Credentialing scientific claims

Perspectives on Science 1 (2):153-203 (1993)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This article seeks rapprochement between the sociology of knowledge and philosophy of science by attempting to capture the best social constructionist insights within a strongly realistic philosophy of science. Key to doing so are separating the grounds for the individual scientist coming to know that P from those grounds for socially credentialing the claim that P within the relevant scientific subcommunity and showing how truth considerations can enter into the analysis of knowledge without interfering with social constructionist treatments of credentialing claims. A detailed epistemology and associated account of the social credentialing of knowledge claims are presented. Close attention is paid to the epistemological and social aspects of the nature and role of observation reports, the interpretation of data, simplifications, idealizations, and approximations, and the nature of replication. The article contains a National Aeronautics and Space Administration remote-sensing case study and a detailed analysis of replication in the 1881–1933 Michelson-Morley-Miller interferometer ether studies.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,963

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Scientific papers have various structures.Valerie Gray Hardcastle - 1999 - Philosophy of Science 66 (3):415-439.
Miracles with method.John B. Gill - 1977 - Sophia 16 (3):19 - 26.
The Structure of scientific theories.Frederick Suppe (ed.) - 1974 - Urbana,: University of Illinois Press.
The truth of scientific claims.Edward MacKinnon - 1982 - Philosophy of Science 49 (3):437-462.
Scientific misconduct: Present problems and future trends.Barbara Mishkin - 1999 - Science and Engineering Ethics 5 (2):283-292.
Clues to the Puzzle of Scientific Evidence.Susan Haack - 2001 - Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 5 (1-2):253-281.
The poverty of analysis.David Papineau - 2009 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 83 (1):1-30.
Scientific perspectivism.Ronald N. Giere - 2006 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2014-04-01

Downloads
36 (#444,006)

6 months
14 (#179,748)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

References found in this work

Models and metaphors.Max Black - 1962 - Ithaca, N.Y.,: Cornell University Press.
Knowledge and Social Imagery.David Bloor - 1979 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 30 (2):195-199.
Models and Analogies in Science.Mary B. Hesse - 1966 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 3 (3):190-191.
How Experiments End.Peter Galison - 1988 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 39 (3):411-414.

View all 29 references / Add more references