Science Ethics in the News

I came across this recent story about a conundrum in research ethics: should scientists publish research on how certain mutations have made a strain of bird flu wildly more virulent, given its obvious implications for bioterrorism? This seems like a perfect case for Heather Douglas's recent opinion piece, "The Dark Side of Science" that I posted about the other week. Let's talk about it next time too.

Remember that we're going to spend a little bit more time on human/animal research at the beginning of class next time, so please bring your Resnik printout again.

Reflections on a Closed Box

Having closed the lid on the box project, so to speak, I thought it’d be worth reflecting on it a bit further “as a group”. I found many of your short writing assignments on this subject quite perceptive and interesting; so I’ll let you do most of the work.

When the box project was first assigned, I was unsure about why it was relevant to the course. . . .

Not too surprising! I expect that the whole project seemed rather trivial. Who cares what’s in some cardboard box — what’s my motivation to solve this puzzle!? It seems to me that this is often a feature of workaday science. This is a point that Thomas Kuhn stressed in his discussions of “Normal Science”: a lot of scientific work focusses on solving puzzles that arise within scientific paradigms/theories — e.g., how does this biosynthetic pathway work? what fundamental particles are there? Addressing these puzzles isn’t really part of any grand project of confirming or disconfirming the theory (the sort of thing that Popper had in mind); indeed it might look trivial or uninteresting to outsiders. 

[The project] touched upon induction, creativity, description, observation, the social aspect of science, explanation, and realism versus anti-realism.

Speaking of realism/anti-realism, a number of you connected on this connection:

I was also wondering how it could have been possible in anyway to observe what is in the box without opening it. . . . Prior to this course and the box project, if I were asked if I can observe what is inside of a closed box without actually opening the box, I would have responded with a strong, “no, duh”.

We often think of science as having all the answers or always coming up with new methods to examine things, but occasionally science has to settle on methods that are less than ideal in order to make any inferences as all. This, obviously, means our certainty is greatly reduced, which is likely why realism faces so many criticisms. The largest point this project made, however, is that the truth may not always be able to be realized by science. . . . We may be able to provide evidence upon piece of evidence and we may be able to be confident in what we think is true, but we may never truly know. I think this point hit home especially hard when both groups realized we weren’t going to open the box. We were all disappointed, because we wanted to know what was inside. We wanted to know if we were right. I think this is the desire of all science, but it is an ultimately unrealized desire. 

After the presentations I feel as though I may take a more anti-realism approach to the project, since we never opened the box to confirm its contents. I now feel that our findings on what we believe to be inside the box are really only examples of how the world might be, rather than how the world is, since there are items in the box that may be unobservable (not observable even with a scientific instrument). . . . I think that this project helped to illustrates the frustrations that come with science. It was said at the end of the presentations that in science "you don't get to open a box at the end of the day and find out if you're right" and I think thats very true. Personally I am still very frustrated that I do not have confirmation as to what the items in the box are, but I guess thats just part of science. Science is about making observations, performing tests, making guesses, providing support for your ideas and allowing others to criticize your findings.

Or here’s a slightly different perspective: perhaps science does often reach the truth — perhaps we are sometimes able to reach out and grasp fundamental, vast, tiny, elusive, and important features of reality — but we have no independent way of checking this. How could we? Any check would just presumably use science. There’s nothing analogous in science to opening the box and checking whether you have it right. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t be very confident (as you no doubt are) that we do have it right. . . .

Some of you remarked on social aspects illustrated by the project:

The thing I found most interesting about the box project was that both groups relied on the most technologically advanced piece of evidence (x-ray images) as their main source of knowledge and did not go beyond this after it was utilized.  Many scientists function this way and want the most expensive kit or the most advanced technology to perform their experiments.  It made me think that sometimes going back to the basics and not relying so heavily on technology and zooming out to grasp the bigger picture may be useful at times in science.  Also, it may provide useful information at a lower cost.  For example, no one thought to measure the objects in the box after they had the x-ray images; this is a practical and easy test that would have provided a lot of useful information.  

