This paper explores the politics of representing events in the world in the form of data points, data sets, or data associations. Data collection involves an act of seeing and recording something that was previously hidden and possibly unnamed. The incidences included in a data set are not random or unrelated but stand for coherent, classifiable phenomena in the world. Moreover, for data to have an impact on law and policy, such information must be seen as actionable, that is, the (...) aggregated data must show people both something they can perceive and something that demands interrogation, explanation, or resolution. Actionable data problematize the taken-for-granted order of society by pointing to questions or imbalances that can be corrected or rectified, or simply better understood, through systematic compilations of occurrences, frequencies, distributions, or correlations. The paper describes and analyzes three different modes of authorized seeing that render data on global environmental phenomena such as climate change both visible and actionable. It argues that the political force of environmental data compilations derives from the divergent epistemological standpoints and expert practices associated with producing views from nowhere, everywhere, and somewhere. (shrink)

The shooting bias hypothesis aims to explain the disproportionate number of minorities killed by police. We present the evidence mounting in support of the existence of shooting bias and then focus on two dissenting studies. We examine these studies in light of Biddle and Leuschner’s “inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent” and conclude that, although they meet this account only partially, the studies are in fact epistemically and socially detrimental as they contribute to racism in society and to a (...) social atmosphere that is hostile to science as scholars working on issues of racism come under attack. We emphasize this final point via recourse to Kitcher’s “Millian argument against the freedom of research.”. (shrink)

Regulating technologies, innovations and risks is an activity that, as much as scientific research needs proofs and evidence. It is the site of development of a distinct kind of science, regulatory science. This special issue addresses the question of the standards of knowledge governing how we test, assess and monitor technologies and their effects. This topic is relevant and timely in the light of problematics of regulation of innovation, regulatory failure and capture. Given the enormous decisions and stakes regulatory science (...) commends, it becomes crucial to ask where its standards come from and gain credibility, but also what valuations of technology and appreciations of their risks or benefits do they embed, and who controls them? This paper introduces the four contributions comprising the special issue, and outlines a perspective from which to question the construction of regulatory science or, in the terminology adopted here, the authorization and standardization of regulatory knowledge, particularly the role of networks of scientific experts therein. (shrink)

Although science is our most reliable producer of knowledge, it can also be used to create ignorance, unjustified doubt, and misinformation. In doing so, agnotological practices result not only in epistemic harms but also in social ones. A way to prevent or minimise such harms is to impede these ignorance-producing practices. In this paper, I explore various challenges to such a proposal. I first argue that reliably identifying agnotological practices in a way that permits the prevention of relevant harms is (...) more difficult than it might appear. I focus on an identifying criterion that many find apt for the task: bad faith motives. I then consider an objection—that reliable criteria are unnecessary to successfully address the concerns raised by agnotological strategies—and I show that it fails. I conclude by exploring other ways of conceptualising the problems attributed to agnotological practices. In particular, I challenge the focus on misinformation as the main problem of concern. (shrink)

Biased research occurs frequently in the sciences. In this paper, I will focus on one particular kind of biased research: research that is subject to sponsorship bias. I will address the following epistemological question: what precisely is epistemically wrong with biased research of this kind? I will defend the evidential account of epistemic wrongness: that is, research affected by sponsorship bias is epistemically wrong if and only if the researchers in question make false claims about the evidential support of some (...) hypothesis H by data E. I will argue that the evidential account captures the epistemic wrongness of three paradigmatic types of sponsorship bias. (shrink)

The potential for financial conflicts of interest (COIs) to damage the credibility of scientific research has become a significant social concern, especially in the wake of high-profile incidents involving the pharmaceutical, tobacco, fossil-fuel, and chemical industries. Scientists and policy makers have debated whether the presence of financial COIs should count as a reason for treating research with suspicion or whether research should instead be evaluated solely based on its scientific quality. This paper examines a recent proposal to develop criteria for (...) evaluating the credibility of research without considering its source of funding. It concludes that proposals of this sort are likely to be either ineffective or impractical in many cases. Nevertheless, this does not imply that all research funded by those with an interest in the outcome must be placed under a cloud of suspicion; there are conditions under which research is at much more serious risk of being corrupted than in other cases, and attention to these conditions can guide productive responses to financial COIs. (shrink)

