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  1. The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread.Cailin O'Connor & James Owen Weatherall - 2019 - New Haven, CT, USA: Yale University Press.
    "Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false belief. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it irrelevant to many (...)
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  • Scientific Conclusions Need Not Be Accurate, Justified, or Believed by their Authors.Haixin Dang & Liam Kofi Bright - 2021 - Synthese 199:8187–8203.
    We argue that the main results of scientific papers may appropriately be published even if they are false, unjustified, and not believed to be true or justified by their author. To defend this claim we draw upon the literature studying the norms of assertion, and consider how they would apply if one attempted to hold claims made in scientific papers to their strictures, as assertions and discovery claims in scientific papers seem naturally analogous. We first use a case study of (...)
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  • On fraud.Liam Kofi Bright - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (2):291-310.
    Preferably scientific investigations would promote true rather than false beliefs. The phenomenon of fraud represents a standing challenge to this veritistic ideal. When scientists publish fraudulent results they knowingly enter falsehoods into the information stream of science. Recognition of this challenge has prompted calls for scientists to more consciously adopt the veritistic ideal in their own work. In this paper I argue against such promotion of the veritistic ideal. It turns out that a sincere desire on the part of scientists (...)
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  • In Epistemic Networks, is Less Really More?Sarita Rosenstock, Cailin O'Connor & Justin Bruner - 2017 - Philosophy of Science 84 (2):234-252.
    We show that previous results from epistemic network models showing the benefits of decreased connectivity in epistemic networks are not robust across changes in parameter values. Our findings motivate discussion about whether and how such models can inform real-world epistemic communities. As we argue, only robust results from epistemic network models should be used to generate advice for the real-world, and, in particular, decreasing connectivity is a robustly poor recommendation.
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  • Scientific polarization.Cailin O’Connor & James Owen Weatherall - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 8 (3):855-875.
    Contemporary societies are often “polarized”, in the sense that sub-groups within these societies hold stably opposing beliefs, even when there is a fact of the matter. Extant models of polarization do not capture the idea that some beliefs are true and others false. Here we present a model, based on the network epistemology framework of Bala and Goyal, 784–811 1998), in which polarization emerges even though agents gather evidence about their beliefs, and true belief yields a pay-off advantage. As we (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Robustness and Idealizations in Agent-Based Models of Scientific Interaction.Daniel Frey & Dunja Šešelja - 2019 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 71 (4):1411-1437.
    The article presents an agent-based model of scientific interaction aimed at examining how different degrees of connectedness of scientists impact their efficiency in knowledge acquisition. The model is built on the basis of Zollman’s ABM by changing some of its idealizing assumptions that concern the representation of the central notions underlying the model: epistemic success of the rivalling scientific theories, scientific interaction and the assessment in view of which scientists choose theories to work on. Our results suggest that whether and (...)
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  • (1 other version)Conformity in scientific networks.Cailin O’Connor & James Owen Weatherall - 2020 - Synthese 198 (8):7257-7278.
    Scientists are generally subject to social pressures, including pressures to conform with others in their communities, that affect achievement of their epistemic goals. Here we analyze a network epistemology model in which agents, all else being equal, prefer to take actions that conform with those of their neighbors. This preference for conformity interacts with the agents’ beliefs about which of two (or more) possible actions yields the better result. We find a range of possible outcomes, including stable polarization in belief (...)
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  • What Is the Epistemic Function of Highly Idealized Agent-Based Models of Scientific Inquiry?Daniel Frey & Dunja Šešelja - 2018 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48 (4):407-433.
    In this paper we examine the epistemic value of highly idealized agent-based models of social aspects of scientific inquiry. On the one hand, we argue that taking the results of such simulations as informative of actual scientific inquiry is unwarranted, at least for the class of models proposed in recent literature. Moreover, we argue that a weaker approach, which takes these models as providing only “how-possibly” explanations, does not help to improve their epistemic value. On the other hand, we suggest (...)
