Dissent is thought to play a valuable role in science, so that scientific communities ought to create opportunities for receiving critical feedback and take dissenting views seriously. There is concern, however, that some dissent does more harm than good. Dissent on climate change and evolutionary theory, for example, has confused the public, created doubt about existing consensus, derailed public policy, and forced scientists to devote resources to respond. Are there limits to the extent to which scientific communities have obligations to (...) seek and engage dissenting views? We consider the two main criteria that have been offered for what constitutes “normatively appropriate dissent” or the sort of dissent that ought to have the opportunity to be heard and taken seriously. Many have argued that dissenters must (1) engage in uptake of criticism against their own views and (2) share some standards for theory appraisal. We argue these criteria ultimately are unsuccessful. (shrink)

While it is widely acknowledged that science is not “free” of non-epistemic values, there is disagreement about the roles that values can appropriately play. Several have argued that non-epistemic values can play important roles in modeling decisions, particularly in addressing uncertainties ; Risbey 2007; Biddle and Winsberg 2010; Winsberg : 111-137, 2012); van der Sluijs 359-389, 2012). On the other hand, such values can lead to bias ; Bray ; Oreskes and Conway 2010). Thus, it is important to identify when (...) it is legitimate to appeal to non-epistemic values in modeling decisions. An approach is defended here whereby such value judgments are legitimate when they promote democratically endorsed epistemological and social aims of research. This framework accounts for why it is legitimate to appeal to non-epistemic values in a range of modeling decisions, while addressing concerns that the presence of such values will lead to bias or give scientists disproportionate power in deciding what values ought to be endorsed. (shrink)

In recent years, the value-freeness of science has come under extensive critique. Early objectors to the notion of value-free science can be found in Rudner and Churchman, later objections occur in Leach and Gaa, and more recent critics are Kitcher, Douglas, and Elliott. The goal of this paper is to examine and critique two arguments opposed to the notion of a value-free science. The first argument, the uncertainty argument, cites the endemic uncertainty of science and concludes that values are needed (...) to give direction to scientific investigation. The second, or moral argument, cites the fact that scientists have moral obligations just like everyone else, and.. (shrink)

Recently, many scientists have become concerned about an excessive number of failures to reproduce statistically significant effects. The situation has become dire enough that the situation has been named the ‘reproducibility crisis’. After reviewing the relevant literature to confirm the observation that scientists do indeed view replication as currently problematic, I explain in philosophical terms why the replication of empirical phenomena, such as statistically significant effects, is important for scientific progress. Following that explanation, I examine various diagnoses of the reproducibility (...) crisis, and argue that for the majority of scientists the crisis is due, at least in part, to a form of publication bias. This conclusion sets the stage for an assessment of the view that evidential relations in science are inherently value-laden, a view championed by Heather Douglas and Kevin Elliott. I argue, in response to Douglas and Elliott, and as motivated by the meta-scientific resistance scientists harbour to a publication bias, that if we advocate the value-ladenness of science the result would be a deepening of the reproducibility crisis. (shrink)

In “Should We Strive to Make Science Bias‑Free? A Philosophical Assessment of the Reproducibility Crisis”, I argue that the problem of bias in science, a key factor in the current reproducibility crisis, is worsened if we follow Heather Douglas and Kevin C. Elliott’s advice and introduce non-epistemic values into the evidential assessment of scientific hypotheses. In their response to my paper, Douglas and Elliott complain that I misrepresent their views and fall victim to various confusions. In this rebuttal I argue, (...) by means of an examination of their published views, that my initial interpretation of their work is accurate and that, in their hands, science is generally prone to deviations from truth. (shrink)

