Scientific disagreements are an important catalyst for scientific progress. But what happens when scientists disagree amidst times of crisis, when we need quick yet reliable policy guidance? In this paper we provide a normative account for how scientists facing disagreement in the context of ‘fast science’ should respond, and how policy makers should evaluate such disagreement. Starting from an argumentative, pragma-dialectic account of scientific controversies, we argue for the importance of ‘higher-order evidence’ (HOE) and we (...) specify desiderata for scientifically relevant HOE. We use our account to analyze the controversy about the aerosol transmission of COVID-19. (shrink)

Scientific disagreements sometimes persist even if scientists fully share results of their research. In this paper we develop an agent-based model to study the impact of diverging diagnostic values scientists may assign to the evidence, given their different background assumptions, on the emergence of polarization in the scientific community. Scientists are represented as Bayesian updaters for whom the diagnosticity of evidence is given by the Bayes factor. Our results suggest that an initial disagreement on the diagnostic value (...) of evidence can, but does not necessarily, lead to polarization, depending on the sample size of the performed studies and the confidence interval within which scientists share their opinions. In particular, the more data scientists share,the more likely it is that the community will end up polarized. (shrink)

Inconsistencies between scientific theories have been studied, by and large, from the perspective of paraconsistent logic. This approach considered the formal properties of theories and the structure of inferences one can legitimately draw from theories. However, inconsistencies can be also analysed from the perspective of modelling practices, in particular how modelling practices may lead scientists to form opinions and attitudes that are different, but not necessarily inconsistent. In such cases, it is preferable to talk about disagreement, rather than (...) inconsistency. Disagreement may originate in, or concern, a number of epistemic, socio-political or psychological factors. In this paper, we offer an account of the ‘loci and reasons’ for disagreement at different stages of the scientific process. We then present a controversial episode in the health sciences: the studies on hypercholesterolemia. The causes and effects of high levels of cholesterol in blood have been long and hotly debated, to the point of deserving the name of ‘cholesterol wars’; the debate, to be sure, isn’t settled yet. In this contribution, we focus on some selected loci and reasons for disagreement that occurred between 1920 and 1994 in the studies on hypercholesterolemia. We hope that our analysis of ‘loci and reasons’ for disagreement may shed light on the cholesterol wars, and possibly on other episodes of scientific disagreement. (shrink)

Scientists often diverge widely when choosing between research programs. This can seem to be rooted in disagreements about which of several theories, competing to address shared questions or phenomena, is currently the most epistemically or explanatorily valuable—i.e. most successful. But many such cases are actually more directly rooted in differing judgments of pursuit-worthiness, concerning which theory will be best down the line, or which addresses the most significant data or questions. Using case studies from 16th-century astronomy and 20th-century geology and (...) biology, I argue that divergent theory choice is thus often driven by considerations of scientific process, even where direct epistemic or explanatory evaluation of its final products appears more relevant. Broadly following Kuhn’s analysis of theoretical virtues, I suggest that widely shared criteria for pursuit-worthiness function as imprecise, mutually-conflicting values. However, even Kuhn and others sensitive to pragmatic dimensions of theory ‘acceptance’, including the virtue of fruitfulness, still commonly understate the role of pursuit-worthiness—especially by exaggerating the impact of more present-oriented virtues, or failing to stress how ‘competing’ theories excel at addressing different questions or data. This framework clarifies the nature of the choice and competition involved in theory choice, and the role of alternative theoretical virtues. (shrink)

The article addresses the question of how should scientific peers revise their beliefs (if at all) upon recognized disagreement. After presenting the basics of peer disagreement in sections 1 and 2, we focus, in section 3, on a concrete case of scientific disagreement, to wit, the dispute over the evidential status of randomized control trials in medical practice. The examination of this case motivates the idea that some scientific disagreements permit a steadfast reaction. In (...) section 4, we support this conclusion by providing a normative argument in the same direction; if we are correct, typical reasons for conciliation are absent in this kind of scientific disagreements. (shrink)

The timing of the origin of flowering plants (Angiosperm) is hotly debated. It has been suggested that the disagreement between the fossil record of angiosperm origin strongly conflicts with the origin estimates generated by molecular clocks. I argue that this conflict reveals lessons about whether or under what conditions scientific disagreement is likely to bear fruit. Specifically, I point to issues of evidence quality and social epistemic structures which deserve more attention in understanding the productivity of (...) class='Hi'>disagreement. (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)

