Bias and values in scientific research

When interests and preferences of researchers or their sponsors cause bias in experimental design, data interpretation or dissemination of research results, we normally think of it as an epistemic shortcoming. But as a result of the debate on science and values, the idea that all ‘extra-scientific’ influences on research could be singled out and separated from pure science is now widely believed to be an illusion. I argue that nonetheless, there are cases in which research is rightfully regarded as epistemologically deficient due to the influence of preferences on its outcomes. I present examples from biomedical research and offer an analysis in terms of social epistemology.     

Judgement aggregation in scientific collaborations: The case for waiving expertise

The fragmentation of academic disciplines forces individuals to specialise. In doing so, they become experts over their narrow area of research. However, ambitious scientific projects, such as the search for gravitational waves, require them to come together and collaborate across disciplinary borders. How should scientists with expertise in different disciplines treat each others’ expert claims? An intuitive answer is that the collaboration should defer to the opinions of experts. In this paper we show that under certain seemingly innocuous assumptions, this intuitive answer gives rise to an impossibility result when it comes to aggregating the beliefs of experts to deliver the beliefs of a collaboration as a whole. We then argue that when experts’ beliefs come into conflict, they should waive their expert status.     

Growing knowledge: Epistemic objects in agricultural extension work

We introduce a novel form of experimental knowledge that is the result of institutionally structured communication practices between farmers and university- and local community-based agronomists (agricultural extension specialists). This form of knowledge is exemplified in these communities’ uses of the concept of grower standard. Grower standard is a widely used but seldom discussed benchmark concept underpinning protocols used within agricultural experiments. It is not a one-size-fits-all standard but the product of local and active interactions between farmers and agricultural extension specialists. Grower standard is in some ways similar to more familiar epistemic objects discussed in philosophy of experiment, such as controls or background conditions. However, we argue that grower standard is epistemically novel, due to how knowledge arising from it is coproduced by farmers and agricultural extension specialists. Further, in the United States, this knowledge coproduction is institutionally structured by federal legislature dating back to the 19th century. We use our analysis of grower standard to focus a discussion of the positionality of the coproducers as well as the epistemic products of this form of knowledge coproduction, and we explore the role extension work plays in shaping agricultural science more broadly.     

Reichenbach on causality in 1923: Scientific inference,coordination, and confirmation

In The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge (1920b), Reichenbach developed an original account of cognition as coordination of formal structures to empirical ones. One of the most salient features of this account is that it is explicitly not a top-down type of coordination, and in fact it is crucially “directed” by the empirical side. Reichenbach called this feature “the mutuality of coordination” but, in that work, did not elaborate sufficiently on how this is supposed to work. In a paper that he wrote less than two years afterwards (but that he published only in 1932), “The Principle of Causality and the Possibility of its Empirical Confirmation” (1923/1932), he described what seems to be a model for this idea, now within an analysis of causality that results in an account of scientific inference. Recent reassessments of his early proposal do not seem to capture the extent of Reichenbach's original worries. The present paper analyses Reichenbach's early account and suggests a new way to look at his early work. According to it, we perform measurements, individuate parameters, collect and analyse data, by using a “constructive” approach, such as the one with which we formulate and test hypotheses, which paradigmatically requires some simplicity assumptions. Reichenbach's attempt to account for all these aspects in 1923 was obviously limited and naive in many ways, but it shows that, in his view, there were multiple ways in which the idea of “constitution” is embodied in scientific practice.     

Subjectivity and emotion in scientific research

A persistent puzzle for philosophers of science is the well-documented appeal made by scientists to their aesthetic emotions in the course of scientific research. Emotions are usually viewed as irremediably subjective, and thus of no epistemological interest. Yet, by denying an epistemic role for scientists’ emotional dispositions, philosophers find themselves in the awkward position of ignoring phenomena which scientists themselves often insist are of importance. This paper suggests a possible solution to this puzzle by challenging the wholesale identification of emotion with subjectivity. The proposed method is a naturalistic and externalist one, calling for empirical investigation into the intersubjective processes by which scientists’ emotional dispositions become refined and attuned to specific objects of attention. The proposal is developed through a critical discussion of Michael Polanyi’s theory of scientific passions, as well as plant geneticist Barbara McClintock’s celebrated “feeling for the organism.”     

关于地方科研院所重点实验室建设发展的战略思考——以广西科研院所重点实验室建设为例

以广西科研院所重点实验室建设为例,概述其建设在引导整合优化科技资源配置,培育区域科研特色优势、创新队伍建设和增强科技创新能力等方面取得的成效与启示;分析并针对其宏观管理、科研及实验室条件建设存在的问题,提出未来建设发展战略地位、发展目标与使命、发展方向与思路、发展战略与策略。     

Physicochemical profiling in drug research: a brief survey of the state-of-the-art of experimental techniques

This review begins with a general presentation of the new paradigm of drug discovery, with its emphasis on the rapid identification and elimination of compounds with unsuitable physicochemical and pharmacokinetic properties. The focus of the paper is on the various experimental methods used to determine such key physicochemical properties as ionization, lipophilicity and distribution in isotropic and anisotropic systems, solubility, and permeability across artificial membranes. Both traditional and high-throughput methods are presented and their limits highlighted. The text concludes with the trade-off between quantity/speed in high-throughput screening techniques versus greater data quality in the more labor-intensive methods. Received 23 April 2002; received after revision 25 June 2002; accepted 11 July 2002 RID="*" ID="*"Corresponding author.