Epistemic democrats are rightly concerned with the quality of outcomes and judge democratic procedures in terms of their ability to ‘track the truth’. However, their impetus to assess ‘rule by experts’ and ‘rule by the people’ as mutually exclusive has led to a meagre treatment of the role of expert knowledge in democracy. Expertise is often presented as a threat to democracy but is also crucial for enlightened political processes. Contemporary political philosophy has so far paid little attention to our (...) reliance on experts and has not sufficiently addressed the question of how expertise can be used to improve the epistemic quality of democratic decision making. We believe this lack of interest is spurred by a too hasty acceptance of arguments dismissive of the political role of experts. The article examines a series of often-cited epistemic objections and concludes that several of them are overstated or misconceived, yet they all reflect real difficulties that need to be addressed. On this background, we tentatively outline a set of mechanisms that can contribute to alleviating the irreducible problem of epistemic asymmetries and ensuring that experts really are experts and use their expertise in the right way. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses the current debates in philosophy of science that focus on the concept of values. In these debates, it is often assumed that all relevant non-epistemic influences on scientific research can be described as values and, consequently, that science carries social legitimacy if the correct values play their proper role in research. I argue that values are _not_ the only relevant non-epistemic influences on research: not unless our definition of values is so broad that it becomes unmanageable. (...) Other factors also affect the authority and social legitimacy of science. I employ political theorist Iris Marion Young’s concepts of social perspectives, opinions and interests to attempt a differentiation of contextual influences relevant to scientific research. While problems arising from these influences may overlap, they often differ in important ways too. As a consequence, I argue that contextual influences cannot be managed jointly but require distinct and complementary strategies. (shrink)

Inmaculada de Melo-Martín and Kristen Intemann consider whether, from the perspective of the argument from inductive risk, ethical and political values might be logically, epistemically, pragmatically, or ethically necessary in the “core” of scientific reasoning. In each case, they argue that there are significant conceptual problems. In this comment, employing regulatory uses of high-throughput toxicology at the US Environmental Protection Agency as a case study, I respond to some of their claims about the notion of “pragmatic necessity.” I conclude that, (...) while an inductive risk framework has some significant limitations, it is still conceptually and rhetorically valuable. (shrink)

The controversy over the old ideal of “value-free science” has cooled significantly over the past decade. Many philosophers of science now agree that even ethical and political values may play a substantial role in all aspects of scientific inquiry. Consequently, in the last few years, work in science and values has become more specific: Which values may influence science, and in which ways? Or, how do we distinguish illegitimate from illegitimate kinds of influence? In this paper, I argue that this (...) problem requires philosophers of science to take a new direction. I present two case studies in the influence of values on scientific inquiry: feminist values in archaeology and commercial values in pharmaceutical research. I offer a preliminary assessment of these cases, that the influence of values was legitimate in the feminist case, but not in the pharmaceutical case. I then turn to three major approaches to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate influences of values, including the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values and Heather Douglas’ distinction between direct and indirect roles for values. I argue that none of these three approaches gives an adequate analysis of the two cases. In the concluding section, I briefly sketch my own approach, which draws more heavily on ethics than the others, and is more promising as a solution to the current problem. This is the new direction in which I think science and values should move. (shrink)

The argument from inductive risk, as developed by Rudner and others, famously concludes that the scientist qua scientist makes value judgments. The paper aims to show that trust in the soundness of the argument is overrated – that philosophers who endorse its conclusion fail to refute two of the most important objections that have been raised to its soundness: Jeffrey’s objection that the genuine task of the scientist is to assign probabilities to hypotheses, and Levi’s objection that the argument is (...) ambiguous about decisions about how to act and decisions about what to believe, that only the former presuppose value judgments, and that qua scientist, the scientist only needs to decide what to believe. (shrink)

For computer simulation models to usefully inform climate risk management, uncertainties in model projections must be explored and characterized. Because doing so requires running the model many ti...

Innovative research on decision making under ‘deep uncertainty’ is underway in applied fields such as engineering and operational research, largely outside the view of normative theorists grounded in decision theory. Applied methods and tools for decision support under deep uncertainty go beyond standard decision theory in the attention that they give to the structuring of decisions. Decision structuring is an important part of a broader philosophy of managing uncertainty in decision making, and normative decision theorists can both learn from, and (...) contribute to, the growing deep uncertainty decision support literature. (shrink)

