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Abstracts-Significant Digits
SIGNIFICANT DIGITS Responsible Use of Quantitative Information @Brussels, Fondation Universitaire 9-10 June 2015 Joint Research Centre Joint Research Centre Brussels, 09-10 June 2015 Preamble We live in an age when good policies are assumed to be evidence-based. And that evidential base is assumed to be at its best when expressed in numbers. The digital information may be derived from quantitative data organised in statistics, or from qualitative data organised in indicators. Either way, evidence in digital form provides the accepted foundation of policy arguments over a very broad range of issues. In the policy realm there are frequent debates over particular policy issues and their associated evidence. But only rarely is the nature of the evidence called into question. Such a faith in numbers can be dangerous. Policies in economic and financial policy, based on numbers whose significance was less than assumed, recently turned out to be quite disastrously wrong. Other examples can easily be cited. The decades-long period of blaming dietary fats for heart disease, rather than sugar, is a notable recent case. We are concerned here with the systemic problem: whether we are regularly placing too much of an evidentiary burden on quantitative sciences whose strength and maturity are inherently inadequate. The harm that has been done to those sciences, as well as to the policy process, should be recognised. Only in that way can future errors be avoided. In this workshop we will review a seminal essay by Andrea Saltelli and Mario Giampietro, ‘The Fallacy of Evidence Based Policy’. That paper contains positive recommendations for the development of a responsible quantification. -
Supersizing Daubert Science for Litigation and Its Implications for Legal Practice and Scientific Research
Volume 52 Issue 4 Article 6 2007 Supersizing Daubert Science for Litigation and Its Implications for Legal Practice and Scientific Research Gary Edmond Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr Part of the Evidence Commons Recommended Citation Gary Edmond, Supersizing Daubert Science for Litigation and Its Implications for Legal Practice and Scientific Research, 52 Vill. L. Rev. 857 (2007). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/vlr/vol52/iss4/6 This Symposia is brought to you for free and open access by Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Villanova Law Review by an authorized editor of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository. Edmond: Supersizing Daubert Science for Litigation and Its Implications f 2007] SUPERSIZING DAUBERT SCIENCE FOR LITIGATION AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR LEGAL PRACTICE AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH GARY EDMOND* I. INTRODUCTION: SCIENCE FOR LITIGATION AND THE EXCLUSIONARY ETHOS T HIS essay is about sciencefor litigation, its implications and limitations.' "Science for litigation" is expert evidence specifically developed for litigation-extant, pending or anticipated.2 Although, as we shall see, federal judges have demonstrated a curious tendency to restrict the concept to expert evidence associated with litigation which is underway or pending. Ordinarily, expert evidence developed for, or tailored to, litigation carries an epistemic stigma. Conventionally, the fact that expert evidence is ori- ented toward a specific goal is thought to impair the independence of the experts and the reliability of their evidence. This often manifests in con- cerns that evidence developed for litigation is inconsistent with scientific knowledge and the opinions of experts not embroiled in litigation. -
Abstract Papers
Workshop on Philosophy & Engineering WPE2008 The Royal Academy of Engineering London November 10th-12th 2008 Supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering, Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education (iFoundry), the British Academy, ASEE Ethics Division, the International Network for Engineering Studies, and the Society for Philosophy & Technology Co-Chairs: David E. Goldberg and Natasha McCarthy Deme Chairs: Igor Aleksander, W Richard Bowen, Joseph C. Pitt, Caroline Whitbeck Contents 1. Workshop Schedule p.2 2. Abstracts – plenary sessions p.5 3. Abstracts – contributed papers p.7 4. Abstracts – poster session p.110 1 Workshop Schedule Monday 10 November 2008 All Plenary sessions take place in F4, the main lecture room 9.00 – 9.30 Registration 9.30 – 9.45 Welcome and introduction of day’s theme(s) Taft Broome and Natasha McCarthy 09.45 – 10.45 Billy V. Koen: Toward a Philosophy of Engineering: An Engineer’s Perspective 10. 45 – 11.15 Coffee break 11. 15 – 12.45 Parallel session – submitted papers A. F1 Mikko Martela Esa Saarinen, Raimo P. Hämäläinen, Mikko Martela and Jukka Luoma: Systems Intelligence Thinking as Engineering Philosophy David Blockley: Integrating Hard and Soft Systems Maarten Frannsen and Bjørn Jespersen: From Nutcracking to Assisted Driving: Stratified Instrumental Systems and the Modelling of Complexity B. F4 Ton Monasso: Value-sensitive design methodology for information systems Ibo van de Poel: Conflicting values in engineering design and satisficing Rose Sturm and Albrecht Fritzsche: The dynamics of practical wisdom in IT- professions C. G1 Ed Harris: Engineering Ethics: From Preventative Ethics to Aspirational Ethics Bocong Li: The Structure and Bonds of Engineering Communities Priyan Dias: The Engineer’s Identity Crisis:Homo Faber vs. -
