Скачать или смотреть Daniel Friedman and Dunja Šešelja: Scientific Disagreements, Fast Science and Higher-Order Evidence

Scientific disagreements are commonly considered an important catalyst of scientific progress (Solomon, 2006, Longino, 2002). But what happens if scientists disagree while society is depending on them for quick yet reliable results? In this paper we aim to provide a normative account for how scientists facing a disagreement in the context of ‘fast science’ should handle it, and how policy makers should evaluate it. Starting from an argumentative, pragma-dialectic account of scientific controversies (Donato Rodríguez and Bonilla, 2013), we argue for the importance of ‘higher-order evidence’ (HOE), which has largely been neglected in previous discussions on scientific disagreements and controversies.
In contrast to first-order evidence (FOE), which is provided in support of, or against the truth of a proposition, HOE is, roughly, evidence about evidence, i.e. evidence for or against the truth of a proposition about the first-order evidence (Dorst, 2020, Whiting, 2020). For instance, while an experimental result is a kind of FOE for a certain scientific hypothesis, evidence showing that some of my peers disagree with me on this result (on its accuracy, significance, interpretation, etc.) serves as HOE, which may undermine the force I took our FOE to have and therefore decrease my confidence in the given hypothesis.
Following Rodriguez & Zamora Bonilla’s view of scientific controversies in terms of a ‘game of giving and asking for reasons’, we show how HOE plays an essential role in the specification of argumentation rules that underlie scientific disagreements and their resolution. We illustrate our point with a recent disagreement on the aerosol transmission of COVID-19 virus (e.g. Jayaweera et al., 2020, Lewis, 2020) and provide guidelines for how legitimate HOE in this and similar cases is acquired.