Chemistry, especially its historical practice, has in the philosophy of science in recent decades attracted more and more attention, influencing the turn from the vision of science as a timeless logic-centred system of statements towards the history- and practice-centred approach. The problem of pluralism in science has become a popular topic in that context. Hasok Chang’s “active normative epistemic pluralism” manifested in his book Is water H2O? Evidence, realism and pluralism, pursuing an integrated study of history and philosophy of science, (...) has provoked quite a widespread debate. It provides a good opportunity to discuss the topical philosophical issue of the nature of disagreements. The differences among disagreements in different domains have been pointed out in the disagreement literature. It has been noticed that in mathematics and science consensus is established more clearly than in philosophy where it remains largely unachievable. However, this conclusion is derived in the context of traditional logic-centred view of science. The aim of this paper is to consider the different nature of disagreements in science and in philosophy in the context of the history- and practice-centred approach. The analysis is focused on the critique of the received view of the Chemical Revolution which played quite a central role in Chang’s becoming a pluralist about science. Unlike Chang, however, a modified Kuhnian paradigm-conception of science and scientific revolutions is defended. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to discuss the nature of disagreement in scientific ontologies in the light of case studies from biology and cognitive science. I argue that disagreements in scientific ontologies are usually not about purely factual issues but involve both verbal and normative aspects. Furthermore, I try to show that this partly non-factual character of disagreement in scientific ontologies does not lead to a radical deflationism but is compatible with a “normative ontological (...) realism.” Finally, I argue that the case studies from the empirical sciences challenge contemporary metaontological accounts that insist on exactly one true way of “carving nature at its joints.”. (shrink)

Our main aim is to discuss the topic of scientific controversies in the context of a recent issue that has been the centre of attention of many epistemologists though not of argumentation theorists or philosophers of science, namely the ethics of belief in face of rational disagreement. We think that the consideration of scientific examples may be of help in the epistemological debate on rational disagreement, making clear some of the deficiencies of the discussion as it (...) has been produced until now. Another central claim of our paper is that the common view according to which beliefs (and changes of beliefs) may exhibit and commonly exhibit a deontic status can be clarified in the light of Brandom’s approach to normative pragmatics and the pragmatic theories of argumentation that also have a normative character (here our example is van Eemeren’s pragma-dialectics). Our article highlights the similarities between both projects, similarities that to our knowledge were not noticed before. Finally, an important point of the article is that we need to take contextual elements into account in order to develop an adequate theory of disagreement. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze some disagreements about scientific ontology as cases of disagreement between epistemic peers. I maintain that the particularities of these cases are better understood if epistemic peerhood is relativized to a perspective-like index of epistemic goals and values. Taking the debate on the metaphysics of laws of nature as a case study, I explore the limits and possibilities of a trans-perspective assessment of positions regarding scientific ontology.

In recent years, disagreement as a philosophical topic has started to attract considerable attention, giving rise to rich debates not only on the logical nature of disagreement but also on specifically political and religious forms of it. Moreover, in some recent documents of the Catholic Church, we see corresponding attempts at understanding religious pluralism, dialogue among religions, and doctrinal tensions that sometimes arise within various parts of the Church itself. In such debates, many assume that the realm of (...) the humanities is clearly distinct from that of the natural sciences and, as a consequence, the dynamics of disagreement within the two realms is distinct as well. This paper challenges this assumption. Sociological studies of science are undermining the idea of a strict dichotomy between the dynamics of disagreement within the sciences and that within other areas of inquiry. Engaging in comparative methodology, this paper critically evaluates the dynamics of ecclesial disagreement and the associated idea of doctrinal authority by comparing them with what happens in the sciences. (shrink)

Epistemic peer disagreement raises interesting questions, both in epistemology and in philosophy of science. When is it reasonable to defer to the opinion of others, and when should we hold fast to our original beliefs? What can we learn from the fact that an epistemic peer disagrees with us? A question that has received relatively little attention in these debates is the value of epistemic peer disagreement—can it help us to further epistemic goals, and, if so, how? We (...) investigate this through a recent case in paleoanthropology: the debate on the taxonomic status of Homo floresiensis remains unresolved, with some authors arguing the fossils represent a novel hominin species, and others claiming that they are Homo sapiens with congenital growth disorders. Our examination of this case in the recent history of science provides insights into the value of peer disagreement, indicating that it is especially valuable if one does not straightaway defer to a peer’s conclusions, but nevertheless remains open to a peer’s evidence and arguments. (shrink)

O debate epistemológico ocorrido recentemente sobre o que veio a ser chamado de "o problema do desacordo racional" retomou a discussão, presente no ceticismo antigo, relativa ao significado epistêmico do desacordo. Similar ao cético pirrônico, alguns autores envolvidos no debate contemporâneo argumentaram que em contextos controversos, onde há desacordo sobre alguma questão específica, a atitude racional de ambos os lados do debate é a suspensão do juízo. Para esses autores, tal veredito deve ser estendido a diversas áreas do conhecimento humano, (...) resultando num ceticismo local relativo a tópicos controversos. Este artigo trata dessa problemática no campo científico. Em diversos episódios de controvérsia científica, cientistas exibem desacordos persistentes em que cada lado do debate mantém sua posição em face do desacordo. Nesse contexto, coloca-se a pergunta pela possibilidade do desacordo racional entre cientistas considerados pares epistêmicos. A partir da característica estrutural e dinâmica da ciência, argumenta-se que o desacordo racional entre cientistas é possível. Ou seja, diferente do que sustentam autores contemporâneos, no contexto científico o significado epistêmico do desacordo não é, necessariamente, o agnosticismo. Recent epistemological debate about what came to be called "the problem of rational disagreement" resumed the discussion, present among the ancient skeptics, on the epistemic significance of disagreement. Similar to the Pyrrhonian skeptic, some authors involved in the contemporary debate argued that in controversial contexts, where there is disagreement on some specific matter, the rational attitude of both sides of the debate is the suspension of judgment. For these authors, such a verdict should be extended to several fields of human knowledge, resulting in local skepticism regarding controversial topics. This article addresses this problematic in the scientific field. In several episodes of scientific controversy, scientists exhibit persistent disagreements where each side of the debate maintains his position in the face of disagreement. In this context, the question of the possibility of rational disagreement among scientists considered epistemic peers arises. From the structural and dynamic characteristics of science, it is argued that rational disagreement between scientists is possible. In other words, unlike the claims of contemporary authors, in the scientific context the epistemic significance of disagreement is not, necessarily, agnosticism. (shrink)

