Role Of Values In Science Research Articles

“Climate-Solutions Polarization”: A Value-based Approach to Understanding Polarization Dynamics around Biomass in Dutch Media Discourse

ABSTRACT Polarization dynamics around climate change are shifting from debates about the reality and severity of climate change to debates about climate solutions. We propose taking a value-based approach to understanding “climate-solutions polarization”. As a case study, we identified the discursive value expressions underlying the polarized biomass media discourse in the Netherlands, from 2019–2021. A discourse analysis showed how the value expressions (a) climate security, (b) environmental benevolence, and (c) local security produce an opposition discourse, whereas the value expressions (d) climate achievement, (e) technological security, and (f) economic security underpin advocacy discourse. We discuss how the strong presence of security values provides both communication opportunities and risks for transitioning to climate-resilient societies. Further, our research shows how both sides of the debate have scientific actors on their side using distinctive rhetorical strategies, providing insight into debates about the role of values in science. The value-based approach to understanding climate-solutions polarization is promising for both the science and practice of environmental communication.

Values in public health: an argument from trust

Research on the role of values in science and objectivity has typically approached trust through its epistemic aspects. Yet, recent work on public trust in science has emphasized the role of non-epistemic values in building and maintaining trust. This paper will use a concept of trust that adds concerns about justice to epistemic conditions to investigate this problem in relation to public health. I will argue that trust-conducive values, particularly justice, are relevant in deciding which value influences are legitimate in scientific decision-making. Drawing on public health ethics, I will provide a consequentialist justification for employing trust-conducive values. While several concepts of justice have been explored in the context of public health, I will further draw on public health ethics, focusing on a view that brings together both distributive and procedural aspects. For illustration, I will use the case of cardiovascular disease prevention, particularly how concerns about justice apply when choosing between population-based and individual-based approaches.

Organizations and Values in Science and Technology

Abstract This paper articulates a conceptual framework for examining philosophical issues such as the role of values in science at an organizational level. It distinguishes between three dimensions of organizations – organizational aims, organizational structure, and organizational culture – and it examines how these dimensions relate to values in research and development, with a focus on machine learning systems for predictive policing. This framework can be fruitful in identifying interesting and understudied philosophical problems – including those involving inter-organizational divisions of labor – that might otherwise be difficult to conceptualize.

Inconvenient Truth and Inductive Risk in Covid-19 Science

To clarify the proper role of values in science, focusing on controversial expert responses to Covid-19, this article examines the status of (in)convenient hypotheses. Polarizing cases like health experts downplaying mask efficacy to save resources for healthcare workers, or scientists dismissing “accidental lab leak” hypotheses in view of potential xenophobia, plausibly involve modifying evidential standards for (in)convenient claims. Societies could accept that scientists handle (in)convenient claims just like nonscientists, and give experts less political power. Or societies could hold scientists to a higher bar, by expecting them not to modify evidential standards to avoid costs only incidentally tied to error.

Science and Responsibility. About the Role of Values in Science

The introduction to the current quarterly issue.

The Hows and whys of philosophy of science teaching: a comparative analysis

What makes teaching philosophy of science to non-philosophy students different from teaching it to philosophy students, and how should lecturers in philosophy adapt to an audience of practitioners of a field of study that they are reflecting on? In this paper we address this question by analyzing the differences between these student groups, and based on this analysis we make suggestions as to how philosophy of science can be taught to non-philosophy students in an effective and attractive way. Starting-point is the observation that not only the background knowledge and interests of these students but also the aims of the respective courses will differ. We present a comparative analysis of the demands and conditions for teaching philosophy of science to the different types of students, focusing on learning objectives and didactic approaches. Next, we apply our analysis to a concrete example, the role of values in science, and discuss how this may be taught to either philosophy students or non-philosophy students. Finally, we discuss an alternative format for teaching philosophy to non-philosophy students.

Severe weather event attribution: Why values won't go away

We start by reviewing the complicated situation in methods of scientific attribution of climate change to extreme weather events. We emphasize the social values involved in using both so-called ″storyline″ and ordinary probabilistic or ″risk-based″ methods, noting that one important virtue claimed by the storyline approach is that it features a reduction in false negative results, which has much social and ethical merit, according to its advocates. This merit is critiqued by the probabilistic, risk-based, opponents, who claim the high ground; the usual probabilistic approach is claimed to be more objective and more ″scientific″, under the grounds that it reduces false positive error. We examine this mostly-implicit debate about error, which apparently mirrors the old Jeffrey-Rudner debate. We also argue that there is an overlooked component to the role of values in science: that of second-order inductive risk, and that it makes the relative role of values in the two methods different from what it first appears to be. In fact, neither method helps us to escape social values, and be more scientifically ″objective″ in the sense of being removed or detached from human values and interests. The probabilistic approach does not succeed in doing so, contrary to the claims of its proponents. This is important to understand, because neither method is, fundamentally, a successful strategy for climate scientists to avoid making value judgments.