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  • The computational philosophy: simulation as a core philosophical method.Conor Mayo-Wilson & Kevin J. S. Zollman - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):3647-3673.
    Modeling and computer simulations, we claim, should be considered core philosophical methods. More precisely, we will defend two theses. First, philosophers should use simulations for many of the same reasons we currently use thought experiments. In fact, simulations are superior to thought experiments in achieving some philosophical goals. Second, devising and coding computational models instill good philosophical habits of mind. Throughout the paper, we respond to the often implicit objection that computer modeling is “not philosophical.”.
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  • Argumentative landscapes: the function of models in social epistemology.N. Emrah Aydinonat, Samuli Reijula & Petri Ylikoski - 2021 - Synthese 199 (1-2):369-395.
    We argue that the appraisal of models in social epistemology requires conceiving of them as argumentative devices, taking into account the argumentative context and adopting a family-of-models perspective. We draw up such an account and show how it makes it easier to see the value and limits of the use of models in social epistemology. To illustrate our points, we document and explicate the argumentative role of epistemic landscape models in social epistemology and highlight their limitations. We also claim that (...)
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  • The natural selection of conservative science.Cailin O'Connor - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 76:24-29.
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  • Agent‐based models of scientific interaction.Dunja Šešelja - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (7):e12855.
    Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 7, July 2022.
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  • (1 other version)Conformity in scientific networks.James Owen Weatherall & Cailin O’Connor - 2018 - Synthese:1-22.
    Scientists are generally subject to social pressures, including pressures to conform with others in their communities, that affect achievement of their epistemic goals. Here we analyze a network epistemology model in which agents, all else being equal, prefer to take actions that conform with those of their neighbors. This preference for conformity interacts with the agents’ beliefs about which of two possible actions yields the better result. We find a range of possible outcomes, including stable polarization in belief and action. (...)
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  • Endogenous epistemic factionalization.James Owen Weatherall & Cailin O’Connor - 2020 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 25):6179-6200.
    Why do people who disagree about one subject tend to disagree about other subjects as well? In this paper, we introduce a model to explore this phenomenon of ‘epistemic factionization’. Agents attempt to discover the truth about multiple propositions by testing the world and sharing evidence gathered. But agents tend to mistrust evidence shared by those who do not hold similar beliefs. This mistrust leads to the endogenous emergence of factions of agents with multiple, highly correlated, polarized beliefs.
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  • How should we promote transient diversity in science?Jingyi Wu & Cailin O’Connor - 2023 - Synthese 201 (2):1-24.
    Diversity of practice is widely recognized as crucial to scientific progress. If all scientists perform the same tests in their research, they might miss important insights that other tests would yield. If all scientists adhere to the same theories, they might fail to explore other options which, in turn, might be superior. But the mechanisms that lead to this sort of diversity can also generate epistemic harms when scientific communities fail to reach swift consensus on successful theories. In this paper, (...)
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  • Can Confirmation Bias Improve Group Learning?Nathan Gabriel & Cailin O'Connor - unknown
    Confirmation bias has been widely studied for its role in failures of reasoning. Individuals exhibiting confirmation bias fail to engage with information that contradicts their current beliefs, and, as a result, can fail to abandon inaccurate beliefs. But although most investigations of confirmation bias focus on individual learning, human knowledge is typically developed within a social structure. We use network models to show that moderate confirmation bias often improves group learning. However, a downside is that a stronger form of confirmation (...)
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  • Towards a Critical Social Epistemology of Social Media.Joshua Habgood-Coote - 2025 - In Jennifer Lackey & Aidan McGlynn (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Social Epistemology. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    What are the proper epistemic aims of social media sites? A great deal of social media critique presupposes an exceptionalist attitude, according to which social media is either uniquely good, or uniquely bad for our collective knowledge-generating practices. Exceptionalism about social media is troublesome, both because it leads to oversimplistic narratives, and because it prevents us making relevant comparisons to other epistemic systems. The goal of this chapter is to offer an anti-exceptionalist account of the epistemic aims of social media. (...)