Consensus and disagreement play important roles in the practice, development, and dissemination of science. This raises a host of important philosophical questions. Some of these issues are conceptual: When, exactly, does a scientific agreement count as a consensus? And in what sense, if any, is disagreement the opposite of consensus? Other questions concern the role of consensus and disagreement in the development of science: For example, is consensus on central methodological issues and assumptions necessary for (...) class='Hi'>scientific work to proceed normally? Yet other questions are epistemological: From a layperson’s perspective, does the presence of a scientific consensus ever indicate that the relevant theory is probably correct? If so, what are the conditions under which it does so? Relatedly, should scientists themselves also defer to the consensus position among their peers whenever such a consensus exists? Or should they instead evaluate consensus theories for themselves, or even actively aim to dissent against such theories? (shrink)

In recent years, several philosophers have argued that their discipline makes no progress (or not enough in comparison to the “hard sciences”). A key argument for this pessimistic position appeals to the purported fact that philosophers widely and systematically disagree on most major philosophical issues. In this paper, we take a step back from the debate about progress in philosophy specifically and consider the general question: How (if at all) would disagreement within a discipline undermine that discipline’s progress? We (...) reject two arguments from disagreement to a lack of progress, and spell out two accounts of progress on which progress is compatible with disagreements that persist or increase over time. However, we also argue that disagreement can undermine our ability to tell which developments are progressive (and to what degree). So, while disagreement can indeed be a threat to progress, the precise nature of the threat has not been appreciated. (shrink)

Recent philosophical investigations on the topic of vaccination research and policy have highlighted the importance of public trust for the success of vaccination programs. This paper will look at the problem of expert disagreement and trustworthiness in the case of vaccine research. Giubilini, Gur-Arie and Jamrozik (2025) have argued for a notion of trustworthiness involving virtues of experts, such as epistemic humility and transparency in order to deal with situations of uncertainty, when there is a minority of scientists disagreeing (...) with the majority consensus. Using this account as a starting point, I will investigate the conditions necessary for the trustworthiness of institutions involved in vaccine research under uncertainty. I will highlight that, in addition to the virtues of individual researchers, certain structural features of the research community are required. More specifically, I will make the case for conditions that enable a fair resolution of disagreement: involving all relevant members of the scientific community and seeking solutions that adequately respond to the public’s needs and interests. (shrink)

Despite their many virtues, democracies suffer from well-known problems with high levels of voter ignorance. Such ignorance, one might think, leads democracies to occasionally produce bad outcomes. Proponents of epistocracy claim that allocating comparatively greater amounts of political power to citizens who possess more politically relevant knowledge may help us to mitigate the bad effects of voter ignorance. An important challenge to epistocracy rejects the claim that we can reliably identify a subset of citizens who possess more politically relevant knowledge (...) than others. Roughly put, such knowledge should involve knowledge of various politically relevant social-scientific facts. But since the social sciences are mired in controversy, it’s not clear what the politically relevant facts are. Accordingly, we cannot definitively say of some citizens that they possess more politically relevant knowledge than others. Call this the Argument from Political Disagreement. In this paper I respond to the Argument from Political Disagreement. First, I argue that it conflates social-scientific knowledge with politically relevant knowledge. Even if there were no uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge, there is much uncontroversial politically relevant knowledge. Second, I establish the importance of such non-social-scientific knowledge for political decision-making. I conclude that this knowledge constitutes the minimal body of knowledge which epistocrats need to make their case. (shrink)

It is often suggested that disagreement among scientific experts is a reason not to trust those experts, even about matters on which they are in agreement. In direct opposition to this view, I argue here that the very fact that there is disagreement among experts on a given issue provides a positive reason for non-experts to trust that the experts really are justified in their attitudes towards consensus theories. I show how this line of thought can be (...) spelled out in three distinct frameworks for non-deductive reasoning: namely, Bayesian Confirmation Theory, Inference to the Best Explanation, and Inferential Robustness Analysis. (shrink)

There are many reasons why scientific experts may mask disagreement and endorse a position publicly as “jointly accepted.” In this paper I consider the inner workings of a group of scientists charged with deciding not only a technically difficult issue, but also a matter of social and political importance: the maximum acceptable dose of radiation. I focus on how, in this real world situation, concerns with credibility, authority, and expertise shaped the process by which this group negotiated the (...) competing virtues of reaching consensus versus reporting accurately the nature and degree of disagreement among them. (shrink)