Darwinian Pilgrim's Late Progress

This is the final part of an autobiographical series which retraces the most significant events, collaborations, and research results of Michael Ruse’s 55-year-long career in the history and philosophy of science. In this installment, Ruse’s increasing engagement with historiography leads him to rethink and tackle the role of values in science. The intertwined topics summarized here are considered as they developed between the 1990s and the 2010s: the mediation between empiricism and social constructivism; the historical study of the idea of qualitative, biological “progress” in evolutionary biology as drawn from coeval social ideas; the paradox according to which “progress” is formally eschewed and yet implicitly present in modern evolutionary biology; the development of evolutionary biology from pseudoscience tied to social progress to popular science to full-fledged professional science; Darwinism as hopeful, progressive “religion” contrasted with progress-less Darwinian theory; meaning in a Darwinian world, and the development of a Darwinian existentialism.

Non-Epistemic Values in Adaptive Management: Framing Possibilities in the Legal Context of Endangered Columbia River Salmon

Courts have determined that adaptive management does not satisfy the Endangered Species Act's requirement to use the ‘best available science’. This is due, in part, to the failure to recognise the role of non-epistemic values in science. We examine the role of values in the legal controversy over the scientific reports and adaptive management plans for endangered salmon in the Columbia River Basin. To do this, we employ philosophical concepts related to risk and uncertainty that demonstrate how non-epistemic values are internal to science. We describe how, because adaptive management is a method for dealing with inductive risk, by remaining flexible, responsive and adaptive in those circumstances where the costs of making a mistake are very high, it requires special attention to ensure that it remains useful. We conclude that, because non-epistemic values will inevitably influence the ‘best available science’, it is critical that they are clarified in any adaptive management planning so that we can ensure the salmon conservation that the ESA mandates. Fortunately, because adaptive management is iterative in nature and includes opportunities for engagement between policymakers and scientists, it enables clarification of non-epistemic values through making standards of evidence transparent, acknowledging aims and goals and dealing with uncertainty at the institutional level.

Situating Longino in the debate on the values in science

Esta nota procura relacionar as ideias de Helen Longino – tal como apresentadas em seu artigo “Valores, heurística e política do conhecimento” – com as de outros fi lósofos, especialmente na questão dos valores na ciência. Após uma introdução sobre o papel dos valores na ciência a partir de Thomas Kuhn, apresento algumas ideias de Longino. Em seguida, procuro relacionar essas ideias com aquelas de outros filósofos da ciência, tanto aqueles que não aceitam a presença de valores na ciência, como Susan Haack, quanto outros que os aceitam, ainda que de modo mais ou menos diverso do empregado por Longino, como Elizabeth Anderson e Hugh Lacey

The Risk of Using Inductive Risk to Challenge the Value-Free Ideal

The argument from inductive risk has been embraced by many as a successful account of the role of values in science that challenges the value-free ideal. We argue that it is not obvious that the argument from inductive risk actually undermines the value-free ideal. This is because the inductive risk argument endorses an assumption held by proponents of the value-free ideal: that contextual values never play an appropriate role in determining evidence. We show that challenging the value-free ideal ultimately requires rejecting this assumption.

The Virtues of Scientific Practice: MacIntyre, Virtue Ethics, and the Historiography of Science.

“Practice” has become a ubiquitous term in the history of science, and yet historians have not always reflected on its philosophical import and in particular on its potential connections with ethics. This essay draws on the work of the virtue ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre to develop a theory of “communal practices” and explore how such an approach can inform the history of science, including allegations about the corruption of science by wealth or power, consideration of scientific ethics or “moral economies,” the role of values in science, the ethical distinctiveness (or not) of scientific vocations, and the relationship between history of science and the practice of science itself.

Run the Experiment, Publish the Study, Close the Sale: Business, Values, Science and Biomedical Research – A Thematic Introduction

Business models for biomedical research prescribe decentralization due to market selection pressures. I argue that decentralized biomedical research does not match four normative philosophical models of the role of values in science. Non-epistemic values affect the internal stages of for-profit biomedical science. Publication planning, effected by Contract Research Organizations, inhibits mechanisms for transformative criticism. The structure of contracted research precludes attribution of responsibility for foreseeable harm resulting from methodological choices. The effectiveness of business strategies leads to over-representation of profit values versus the values of the general public. These disconnects in respect to the proper role of values in science results from structural issues ultimately linked to the distinct goals of business versus applied science, and so it seems likely that disconnects will also be found in other dimensions of attempts to combine business and science. The volume and integration in the publishing community of decentralized biomedical research imply that the entire community of biomedical research science cannot match the normative criteria of community-focused models of values in science. Several proposals for changing research funding structure might successfully relieve market pressures that drive decentralization.

The future of sustainability science: a solutions-oriented research agenda

Over the last decade, sustainability science has been at the leading edge of widespread efforts from the social and natural sciences to produce use-inspired research. Yet, how knowledge generated by sustainability science and allied fields will contribute to transitions toward sustainability remains a critical theoretical and empirical question for basic and applied research. This article explores the limitations of sustainability science research to move the field beyond the analysis of problems in coupled systems to interrogate the social, political and technological dimensions of linking knowledge and action. Over the next decade, sustainability science can strengthen its empirical, theoretical and practical contributions by developing along four research pathways focused on the role of values in science and decision-making for sustainability: how communities at various scales envision and pursue sustainable futures; how socio-technical change can be fostered at multiple scales; the promotion of social and institutional learning for sustainable development.