Stephen John has recently suggested that the ethics of communication yields important insights as to how values should be incorporated into science. In particular, he examines cases of “wishful speaking” in which a scientific actor endorses unreliable conclusions in order to obtain the consequences of the listener treating the results as credible. He concludes that what is wrong in these cases is that the speaker surreptitiously relies on values not accepted by the hearer, violating what he terms “the value-apt ideal”. (...) I expand on this view by integrating into it Miranda Fricker’s account of testimonial injustice. I find testimonial injustice can arise in a manner unanticipated by Fricker, specifically that a credibility excess given to a speaker typically reduces the ability of others in the epistemic community to transmit knowledge, a phenomenon I term “collateral epistemic injustice”. I argue that this possibility entails that receivers have an ethical obligation to assign credibility judiciously. A further consequence of this view is that the value-apt ideal is insufficient. Because audience members have an obligation to assign credibility judiciously, a speaker cannot merely rely on shared values, they must also be open about the extent to which their conclusions depend on those values. Thus, both wishful speaking and obscuring the value-dependent nature of a conclusion makes one an unreliable source of information. Accordingly, other community members have an ethical obligation to ignore a speaker that frequently engages in either. (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)

The shooting bias hypothesis aims to explain the disproportionate number of minorities killed by police. We present the evidence mounting in support of the existence of shooting bias and then focus on two dissenting studies. We examine these studies in light of Biddle and Leuschner’s “inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent” and conclude that, although they meet this account only partially, the studies are in fact epistemically and socially detrimental as they contribute to racism in society and to a (...) social atmosphere that is hostile to science as scholars working on issues of racism come under attack. We emphasize this final point via recourse to Kitcher’s “Millian argument against the freedom of research.”. (shrink)

The paper seeks to contribute to clarifying agnotology as an ‘epistemic strategy’, conceived as ‘epistemically damaging and hurt[ing] the production of knowledge’. My general claim is that the grammar of intentions ‘embedded’ in agnotological arguments is often not considered accurately. I use considerations from the philosophy of action as a theoretical framework to make more explicit what is implied in agnogenetic manoeuvres. Agnotology, as a ‘theory’ about epistemic states, in particular knowledge and ignorance, would be seriously incomplete without that component. (...) The following can thus be read as a contribution to an analysis of the presuppositions of the strategic variant of Agnotology. My first claim is that the more common objections to the introduction of intentions are in no way definitive. My second, more specific, claim is that we need a room, in our conceptual toolbox, for ‘anti-epistemic intentions’, which play a key role in agnotological arguments. (shrink)

The disconnect problem arises wherever there is ongoing and severe discordance between the scientific assessment of a politically relevant issue, and the politics and legislation of said issue. Here, we focus on the disconnect problem as it arises in the case of climate change, diagnosing a failure to respect the necessary tradeoff between authority and autonomy within a public institution like science. After assessing the problematic deployment of scientific authority in this arena, we offer suggestions for how to mitigate climate (...) change’s particular disconnect problem, as well as more general proposals for reforming science advising. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to clarify the concept of scientific ignorance: what is it, what are its sources, and when is it epistemically detrimental for science. I present a taxonomy of scientific ignorance, distinguishing between intrinsic and extrinsic sources. I argue that the latter can create a detrimental epistemic gap, which have significant epistemic and social consequences. I provide three examples from medical research to illustrate this point. To conclude, I claim that while some types of scientific ignorance (...) are inevitable and even desirable, other types of scientific ignorance are epistemically and ethically flawed and should be prevented. (shrink)