I agree. Scientists are people and motivated by all manner of non-rational considerations including what the latest and greatest equipment is, possession of which might bring increased status (via the “Oooh: new and shiny!” effect). One of you also pointed out the tenuous role of competition as a motivator:

. . . Another influence in science that can be seen as “positive” is the impact of competing scientific groups. For example, the two competing groups for this project pushed each other to do more and more comprehensive tests in order to out do the other group, which helped fuel the overall evidence gathering of the collective of both groups. Unfortunately, science can get to the point where it is only based on this idea of competition. Some scientists may only work hard in order to be better than other scientists rather than actually try and develop theories to help improve society. Something similar to this would be if one of the two box project groups was only focused on gaining the gift certificate to cherry alley. There is an incentive which is great since it gives us an additional reason to pursue science, but some scientists may decide to only work to the level that they think the other scientists will work to and no to their actual full potential, inhibiting the world from gaining the fullest amount of benefits from its brightest minds.

One of the fascinating issues that we haven’t explicitly addressed is the role that such social factors play in science. French has a really nice pair of chapters on this issue that I encourage you to read (you know: over winter break). It strikes me that when, for example, Faviola Gianotti (a spokesperson for the ATLAS project at CERN on the video I posted last week) says that “It’s not us who decide if [the Higgs Boson is] there or not — it’s nature,” she may be overstating things somewhat. While we can certainly agree that either nature contains or doesn’t contain the Higgs Boson (as conceived by the Standard Model), but ultimately it is us who decide whether nature decides such and such! 

The Dark Side of Science

My friend Heather Douglas (a philosopher of science at Waterloo in Canada, who recently wrote an excellent book on the relation between science and politics/values), just published a fascinating essay in The Scientist: "The Dark Side of Science". We might consider making some of these issues the topic for the final days of the course.

Further Reflections on the Decline Effect

A recent conversation with Carleen got me thinking again about the decline effect. Turns out that Lehrer wrote two other articles on the subject: "More Thoughts on the Decline Effect" (in the New Yorker) and "Is Corporate Research Better?" (in his Wired blog, "The Frontal Cortex"). Both are really interesting, but something stood out to me in the former. Lehrer writes:

If false results can get replicated, then how do we demarcate science from pseudoscience? And how can we be sure that anything—even a multiply confirmed finding—is true?

It strikes me as a blunder to confused the issue of demarcation and error. The decline effect reminds us that even replicated results can be incorrect. But this doesn't clearly raise the demarcation problem. Rather, it raises the pressing question of how confident we ought to be in the deliverances of scientific theories. His second article (on corporate research) suggests that at least many in industry are taking a more skeptical outlook on basic science, since their monetary stakes are quite high. . . .

The former article continues:

These questions have no easy answers. However, I think the decline effect is an important reminder that we shouldn’t simply reassure ourselves with platitudes about the rigors of replication or the inevitable corrections of peer review. Although we often pretend that experiments settle the truth for us—that we are mere passive observers, dutifully recording the facts—the reality of science is a lot messier. It is an intensely human process, shaped by all of our usual talents, tendencies, and flaws.

With this I think we can agree.

Further Reflections on Induction

Since a few confusions about the problem of induction persist — and the topic isn’t quite ready to go away — I thought I’d attempt some clarification. I’ll proceed in the time-honored form of an FAQ sheet. This isn’t meant to be exhaustive: I suggest circling back to the relevant Foster, Lipton, and Popper readings for further details. However, I’d be very happy to answer other questions you think should be included here (feel free to leave a comment or shoot me an email). And as usual, you’re welcome to join me in my office hours (or another time) to clarify any lingering puzzlement.