Controversies about time discounting loom large in decisions about climate change. Prominently, a particularly controversial debate about time discounting in climate change decision-making has been conducted within climate economics, between the authors of Stern et al. and their critics :977–981, 2006; Weitzman in J Econ Lit XLV:703–724, 2007; Nordhaus in J Econ Lit XLV:686–702, 2007). The article examines the role of values in this debate. Firstly, it is shown that time discounting is a case in which values are key because (...) it is at heart an ethical problem. Secondly, it is argued that time discounting in climate economics is a case of economists making frequent and routine references to ethical values and indeed conduct ethical debates with each other. Thirdly, it is argued that there is evidence for deep and pervasive entanglement between facts and values in the prevalent methodologies for time discounting. Finally, it is argued that this means that economists have given up the ‘value-free ideal’ concerning time discounting, and discussed how the current methodology of time discounting in economics can be improved. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the responsibility of AI experts for guiding the development of AI in a desirable direction. More specifically, the aim is to answer the following research question: To what extent are AI experts responsible in a forward-looking way for effects of AI technology that go beyond the immediate concerns of the programmer or designer? AI experts, in this paper conceptualised as experts regarding the technological aspects of AI, have knowledge and control of AI (...) technology that non-experts do not have. Drawing on responsibility theory, theories of the policy process, and critical algorithm studies, we discuss to what extent this capacity, and the positions that these experts have to influence the AI development, make AI experts responsible in a forward-looking sense for consequences of the use of AI technology. We conclude that, as a professional collective, AI experts, to some extent, are responsible in a forward-looking sense for consequences of use of AI technology that they could foresee, but with the risk of increased influence of AI experts at the expense of other actors. It is crucial that a diversity of actors is included in democratic processes on the future development of AI, but for this to be meaningful, AI experts need to take responsibility for how the AI technology they develop affects public deliberation. (shrink)

Cognitive values like simplicity, broad scope, and easy handling are properties of a scientific representation that result from the idealization which is involved in the construction of a representation. These properties may facilitate the application of epistemic values to credibility assessments, which provides a rationale for assigning an auxiliary function to cognitive values. In this paper, I defend a further rationale for cognitive values which consists in the assessment of the usefulness of a representation. Usefulness includes the relevance of a (...) representation regarding the investigation of a given problem and its practicability for the users. This rationale builds on the claim that any evaluation of scientific representations should pursue two aims: providing information about their credibility and providing information about their usefulness. Cognitive values relating to the usefulness of a representation and epistemic values relating to its credibility both perform a first-order function. Cognitive values are abstract, and several values with first-order functions may conflict in their application. Thus, in order for cognitive values to account for the sort of problem that is to be investigated by means of a representation, they need to be appropriately specified and weighed. Comprehensiveness, complexity, high resolution, and easy handling, for instance, may be required in a first-order function for model-based prediction of regional climate impacts but not for explaining how the global climate system works. Specifying and weighing cognitive and epistemic values relative to a given problem is a legitimate second-order function of social values. (shrink)

The proper role of non-epistemic values such as moral, political, and social values in practices of justification of policy-relevant hypotheses has recently become one of the central questions in philosophy of science. This strand of research has yielded conceptual clarifications and significant insight into the complex and notoriously contentious issue of the proper relationship between science, non-epistemic values, and policymaking. A central part of this discussion revolves around whether scientists should aspire for the value-free ideal, according to which non-epistemic values (...) are unacceptable in the justification of hypotheses. By so doing, scientists can... (shrink)

Prevention of age-related disorders is increasingly in focus of health policies, and it is hoped that early intervention on processes of deterioration can promote healthier and longer lives. New opportunities to slow down the aging process are emerging with new fields such as personalized nutrition. Data-intensive research has the potential to improve the precision of existing risk factors, e.g., to replace coarse-grained markers such as blood cholesterol with more detailed multivariate biomarkers. In this paper, we follow an attempt to develop (...) a new aging biomarker. The vision among the project consortium, comprising both research and industrial partners, is that the new biomarker will be predictive of a range of age-related conditions, which may be preventable through personalized nutrition. We combine philosophical analysis and ethnographic fieldwork to explore the possibilities and challenges of managing aging through bodily signs that are not straightforwardly linked to symptomatic disease. We document how the improvement of measurement brings about new conceptual challenges of demarcating healthy and unhealthy states. Moreover, we highlight that the reframing of aging as risk has social and ethical implications, as it is generative of normative notions of what constitutes successful aging and good citizenship. (shrink)

The public rejection of scientific claims is widely recognized by scientific and governmental institutions to be threatening to modern democratic societies. Intense conflict between science and the public over diverse health and environmental issues have invited speculation by concerned officials regarding both the source of and the solution to the problem of public resistance towards scientific and policy positions on such hot-button issues as global warming, genetically modified crops, environmental toxins, and nuclear waste disposal. The London Royal Society’s influential report (...) “Public Understanding of Science”, which spearheaded the now-thriving area of science... (shrink)

The independence of research is a key strategic issue of modern societies. Dealing with it appropriately poses legal, economic, political, social and cultural problems for society, which have been studied by the corresponding disciplines and are increasingly the subject of reflexive discourses of scientific communities. Unfortunately, problems of independence are usually framed in disciplinary contexts without due consideration of other perspectives’ relevance or possible contributions. To overcome these limitations, we review disciplinary perspectives and findings on the independence of research and (...) identify interdisciplinary prospects that could inform a research programme. (shrink)