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  • Theory-choice, transient diversity and the efficiency of scientific inquiry.AnneMarie Borg, Daniel Frey, Dunja Šešelja & Christian Straßer - 2019 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (2):26.
    Recent studies of scientific interaction based on agent-based models suggest that a crucial factor conducive to efficient inquiry is what Zollman has dubbed ‘transient diversity’. It signifies a process in which a community engages in parallel exploration of rivaling theories lasting sufficiently long for the community to identify the best theory and to converge on it. But what exactly generates transient diversity? And is transient diversity a decisive factor when it comes to the efficiency of inquiry? In this paper we (...)
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  • Jump ship, shift gears, or just keep on chugging: Assessing the responses to tensions between theory and evidence in contemporary cosmology.Siska De Baerdemaeker & Nora Mills Boyd - 2020 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 72:205-216.
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  • Scientific autonomy and the unpredictability of scientific inquiry: The unexpected might not be where you would expect.Baptiste Bedessem & Stéphanie Ruphy - 2019 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 73:1-7.
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  • The theory of games as a tool for the social epistemologist.Kevin J. S. Zollman - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (4):1381-1401.
    Traditionally, epistemologists have distinguished between epistemic and pragmatic goals. In so doing, they presume that much of game theory is irrelevant to epistemic enterprises. I will show that this is a mistake. Even if we restrict attention to purely epistemic motivations, members of epistemic groups will face a multitude of strategic choices. I illustrate several contexts where individuals who are concerned solely with the discovery of truth will nonetheless face difficult game theoretic problems. Examples of purely epistemic coordination problems and (...)
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  • Agent-Based Models of Dual-Use Research Restrictions.Elliott Wagner & Jonathan Herington - 2021 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 72 (2):377-399.
    Scientific research that could cause grave harm, either through accident or intentional malevolence, is known as dual-use research. Recent high-profile cases of dual-use research in the life sciences have led to debate about the extent to which restrictions on the conduct and dissemination of such research may impede scientific progress. We adapt formal models of scientific networks to systematically explore the effects that different regulatory schemes may have on a community’s ability to learn about the world. Our results suggest that, (...)
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  • The division of cognitive labor: two missing dimensions of the debate.Baptiste Bedessem - 2018 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 9 (1):1-16.
    The question of the division of cognitive labor has given rise to various models characterizing the way scientists should distribute their efforts. These models often consider the scientific community as a self-governed sphere constituted by rational agents making choices on the basis of fixed rules. Such models have recently been criticized for not taking into account the real mechanisms of science funding. Hence, the question of the utility of the DCL models in guiding science policy remains an open one. In (...)
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  • Rethinking the history of peptic ulcer disease and its relevance for network epistemology.Bartosz Michał Radomski, Dunja Šešelja & Kim Naumann - 2021 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43 (4):1-23.
    The history of the research on peptic ulcer disease is characterized by a premature abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis, which subsequently had its comeback, leading to the discovery of Helicobacter pylori—the major cause of the disease. In this paper we examine the received view on this case, according to which the primary reason for the abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis in the mid-twentieth century was a large-scale study by a prominent gastroenterologist Palmer, which suggested no bacteria could be found in (...)
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  • Revisiting the Basic/Applied Science Distinction: The Significance of Urgent Science for Science Funding Policy.Jamie Shaw - 2022 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 53 (4):477-499.
    There has been a resurgence between two closely related discussions concerning modern science funding policy. The first revolves around the coherence and usefulness of the distinction between basic and applied science and the second concerns whether science should be free to pursue research according to its own internal standards or pursue socially responsible research agendas that are held accountable to moral or political standards. In this paper, I argue that the distinction between basic and applied science, and the concomitant debate (...)
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  • Formal models of the scientific community and the value-ladenness of science.Vincenzo Politi - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (4):1-23.