What is induction? 
Broadly speaking, induction is a non-deductive form of inference. People often have specific ideas about what sorts of inferences count as induction. For example, they may say that inductive inference proceeds from specific to general — while deductive arguments proceed from general to specific. Thus “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal” is a classic deductive argument, while “This man is mortal; this other man is moral; that guy’s mortal, . . . ; therefore, all men are moral” is an exemplary inductive argument. 

However, a little reflection shows that this isn’t that great of a characterization — for either inductive or deductive arguments. Deductive arguments come in all shapes and sizes. Here’s one: “Professor Bermudez is either in his office or meeting with the dean; he’s not in his office, so he must be meeting with the dean.” Shoehorning this argument into the “general-to-specific” motto doesn’t seem right. We can find similar mismatches among inductive arguments. For example, consider one of the pieces of evidence for the Big Bang: “everywhere in the universe we look, there’s this hiss of background radiation; such a background would be nicely explained by the universe’s coming to be in a ‘Big Bang’; so therefore (probably) the big bang model of the universe’s origin is true.” We’ll look at arguments like this — sometimes called ‘abductive’ arguments or ‘inference to the best explanation’ — in more detail in a few weeks. If anything, we’re going from general to particular there, yet the argument is clearly supposed to be inductive in our broad sense. This example also demonstrates the inadequacy of another popular characterization of induction: that it is about prediction of the future events (or future observations). The arguments for the occurrence of a Big Bang are obviously not forward-looking. Science is about more than prediction: it is about finding out what happened and explaining it.   

You said that the inference to the best explanation above was clearly inductive? Why? Because the argument is not deductively valid?

Good question! Though it’s true that the argument is not deductively valid (the conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises as a matter of logic alone: we can imagine the premises about the background radiation being true but the Big Bang theory being false), this fact alone isn’t enough to make the argument inductive. We wouldn’t want to say that deductive arguments are necessarily valid: that is the standard to which deductive arguments “strive”, but there are plenty of invalid deductive arguments. For example: “If Professor Bermudez in his office, then he’s working; he’s not in his office; therefore, he’s not working.” The conclusion doesn’t follow from the premises in this case: it’s possible that Bermudez is working elsewhere. Thinking that this argument form is valid is a common enough mistake that it has its own name: ‘the fallacy of denying the antecedent’. What makes this argument deductive rather than inductive. The best answer has to do with the standard of evaluation that is likely intended by the arguer. 

So induction is a weaker, less demanding standard than deduction?

That’s a somewhat misleading way of putting it. Induction and deduction are simply different standards. In the case of deductive arguments, we can tell whether they are valid by more or less algorithmic means. That’s because validity has to do with logical form (roughly, the grammatical structure) of an argument rather than its content. (This is why it’s often called ‘formal logic’ — not because it dresses up nicely.) But the level of certainty that this standard gives us comes at a price: triviality. There’s a sense that we don’t really learn much when we derive the conclusion of a deductively valid argument from its premises. We might not have worked it out, but the information was (in a sense) already there, buried, as it were, in the form of the premises. That shows us that deduction alone won’t be a good way of expanding our knowledge. Inductive arguments, on the other hand, purport to do this. That is why some call inductive inference “ampliative”. 

But how can induction “amplify” our knowledge if the conclusions of inductive arguments are underdetermined by our evidence?

It is important to realize that the fact of underdetermination alone should not scupper our confidence in induction. For example, when some people are first exposed to the problem of induction they seem a little too eager to relinquish claims about knowledge of the future. It seems to me that they are confusing knowledge and certainty. Fair enough: I cannot be certain that, stay, the sun will rise tomorrow. My evidence thus far underdetermines whether it will (perhaps a rogue star will sweep through our solar system and disrupt everything tonight!). But on the other hand, our evidence suggests pretty strongly that no such freakish occurrence will take place. Underdetermination alone should not get us to relinquish inductive inference. We use it all the time. It has been successful.

What is the justificatory problem of induction? Doesn’t it stem from underdetermination? 

