<html><head></head><body><div class="ydpc1b8a037yahoo-style-wrap" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;font-size:16px;"><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997"><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997yMail_cursorElementTracker_1550769559181">Dear colleagues, </div><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997yMail_cursorElementTracker_1550769568898"><br></div><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997yMail_cursorElementTracker_1550769569135">I want to strongly disagree with the thesis put forward at this morning's meeting that the quality of our work product depends on our following some very small number of discrete methodologies for identifying variants. It does not. </div><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997yMail_cursorElementTracker_1550769656752"><br></div><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997yMail_cursorElementTracker_1550769656931">A methodology, any methodology, is merely a tool. Its purpose is to help us get to our goal -- identifying variants. If we use multiple methodologies, each of which allows us to identify some (quite possibly overlapping) subset of the universe of variants, that's OK. If we identify a few additional cases that we believe to be variants, while going outside those methodologies, that's OK too. It is desirable to have methodologies which identify large subsets, but <i>only</i> because that expedites our work. The methodologies are a means to an end, not the end in themselves. </div><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997yMail_cursorElementTracker_1550769857286"><br></div><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997yMail_cursorElementTracker_1550769857497">The quality of our work product is based on how successfully we identify the members of the underlying universe of variants. How we get there is really irrelevant to the quality of what we produce.</div><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997"><br></div><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997"><br></div>Bill Jouris </div><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997"><br><br><div id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997ymail_android_signature"><a id="ydpc1b8a037yiv0434286997ymail_android_signature_link" href="https://go.onelink.me/107872968?pid=InProduct&c=Global_Internal_YGrowth_AndroidEmailSig__AndroidUsers&af_wl=ym&af_sub1=Internal&af_sub2=Global_YGrowth&af_sub3=EmailSignature" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android</a></div></div></div></body></html>