    In the past few years, social epistemologists have developed several formal models of the social organisation of science. While their robustness and representational adequacy has been analysed at length, the function of these models has begun to be discussed in more general terms only recently. In this article, I will interpret many of the current formal models of the scientific community as representing the latest development of what I will call the ‘Kuhnian project’. These models share with Kuhn a number (...)
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  • Rethinking the History of Peptic Ulcer Disease and its Relevance for Network Epistemology.Bartosz Radomski, Dunja Šešelja & Naumann Kim - forthcoming - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences.
    The history of the research on peptic ulcer disease is characterized by a premature abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis, which subsequently had its comeback, leading to the discovery of Helicobacter pylori – the major cause of the disease. In this paper we examine the received view on this case, according to which the primary reason for the abandonment of the bacterial hypothesis in the mid-twentieth century was a large-scale study by a prominent gastroenterologist Palmer, which suggested no bacteria could be (...)
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  • Landscapes and Bandits: A Unified Model of Functional and Demographic Diversity.Alice C. W. Huang - forthcoming - Philosophy of Science.
    Two types of formal models - landscape search tasks and two-armed bandit models - are often used to study the effects that various social factors have on epistemic performance. I argue that they can be understood within a single framework. In this unified framework, I develop a model that may be used to understand the effects of functional and demographic diversity and their interaction. Using the unified model, I find that the benefit of demographic diversity is most pronounced in a (...)
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  • The Independence of Research—A Review of Disciplinary Perspectives and Outline of Interdisciplinary Prospects.Jochen Gläser, Mitchell Ash, Guido Buenstorf, David Hopf, Lara Hubenschmid, Melike Janßen, Grit Laudel, Uwe Schimank, Marlene Stoll, Torsten Wilholt, Lothar Zechlin & Klaus Lieb - 2022 - Minerva 60 (1):105-138.
    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 (...)
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  • Modelling Efficient Team Structures in Biology.Vlasta Sikimić & Ole Herud-Sikimić - 2022 - Journal of Logic and Computation.
    We used agent-based modelling to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of several management styles in biology, ranging from centralized to egalitarian ones. In egalitarian groups, all team members are connected with each other, while in centralized ones, they are only connected with the principal investigator. Our model incorporated time constraints, which negatively influenced weakly connected groups such as centralized ones. Moreover, our results show that egalitarian groups outperform others if the questions addressed are relatively simple or when the communication among (...)
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  • Structural Inequality in Collaboration Networks.Rafael Ventura - 2022 - Philosophy of Science:1-28.
    Recent models of scientific collaboration show that minorities can end up at a disadvantage in bargaining scenarios. However, these models presuppose the existence of social categories. Here, we present a model of scientific collaboration in which inequality arises in the absence of social categories. We assume that all agents are identical except for the position that they occupy in the collaboration network. We show that inequality arises in the absence of social categories. We also show that this is due to (...)
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  • Argumentation, cognition, and the epistemic benefits of cognitive diversity.Renne Pesonen - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-17.
    The social epistemology of science would benefit from paying more attention to the nature of argumentative exchanges. Argumentation is not only a cognitive activity but a collaborative social activity whose functioning needs to be understood from a psychological and communicative perspective. Thus far, social and organizational psychology has been used to discuss how social diversity affects group deliberation by changing the mindset of the participants. Argumentative exchanges have comparable effects, but they depend on cognitive diversity and emerge through critical interaction. (...)
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  • Two conceptions of the sources of conservatism in scientific research.Baptiste Bedessem - 2019 - Synthese 198 (7):1-18.
    The issue of the conservatism of scientific research questions the nature and the role of the internal and external forces controlling the emergence of new research questions or problems, the exploration of risky directions of research, or the use of risky research methods. This issue has recently gained a new framing in connection with the growing importance of the peer-review process and of the social and economic pressures weighing on the funding of scientific research. Current literature then interrogates the external (...)