Feminist science studies scholars have documented the historical and cultural contingency of scientific knowledge production. It follows that political and social activism has impacted the practice of science today; however, little has been done to examine the current cultures of science in light of feminist critiques and activism. In this article, I argue that, although critiques have changed the cultures of science both directly and indirectly, fundamental epistemological questions have largely been ignored and neutralized through these policy reforms. I provide (...) an auto-ethnography of my doctoral work in a neuroscience program to a) demonstrate how the culture of science has incorporated critiques into its practices and b) identify how we might use these changes in scientific practices to advance feminist science agendas. I critically analyze three areas in current scientific practice in which I see obstacles and opportunities: 1) research ethics, 2) diversity of research subjects and scientists, and 3) identification of a project's significance for funding. I argue that an understanding of the complicated and changing cultures of science is necessary for future feminist interventions into the sciences that directly challenge science's claim to epistemic authority. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the rhetoric of democratic science within the field of synthetic biology. The still emerging field of synthetic biology claims to be a new kind of science based on the promises of affordable medicines, environmental bioremediation, and democratic, do-it-yourself science practices. I argue that the formation of a more democratic, DIY portion of this field represents an intervention into ethics debates by becoming “the proper informed public.” Through an analysis of twelve DIY and community-based synthetic biology (...) organizations’ websites, I found that democratic science was presented as a novel, progressive approach to science that addresses ethical concerns and at the same time produces better scientific results. In part, these claims were made possible through a reconfiguring of the boundaries between Science and the Public where scientists lay claim to solidarity with the public at large in opposition to traditional biosciences and Big Bio. My research suggests that the superficial use of the language of rights and democracy relegitimizes the primacy of scientific discovery to solve societal problems. I further suggest that by becoming the proper informed public, ethical challenges from publics critical of genetic sciences may become delegitimized. (shrink)

What is the epistemic position that a scientist must be in vis-à-vis a proposition, p, to be in a good enough epistemic position to assert that p to a fellow scientist within the scientific process? My aim is to provide an answer to this question and, more generally, to connect the epistemological debates about the epistemic norms of assertion to the debates about the nature of the scientific process. The question is important because science is a collaborative enterprise based on (...) a division of labor. It has even been suggested that such collaboration is a part of the scientific method. However, scientific collaboration depends upon communication between scientists—that is, intra-scientific testimony. After distinguishing some different kinds of intra-scientific testimony, I provide a specific proposal for an epistemic norm of assertion that generally governs such testimony. I argue that the proposal aligns with the requirements of three scientific virtues—replicability, revisability, and accountability. The discussion of replicability considers a prominent debate in the social and cognitive sciences. In conclusion, I consider some of the wider questions raised by characterizing scientific collaboration, division of labor, and more generally, scientific method via intra-scientific testimony. (shrink)

Explanations are supposed to provide us with understanding. It is common to make a distinction between genuine, scientific understanding, and the phenomenological, or ‘aha’ notion of understanding, where the former is considered epistemically relevant, the latter irrelevant. I argue that there is a variety of phenomenological understanding that does play a positive epistemic role. This phenomenological understanding involves a similarity between bodily sensations that is used as evidence for mechanistic hypotheses. As a case study, I will consider 17th and 18th (...) century research into the mechanism behind the electric eel’s power to shock. Se supone que las explicaciones nos dotan de comprensión. Es habitual hacer una distinción entre compresión cientifica, genuina, y la noción fenomenológica, o ‘ahá’, de comprensión, donde la primera se considera epistemológicamente relevante y esta última irrelevante. Argumento que hay un tipo de compresión fenomenológica que sí juega un papel positivo epistémico. Esta comprensión epistemológica conlleva cierta semejanza con las sensaciones corporales que se usan como evidencia de algunas hipótesis mecanicistas. Como caso de estudio, consideraré la investigación en los siglos xvii y xviii del mecanismo tras la capacidad de la anguila eléctrica para provocar un shock. (shrink)