Recent accounts of epistemic democracy aim to show that in some qualified sense, democratic institutions have a tendency to produce reasonable outcomes. Epistemic democrats aim to offer such accounts without presupposing any narrow, controversial view of what the outcomes of democratic procedures should be, much as a good justification of a particular scientific research design does not presuppose the hypothesis that the research aims to test. The article considers whether this aim is achievable. It asks, in particular, whether accounts (...) of epistemic democracy can be reconciled with the commonly held view that disagreement about which laws and policies should be enacted is a fundamental, permanent feature of democratic politics and imposes constraints on how we justify democratic procedures. (shrink)

The fact that philosophy has not made much progress in finding answers to its big questions is often demonstrated with a comparison to natural sciences. Some have recently argued that the state of progress in philosophy is not so different than the sciences: there are many unresolved big questions in the sciences too, and philosophy has made progress on its smaller questions just like the sciences. I argue that this comparison is misleading: the situation in the two fields looks similar (...) only if we focus on unresolved scientific questions that have philosophical import. The sciences have made progress on many questions that are significant but that are not ‘big’ in a philosophical sense, while philosophy has made less progress on its own significant questions. Moreover, ‘smaller’ questions in the sciences are significant in themselves, while smaller questions in philosophy do not have much significance beyond their contribution to the bigger debates. I conclude with brief remarks about what underlies the disparity between the two fields: to understand the slow pace of progress in philosophy we should pay attention to factors that are at the intersection of the nature of philosophical questions, current philosophical methodology and the sociology of academic philosophy. (shrink)

Recently, invasion biologists have argued that some of the skepticism expressed in the scientific and lay literatures about the risks of invasive species and other aspects of the consensus within invasion biology is a kind of science denialism. This paper presents an argument that, while some claims made by skeptics of invasion biology share important features with paradigm cases of science denialism, others express legitimate ethical concerns that, even if one disagrees, should not be dismissed as denialist. Further, this (...) case illustrates a more general point about ethical disagreement within sciences like invasion biology that constitutively pursue non-epistemic goals and values. While philosophers of science have argued that epistemic disagreement within science can be productive as heterogeneous epistemic communities “hedge their bets,” the case of invasion biology shows how non-epistemic or ethical disagreement within sciences, while carrying significant risks, can also be epistemically and non-epistemically valuable. (shrink)

Scientific researchers welcome disagreement as a way of furthering epistemic aims. Religious communities, by contrast, tend to regard it as a potential threat to their beliefs. But I argue that religious disagreement can help achieve religious epistemic aims. I do not argue this by comparing science and religion, however. For scientific hypotheses are ideally held with a scholarly neutrality, and my aim is to persuade those who arecommittedto religious beliefs that religious disagreement can be epistemically (...) beneficial for them too. (shrink)

The debate between scientific realism and anti-realism remains at a stalemate, making reconciliation seem hopeless. Yet, important work remains: exploring a common ground, even if only to uncover deeper points of disagreement and, ideally, to benefit both sides of the debate. I propose such a common ground. Specifically, many anti-realists, such as instrumentalists, have yet to seriously engage with Sober's call to justify their preferred version of Ockham's razor through a positive account. Meanwhile, realists face a similar challenge: (...) providing a non-circular explanation of how their version of Ockham's razor connects to truth. The common ground I propose addresses these challenges for both sides; the key is to leverage the idea that everyone values some truths and to draw on insights from scientific fields that study scientific inference—namely, statistics and machine learning. This common ground also isolates a distinctively epistemic root of the irreconcilability in the realism debate. (shrink)

In the field of placebo studies residual disagreement about the terminology ‘placebo’ and ‘placebo effect’ still persists. We differentiate between the conceptualization of placebos in clinical trials; and placebo effects understood as a psychobiological phenomenon. With respect to the latter, we argue that a scientific ‘placebo paradigm’ has emerged, indicating that—at least among placebo scientists—there exists relatively stable consensus about how to conceive of placebo effects. We claim that existence of a placebo paradigm does not protect concepts from (...) revision; nonetheless, we argue that scientific progress is dependent on, and guided by relative conceptual stability. Therefore, to mount persuasive arguments for conceptual revision in respect of ‘placebo effects’ we argue, critics either need to defend the claim that a placebo paradigm is not underway, or that there are major scientific failings in respect of it. With these considerations in mind we examine three alternative proposals for conceptual reform: Grünbaum/Howick’s relativity models of placebo concepts; Moerman/Brody’s meaning response; and Nunn/Turner’s proposal for conceptual eliminativism. We derive two conclusions from this evaluation. First, we conclude that no convincing arguments have so far been presented for conceptual overhaul of ‘placebo effects.’ Notwithstanding this analysis, we conclude that refinement of this concept is likely. Second, we agree with Turner and Nunn that the term ‘placebo’ in the context of randomized controlled trials remains a source of confusion for many researchers, risking the design and scientific integrity of clinical findings. Therefore, in these contexts, replacing the term ‘placebo’ with ‘control’ is justified. (shrink)

