from the techniques that are used. In this paper, the concept of risk is used to explain why unwanted behaviour may not be as unreasonable as it seems, once the risks that researchers face are taken into account.

Evidential al parecer: Between the physical and the cognitive meaning in Spanish scientific prose of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries

Some of the evidential particles and adverbs in Spanish are believed to have developed during the 18th and 19th centuries. This also coincides with the consolidation of scientific writing in Spanish, a genre that holds a special relation with the expression of sources of information. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to study the evolution of the Spanish evidential discourse particle al parecer (‘seemingly, apparently’) in scientific texts of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Our analysis shows that in the period under review the occurrences of the evidential particle al parecer were dominant, but they were not the only uses of this construction. It coexisted with two other constructions: a two-member construction al parecer x, pero en realidad y (‘it appears to be x, but in reality is y’) with inferential interpretation and with a construction al parecer with physical meaning (es al parecer rómbico; ‘it looks rhombic’). Our data suggests that only the occurrences of the grammaticalized discourse particle al parecer were purely evidential. Furthermore, it shows that the evidential meaning of the particle developed toward more indirect evidentiality during the process of fixation. In the context of the genre analyzed, all three constructions of al parecer reflect the changes in the scientific writing practices: from basing the evidences on personal observation to relying on the experiment and reporting from the common knowledge.

Time-Frequency Analysis as Probabilistic Inference

This paper proposes a new view of time-frequency analysis framed in terms of probabilistic inference. Natural signals are assumed to be formed by the superposition of distinct time-frequency components, with the analytic goal being to infer these components by application of Bayes' rule. The framework serves to unify various existing models for natural time-series; it relates to both the Wiener and Kalman filters, and with suitable assumptions yields inferential interpretations of the short-time Fourier transform, spectrogram, filter bank, and wavelet representations. Value is gained by placing time-frequency analysis on the same probabilistic basis as is often employed in applications such as denoising, source separation, or recognition. Uncertainty in the time-frequency representation can be propagated correctly to application-specific stages, improving the handing of noise and missing data. Probabilistic learning allows modules to be co-adapted; thus, the time-frequency representation can be adapted to both the demands of the application and the time-varying statistics of the signal at hand. Similarly, the application module can be adapted to fine properties of the signal propagated by the initial time-frequency processing. We demonstrate these benefits by combining probabilistic time-frequency representations with non-negative matrix factorization, finding benefits in audio denoising and inpainting tasks, albeit with higher computational cost than incurred by the standard approach.

Information-Theoretic Statistical Mechanics without Landauer’s Principle

This paper distinguishes two different senses of information-theoretic approaches to statistical mechanics that are often conflated in the literature: those relating to the thermodynamic cost of computational processes and those that offer an interpretation of statistical mechanics where the probabilities are treated as epistemic. This distinction is then investigated through Earman and Norton’s ([1999]) ‘sound’ and ‘profound’ dilemma for information-theoretic exorcisms of Maxwell’s demon. It is argued that Earman and Norton fail to countenance a ‘sound’ information-theoretic interpretation and describes how the latter inferential interpretations can escape the criticisms of Earman and Norton and Norton ([2005]) by adopting this ‘sound’ horn. This paper considers a standard model of Maxwell’s Demon to illustrate how one might adopt an information-theoretic approach to statistical mechanics without a reliance on Landauer’s principle, where the incompressibility of the probability distribution due to Liouville’s theorem is taken as the central feature of such an interpretation.

What Should be Taken into Consideration for a Meta-Analysis of Green Tea Consumption and Stomach Cancer Risk?

Stomach cancer is the most common cancer in Japan, China and Korea, and is the second leading cause of deaths from cancer globally, although the incidence and mortality have been declining over the years [1]. Dietary factors are known to play an important role in the development of stomach cancer [2]. Among dietary factors, green tea has recently been of considerable interest in the etiology of stomach cancer [3]. It has been hypothesized that green tea consumption has a protective effect against the development of stomach cancer [4]. The main constituents of green tea extracts are polyphenols known as catechins, which have been reported to have anticarcinogenic, antimutagenic and antioxidant activity in experimental studies using in vivo animal models [5]. An article was published by Kang et al. [6] on a meta-analysis of green tea consumption and its relation to stomach cancer. They did further subgroup analyses with a variety of effect sizes in order to explore the causes of heterogeneity among different studies. They also converted all the measured consumption levels of green tea to a cups-per-day scale to calculate the difference between the highest and lowest consumption levels. With such elaborate statistical approaches, their conclusion was that green tea may play a protective role against the development of stomach cancer. It is important to perform subgroup analyses since there are discrepancies in the effects of green tea consumption on stomach cancer risk between case-control studies and cohort studies as well as between crude data and adjusted data in the meta-analysis of published epidemiologic studies, for instance. More interestingly, when stratified by country (Japan versus China) in the subgroup analyses performed by Kang et al. [6], a significant risk reduction by 39% (summary RR/OR=0.61, 95% CI: 0.47-0.81) was found with homogeneity (p=0.43) from the Chinese studies, while a non-significant risk reduction by 8% (summary RR/OR=0.92, 95% CI: 0.80-1.05) was observed with marginal homogeneity (p=0.10) from the Japanese studies. Part of the reason for the different results between the Chinese and Japanese studies could be that the seven cohort studies among the twelve Japanese studies failed to support the association (summary RR/OR=1.03, 95% CI: 0.92-1.16). Another part of the reason for the different results could be due to the varieties of green tea that undergo a type of roasting to dry the leaves in China [7]. These teas often characterize the Chinese varieties on the market, which provide a much more roasted flavor. In Japan, the green tea leaves are steam dried, creating a fresh grassy infusion. Many Japanese teas can be characterized by this technique and the light flavor that it produces. Since there have been no epidemiological studies investigating green tea consumption related to stomach cancer among a Korean population, which is one of biggest consumers in the world, it is limited to apply this meta-analytical result to Koreans with inferential interpretation. Hence, questions should be answered with more scientific evidence on whether the discrepancies may be due to either genetic background, environmental variables such as dietary factors, or the research methodology and design implemented. It should be noted that there are some limitations regarding the interpretation of the meta-analysis. First, as green tea is consumed mainly in Asian countries, such as China, Japan, Korea, and a few countries in the Middle East and North Africa [8], we are not able to generalize our findings to all populations. Second, a random-effect model is usually selected in order to adjust for the effect of heterogeneity across studies but this model does not discount the effects of heterogeneity. In addition, another bias can occur in this meta-analysis. Publication bias can cause researchers to reach incorrect conclusions from their meta-analyses because studies with statistically significant results tend to be published. Although Begg's test shows that there is no significant publication bias in this meta-analysis, we can not ignore the possibility of this bias, inherent in any meta-analysis. Therefore, the conclusions or interpretations made from the results of this meta-analysis should be considered cautiously due to the above limitations and biases. The findings and explanations should be explored in future research, including clinical trials and further epidemiologic studies.