In the debate about values in science, it is a time-honored tradition to distinguish between the normative question of whether non-cognitive values should play a role in science and the descriptive question of whether they in fact do so or not.1 Among philosophers of science, it is now an accepted view that the descriptive question has been settled. That is, it is no longer disputed that non-cognitive values play a role in science. Hence, all that is left to do on (...) the descriptive front is to describe these values and their roles in more detail. In the words of Longino: “We should stop asking whether social values play a role in science and ask which values and whose values play a role and how” (2004, p. .. (shrink)

The paper draws on philosophy of science to help resolve a tension between two central journalistic ideals: That of resenting diverse viewpoints (Balanced Reporting) and that of presenting the most reliable testimony (Reliable Reporting). While both of these ideals are valuable, they may be in tension. This is particularly so when it comes to scientific testimony and science reporting. Thus, we face a hard question: How should and be balanced in science reporting? The present paper contributes substantive proposals in a (...) manner that integrates philosophy of science with the recent empirical literature on science communication. Specifically, I articulate and evaluate strategies for balancing Balanced Reporting and Reliable Reporting. First, I provide a diagnosis of the conflict between them that is informed by philosophy of science. On this basis, I provide restrictions of both Balanced Reporting and Reliable Reporting. The restrictions are unified because they are inspired by similar reflections about the epistemic basis of science reporting—namely scientific justification. Moreover, I note some empirical work that supports the restrictions as well as some empirical work that indicates some limitations of them. Thus, the paper exemplifies how an empirically informed philosophy of science may bear on a question of societal concern. (shrink)

Scientific expert testimony is crucial to public deliberation, but it is associated with many pitfalls. This article identifies one—namely, expert trespassing testimony—which may be characterized, crudely, as the phenomenon of experts testifying outside their domain of expertise. My agenda is to provide a more precise characterization of this phenomenon and consider its ramifications for the role of science in society. I argue that expert trespassing testimony is both epistemically problematic and morally problematic. Specifically, I will argue that scientific experts are (...) subject to a particular obligation. Roughly, this is the obligation to qualify their assertions when speaking outside their domain of scientific expertise in certain contexts. Thus, I argue that scientists who possess expert knowledge are confronted with hard questions about when and how to testify and, therefore, that being a scientific expert comes with great responsibility. Consequently, I provide a concrete “expert guideline” according to which scientific experts, in certain contexts, face an obligation to qualify their assertions when speaking outside their domain of expertise. Furthermore, I consider a number of the conditions in which the guideline is waived or overridden. On this basis, I consider the broader aspects of the roles of scientific experts in a society with a high division of cognitive labor that calls for trust in scientific expert testimony. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a new way to understand the integration of facts and values in the concept of mental disorder that has the potential to avoid the flaws of previous hybrid approaches. I import conceptual tools from the account of procedural objectivity defended by Helen Longino to resolve the controversy over the definition of mental disorder. My argument is threefold: I first sketch the history of the debate opposing objectivists and constructivists and focus on the criticisms that (...) led to the emergence of the debate. Second, I offer a reconstruction of the “Natural Function Approach” argument to make explicit an unsound assumption underlying this approach. The reconstruction will allow me to show that the NFO’s argument depends on the ideal of value-free science that I will criticize. Then I propose an alternative ideal for psychiatry: social objectivity. I argue that the concept of mental health should be seen as “socially objective” rather than value-free, moving the debate towards the social procedures by which the definition is produced rather than the normative and factual content of its definition. (shrink)

Environmental health research produces scientific knowledge about environmental hazards crucial for public health and environmental justice movements that seek to prevent or reduce exposure to these hazards. The environment in environmental health research is conceptualized as the range of possible social, biological, chemical, and/or physical hazards or risks to human health, some of which merit study due to factors such as their probability and severity, the feasibility of their remediation, and injustice in their distribution. This paper explores the ethics of (...) identifying the relevant environment for environmental health research, as judgments involved in defining an environmental hazard or risk, judgments of that hazard or risk's probability, severity, and/ or injustice, as well as the feasibility of its remediation, all ought to appeal to non-epistemic as well as epistemic values. I illustrate by discussing the case of environmental lead, a housing-related hazard that remains unjustly distributed by race and class and is particularly dangerous to children. Examining a controversy in environmental health research ethics where researchers tested multiple levels of lead abatement in lead-contaminated households, I argue that the broader perspective on the ethics of environmental health research provided in the first part of this paper may have helped prevent this controversy. (shrink)

