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15Error and the Growth of Experimental KnowledgeUniversity of Chicago. 1996.This text provides a critique of the subjective Bayesian view of statistical inference, and proposes the author's own error-statistical approach as an alternative framework for the epistemology of experiment. It seeks to address the needs of researchers who work with statistical analysis.
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4Cartwright, Causality, and CoincidencePSA Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association 1986 (1): 42-58. 1986.In How the Laws of Physics Lie (1983)2 Cartwright argues for being a realist about theoretical entities but non-realist about theoretical laws. Her reason for this distinction is that only the former involves causal explanation, and accepting causal explanations commits us to the existence of the causal entity invoked. “What is special about explanation by theoretical entity is that it is causal explanation, and existence is an internal characteristic of causal claims. There is nothing similar f…Read more
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9Error, tests and theory confirmationIn Deborah G. Mayo & Aris Spanos (eds.), Error and Inference: Recent Exchanges on Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science, . pp. 125-154. 2010.
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26Statistical significance and its critics: practicing damaging science, or damaging scientific practice?Synthese 200 (3): 1-33. 2022.While the common procedure of statistical significance testing and its accompanying concept of p-values have long been surrounded by controversy, renewed concern has been triggered by the replication crisis in science. Many blame statistical significance tests themselves, and some regard them as sufficiently damaging to scientific practice as to warrant being abandoned. We take a contrary position, arguing that the central criticisms arise from misunderstanding and misusing the statistical tools…Read more
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39Some surprising facts about surprising factsStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 45 79-86. 2014.A common intuition about evidence is that if data x have been used to construct a hypothesis H, then x should not be used again in support of H. It is no surprise that x fits H, if H was deliberately constructed to accord with x. The question of when and why we should avoid such “double-counting” continues to be debated in philosophy and statistics. It arises as a prohibition against data mining, hunting for significance, tuning on the signal, and ad hoc hypotheses, and as a preference for prede…Read more
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75How to discount double-counting when it counts: Some clarificationsBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 59 (4): 857-879. 2008.The issues of double-counting, use-constructing, and selection effects have long been the subject of debate in the philosophical as well as statistical literature. I have argued that it is the severity, stringency, or probativeness of the test—or lack of it—that should determine if a double-use of data is admissible. Hitchcock and Sober ([2004]) question whether this severity criterion' can perform its intended job. I argue that their criticisms stem from a flawed interpretation of the severity…Read more
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121Ontology & MethodologySynthese 192 (11): 3413-3423. 2015.Philosophers of science have long been concerned with the question of what a given scientific theory tells us about the contents of the world, but relatively little attention has been paid to how we set out to build theories and to the relevance of pre-theoretical methodology on a theory’s interpretation. In the traditional view, the form and content of a mature theory can be separated from any tentative ontological assumptions that went into its development. For this reason, the target of inter…Read more
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29Introduction to recent issues in philosophy of statistics: evidence, testing, and applicationsSynthese 201 (4): 1-5. 2023.
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6Increasing Public Participation in Controversies Involving Hazards: The Value of Metastatistical RulesScience, Technology and Human Values 10 (4): 55-65. 1985.
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25Causal Modeling, Explanation and Severe TestingIn Deborah G. Mayo & Aris Spanos (eds.), Error and Inference: Recent Exchanges on Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science, Cambridge University Press. pp. 331-375. 2010.
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31Significance Tests: Vitiated or Vindicated by the Replication Crisis in Psychology?Review of Philosophy and Psychology 12 (1): 101-120. 2020.The crisis of replication has led many to blame statistical significance tests for making it too easy to find impressive looking effects that do not replicate. However, the very fact it becomes difficult to replicate effects when features of the tests are tied down actually serves to vindicate statistical significance tests. While statistical significance tests, used correctly, serve to bound the probabilities of erroneous interpretations of data, this error control is nullified by data-dredging…Read more
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Error and the Growth of Experimental KnowledgeBritish Journal for the Philosophy of Science 48 (3): 455-459. 1997.
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131Methodology in Practice: Statistical Misspecification TestingPhilosophy of Science 71 (5): 1007-1025. 2004.The growing availability of computer power and statistical software has greatly increased the ease with which practitioners apply statistical methods, but this has not been accompanied by attention to checking the assumptions on which these methods are based. At the same time, disagreements about inferences based on statistical research frequently revolve around whether the assumptions are actually met in the studies available, e.g., in psychology, ecology, biology, risk assessment. Philosophica…Read more
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11Acceptable Evidence: Science and Values in Risk Management (edited book)Oxford University Press USA. 1991.Discussions of science and values in risk management have largely focused on how values enter into arguments about risks, that is, issues of acceptable risk. Instead this volume concentrates on how values enter into collecting, interpreting, communicating, and evaluating the evidence of risks, that is, issues of the acceptability of evidence of risk. By focusing on acceptable evidence, this volume avoids two barriers to progress. One barrier assumes that evidence of risk is largely a matter of o…Read more
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9Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach by Colin Howson; Peter Urbach (review)Isis 82 788-789. 1991.
