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Epistemological and Ethical Aspects of Time in Scientific Research

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Epistemological and Ethical Aspects of Time in Scientific Research Epistemological and Ethical Aspects of Time in Scientific Research Von der Philosophischen Fakultät der Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Universität Hannover zur Erlangung des Grades Doktor der Philosophie Dr. phil. genehmigte Dissertation von Daria Jadreškić Erscheinungsjahr 2020 Referent: Prof. Dr. Torsten Wilholt Institut für Philosophie, Leibniz Universität Hannover Korreferentin: Prof. Dr. Anke Büter Department of Philosophy and History of Ideas, Aarhus University Tag der Promotion: 10.06.2020 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisors Torsten Wilholt and Anke Büter for guiding me through the dissertation process in the most academically rigorous, yet most possibly encouraging manner. Conversations with Torsten Wilholt have especially contributed to my argumentation skills, broadness of interest, attention to style, reader-friendliness, and most of all, confidence that this dissertation is achievable. Anke Büter has been a careful reader and an attentive listener of my talks at many conferences that we have attended together. Her feedback has made my work better in various ways every time she provided it and I have learned a lot from being a regular attendant of her talks as well. I am grateful to my research training group DFG-GRK 2073 Hannover-Bielefeld for letting me be a part of the team. I think we are a great crowd of people, who have always managed to make our common research business into a friendly team-building process that has brought me so much fun and insight. I could not have picked a better place to get this thing done. Our research colloquia, theory workshops, and peer group meetings are events that I have always enjoyed, for the talks as well as for the dinners. The Hannover part of the group has basically been my second home, next to my home in Croatia. I am quite sure that I have spent most of the time in the office these three years, not necessarily in order to work, but in order to hang out with friends. I cherish very fond memories from both of our addresses. I would like to thank Rafael Ugarte Chacón for his patience with my questions and attention to various administrative details that I would have never been able to catch up with on my own. I also thank him for the reliable comfort of the morning office coffees which have been a much-needed constant in the ever-changing world. I have learned so much about so many things there. My special thanks go to David Hopf and Stefano Canali for being loyal members of our coffee group. Both of them have been an especially invaluable resource for topics, philosophical exchange, and extreme human kindness. Many thanks to Julia Pfeiff for being a perfect office mate and a dear friend. I don’t think I have ever loved any disagreements more than ours. Thanks to Enno Fischer for his friendly support and for being a model in dedication to philosophy, but also in work-life balance. His young family has been a breath of fresh family air that has been a pleasure to see growing. iii My gratitude also goes to other members of the Hannover group and the Institute of Philosophy who have made my doctoral studies richer: Anna Leuschner, Philipp Eichenberger, Leon Schäfer, Tobias Schönwitz, Markus Ahlers, Jonas Lipski, Lukas Steinbrink, and Simon Lohse, with a special credit to Martin Wasmer and Lucie White for their readiness to join in for a beer when needed. I am also grateful for the privilege to get to know the Carson-Feest family that has made my Hannover life much warmer. Thanks to Mathias Frisch, Ralf Stöcker, and Saana Jukola for their valuable feedback, as well as to other members of the graduate school who have on various occasions had the opportunity to engage with my work. The Institute of Philosophy in Hannover has provided me the most motivating academic environment. Thanks to students in my seminar for the fruitful discussions we had. Thanks to Jessica Inhestern and Güliz Erdem for helping me out with organizational and administrative issues. My special thanks go to three researchers from the Albert Einstein Institute in Hannover who have been kind enough to introduce me to the fascinating world of gravitational wave physics and answer my questions about their career and work, as well as to their colleagues who have guided me through the GEO600, a gravitational wave detector near Hannover, during the Open Day on June 16, 2019. I am indebted to the audiences at many conferences I had the opportunity to attend. I have been especially encouraged and have benefited from the feedback by and conversations with Jeffrey Kenneth Aronson, Philip Kitcher, Kevin C. Elliott, Barbara Osimani, Miriam Solomon, Rebecca Kukla, Rachel Ankeny, Mark Tonelli, Chrysostomos Mantzavinos, Paul Hoyningen- Huene, and Bennett Holman. My special thanks go to Tomasz Rzepiński for inviting me to give a talk at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and for his generous hospitality during my stay there, as well as to Marko Jurjako for inviting me to give a talk at my hometown University of Rijeka. I am grateful to dear friends I have