Summary The argument of this paper is (1) that, contrary to what is often thought, there are cases of disagreement among scientists concerning the relative acceptability of theories which do not turn on nonrational or extra-scientific considerations, (2) that agreement cannot be secured without adversely affecting the scientific enterprise as we know it, and (3) that disagreement can be accommodated within a theory of scientific rationality and progress based on the idea that the relative acceptability (...) of scientific theories is a function of their relative problem-solving effectiveness.The diversity of our opinions does not proceed from some men being more rational than others but solely from the fact that our thoughts pass through diverse channels and the same objects are not considered by all.’ Descartes, Discourse on Method. (shrink)

Psychological-epistemic accounts take scientific progress to consist in the development of some psychological-epistemic attitude. Disagreements over what the relevant attitude is – true belief, knowledge, or understanding – divide proponents of thesemantic,epistemic,andnoeticaccounts of scientific progress, respectively. Proponents of all such accounts face a common challenge. On the face of it, only individuals have psychological attitudes. However, as I argue in what follows, increases in individual true belief, knowledge, and understanding are neither necessary nor sufficient for scientific progress. (...) Rather than being fatal to the semantic, epistemic, and noetic accounts, this objection shows that these accounts are most plausible when they take the psychological states relevant to scientific progress to be states of communities, rather than individuals. I draw on recent work in social epistemology to develop two ways in which communities can be the bearers of irreducible psychological-epistemic states. Each way yields a strategy by which proponents of one of the psychological-epistemic accounts might attempt to account for the social dimensions of scientific progress. While I present serious reasons for concern about the first strategy, I argue that the second strategy, at least, offers a promising path forward for a psychological-epistemic account of scientific progress. (shrink)

Neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism affect one-eighth of all U.S. newborns. Yet scientists, accessing the same data and using Bradford-Hill guidelines, draw different conclusions about the causes of these disorders. They disagree about the pesticide-harm hypothesis, that typical United States prenatal pesticide exposure can cause neurodevelopmental damage. This article aims to discover whether apparent scientific disagreement about this hypothesis might be partly attributable to questionable interpretations of the Bradford-Hill causal guidelines. Key scientists, who claim to employ Bradford-Hill causal (...) guidelines, yet fail to accept the pesticide-harm hypothesis, fall into errors of trimming the guidelines, requiring statistically-significant data, and ignoring semi-experimental evidence. However, the main scientists who accept the hypothesis appear to commit none of these errors. Although settling disagreement over the pesticide-harm hypothesis requires extensive analysis, this article suggests that at least some conflicts may arise because of questionable interpretations of the guidelines. (shrink)

Do scientists agree? It is not only unrealistic to suppose that they do, but probably just as unrealistic to think that they ought to. Agreement is for what is already established scientific history. The current and vital ongoing aspect of science consists of an active and often heated interaction of data, ideas and minds, in a process one might call "creative disagreement." The "scientific method" is largely derived from a reconstruction based on selective hindsight. What actually goes (...) on has much less the flavor of a systematic method than of trial and error, conjecture, chance, competition and even dialectic. (shrink)

There is a large gap between the specialized knowledge of scientists and laypeople’s understanding of the sciences. The novice-expert problem arises when non-experts are confronted with (real or apparent) scientific disagreement, and when they don’t know whom to trust. Because they are not able to gauge the content of expert testimony, they rely on imperfect heuristics to evaluate the trustworthiness of scientists. This paper investigates why some bodies of scientific knowledge become polarized along political fault lines. Laypeople (...) navigate conflicting epistemic and social demands in their acceptance of scientific testimony; this might explain their deference to scientific fringe theories, which often goes together with denying established scientific theories. I evaluate three approaches to mitigate denialism: improving the message, improving the messenger, and improving the environment in which the message is conveyed. (shrink)

-/- Species lists play an important role in biology and practical domains like conservation, legislation, biosecurity and trade regulation. However, their effective use by non-specialist scientific and societal users is sometimes hindered by disagreements between competing lists. While it is well-known that such disagreements exist, it remains unclear how prevalent they are, what their nature is, and what causes them. In this study, we argue that these questions should be investigated using methods based on taxon concept rather than methods (...) based on Linnaean names, and use such a concept-based method to quantify disagreement about bird classification and investigate its relation to research effort. We found that there was disagreement about 38% of all groups of birds recognized as a species, more than three times as much as indicated by previous measures. Disagreement about the delimitation of bird groups was the most common kind of conflict, outnumbering disagreement about nomenclature and disagreement about rank. While high levels of conflict about rank were associated with lower levels of research effort, this was not the case for conflict about the delimitation of bird groups. This suggests that taxonomic disagreement cannot be resolved simply by increasing research effort. (shrink)

This paper seeks to refute one variant of a view that scientific disciplines are intrinsically more objective than non?scientific ones, and that this greater objectivity explains increasing social agreement about the findings of science, by contrast with increasing disagreement about the findings of, e.g., ethics. Such a view rests on the implicit assumption that all forms of discourse aim equally at the generation of consensus; instead, differing degrees of consensus in different disciplines are often explicable by sociological, (...) not metaphysical, differences in the disciplines concerned. A detailed example is presented of a discipline (Indian folk dietary medicine) in which considerable lack of consensus is observed, for sociologically explicable reasons, in spite of its claims to scientific objectivity. It is concluded that disciplines may differ in the degree of truth of the claims advanced in them, and in the importance of consensus among their social aims. But neither of these is to be explained by differences in respect of some independent property of objectivity. (shrink)