Research on the influence of industry on chemical regulation has mostly been conducted within the framework of the production of ignorance. This special issue extends this research by looking at how industry asserts its interests––not just in the scientific sphere but also at other stages of policy-making and regulatory process––with a specific focus on the types of tools or instruments industry has used. Bringing together sociologists and historians specialized in Science and Technology Studies, the articles of the special issue study (...) the arenas in which instruments and practical guidelines for public policy are negotiated or used. The aim is to observe the devices in the making or in action, from the selection of actors to the production of thresholds, criteria, and other technical regulations. The introduction highlights how industry influence on expertise and regulation is undoubtedly far more pervasive and multifarious than has been conceptualized to date by social scientists. Putting this issue back at the heart of both the STS and social sciences research agendas is increasingly urgent and could lead to new inquiries able to highlight these logics even more widely, using fresh empirical examples. (shrink)

Why do corporations and wealthy philanthropists fund the human sciences? Examining the history of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), a private research institute founded in the early 1980s, this article shows that funders can find as much value in the social worlds of the sciences they sponsor as in their ideas. SFI became increasingly dependent on funding from corporations and libertarian business leaders in the 1990s and 2000s. At the same time, its intellectual work came to focus on the underlying (...) principles of adaptation, innovation, and decentralized coordination supposedly at work in ‘complex systems’ from biological ecosystems to markets and firms. This research cast the ideas of the libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek into a new scientific idiom. SFI also became a space where figures in business, media, academia, and politics could come to learn to see the world in a particular way—to acquire the subjectivity of what I call ‘the Santa Fe Institute libertarian’. At SFI, visitors did not simply learn the principles of neo-Hayekian complex system science. They came to see themselves as agents of social evolution, providing the spark that the free-market system needed to produce new technologies and new solutions to social problems without top-down political direction. For the Institute's corporate and libertarian financiers, SFI was not just a space where intellectuals described the world in favored ideological terms, but a space where elite actors became committed to the project of making a new political-economic order. (shrink)

A common objection to a pragmatist perspective on scientific expertise is that, while there is a well-known pragmatist theory of inquiry, which was formulated first by Peirce, then refined by Dewey and others, this theory cannot provide a clear-cut account of scientific expertise. In this paper, after addressing this objection in the second section, I claim that, on the contrary, pragmatism offers robust tools to think scientific expertise. In Sections 3 to 7, I present five important insights that one can (...) derive from a pragmatist epistemology when responding to contemporary problems posed by expertise: about science and scientific expertise in a legal context (sections 3 and 4), about collective expertise (sections 5 and 6), and even about expertise on ignorance (section 7). (shrink)

The growing commercialization of scientific research has raised important concerns about industry bias. According to some evidence, so-called industry bias can affect the integrity of the science as well as the direction of the research agenda. I argue that conceptualizing industry’s influence in scientific research in terms of bias is unhelpful. Insofar as industry sponsorship negatively affects the integrity of the research, it does so through biasing mechanisms that can affect any research independently of the source of funding. Talk about (...) industry bias thus offers no insight into the particular epistemic shortcomings at stake. If the concern is with the negative effects that industry funding can have on the research agenda, conceptualizing this influence as bias obscures the ways in which such impact is problematic and limits our ability to offer solutions that can successfully address the concerns raised by the growing role of private funding in science. (shrink)

The goal of this chapter is to contribute to ignorance studies by taking advantage of the pragmatist epistemology of Peirce and Dewey, which, in my view, would be an “unfinished” business without facing sundry problems raised by ignorance studies. Five typical pragmatist claims provide the framework for this chapter. They can be endorsed by other philosophies, but their conjunction is typical of pragmatism: (1) the first is Peirce’s pragmatist maxim for clarifying our ideas, where the reference to “practical bearings”, to (...) situations, conducts and contexts, is pivotal; (2) the second is pragmatism’s focus on inquiry as a norm-governed practice, rather than on mere knowledge; (3) the third idea is their “externalism”, the conviction that mind, reason and knowledge are not properties of atomic individuals but are distributed over community of inquirers or “publics” and their environment; (4) the fourth idea is that philosophy has condemned itself to skepticism when it was looking for absolute theoretical certainties; and (5) the last claim is their rejection of the fact-value dichotomy. My own general claim is that pragmatism has under-appreciated relevance for understanding the epistemology of ignorance and its social implications, and each section explores one possible dimension – semantic, epistemic, externalist, doxastic and normative – for this contribution. (shrink)

