FIELDS W, X, and Y 

 Columns 68; 69 and 

 70; and 71 



The differences between certain biological fields which account for characteristic differences 

 in general intensity of response are numerous; for example, the differences in control of the chemical's 

 application (injection or topical application which is generally typical of medicinal administrations, as 

 opposed to the agricultural spraying of the chemical outdoors over a plot or field of organisms where all 

 weather factors may affect the deposit) or differences in the general type of organism (higher animals 

 vs. higher plants), etc. Most commonly, the investigator takes into consideration the performance of 

 other chemicals known to cause the particular response in the same general biological field for which 

 the test compound has been applied and expresses an evaluation (e.g. , "insignificant", "fair", 

 "moderate", etc. ) with this factor of comparison of chemicals in mind, though comparison might 

 conceivably be made with a given test compound's effect in another organism, or by another route of 

 administration, etc. 



These interpretations by the investigator, of course, contribute much meaning to the results, 

 for the reader of the author's journal article, report, or file data; comprehension of the significance of 

 new data is always assisted by, or dependent upon, the use of the familiar as a frame of reference. 



However, the variation in interpretation of results according to authors' special points of view 

 represents a problem in coding test results so that all evaluation entries in the file will be on a 

 reasonably comparable basis. In a sense, recording only the verbal evaluation made by an author 

 represents coding by a separate classification scheme (i. e. , the author's rather than the CBCC's) for 

 which the criteria for evaluation are frequently obscure; similarly, every evaluation made by comparison 

 to a standard compound represents coding by a unique classification scheme (according to the set of 

 special attributes of the standard compound rather than the standards of the CBCC classification scheme 

 for evaluations). The CBCC, therefore, prefers not to "index" by coding according to the author's 

 classification concepts (Criteria 01 and 02), except when there is no alternative, nor to index by coding 

 according to the special set of characteristics represented by some compound selected as a standard 

 for comparison (Criteria 03 and 04), unless there is no alternative. 



Whenever possible, it is preferred to derive an evaluation by making a correlation between the 

 two basic measurements from the test coded, (1) intensity of response and (2) quantity of compound 

 used to produce that intensity ("potency" of the compound, as defined in Division 8). The criteria which 

 might conceivably be considered as permitting this are Criteria 20, 21, 22, 51, 52, 53, and 55. When this 

 is for any reason impossible or impractical, the evaluation next in preference is by rating the test 

 compound according to the measure of intensity of response--for example, killing time (Criterion 11), 

 per cent increase in some normal function (Criterion 61 and 62), duration of action (Criterion 13), 

 duration of action correlated with the incidence of that duration of action (Criterion 54), etc. In short, 

 the CBCC coding of Field Y is intended to record uncritically and as accurately as possible the 

 chemical's ability to cause the response or at least the intensity of response, while interpretation and 

 comparisons are left for users of the files of coded data; any interpretations and comparisons made by 

 the author should be included in the written abstract of the code line, however, to make them accessible 

 to the interpreter of the coding in Field Y. 



The symbol for "measure of response intensity" or the "potency value" is obtained by reference 

 to fixed CBCC Field Y scales. (The term, "fixed", is meant to imply that, for any one criterion of 

 Field X, the Field Y scale does not deviate according to the type or field of chemical- biological data, 

 but data from all types of tests are graded on the scale. ) Thus, these CBCC values coded in Field Y 

 are not reduced to mere relative values by comparing them, for example, to the actions for other 

 compounds (e. g. , "the test compound causes only 50% of the response caused by compound X") or 

 responses of other organisms (e. g. , "the test organism responded only half as much as organism B") 

 or the responses when administered by another route (e. g. , "the response by intravascular injection 

 was twice as great as by intramuscular injection" or "the response when sprayed on plants in the 

 laboratory was six times as great as when sprayed on the exposed plant in the field"), etc. To make 

 the evaluation expressions of these examples meaningful, there must be known the evaluations of 

 responses caused by the factors to which comparisons are made- -in other words, evaluation of the 

 response caused by compound X, or caused in organism B, or caused by intramuscular injection, or by 

 application to exposed plants in the field. It will be recognized that such comparative expressions of 

 evaluation would require interpretation for which would be necessary a value that is not coded in the 

 biology code line in which such a comparative evaluation would be coded (in the examples used here, 

 the response of compound X is not coded, nor the response of organism B, nor of administration by 

 intramuscular injection, nor of spraying of exposed field plants). 



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