This paper discusses ethical issues surrounding Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) of the economic effects of climate change, and how climate economists acting as policy advisors ought to represent the uncertain possibility of catastrophe. Some climate economists, especially Martin Weitzman, have argued for a precautionary approach where avoiding catastrophe should structure climate economists’ welfare analysis. This paper details ethical arguments that justify this approach, showing how Weitzman’s “fat tail” probabilities of climate catastrophe pose ethical problems for widely used IAMs. The main (...) claim is that economists who ignore or downplay catastrophic risks in their representations of uncertainty likely fall afoul of ethical constraints on scientists acting as policy advisors. Such scientists have duties to honestly articulate uncertainties and manage (some) inductive risks, or the risks of being wrong in different ways. (shrink)

The replicability crisis refers to the apparent failures to replicate both important and typical positive experimental claims in psychological science and biomedicine, failures which have gained increasing attention in the past decade. In order to provide evidence that there is a replicability crisis in the first place, scientists have developed various measures of replication that help quantify or “count” whether one study replicates another. In this nontechnical essay, I critically examine five types of replication measures used in the landmark article (...) “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science” (Open Science Collaboration, Science, 349, ac4716, 2015) based on the following techniques: subjective assessment, null hypothesis significance testing, comparing effect sizes, comparing the original effect size with the replication confidence interval, and meta-analysis. The first four, I argue, remain unsatisfactory for a variety of conceptual or formal reasons, even taking into account various improvements. By contrast, at least one version of the meta-analytic measure does not suffer from these problems. It differs from the others in rejecting dichotomous conclusions, the assumption that one study replicates another or not simpliciter. I defend it from other recent criticisms, concluding however that it is not a panacea for all the multifarious problems that the crisis has highlighted. (shrink)

Expanding on recent philosophical contributions to the conceptual and normative framework of scientific imperialism, I examine whether the economics approach to social epistemology can be considered a case of economics imperialism and determine whether economics’ explanatory expansionism appropriately contributes to this philosophical subfield or not. I argue first that the economics approach to social epistemology counts as a case of economics imperialism under a broad conception of the term, and second that we have good reasons to doubt the appropriateness of (...) the incursion of economics into social epistemology, insofar as economics’ attempt at explanatory unification fails to express significant human interests. (shrink)

A coherent and helpful public policy based on science is difficult to achieve for at least three reasons. First, there are purely practical problems—for example, that scientific experts often disagree on policy-relevant questions and their debates often continue well beyond policy appropriate timelines. Second, there are epistemic problems—for example, that science is hardly the neutral supplier of factual information that traditionally has been supposed. And third, there are social problems: given the commercialization of today’s science and its enduring limitations, much (...) of scientific research today fails to meet the moral and political standards one would expect it to meet in order to inform public policy. In this paper, we examine such problems in the context of breast cancer screening policy and suggest the role philosophy of science should play in dealing with the situation. (shrink)

In this paper, I ask feminist philosophers and science studies scholars to consider the goals of developing critical analyses of evolutionary psychology. These goals can include development of scholarship in feminist philosophy and science studies, mediation of the uptake of evolutionary psychology by other academic and lay communities, and improvement of the practices and products of evolutionary psychology itself. I evaluate ways that some practices of feminist philosophy and science studies facilitate or hinder meeting these goals, and consider the merits (...) of critical engagement with some of the scientists themselves. Finally, I describe a community of feminist evolutionary psychologists with whom it might be both fruitful and interesting to engage, and identify ways that these interactions may benefit the science and the study of the science. (shrink)

. The potential for financial conflicts of interest to influence scientific research has become a significant concern. Some commentators have suggested that the development of standardized study protocols could help to alleviate these problems. This paper identifies two problems with this solution: scientific research incorporates numerous methodological judgments that cannot be constrained by standardized protocols; and standardization can hide significant value judgments. These problems arise because of four weaknesses of standardized guidelines: incompleteness, limited applicability, selective ignorance, and ossification. Therefore, the (...) standardization of study designs should not serve as an alternative to addressing the interests and power relations that pervade science policy-making. Policy makers should take at least two steps to prevent powerful interest groups from co-opting standardized guidelines. First, their development and review should be made as transparent as possible and should be subjected to broadly-based deliberation. Second, standardized guidelines should be supplemented with efforts to scrutinize the conditions under which financial COIs tend to have the most worrisome effects so that additional steps can be taken to eliminate and mitigate those conditions. (shrink)