Underdetermination is only part of the story. Hume’s skeptical argument is roughly this: the fact that inductive inferences are underdetermined by evidence shows us that no deductive justification of the reliability of inductive inference will be forthcoming. But what’s the alternative? Induction!? If we say something like “when we’ve previously used induction, it’s shown itself to be more or less reliable”, we’re using induction. So if the reliability of induction is already an open question, we can’t use induction to defend its reliability. Otherwise, we reason in a circle — or “beg the question” —, taking for granted what is in question. Ditto for attempts to justify particular inductive arguments by adding premises about the “Uniformity of Nature”. This gambit is in even worse trouble than using induction to justify induction. For one, presumably, we’d need induction in order to show that nature is uniform, running into the same problem circularity problem. And for two, it looks pretty doubtful that we can put specific enough sense to the claim that nature is uniform in order to make it come out both true and useful. It’s either going to be true but too weak (e.g., “Nature is uniform for the most part, in certain respects”) or strong enough to be of some use, but false (e.g., “Nature is uniform in all respects relevant to induction”). 

So does Hume’s skeptical argument show that induction is unreliable?

No. For one, just because he gives us an argument whose conclusion is that inductive inference cannot be justified, doesn’t mean that we ought to believe that conclusion. We might try to show where the argument goes wrong. Or we might try to finesse the issue in a less direct way. But anyway, even if we did accept the conclusion that we cannot justify our use of inductive inference — that, as Lipton puts it, there is a “deep symmetry” between induction and other “counterinductive” principles — we shouldn’t confuse this with the claim that induction is unreliable. Lipton’s analogy to lying is revealing here: if you are wondering whether I am honest, there’s not a lot that I can say that should help you decide. But importantly, this fact — that I cannot effectively testify to my own honesty — does not show that I am not honest.

How does the descriptive problem fit into this picture?

Here’s one way of thinking about this story: we have general reasons for being skeptical about the possibility of justifying inductive inference’s reliability. We seem forced by underdetermination to use induction to justify itself, but this has us committing the fallacy of arguing in a circle. Subtle minds begin to ask whether we haven’t been asking the wrong questions. Does inductive inference need to be justified? What exactly is it that we’re looking for here? Compare deduction: what justifies a particular rule of deduction? It seems unlikely that we’ll be able to say anything here without using deductive inference. [Hey, maybe we could argue inductively that deduction is reliable — homework (replace a question of your choosing in an SWA): can this idea go anywhere?] So perhaps we should do with induction what we’ve done with deduction: simply articulate the rules very carefully and follow them.

However, it turns out that this is easier to say than to do. Not too surprising: it’s often harder to describe what we have a knack for doing (playing a musical instrument, shooting a basket, cooking the perfect omelet, whatever). Problems like the Ravens Paradox, the Tacking Problem, and Goodman’s New Riddle offer further challenges to particular descriptions of how we in fact reason inductively. Notice that these problems do not call into question the ways in which we reason (suggesting that we shouldn’t reason in those ways, say). Instead, they cast doubt on the accuracy of those descriptions. The justification of our practices needn’t enter into it at this point.

Follow-up Questions for Induction

I want to start class next time by considering some of the proposed solutions to the justificatory problem of induction. I will then run you through the Ravens paradox quickly (since it's in a way not so dissimilar to the problem facing H-Dism) and start on Goodman's "New Riddle". So no further reading is assigned for Thursday. However, you will probably get more out of our discussion if you read the optional articles from last time.

Here are some additional questions to think about and/or write on (if you have not done an SWA yet for this week). (Write on one:)

• Foster compares two strategies for responding to the justification problem: saying something about the meaning of 'rational' and questioning the legitimacy of the challenge (see pp. 13–15). Explain this difference.
• Devise an analogy that helps to illustrate the justificatory problem of induction. 
• If you've read the Godfrey-Smith reading: try to explain I.J. Good's solution to the Ravens Problem.
• If you've read Goodman: explain why "grue" emeralds are a problem for the instantial model.