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  • Credibility excess as an epistemic injustice.Keith Dyck - forthcoming - Episteme:1-12.
    According to Fricker’s (2007) seminal account, an epistemic injustice is done when, based on prejudice, a hearer ascribes to a speaker a level of credibility below what they deserve. When prejudice results in credibility excess, however, Fricker contends no similar injustice takes place. In this paper, I will challenge the second of these claims. Using a modified version of Zollman’s (2007) two-armed bandit model, I will show how the systematic over-ascription of credibility within a dominant group can produce epistemic advantages (...)
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  • Some Remarks on the Division of Cognitive Labor.Marco Viola - 2015 - RT. A Journal on Research Policy and Evaluation 3.
    Since the publication of Kitcher’s influential paper The Division of Cognitive Labor, some philosophers wondered about these two related issues: (1) which is the optimal distribution of cognitive efforts among rival methods within a scientific community?, and (2) whether and how can a community achieve such an optimal distribution? Though not committing to any specific answer to question (1), I claim that issue (2) does not depend exclusively on an invisible hand like mechanism, since both intra-scientific and extra-scientific institutions may (...)
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  • Highly idealized models of scientific inquiry as conceptual systems.Renne Pesonen - 2024 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 14 (3):1-22.
    The social epistemology of science has adopted agent-based computer simulations as one of its core methods for investigating the dynamics of scientific inquiry. The epistemic status of these highly idealized models is currently under active debate in which they are often associated either with predictive or the argumentative functions. These two functions roughly correspond to interpreting simulations as virtual experiments or formalized thought experiments, respectively. This paper advances the argumentative account of modeling by proposing that models serve as a means (...)
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  • Pandemics and flexible lockdowns: In praise of agent-based modeling.Igor Douven - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (3):1-27.
    Philosophers have recently questioned the methodological status of agent-based modeling. Meanwhile, this methodology has been central to various studies of the COVID-19 pandemic. Few agent-based COVID-19 models are accessible to philosophers for inspection or experimentation. We make available a package for modeling the COVID-19 pandemic and similar pandemics and give an impression of what can be achieved with it. In particular, it is shown that by coupling an agent-based model to a standard optimizer we are able to identify strategies for (...)
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  • What Kind of Explanations Do We Get from Agent-Based Models of Scientific Inquiry?Dunja Šešelja - 2022 - In Tomas Marvan, Hanne Andersen, Hasok Chang, Benedikt Löwe & Ivo Pezlar (eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology. London: College Publications.
    Agent-based modelling has become a well-established method in social epistemology and philosophy of science but the question of what kind of explanations these models provide remains largely open. This paper is dedicated to this issue. It starts by distinguishing between real-world phenomena, real-world possibilities, and logical possibilities as different kinds of targets which agent-based models can represent. I argue that models representing the former two kinds provide how-actually explanations or causal how-possibly explanations. In contrast, models that represent logical possibilities provide (...)
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  • Structure-sensitive testimonial norms.Benedikt T. A. Höltgen - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11 (3):1-23.
    Although there has been a lot of investigation into the influence of the network structure of scientific communities on the one hand and into testimonial norms on the other, a discussion of TNs that take the network structure into account has been lacking. In this paper, I introduce two TNs which are sensitive to the local network structure. According to these norms, scientists should give less weight to the results of well-connected colleagues, as compared to less connected ones. I employ (...)
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  • Optimization of Scientific Reasoning: a Data-Driven Approach.Vlasta Sikimić - 2019 - Dissertation,
    Scientific reasoning represents complex argumentation patterns that eventually lead to scientific discoveries. Social epistemology of science provides a perspective on the scientific community as a whole and on its collective knowledge acquisition. Different techniques have been employed with the goal of maximization of scientific knowledge on the group level. These techniques include formal models and computer simulations of scientific reasoning and interaction. Still, these models have tested mainly abstract hypothetical scenarios. The present thesis instead presents data-driven approaches in social epistemology (...)
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