Post Normal Science: Working Deliberatively Within Imperfections
Copernicus Institute Studium Generale Wageningen Science, Policy and Complex Phenomena 21 March 2007 Post Normal Science: working deliberatively within imperfections Dr. Jeroen P. van der Sluijs Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development and Innovation Utrecht University & Centre d'Economie et d'Ethique pour l'Environnement et le Développement, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France Universiteit Utrecht Copernicus Institute Haugastøl group: Jeroen van der Sluijs; Ragnar Fjelland; Jerome Ravetz; Anne Ingeborg Myhr; Roger Strand; Silvio Funtowicz; Kamilla Kjølberg; Kjellrun Hiis Hauge; Bruna De Marchi; Andrea Saltelli Universiteit Utrecht Copernicus Institute Complex - uncertain -risks Typical characteristics (Funtowicz & Ravetz): • Decisions will need to be made before conclusive scientific evidence is available; • Potential impacts of ‘wrong’ decisions can be huge • Values are in dispute • Knowledge base is characterized by large (partly irreducible, largely unquantifiable) uncertainties, multi- causality, knowledge gaps, and imperfect understanding; • More research ≠ less uncertainty; unforeseen complexities! • Assessment dominated by models, scenarios, assumptions, extrapolations • Many (hidden) value loadings reside in problem frames, indicators chosen, assumptions made Knowledge Quality Assessment is essential Universiteit Utrecht Copernicus Institute Universiteit Utrecht Copernicus Institute 3 paradigms of uncertain risks 'deficit view' • Uncertainty is provisional • Reduce uncertainty, make ever more complex -
Science on the Verge
Science on the Verge Andrea Saltelli Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT) - University of Bergen (UIB) & Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) - Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) Symposium at Copernicus Institute, Utrecht, Ruppertbuilding room 134, 25 February 2016, h16.30-18.00 Published by the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, March 2016, on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Rightful-Place-Science- Verge/dp/0692596380/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456255907&sr=1-1&keywords=saltelli http://www.andreasaltelli.eu/science-on-the-verge Dan Sarewitz, Preface Almodóvar, Swift, Laputa’s portrayal of XVIII science, science’s present predicaments Chapter 1. Andrea Saltelli, Jerome Ravetz, Silvio Funtowicz, Who will solve the crisis in science? This talk Chapter 2. Andrea Saltelli, Mario Giampietro, The fallacy of evidence based policy Quantification as hypocognition; socially constructed ignorance & uncomfortable knowledge; ancien régime; quantitative story telling Chapter 3. Alice Benessia, Silvio Funtowicz, Never late, never lost, never unprepared Trajectories of innovation and modes of demarcation of science from society: ‘separation’, ‘hybridization’ and ‘substitution’; what contradictions these trajectories generate Chapter 4. Ângela Guimarães Pereira, Andrea Saltelli , Institutions on the verge: working at the science policy interface The special case of the commission’s in house science service; the Joint Research Centre as a boundary institutions; diagnosis, -
SCIENCE, LABOR and SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS by George Borg B.Sc
TITLE PAGE SCIENCE, LABOR AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS by George Borg B.Sc. in Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley 1999 Ph.D. in Chemistry, Harvard University, 2007 M.A. in Philosophy, Tufts University, 2012 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2020 COMMITTE E PAGE UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by George Borg It was defended on June 5, 2020 and approved by Paolo Palmieri, Associate Professor, History and Philosophy of Science Kevin Zollman, Associate Professor, Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University Dissertation Co-Director: John D. Norton, Distinguished Professor, History and Philosophy of Science Dissertation Co-Director: Michael R. Dietrich, Professor, History and Philosophy of Science ii Copyright © by George Borg 2020 iii ABST RACT SCIENCE, LABOR AND SCIENTIFIC PROGRSS George Borg, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2020 My dissertation introduces a new materialist theory of scientific progress built on a novel characterization of scientific work and an analysis of progress appropriate to it. Two questions, crucial for understanding scientific progress, are answered: Why is it possible for scientists at a given time to have more epistemic abilities than scientists at an earlier time? How can knowledge acquired in the past be used in on-going or future research? I argue that these questions are best answered by analyzing science as a form of labor. The elements of the labor process, involving both intellectual and material means, provide a starting-point for the systematic study of how scientific abilities evolve. -
Democratizing Science in an Age of Uncertainty
