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How to Assess the Epistemic Wrongness of Sponsorship Bias? The Case of Manufactured Certainty

Although the impact of so-called “sponsorship bias” has been the subject of increased attention in the philosophy of science, what exactly constitutes its epistemic wrongness is still debated. In this paper, I will argue that neither evidential accounts nor social–epistemological accounts can fully...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Leefmann, Jon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8131867/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34027299
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.599909
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author Leefmann, Jon
author_facet Leefmann, Jon
author_sort Leefmann, Jon
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description Although the impact of so-called “sponsorship bias” has been the subject of increased attention in the philosophy of science, what exactly constitutes its epistemic wrongness is still debated. In this paper, I will argue that neither evidential accounts nor social–epistemological accounts can fully account for the epistemic wrongness of sponsorship bias, but there are good reasons to prefer social–epistemological to evidential accounts. I will defend this claim by examining how both accounts deal with a paradigm case from medical epistemology, recently discussed in a paper by Bennett Holman. I will argue that evidential accounts cannot adequately capture cases of sponsorship bias that involve the manufacturing of certainty because of their neutrality with respect to the role of non-epistemic values in scientific practice. If my argument holds, it further highlights the importance of integrating social and ethical concerns into epistemological analysis, especially in applied contexts. One can only properly grasp sponsorship bias as an epistemological problem if one resists the methodological tendency to analyze social, ethical, and epistemological issues in isolation from each other.
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spelling pubmed-81318672021-05-20 How to Assess the Epistemic Wrongness of Sponsorship Bias? The Case of Manufactured Certainty Leefmann, Jon Front Res Metr Anal Research Metrics and Analytics Although the impact of so-called “sponsorship bias” has been the subject of increased attention in the philosophy of science, what exactly constitutes its epistemic wrongness is still debated. In this paper, I will argue that neither evidential accounts nor social–epistemological accounts can fully account for the epistemic wrongness of sponsorship bias, but there are good reasons to prefer social–epistemological to evidential accounts. I will defend this claim by examining how both accounts deal with a paradigm case from medical epistemology, recently discussed in a paper by Bennett Holman. I will argue that evidential accounts cannot adequately capture cases of sponsorship bias that involve the manufacturing of certainty because of their neutrality with respect to the role of non-epistemic values in scientific practice. If my argument holds, it further highlights the importance of integrating social and ethical concerns into epistemological analysis, especially in applied contexts. One can only properly grasp sponsorship bias as an epistemological problem if one resists the methodological tendency to analyze social, ethical, and epistemological issues in isolation from each other. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC8131867/ /pubmed/34027299 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.599909 Text en Copyright © 2021 Leefmann. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Research Metrics and Analytics
Leefmann, Jon
How to Assess the Epistemic Wrongness of Sponsorship Bias? The Case of Manufactured Certainty
title How to Assess the Epistemic Wrongness of Sponsorship Bias? The Case of Manufactured Certainty
title_full How to Assess the Epistemic Wrongness of Sponsorship Bias? The Case of Manufactured Certainty
title_fullStr How to Assess the Epistemic Wrongness of Sponsorship Bias? The Case of Manufactured Certainty
title_full_unstemmed How to Assess the Epistemic Wrongness of Sponsorship Bias? The Case of Manufactured Certainty
title_short How to Assess the Epistemic Wrongness of Sponsorship Bias? The Case of Manufactured Certainty
title_sort how to assess the epistemic wrongness of sponsorship bias? the case of manufactured certainty
topic Research Metrics and Analytics
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8131867/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34027299
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/frma.2021.599909
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