Domain Language¶
Lab terminology distinguishes a scientifically attractive experiment from work that is safe and ready to execute.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| evidence need | A specific uncertainty or missing support that experimental work could reduce |
| assay intent | The scientific objective of an assay and its prerequisite assays |
| advisory assay plan | Prioritized scientific recommendations with rationale and open gaps; never a direct execution instruction |
| executable assay plan | Concrete batch instructions with samples, preflight checks, blockers, and readiness state |
| experiment batch | Ordered assays sharing an objective, priority, material context, and review gates |
| blocking gate | A condition that must pass before the associated work can proceed |
| operational readiness | Joint assessment of capacity, instruments, materials, staffing, budget, controls, provenance, evidence, and backlog |
| handoff artifact | Stable, reviewed contract passed from planning to laboratory operations or from outcomes to another owner |
| observation | A measured value with metric, unit, replicates, QC, and interpretation context |
| acceptance rule | Declared operator and threshold used to evaluate an observation |
| technical failure | Failure of execution or measurement that does not establish the biological hypothesis is false |
| biological failure | Interpretable evidence that the biological acceptance criterion was not met |
| reproducibility failure | Inability to obtain sufficiently consistent results across required repeats |
| inconclusive | An outcome that cannot responsibly support acceptance or rejection |
| rerun policy | Declared rule connecting an outcome class to repeat work |
| promotion | Reviewed conversion of a lab outcome into normalized evidence for durable knowledge memory |
| superseded | A plan, decision, or promoted record replaced by a later reviewed record while remaining auditable |
“Recommended,” “executable,” “ready,” “completed,” “passed,” and “promoted” describe different gates. Using them interchangeably would erase the controls that protect irreversible laboratory spend and downstream scientific claims.