Scholars working in science and technology studies have recently argued that we could learn much about the nature of scientific knowledge by paying closer attention to scientific ignorance. Building on the work of Robert Proctor, this article shows how ignorance can stem from a wide range of selective research choices that incline researchers toward partial, limited understandings of complex phenomena. A recent report produced by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development serves as the article’s central (...) case study. After arguing that the forms of selective ignorance illustrated in cases like this one are both socially important and difficult to address, I suggest several strategies for responding to them in a socially responsible manner. (shrink)

This response addresses the excellent responses to my book provided by Heather Douglas, Janet Kourany, and Matt Brown. First, I provide some comments and clarifications concerning a few of the highlights from their essays. Second, in response to the worries of my critics, I provide more detail than I was able to provide in my book regarding my three conditions for incorporating values in science. Third, I identify some of the most promising avenues for further research that flow out of (...) this interchange. (shrink)

I analyse an empirically informed argument in philosophy of science to show that it faces several varieties of risk commonly discussed as inductive risk. I argue that this is so even though the type of reasoning used in this argument differs from the reasoning in some of the arguments usually discussed in connection with inductive risk. To capture the variety of risks involved, I use the more general notion of epistemic risk proposed by Justin Biddle and Quill Kukla. I show (...) how the argument in question faces several of the epistemic risks already described in connection with empirical reasoning. Importantly, I also argue that the subtype of inductive reasoning used in the argument merits a separate discussion. To analyse it, I recommend using the model of colligation, or reasoning through offering synthesising expressions. I then argue that it is desirable to recognise the risk in colligating inductive reasoning as a distinct type of epistemic risk that is relevant for understanding risk in other fields as well. Thus, I suggest that philosophy of science is one of the fields subject to non-trivial epistemic risk; I characterise several of these risks on the example of a specific argument; and I describe epistemic risk that accompanies colligation – colligating inductive risk. (shrink)

The approach to expert communities and political representation of non-experts in Harry Collins and Robert Evans’ elective modernism reflects the conviction that experts are not representative of ordinary citizens. I use an analysis of aspects of representation and the argument from inductive risk to argue that experts can be seen as representative of non-experts, when we understand representation as resemblance based on shared social perspectives and acknowledge the inevitable involvement of such perspectives in decisions under inductive risk. This, in turn, (...) has implications for some of the proposals about practices and institutions made in elective modernism. (shrink)

Professionals in environmental fields engage with complex problems that involve stakeholders with different values, different forms of knowledge, and contentious decisions. There is increasing recognition of the need to train graduate students in interdisciplinary environmental science programs in these issues, which we refer to as “social ethics.” A literature review revealed topics and skills that should be included in such training, as well as potential challenges and barriers. From this review, we developed an online survey, which we administered to faculty (...) from 81 United States colleges and universities offering IESPs. Respondents overwhelmingly agreed that IESPs should address values in applying science to policy and management decisions. They also agreed that programs should engage students with issues related to norms of scientific practice. Agreement was slightly less strong that IESPs should train students in skills related to managing value conflicts among different stakeholders. The primary challenges to incorporating social ethics into the curriculum were related to the lack of materials and expertise for delivery, though challenges such as ethics being marginalized in relation to environmental science content were also prominent. Challenges related to students’ interest in ethics were considered less problematic. Respondents believed that social ethics are most effectively delivered when incorporated into existing courses, and they preferred case studies or problem-based learning for delivery. Student competence is generally not assessed, and respondents recognized a need for both curricular materials and assessment tools. (shrink)

This paper offers a moral history of the industrialisation of seaweed harvesting in Norway. Industrialisation is often seen as degrading natural resources. Ironically, we argue, it is precisely the scale and scope of industrial utilisation that may enable non-instrumental valuations of natural resources. We use the history of the Norwegian seaweed industry to make this point. Seaweed became increasingly interesting to harvest as a fruit and then as a crop of the sea in the early twentieth century following biochemical applications (...) for alginates derived from seaweed. When harvesting was mechanised, however, attention turned to the environmental and aesthetic value of kelp forests. Further, the sale of the industry to the American FMC corporation flagged the national value of these plants. In sum epistemic, aesthetic and moral appreciations of natural resources are tangled up and co-evolve with their industrial utilisation, in an ecology of values. Our account uses interview and ethnographic material from key sites in Norway. (shrink)