June 2016 Democratizing Science in an Age of Uncertainty An Interview with Jerome Ravetz Uncertainty, one of the defining features of many of the challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century, has considerable implications for scientific thought and practice. Allen White, Senior Fellow at Tellus Institute, talks with Jerome Ravetz, a pioneer of post-normal science and a leading advocate of citizen science, about why it is time to retire the doctrine of scientific certainty and why science is too important to be left to the scientists alone. You are perhaps best known for your work on post-normal science. What drew you to the study of the philosophy of science in the first place? I began my studies in mathematics, but I was never as passionate about it as some of my peers were. Science seemed like a relatively safe career path. Meanwhile, some seminars in philosophy piqued my interest in the philosophy of science, though I had serious misgivings. To me, philosophy’s image of science had little relation to what I was studying, or even to the questions that I was beginning to have about science. In graduate school, I intended to study physics, but ended up in mathematics. After settling in England, I connected with Stephen Toulmin, a distinguished philosopher of science, who enabled me to jump from mathematics to the history and philosophy of science. I spent much of the next ten years pondering questions of where science is and where it should be going. This led to the publication Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems in 1971, in which I argued that scientific research is not a simple discovery of facts, but rather craftsmen’s work on “intellectually constructed classes of things and events.” The health and vitality, even the survival, of objective knowledge of the world around us depends critically on the subjective commitments to quality of the scientists themselves. -
What Is Science's Crisis Really About?
Futures 91 (2017) 5–11 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Futures journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/futures What is science’s crisis really about? MARK ⁎ Andrea Saltellia,b, , Silvio Funtowicza a Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (SVT), University of Bergen, Norway b Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Keywords: Present day reasoning about difficulties in science reproducibility, science governance, and the History and philosophy of science Science use of science for policy could benefit from a philosophical and historical perspective. This would Science's crisis show that the present crisis was anticipated by some scholars of these disciplines, and that di- Science and Technology Studies agnoses were offered which are not yet mainstream among crisis-aware disciplines, from sta- Post-normal science tistics to medicine, from bibliometrics to biology. Diagnoses in turn open the path to possible Reproducibility solutions. This discussion is urgent given the impact of the crises on public trust in institutions. Extended participation We ask whether the present crisis may be seminal in terms of drawing attention to alternative visions for the role of Science in society, and its relevant institutional arrangements. We finish by offering a number of suggestions in this direction. 1. Crises recognized and unrecognized Many articles have been written on the crisis in science’s reproducibility, science’s governance, and the use of science for policy. Still a clear identification of the root causes of the present situation seem to have eluded most commentators. A discussion of those causes is urgent given the public impact of the crisis on trust in institutions. -
Praise for Science on the Verge
Praise for Science on the Verge “It is time that a book pulls no punches on the inade- quate state of science on the verge of collapse. This at- tack does not aim to knockout with one blow bad practice of contemporary science; it rather circles the issue and delivers body blows until the job is done. […] It starts with the epidemic of retractions and failure across science. It debunks evidence-based science. It goes on to analyze the history of how science got into this mess. Gratuitous mathematization is exposed and stands naked. And finally attitudes to doubt and certain- ty are laid bare, as contemporary science loses every round, left on the verge of collapse.” Professor Emeritus Timothy Allen University of Wisconsin–Madison “A major contribution, this book approaches the current crisis of scientific practices with deep insights on the entanglement of science, policy and ethics.” Professor Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent Université Paris 1, Panthéon Sorbonne “This book is about complex issues in science and gov- ernance relationships that need clarification. It is a fun- damental contribution that should interest scientists, policy makers, practitioners and theoreticians involved in evidence-based decision making. In particular, it deals with the interface between research and policymaking, investigating some important areas where more research and discussions are needed. The book poses key ques- tions and provides some answers. As such, the book is relevant to researchers and policy makers alike.” Professor Ron S. Kennet University of Turin (Italy) Founder & CEO, the KPA Group (Israel) “The ‘crisis’ in science is not emergent: it has been brew- ing at least since WWII, if not since the scientific revolu- tion. -