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4There are two reasons, I claim, scientists do and should ignore standard philosophical theories of objective evidence: Such theories propose concepts that are far too weak to give scientists what they want from evidence, viz., a good reason to believe a hypothesis; and They provide concepts that make the evidential relationship a priori, whereas typically establishing an evidential claim requires empirical investigation.
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12Sociological versus metascientific views of technological Risk assessmentIn Kristin Shrader-Frechette & Laura Westra (eds.), Technology and Values, Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 217. 1997.
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63Some methodological issues in experimental economicsPhilosophy of Science 75 (5): 633-645. 2008.The growing acceptance and success of experimental economics has increased the interest of researchers in tackling philosophical and methodological challenges to which their work increasingly gives rise. I sketch some general issues that call for the combined expertise of experimental economists and philosophers of science, of experiment, and of inductive‐statistical inference and modeling. †To contact the author, please write to: 235 Major Williams, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061‐0126; e‐m…Read more
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The Methods of Science: No Dogs or Philosophers AllowedDVD. forthcoming.What is science, and what is it not? Is falsifiability the key to drawing this line? How and why does science work? Should we worry whether science is talking about a "real" world? And should we stop thinking there is a single thing we can call "the scientific method"? With Deborah Mayo, Robert Rynasiewicz, and Drew Arrowood
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80Philosophical Scrutiny of Evidence of Risks: From Bioethics to BioevidencePhilosophy of Science 73 (5): 803-816. 2006.We argue that a responsible analysis of today's evidence-based risk assessments and risk debates in biology demands a critical or metascientific scrutiny of the uncertainties, assumptions, and threats of error along the manifold steps in risk analysis. Without an accompanying methodological critique, neither sensitivity to social and ethical values, nor conceptual clarification alone, suffices. In this view, restricting the invitation for philosophical involvement to those wearing a "bioethicist…Read more
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116Novel evidence and severe testsPhilosophy of Science 58 (4): 523-552. 1991.While many philosophers of science have accorded special evidential significance to tests whose results are "novel facts", there continues to be disagreement over both the definition of novelty and why it should matter. The view of novelty favored by Giere, Lakatos, Worrall and many others is that of use-novelty: An accordance between evidence e and hypothesis h provides a genuine test of h only if e is not used in h's construction. I argue that what lies behind the intuition that novelty matter…Read more
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36Frequentist statistics as a theory of inductive inferenceIn Deborah G. Mayo & Aris Spanos (eds.), Error and Inference: Recent Exchanges on Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science, Cambridge University Press. 2006.After some general remarks about the interrelation between philosophical and statistical thinking, the discussion centres largely on significance tests. These are defined as the calculation of p-values rather than as formal procedures for ‘acceptance‘ and ‘rejection‘. A number of types of null hypothesis are described and a principle for evidential interpretation set out governing the implications of p- values in the specific circumstances of each application, as contrasted with a long-run inter…Read more
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124Error and Inference: Recent Exchanges on Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2009.Although both philosophers and scientists are interested in how to obtain reliable knowledge in the face of error, there is a gap between their perspectives that has been an obstacle to progress. By means of a series of exchanges between the editors and leaders from the philosophy of science, statistics and economics, this volume offers a cumulative introduction connecting problems of traditional philosophy of science to problems of inference in statistical and empirical modelling practice. Phil…Read more
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47Toward progressive critical rationalism : exchanges with Alan MusgraveIn Deborah G. Mayo & Aris Spanos (eds.), Error and Inference: Recent Exchanges on Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science, Cambridge University Press. pp. 113. 2009.
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73An objective theory of statistical testingSynthese 57 (3). 1983.Theories of statistical testing may be seen as attempts to provide systematic means for evaluating scientific conjectures on the basis of incomplete or inaccurate observational data. The Neyman-Pearson Theory of Testing (NPT) has purported to provide an objective means for testing statistical hypotheses corresponding to scientific claims. Despite their widespread use in science, methods of NPT have themselves been accused of failing to be objective; and the purported objectivity of scientific cl…Read more
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16Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach. Colin Howson, Peter UrbachIsis 82 (4): 788-789. 1991.
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92Peircean Induction and the Error-Correcting ThesisTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 41 (2). 2005.
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