This paper argues that challenges that are grand in scope such as "lifelong health and wellbeing", "climate action", or "food security" cannot be addressed through scientific research only. Indeed scientific research could inhibit addressing such challenges if scientific analysis constrains the multiple possible understandings of these challenges into already available scientific categories and concepts without translating between these and everyday concerns. This argument builds on work in philosophy of science and race to postulate a process through which non-scientific notions become (...) part of science. My aim is to make this process available to scrutiny: what I call founding everyday ideas in science is both culturally and epistemologically conditioned. Founding transforms a common idea into one or more scientifically relevant ones, which can be articulated into descriptively thicker and evaluatively deflated terms and enable operationalisation and measurement. The risk of founding however is that it can invisibilise or exclude from realms of scientific scrutiny interpretations that are deemed irrelevant, uninteresting or nonsensical in the domain in question-but which may remain salient for addressing grand-in-scope challenges. The paper considers concepts of "wellbeing" in development economics versus in gerontology to illustrate this process. (shrink)

This paper examines lessons obtained by means of simulations in the form of agent-based models about the norms that are to guide disagreeing scientists. I focus on two types of epistemic and methodological norms: norms that guide one’s attitude towards one’s own theory, and norms that guide one’s attitude towards the opponent’s theory. Concerning I look into ABMs that have been designed to examine the context of peer disagreement. Here I challenge the conclusion that the given ABMs provide a support (...) for the so-called Steadfast Norm, according to which one is epistemically justified in remaining steadfast in their beliefs in face of disagreeing peers. I argue that the proposed models at best provide evidence for a weaker norm, which concerns methodological steadfastness. Concerning I look into ABMs aimed at examining epistemic effects of scientific interaction. Here I argue that the models provide diverging suggestions and that the link between each ABM and the type of represented inquiry is still missing. Moreover, I examine alternative strategies of arguing in favor of the benefits of scientific interaction, relevant for contemporary discussions on scientific pluralism. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer an account of epistemic justification suitable for the context of theory pursuit, that is, for the context in which new scientific ideas, possibly incompatible with the already established theories, emerge and are pursued by scientists. We will frame our account paradigmatically on the basis of one of the influential systems of epistemic justification: Laurence Bonjour’s coherence theory of justification. The idea underlying our approach is to develop a set of criteria which indicate (...) that the pursued system is promising of contributing to the epistemic goal of robustness of scientific knowledge and of developing into a candidate for acceptance. In order to realize this we will (a) adjust the scope of Bonjour’s standards—consistency, inferential density, and explanatory power, and (b) complement them by the requirement of a programmatic character. In this way we allow for the evaluation of the “potential coherence” of the given epistemic system. (shrink)

When one wants to use citizen input to inform policy, what should the standards of informedness on the part of the citizens be? While there are moral reasons to allow every citizen to participate and have a voice on every issue, regardless of education and involvement, designers of participatory assessments have to make decisions about how to structure deliberations as well as how much background information and deliberation time to provide to participants. After assessing different frameworks for the relationship between (...) science and society, we use Philip Kitcher's framework of Well-Ordered Science to propose an epistemic standard on how citizen deliberations should be structured. We explore what potential standards follow from this epistemic framework focusing on significance versus scientific and engineering expertise. We argue that citizens should be tutored on the historical context of why scientific questions became significant and deemed scientifically and socially valuable, and if citizens report that they are capable of weighing in on an issue then they should be able to do so. We explore what this standard can mean by looking at actual citizen deliberations tied to the 2014 NASA ECAST Asteroid Initiative Citizen forums. We code different vignettes of citizens debating alternative approaches for Mars exploration based upon what level of information seemed to be sufficient for them to feel comfortable in making a policy position. The analysis provides recommendations on how to design and assess future citizen assessments grounded in properly conveying the historical value context surrounding a scientific issue and trusting citizens to seek out sufficient information to deliberate. (shrink)

The argument from inductive risk is considered to be one of the strongest challenges for value-free science. A great part of its appeal lies in the idea that even an ideal epistemic agent—the “perfect scientist” or “scientist qua scientist”—cannot escape inductive risk. In this paper, I scrutinize this ambition by stipulating an idealized Bayesian decision setting. I argue that inductive risk does not show that the “perfect scientist” must, descriptively speaking, make non-epistemic value-judgements, at least not in a way that (...) undermines the value-free ideal. However, the argument is more successful in showing that there are cases where the “perfect scientist” should, normatively speaking, use non-epistemic values. I also show that this is possible without creating problems of illegitimate prescription and wishful thinking. Thus, while inductive risk does not refute value-freedom completely, it still represents a powerful critique of value-free science. (shrink)