In this paper, I highlight the importance of models and social structure to Kuhn’s conception of science, and then use these elements to sketch a Kuhnian classification of scientific controversies. I show that several important sorts of non-revolutionary scientific disagreements were both identified and analyzed in Structure. Ultimately, I contend that Kuhn’s conception of science supports an approach to scientific controversies that has the potential to both reveal the importantly different sources of scientific disagreements and to (...) provide useful resources for understanding their endurance and eventual termination. Several brief examples are used to suggest the power of a Kuhnian analysis and this analysis is contrasted with several more contemporary alternatives. (shrink)

Scientific authorship serves to identify and acknowledge individuals who “contribute significantly” to published research. However, specific authorship norms and practices often differ within and across disciplines, labs, and cultures. As a consequence, authorship disagreements are commonplace in team research. This study aims to better understand the prevalence of authorship disagreements, those factors that may lead to disagreements, as well as the extent and nature of resulting misbehavior. Methods include an international online survey of researchers who had published from 2011 (...) to 2015. Of the 6673 who completed the main questions pertaining to authorship disagreement and misbehavior, nearly half reported disagreements regarding authorship naming; and discipline, rank, and gender had significant effects on disagreement rates. Paradoxically, researchers in multidisciplinary teams that typically reflect a range of norms and values, were less likely to have faced disagreements regarding authorship. Respondents reported having witnessed a wide range of misbehavior including: instances of hostility, undermining of a colleague’s work during meetings/talks, cutting corners on research, sabotaging a colleague’s research, or producing fraudulent work to be more competitive. These findings suggest that authorship disputes may contribute to an unhealthy competitive dynamic that can undermine researchers’ wellbeing, team cohesion, and scientific integrity. (shrink)

Scientific realists argue that a good track record of multi-agent, and multiple method, validation of empirical claims is itself evidence that those claims, at least partially and approximately, reflect ways nature actually is independent of the ways we conceptualize it. Constructivists contend that successes in validating empirical claims only suffice to establish that our ways of modelling the world, our “constructions,” are useful and adequate for beings like us. This essay presents a thought experiment in which beings like us (...) intersubjectively validate claims about properties of particular things in nature under conditions in which those beings have profoundly different personal phenomenological experiences of those properties. I submit that the thought experiment scenario parallels our actual situation, and argue that this shows that successes in intersubjectively validating empirical claims are indeed enough to claim victory for the realist. More specifically, I champion a variation of realism that marries Ronald Giere’s brand of ‘perspectival realism’ with Philip Kitcher’s ‘real realism,’ and posits that causal relations between ourselves and properties instantiated in nature ground our references to the relevant properties even though our conceptions of them are perspective relative. (shrink)

This article focuses on the role considerations about the history of science play in philosophical debates about disagreement in science. First the article shortly reflects on the relationship between history and philosophy of science. Second, the article focuses on figuring out the impact of Kuhn’s and Feyerabend’s much discussed claims about incommensurability on the question of disagreement. It is shown that incommensurability introduces a plethora of potential issues of disagreement in science. The article closes by some remarks (...) about using examples from the history of science in the debate about scientific realism: the same cases of disagreement in the history of science can be interpreted in a realist or anti-realist way. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate whether and to what extent scientists (e.g. inquirers such as epidemiologists or virologists) can have rational and fruitful disagreement with what we call post-enquirers (e.g. conspiratorial anti-vaxxers) on topics of scientific relevance such as the safety and efficacy of vaccines. In order to accomplish this aim, we will rely and expand on the epistemological framework developed in detail in Ferrari & Moruzzi (2021) to study the underlying normative profile of enquiry and post-enquiry. We (...) take it that our analysis provides an effective explanation of why standard argumentative strategies such as fact-checking and debunking cannot work in the context of disagreement between scientists and denialists unless they are coupled with a discussion of the values that are endorsed by the scientific community. (shrink)

Relativism is often motivated in terms of certain types of disagreement. In this paper, we survey the philosophical debates over two such types: faultless disagreement in the case of gustatory conflict, and fundamental disagreement in the case of epistemic conflict. Each of the two discussions makes use of a implicit conception of judgement: brute judgement in the case of faultless disagreement, and rule-governed judgement in the case of fundamental disagreement. We show that the prevalent accounts (...) work with unreasonably high levels of idealization. We defend two claims. First, philosophical discussions of disagreement need to be de-idealized. Second, once a less idealized account of disagreement is available, both our conception of judgement and our understanding of relativism need to be revised. Our example is a case study in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s classic Leviathan and the Air-Pump. This case study gives a less idealized account of disagreement that conceptualizes judgements as situated. We argue that this conception can and should be applied to cases of gustatory and epistemic disagreement. The payoff will be a reformulation of relativism in terms of rationally resolvable yet contingent disagreements. (shrink)

