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Interests and Epistemic Integrity in Science
A New Framework to Assess Interest Influences in Scientific Research Processes
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2016
Summary
Scientific research is often influenced by financial interests, political interests, or personal career interests of the scientists involved. For instance, the pharmaceutical giant Merck manipulated clinical trial data in order to make sure that data confirmed the safety of one of its products, Vioxx, in order to serve the company’s short-term commercial interests. This case is obviously unacceptable. But why exactly is it unacceptable? One way to account for this judgment is on the basis of the ideal of purity. According to this ideal, scientific decision-making should be pure— that is, unaffected by financial interests, political interests, career interests, and so on. Although this ideal is questionable, many people (including philosophers of science) still hold on to it.
In Interests and Epistemic Integrity in Science: A New Framework to Assess Interest Influences in Scientific Research Processes, Jan De Winter first argues that it is better to fully abandon the ideal of purity, then proposes an alternative ideal to assess interest influences in science: the ideal of epistemic integrity. He spells out and systematically defends a new concept of epistemic integrity, using it not only to analyze the Vioxx debacle, but also to identify unacceptable interest influences in aerospace science, climate science, and biology, and to explain exactly why these interest influences are unacceptable. These analyses make a compelling case for the new concept of epistemic integrity which will be interesting and useful for philosophers of science, scientists, engineers, science policymakers, and anyone else concerned about the integrity of science.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2016
ISBN-Print
978-1-4985-2933-4
ISBN-Online
978-1-4985-2934-1
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
187
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Table of Contents No access
Preface No access
Introduction No access Pages 1 - 14
Chapter One: The Ideal of Purity No access
Chapter Two: Mechanistic Artifact Explanation No access
Chapter Three: Explanations in Software Engineering No access
Chapter Four: Interests and Explanation in the Sciences No access
Chapter Five: Developing a Concept of Epistemic Integrity No access
Chapter Six: The Four Requirements of Explication No access
Chapter Seven: The Space Shuttle Program No access
Chapter Eight: Controversies Concerning the IPCC No access
Chapter Nine: Frans de Waal’s Work on Animal Morality No access
