Different medical traditions notice—and miss—different things in the same patient.

Founding problem

“Diagnostic remainder” names a research responsibility, not a patient

Residual symptoms after established disease, evolving differential diagnoses, functional syndromes, post-infectious or treatment-related states, and context-dependent symptom patterns are different. We do not assign them one cause. We study sequence, coupled variation, triggers and relievers, functional loss, treatment exposure, and response that diagnosis labels alone may omit.

Dual-track principle: continue biomedical reassessment for new symptoms, red flags, and changing trajectories while caring for and studying symptoms and function without waiting for perfect diagnostic certainty. Neither track closes the other.

Relation grammar

Naming relations precisely instead of saying “the same”

We distinguish quotation, commentary, inheritance, transformation, clinical exemplification, operationalisation, analogy with non-correspondence, support, qualification, contradiction, mechanistic bridge, and testable translational hypothesis. This prevents a classical passage from becoming a modern mechanism by assertion, or a single case from becoming efficacy evidence.

From difference to a study

The next study begins where explanations diverge

1. Extract phenomena, time courses, environments, treatment responses, and clinical signs in each tradition’s own language—not only disease labels.
2. Map contradiction, missingness, untranslated residue, and unstudied combinations as well as agreement.
3. Rank structural gaps by novelty, explanatory value, testability, clinical importance, and safety.
4. Write competing hypotheses, failure conditions, and required measures before converting a gap into retrieval, observational, or experimental protocols.
5. Publish null findings and failed connections as negative maps.

Possible outputs

Outputs are not limited to review articles

Outputs include annotated source editions, concept genealogies, case-cluster analyses, formula/herb presentation phenotype maps, Korean–Chinese–Japanese tradition comparisons, controversy reconstructions, measurement proposals, mechanistic-bridge papers, counter-hypothesis and negative-evidence maps, N-of-1 and observational protocols, and reproducible datasets and code.

Living research record

We preserve the path to a conclusion, not only the conclusion

Each stage—open problem, rationale/evidence, competing hypothesis, method/protocol, sources/data/results, analysis, interpretation, clinical implications, and public assessment—can persist as an independently citable object. Later work may branch by revising or contradicting earlier objects, while preserving versions and review history.

Clinical significance

Broader than a p-value, more rigorous than impression

Clinical meaning is not decided by statistical significance alone. We jointly examine effect size and uncertainty, individual heterogeneity, response over time, external validity, patient-important outcomes, harms and opportunity costs, coherence with mechanistic and historical explanations, and whether a local clinic can measure and act on the finding. An intriguing theory, however, is never sufficient for an efficacy claim.

Local clinical bridge

Every major study specifies a bridge to local practice

1. Which clinical phenomenon or patient subgroup does this work make newly visible?
2. What minimum observation and time course could be recorded from the next visit?
3. Which decisions might eventually change, and which decisions must not yet change?
4. What safe chart audit, prospective registry, N-of-1, or pragmatic study could test it?
5. Which observations and stopping rules would count against the hypothesis?

This clinical bridge is not an immediate treatment recommendation. It is a translation device that states applicability and the next test.