Science progresses through debate and disagreement, and scientific controversies play a crucial role in the growth of scientific knowledge. However, not all controversies and disagreements are progressive in science. Sometimes, controversies can be pseudoscientific; in fact, bogus controversies, and what seem like genuine scientific disagreements, can be a distortion of science set up by non-scientific actors. Bogus controversies are detrimental to science because they can hinder scientific progress and eventually bias science-based decisions. The first (...) goal of this paper is to elucidate the distinction between bogus and genuine scientific controversies and provide a qualitative methodology, based on the literature on expertise, for distinguishing between the two. We will illustrate six epistemic criteria for distinguishing bogus from genuine scientific debates in science and medicine. This heuristic strategy applies directly to scientific reports, and it relies mostly on the social structure of science. We will then apply the above criteria to a case study: the controversy over statins, which are widely prescribed drugs for reducing the level of cholesterol and preventing cardiovascular disease. (shrink)

This paper attends to two main tasks. First, I introduce the notion of perspectival disagreement in science. Second, I relate perspectival disagreement in science to the broader issue of realism about science: how to maintain realist ontological commitments in the face of perspectival disagreement among scientists? I argue that often enough perspectival disagreement is not at the level of the scientific knowledge claims but rather of the methodological and justificatory principles. I introduce and clarify the (...) notion of ‘agreeing-whilst-perspectivally-disagreeing’ with an episode from the history of modern physics: namely, how we came to agree about the electric charge as a minimal natural unit despite different scientific perspectives and associated data-to-phenomena inferences available for it in the period 1897–1906. (shrink)

Feyerabend is infamous for his defense of pluralism, which he extends to every topic he discusses. Disagreement, a by-product of this pluralism, becomes a sign of flourishing critical communities. In Feyerabend’s political works, he extends this pluralism from science to democratic societies and incorporates his earlier work on scientific methodology into a procedure for designing just policy. However, a description and analysis of Feyerabend’s conception of disagreement is lacking. In this paper, I reconstruct and assess Feyerabend’s conception (...) of disagreement, with a particular emphasis on the role of experts, and its role in the formation of science policy. I go on to assess this argument in light of recent literature on manufactured disagreement on politically contentious science policy. I conclude by suggesting some prospects and problems for de-idealizing Feyerabend’s position on disagreement to see whether it may be plausibly implemented. (shrink)

Science education is generally perceived as a key facilitator in cultivating a scientifically literate society. In the last decade, however, this conventional wisdom has been challenged by evidence that greater scientific literacy and critical thinking skills may in fact inadvertently aggravate polarization on scientific matters in the public sphere. Supporting an alternative “scientific update hypothesis,” in a series of studies (total N = 2087), we show that increased science’s epistemology literacy might have consequential population-level effects on the (...) public’s alignment with scientific results. In one exploratory study and a pre-registered national online survey, we first show that understanding scientific epistemology predicts refusal of pseudoscientific beliefs and higher scores in a methodology of science test. We also find and replicate a propensity for epistemologically literate citizens to endorse the norm of belief updating and the communicated scientific consensus following both ideologically congruent and incongruent scientific results. Notably, after 2 months of first being presented with scientific results on politically controversial issues, a one standard deviation higher score in epistemological literacy is associated with a 14% increase in the odds of individuals switching their beliefs to align with the scientifically communicated consensus. We close by discussing how, on the face of ideological incongruity, a general understanding of scientific epistemology might foster the acceptance of scientific results, and we underscore the need for a more nuanced appreciation of how education, public comprehension of scientific knowledge, and the dynamics of polarization intersect in the public sphere. (shrink)

Inter- and transdisciplinary research arise as necessary conditions to address societal problems. These collaborations, by definition, encompass experts from distinct domains, demanding an epistemic dependence between researchers. In such cases where, additionally, an epistemic asymmetry exists, this might then lead to tensions and enhance epistemic disagreements. How should scholars behave when in peer disagreement? On the one hand, in philosophical literature on the epistemology of disagreement, normative accounts about how one should respond when facing an epistemic disagreement (...) are usually built upon hypothetical scenarios that do not portray real-life disagreements in scientific settings. On the other hand, Science and Technology Studies (STS) research that deals with academic and scientific disagreement typically uses a descriptive, empirical approach. We argue that before a normative account of responses to disagreement is developed, we need to understand how academic disagreement actually takes place in real interdisciplinary scientific practice. In this chapter, we address a case of academic disagreement within an interdisciplinary research team in Brazil during their development of a framework for transdisciplinary collaboration. Data was collected with ethnographic tools, while the analytic perspective of the investigation is grounded on recent debates about research groups in social epistemology and in the epistemology of disagreement. We will show that an interplay between trust and disagreement is required for dealing with inter- and transdisciplinary research practices. We hold that shedding light on disagreements and communications between collaborators may improve the epistemic performance of collaborative research teams by refining the dynamics of inter- and transdisciplinary investigations. (shrink)