HUMANS IN THE CENTER?

HUMANS IN THE CENTER?

Valores e incomensurabilidade: meditações kuhnianas em chave estruturalista e laudaniana

In this paper, two themes that figure outstandingly in the Kuhnian image of science are brought together, put into perspective, and re-interpreted: (1) the role of values in science and their relation with the issue of methodological underdetermination; (2) incommensurability and its dilemmas. Kuhn's theses concerning these themes are re-evaluated, how they unfold is critically discussed, and certain re-interpretations and reformulations are proposed. This is done according to two metascientific perspectives: Laudan's historiographic-metamethodological view (both in its problem-solving and reticulational variants), and the structuralist metatheory pioneered by Balzer, Moulines and Sneed. In this way, it is shown that the main difficulties inherent in the Kuhnian treatment of these questions can be removed, while at the same time being still possible to keep the most interesting features, as well as Kuhn's most insightful intuitions, concerning these issues.

Reflections on Science at the Interface of the Islamization of Knowledge Debate

The author revisits the forty-year Islamization of knowledge debate in relation to science. He maintains that values and the worldview have an undeniable role in science and its multidimensional growth. He maintains that the role of values in science is no more controversial, and if some people still deny it, it may not be long before they will reverse and reframe their opinion on the relation between science and religion.

Reflections on Science at the Interface of the Islamization of Knowledge Debate

The author revisits the forty-year Islamization of knowledge debate in relation to science. He maintains that values and the worldview have an undeniable role in science and its multidimensional growth. He maintains that the role of values in science is no more controversial, and if some people still deny it, it may not be long before they will reverse and reframe their opinion on the relation between science and religion.

ON THE ROLE OF VALUES IN ECONOMIC SCIENCE: ROBBINS AND HIS CRITICS

Lionel Robbins’s (1932) An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (henceforth, Essay) is one of the two most important works on economic methodology of the twentieth century, together with Milton Friedman’s classic ‘‘The Methodology of Positive Economics’’ (1953). The fundamental legacy of the Essay is having forcefully championed a conception of economic science as axiomatic, value-free, and primarily concerned with scarcity—a conception that is today widely, even though not universally, accepted. Robbins (1932) presented his position as if it captured what was at the time a broadly shared understanding of economic science. As it turns out, Robbins’s Essay was met by largely negative reactions in academic journals. The main purpose of this paper is to describe and assess the nature of the negative reactions to Robbins’s work in the 1930s, primarily with respect to the value-freeness of economics. Some interpreters have argued that the hostility to Robbins’s work was mostly based on a misunderstanding of his position (e.g. Peston and Corry 1972; Masini Forthcoming). Robbins himself supported this interpretation, arguing that, with respect to his work on methodology, ‘‘I have never succeeded in making my views immune from misunderstanding’’ (Robbins 1963, Preface to his Politics and Economics, p. vii). Even though some reactions to the Essay did originate from failure to appreciate the subtleties of Robbins’s views, I want to argue that a great many were based on a substantive disagreement over the very possibility and desirability of keeping values outside of economic science. Recent developments in the debate on the role of values in science show that Robbins’s critics, although clumsily, pointed to genuine weaknesses of the thesis that economic science should be value-free. I will reconstruct and evaluate what I take to be the most insightful lines of criticisms leveled against Robbins from 1932, when the Essay was published, to

Video in science. Protocol videos: the implications for research and society.

The Chinese folktale, Three Blind Men and an Elephant , is more than 2,000 years old. Three blind men approached an elephant and tried to describe it. The first man felt the elephant's ear and decided that it was like a fan. The second man touched the elephant's knee and decided that it was like a tree. The third man held the elephant's trunk and concluded that it was like a snake. They could not agree on what an elephant is really like (Kuo & Kuo, 1976). If each of the three men had felt the whole of the elephant, or at least experienced each of the three parts themselves, they would have gained a better idea of what animal they were trying to describe. Scientists, like the blind men, often have too narrow a focus when thinking about their field of research or particular topics. To obtain a larger, more complete picture—to understand what the ‘elephant’ is—they need as much information as possible. One way of achieving this is to take advantage of new technologies, such as video, and use it to communicate scientific methods, protocols and results. Here, I describe the possible advantages of using video to communicate scientific protocols instead of verbal descriptions, and highlight some further benefits of such an approach, in particular in educational and outreach programmes. Visual information is fundamental to communication. As humans, we have relied on our visual perception of the world to convey ideas, feelings and images ever since our ancestors started painting animals on cave walls thousands of years ago. Drawings, paintings, photography, film, television, analogue and digital video, computer‐generated images and the Internet have all further increased and enhanced the use of images to communicate information—not just in general, but specifically with regard to scientific ideas, results and communication. …