Science Advocacy Is an Institutional Issue, Not an Individual One Daniel Sarewitz Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes Arizona State University
Science Advocacy is an Institutional Issue, Not an Individual One Daniel Sarewitz Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes Arizona State University Background Paper Workshop on Advocacy in Science AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program October 17-18, 2011 January 2012 Draft Science Advocacy is an Institutional Issue, Not an Individual One Daniel Sarewitz Arizona State University January 2012 Draft ___________________________________ Advocacy is a condition not of the behavior of individual scientists, but of the political and institutional context for science. Advocacy in science becomes an issue when there is both uncertainty about facts and disagreement about values. Under such circumstances, scientists become different not because they have changed, but because the context in which they operate has changed. Dialogue I Mr A.: Professor Sloat, can you report on the findings from your recent field research? Professor Sloat: Gladly. In short, I discovered a marvelous unconformity separating two apparently similar sedimentary units, units that turn out to be separated by over 10 million years of erosion and non-deposition. Previously they had been thought to be a single unit. Mr. A.: How fascinating. Can you explain what you’re talking about? Professor Sloat: Well the idea is that we have these two rock units, both are shales—rocks that were originally deposited as mud in a marine environment. They look quite similar, but if you analyze the fossil content of the units, you discover that the unit lying to the east of the river contains fossils of late Jurassic age, whereas those to the west are early Cretaceous, more than 10 million years younger. -
Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research
Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn · Holger Hoffmann-Riem · Susette Biber-Klemm · Walter Grossenbacher-Mansuy · Dominique Joye · Christian Pohl · Urs Wiesmann · Elisabeth Zemp Editors Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research Foreword by Jill Jäger Editors Gertrude Hirsch Hadorn Christian Pohl ETH Zurich Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences Zurich Berne Switzerland Switzerland Holger Hoffmann-Riem and Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences ETH Zurich Berne Zurich Switzerland Switzerland Susette Biber-Klemm Urs Wiesmann University of Basel University of Berne Basel Berne Switzerland Switzerland Walter Grossenbacher-Mansuy Elisabeth Zemp Swiss Science and Technology Council University of Basel Berne Basel Switzerland Switzerland Dominique Joye University of Lausanne Lausanne Switzerland ISBN: 978-1-4020-6698-6 (hb) e-ISBN: 978-1-4020-6699-3 ISBN: 978-1-4020-6700-6 (pb) Library of Congress Control Number: 2007936990 c 2008 Springer Science + Business Media B.V. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Cover Image c 2007 JupiterImages Corporation Printed on acid-free paper. 987654321 springer.com The Handbook of Transdisciplinary Research results from a project of c/o SCNAT Schwarztorstrasse 9 3007 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.transdisciplinarity.ch The Editors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Foreword In a world characterised by rapid change, uncertainty and increasing interconnectedness there is a growing need for science to contribute to the solution of persistent, complex problems. -
The Paradoxes of Transparency
5 MARE PUBLICATION SERIES 5 Douglas Clyde Wilson The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) is the central scientific Douglas Clyde Wilson network within the massive set of bureaucracies that is responsible for Europe’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). While spending the past 25 years failing to sustain Europe’s fish stocks, this management system also became adept at making the lives of its scientists miserable. Now it is being confronted by the complex challenge of an ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management. If this combination of a multi-national bureaucracy, hard politics, and scientific uncertainty has made it impossible to maintain many individual fish stocks, how are decisions going to be made that consider everything from The Paradoxes of Transparency Paradoxes The sea birds to climate change? The old political saw that “if you can’t solve a problem, make it bigger” has never been put to a test like this! Yet ICES has begun to rise in an impressive way to the scientific challenge of providing advice for an ecosystem approach within the world’s most cumbersome fisheries management system. This book lays out the results of extensive sociological research on ICES and the decision making systems into which it feeds. ICES is finding ways to provide effective advice in the many situations where scientific advice is needed but a clear, simple answer is out of reach. In spite of the difficulties, scientists are beginning to help the various parties concerned with management to deal with facts about nature in ways that are more useful and transparent.