made in Hannover, who have been an invaluable support in many aspects of my life here: Radhika Natarajan and Siham Schotemeier. I also thank many others with whom I have crossed paths and established a connection that I will always cherish: Amélie Fau, Sahar Dehnavi, Iris Phan, Vedat Uner, and Edith Velázquez. I have been especially indebted by the enormous hospitality of the Bošnjak family and the many dear ladies and gentlemen working in the Conti-Campus Contine. iv This is as far as Germany goes, and my acknowledgements now travel southeast, to Croatia. My connection with Hannover would have never been established had it not been for the project designed and executed at the University of Rijeka by Predrag Šustar, Smilja Cukrov, and Zdenka Brzović, and later led by Elvio Baccarini. I am indebted to all of them for involving me in the team, as well as to Nenad Smokrović and Snježana Prijić-Samaržija for always being supportive of my academic work. Special thanks in this respect go to Bruno Lončarić and s. Veronika Mila Popić to whom I am grateful for their generosity, openness, and active support during many years of our friendship that has outgrown our professional connections. I am indebted to many dear friends who have always supported me: Marija Sekulić, Marijana Dlačić, Diana Gašpić, Ivana and Srđan Baričević, Silvia Vlaše, Blanka Krivičić, Jan Hyrat, Nataša Jakšić, Jasmina Kovačić, Iva and Ivan Bujger, Martina Blečić, Vedran Krušvar, Boris Ružić, Saša Stanić, Stella Defranza, Viktorija Žgela, Dinko Benčić, Igor Eterović, and the Veljak family. Finally, my greatest “Thank you” goes to my family: mother Dubravka, father Dario, sister Ornella, and brother Jakov. They have been my strength and motivation. The love and support I have always had from them, as well as from my grandparents, is beyond words. Hvala vam na svemu. v Abstract This dissertation explores the influence of time constraints on different research practices. The first two parts present case studies, which serve as a basis for discussing the epistemological and ethical implications of temporal limitations in scientific research. Part I is a case study on gravitational wave research, conducted by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration. This exemplifies fundamental research – without immediate societal applications, open-ended in terms of timeline and in terms of research goals. It is based, in part, on qualitative interviews conducted with gravitational wave physicists. I show that considerations about time and speed play a role in every stage of research: goal setting, method design, and the evaluation and communication of results. Part II provides a case study on translational medicine, an approach explicitly dedicated to accelerating research in order to develop and implement new therapies. This epitomizes applied research with high social stakes, motivated by non-epistemic goals. Here, epistemic trade-offs between speed and reliability intersect with ethical trade-offs between different types of harms. In Part III, the insights from both of these case studies are used as the basis for a more general discussion concerning the pragmatic aspects of epistemic practices, especially in relation to current debates centered on the role of values in science. A particular focus is on the value of speed and the ability to generate reliable results, either via choice of methods, or via decisions about which goals to set, as well as decisions about when to stop further testing. The primary thesis of the dissertation is that pragmatic considerations stemming from limitations of resources are a necessary feature of the pursuit of epistemic aims, and that the epistemic is thus inherently pragmatic. Keywords: scientific practice; gravitational wave research; translational medicine; values in science; speed; reliability; ethical implications of research vi Contents Introduction 1. An unfair comparison………………………………………………………………………..1 2. The problem………………………………………………………………………………….4 3. Overview of the dissertation…………………………………………………………………7 Part I Case Study I: Gravitational Wave Physics 1. Introduction: LIGO…………………………………………………………………………10 2. Speed of research and goal setting………………………………………………………….21 3. Prioritization and urgency……………………………………………………………….….31 4. Time and methods………………………………………………………………………….38 4.1 Matched filtering……………………………………………………………………….38 4.2 Machine learning……………………………………………………………………….43 4.3 Searches for continuous waves…………………………………………………………45 5. Time and the evaluation and communication of results…………………………………….48 5.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….48 5.2 Non-epistemic and pragmatic values in the communication of results………………….50 6. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….56 Part II Case Study II: Translational Medicine 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………...59 2. What is translational medicine? .......................................................................................... 63 2.1 The location and scope of translational gap(s)………………………………………….65 2.2 Three models of translational process…………………………………………………..67 2.3 Causes of translational gap(s)…………………………………………………………..73 3. A short history of translational medicine…………………………………………………...76 4.
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