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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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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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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 |
collection | PubMed |
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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8131867 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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