Methods for comparing competing hypotheses in hypothesis-oriented systems

With the advent of a new class of virtual experiments management systems, the use of hypotheses and models in an explicit form becomes more and more widespread. Such systems apply both hypotheses generated from the data and theoretical hypotheses. It becomes critically important to compare several competing hypotheses of different origin with each other. The paper considers various approaches to comparing competing hypotheses and computational models implementing them. The considered approaches are implemented as a software component that is a part of a virtual experiment management system. The component is applied for problem solving in neurophysiology.