This article shows why it is important to do normative or practical philosophy of science, especially philosophy of science that criticizes and evaluates contemporary use of scientific methods to analyze welfare-affecting societal problems. The article introduces the scientific, ethical, and social problem of environmental injustice—disproportionate environmental and pollution threats that are responsible for roughly 40% of all preventable disease and death. Next it explains that many deadly threats continue in part because of “special-interest science”, methodologically flawed science that is done (...) to promote corporate profits, rather than truth, then argues that philosophers of science should use normative or practical philosophy of science to critique and expose special-interest science. To illustrate special-interest science, the article provides two case studies, on diesel-particulate-matter pollution and on organophophate-pesticide pollution, and shows how diesel and pesticide polluters use special-interest science. For instance, they often ignore observational data, illegitimately demand statistically significant evidence of harm from observational data, use small sample sizes, do the wrong tests, or demand certainty—rather than a preponderance of evidence—to justify a conclusion about pollution harm. They also use flawed normative arguments to defend both diesel and pesticide pollution. The article concludes that, given the epistemic, scientific, human-welfare toll of special-interest science, philosophers of science need to do normative or practical philosophy of science that exposes these scientific flaws. (shrink)

In addition to providing a rebuttal of the “paper-doubts” of the would-be skeptic, pragmatists have also been quite responsive to the social dimensions of doubt. This is true concerning the causes of doubt. This is true also regarding its consequences: doubt has consequences on epistemic trust; on the way we discuss truths, either about the sciences or about the “construction of good”. Readers of Dewey’s The Quest for Certainty and of some of his most important political writings can easily see (...) how practical uncertainty can degenerate into practical and political skepticism, preventing the emergence of the public. This social aspect of the question has received less attention, perhaps, than the general pragmatist stance towards skepticism, and the present symposium offers a rst round of insights into this aspect of the question: the papers retrieved below all cast light on important aspects of the debate on justi cation, on scienti c dogmatism, on irony and skepticism, on doubt and legal theory, on skepticism and political anarchism. (shrink)

Historically, entities with a vested interest in a product that critics have suggested is harmful have consistently used research to back their claims that the product is safe. Prominent examples are: tobacco, lead, bisphenol A, and atrazine. Research literature indicates that about 80–90 % of studies with industry affiliation found no harm from the product, while only about 10–20 % of studies without industry affiliation found no harm. In parallel to other historical debates, recent studies examining a possible relationship between (...) mercury exposure and autism spectrum disorder show a similar dichotomy. Studies sponsored and supported by industry or entities with an apparent conflict of interest have most often shown no evidence of harm or no “consistent” evidence of harm, while studies without such affiliations report positive evidence of a Hg/autism association. The potentially causal relationship between Hg exposure and ASD differs from other toxic products since there is a broad coalition of entities for whom a conflict of interest arises. These include influential governmental public health entities, the pharmaceutical industry, and even the coal burning industry. This review includes a systematic literature search of original studies on the potential relationship between Hg and ASD from 1999 to date, finding that of the studies with public health and/or industry affiliation, 86 % reported no relationship between Hg and ASD. However, among studies without public health and/or industry affiliation, only 19 % find no relationship between Hg and ASD. The discrepancy in these results suggests a bias indicative of a conflict of interest. (shrink)