Evidence based-policy (EBP) is a popular research paradigm in the applied social sciences and within government agencies. Informally, EBP represents an explicit commitment to applying scientific methods to public affairs, in contrast to ideologically-driven or merely intuitive “common-sense” approaches to public policy. More specifically, the EBP paradigm places great weight on the results of experimental research designs, especially randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and systematic literature reviews that place evidential weight on experimental results. One hope is that such research designs (...) and approaches to analysing the scientific literature are sufficiently robust that they can settle what really ‘works’ in public policy. Can EBP succeed in displacing reliance on domain-specific expertise? On our account, this is seldom, if ever, the case. The key reason for this is that underlying this approach is generally an appeal to argument by induction, which always requires further assumptions to underwrite its validity, and if not induction, some other argument form that also requires assumptions that are very often not validated for the case at hand. (shrink)

Policymakers who seek to make scientifically informed decisions are constantly confronted by scientific uncertainty and expert disagreement. This thesis asks: how can policymakers rationally respond to expert disagreement and scientific uncertainty? This is a work of non-ideal theory, which applies formal philosophical tools developed by ideal theorists to more realistic cases of policymaking under scientific uncertainty. I start with Bayesian approaches to expert testimony and the problem of expert disagreement, arguing that two popular approaches— (...) supra-Bayesianism and the standard model of expert deference—are insufficient. I develop a novel model of expert deference and show how it can deal with many of these problems raised for them. I then turn to opinion pooling, a popular method for dealing with disagreement. I show that various theoretical motivations for pooling functions are irrelevant to realistic policymaking cases. This leads to a cautious recommendation of linear pooling. However, I then show that any pooling method relies on value judgements, that are hidden in the selection of the scoring rule. My focus then narrows to a more specific case of scientific uncertainty: multiple models of the same system. I introduce a particular case study involving hurricane models developed to support insurance decision-making. I recapitulate my analysis of opinion pooling in the context of model ensembles, confirming that my hesitations apply. This motivates a shift of perspective, to viewing the problem as a decision theoretic one. I rework a recently developed ambiguity theory, called the confidence approach, to take input from model ensembles. I show how it facilitates the resolution of the policymaker’s problem in a way that avoids the issues encountered in previous chapters. This concludes my main study of the problem of expert disagreement. In the final chapter, I turn to methodological reflection. I argue that philosophers who employ the mathematical methods of the prior chapters are modelling. Employing results from the philosophy of scientific models, I develop the theory of normative modelling. I argue that it has important methodological conclusions for the practice of formal epistemology, ruling out popular moves such as searching for counterexamples. (shrink)

To speak of being religious lucky certainly sounds odd. But then, so does “My faith holds value in God’s plan, while yours does not.” This book argues that these two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — are inextricably connected. It argues that religious luck attributions can profitably be studied from a number of directions, not just theological, but also social scientific and philosophical. There is a strong (...) tendency among adherents of different faith traditions to invoke asymmetric explanations of the religious value or salvific status of the home religion vis-à-vis all others. Attributions of good/bad religious luck and exclusivist dismissal of the significance of religious disagreement are the central phenomena that the book studies. Part I lays out a taxonomy of kinds of religious luck, a taxonomy that draws upon but extends work on moral and epistemic luck. It asks: What is going on when persons, theologies, or purported revelations ascribe various kinds of religiously-relevant traits to insiders and outsiders of a faith tradition in sharply asymmetric fashion? “I am saved but you are lost”; “My religion is holy but yours is idolatrous”; “My faith tradition is true, and valued by God, but yours is false and valueless.” Part II further develops the theory introduced in Part I, pushing forward both the descriptive/explanatory and normative sides of what the author terms his inductive risk account. Firstly, the concept of inductive risk is shown to contribute to the needed field of comparative fundamentalism by suggesting new psychological markers of fundamentalist orientation. The second side of what is termed an inductive risk account is concerned with the epistemology of religious belief, but more especially with an account of the limits of reasonable religious disagreement. Problems of inductively risky modes of belief-formation problematize claims to religion-specific knowledge. But the inductive risk account does not aim to set religion apart, or to challenge the reasonableness of religious belief tout court. Rather the burden of the argument is to challenge the reasonableness of attitudes of religious exclusivism, and to demotivate the “polemical apologetics” that exclusivists practice and hope to normalize. Lexington Books Pages: 290 978-1-4985-5017-8 • Hardback • December 2018 • $95.00 • (£65.00) 978-1-4985-5018-5 • eBook • December 2018 • $90.00 • (£60.00) ISBN 978-1-4985-5018-5 (pbk: alk. paper) (coming 2020) [Download the 30% personal use Discount Order Form I uploaded for hardcover or e-book, and please ask your library to purchase a copy for their collection.]. (shrink)

My target is the epistemological dimension of the realism debate. After establishing a stance voluntarist framework with a Jamesian background, drawing mostly on Wylie, Chakravarty, and van Fraassen, I argue that current voluntarists are too permissive. I show that especially various anti-realist stances but also some realist and selective realist stances block themselves from refutation by the history of science. I argue that such stances should be rejected. Finally, I propose that any disagreement that cannot be resolved by this (...) strategy frequently boils down to an epistemic value disagreement about balancing the truth-goal. (shrink)