Since scholarly interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has primarily focused on the synergies between social and economic performance, our understanding of how (and the conditions under which) companies use CSR to produce policy outcomes that work against public welfare has remained comparatively underdeveloped. In particular, little is known about how corporate decision-makers privately reconcile the conflicts between public and private interests, even though this is likely to be relevant to understanding the limitations of CSR as a means of aligning (...) business activity with the broader public interest . This study addresses this issue using internal tobacco industry documents to explore British-American Tobacco’s (BAT) thinking on CSR and its effects on the company’s CSR Programme. The article presents a three-stage model of CSR development, based on Sykes and Matza’s theory of techniques of neutralization, which links together: how BAT managers made sense of the company’s declining political authority in the mid-1990s; how they subsequently justified the use of CSR as a tool of stakeholder management aimed at diffusing the political impact of public health advocates by breaking up political constituencies working towards evidence-based tobacco regulation; and how CSR works ideologically to shape stakeholders’ perceptions of the relative merits of competing approaches to tobacco control. Our analysis has three implications for research and practice. First, it underlines the importance of approaching corporate managers’ public comments on CSR critically and situating them in their economic, political and historical contexts. Second, it illustrates the importance of focusing on the political aims and effects of CSR. Third, by showing how CSR practices are used to stymie evidence-based government regulation, the article underlines the importance of highlighting and developing matrices to assess the negative social impacts of CSR. (shrink)

With an innovative perspective on the social character of ignorance production, agnotology has been a fruitful approach for understanding the social and epistemological consequences of the interaction between industry and scientific research. In this paper, I argue that agnotology, or the study of ignorance, contributes to a better understanding of commercially driven research and its societal impact, showing the ways in which industrial interests have reshaped the epistemic aims of traditional scientific practices, turning them into mechanisms of ignorance production. To (...) do so, I examine some of the main contributions to agnotology and provide a taxonomy of practices of ignorance construction common in commercially driven research today. In particular, I present the tobacco industry’s campaign against the health hazards of smoking as a paradigmatic case of ignorance production, identifying five central strategies. I then argue that the same strategies have been used in three other cases—global warming, pharmaceuticals, and the 2008 financial crisis. (shrink)

In the early 1970s, the idea of precaution—of heeding rather than ignoring scientific evidence of harm when there is uncertainty, and taking action that errs on the side of safety—was so appealing that the US Congress used it as the basis of the toxics provisions of the Clean Water Act of 1972, the federal Environmental Protection Agency based its proposals for implementing those provisions on it, and the courts frequently tended toward it when resolving conflicts over the implementation of pollution (...) control law. In other words, precaution was written into toxic water pollutant control law and was beginning to be written into policy and regulations. By 1976, the tables were completely turned. The EPA abandoned the safety-providing approach in the implementation of the law, even though the law required it, and adopted a risk-taking approach in the creation of standards for the vast majority of toxic water pollutants. The article examines how this change was brought about. It builds on recent work on undone science as an obstacle to regulation and contributes to the development of an account of the creation of the regulatory system, with both its achievements and its limitations. (shrink)

Why do classic biostatistical studies, alleged to provide causal explanations of effects, often fail? This article argues that in statistics-relevant areas of biology—such as epidemiology, population biology, toxicology, and vector ecology—scientists often misunderstand epistemic constraints on use of the statistical-significance rule (SSR). As a result, biologists often make faulty causal inferences. The paper (1) provides several examples of faulty causal inferences that rely on tests of statistical significance; (2) uncovers the flawed theoretical assumptions, especially those related to randomization, that likely (...) contribute to flawed biostatistics; (3) re-assesses the three classic (SSR-warrant, avoiding-selection-bias, and avoiding-confounders) arguments for using SSR only with randomization; and (4) offers five new reasons for biologists to use SSR only with randomized experiments. (shrink)

This study investigates how uncertainty works in science policy debates by considering an unusual case: one in which uncertainty-based arguments for delay come from the scientific community, rather than industry actors. The case I present is the central use of value-added modeling in the evaluation of individual teachers, a controversial trend in education reform. In order to understand how policy actors might counter inconvenient statements of uncertainty from experts, I analyze speeches from Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a committed and influential (...) advocate of VAM. I identify a three-part rhetorical tactic, the “Overcaution Allegation,” and describe its persuasive potential to legitimize policies that elicit caution from the scientific community because they are built on uncertain science. (shrink)

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...