Related papers: Science and Illusions
Statistical hypothesis testing is the central method to demarcate scientific theories in both exploratory and inferential analyses. However, whether this method befits such purpose remains a matter of debate. Established approaches to…
A fundamental problem in science is how to make logical inferences from scientific data. Mere data does not suffice since additional information is necessary to select a domain of models or hypotheses and thus determine the likelihood of…
Modern science increasingly relies on ever-growing observational datasets and automated inference pipelines, under the implicit belief that accumulating more data makes scientific conclusions more reliable. Here we show that this belief can…
This is a short, light spirited account of how some possibly important science actually happened. It very much conflicts with Popper's contention that the key to scientific progress is falsification.
This paper presents a plausible reasoning system to illustrate some broad issues in knowledge representation: dualities between different reasoning forms, the difficulty of unifying complementary reasoning styles, and the approximate nature…
Explaining autonomous and intelligent systems is critical in order to improve trust in their decisions. Counterfactuals have emerged as one of the most compelling forms of explanation. They address ``why not'' questions by revealing how…
Information accounting provides a better foundation for hypothesis testing than does uncertainty quantification. A quantitative account of science is derived under this perspective that alleviates the need for epistemic bridge principles,…
Empirical science needs to be based on facts and claims that can be reproduced. This calls for replicating the studies that proclaim the claims, but practice in most fields still fails to implement this idea. When such studies emerged in…
Any system based on axioms is incomplete because the axioms cannot be proven from the system, just believed. But one system can be less-incomplete than other. Neutrosophy is less-incomplete than many other systems because it contains them.…
One of the main goals of scientific research is to provide a description of the empirical data which is as accurate and comprehensive as possible, while relying on as few and simple assumptions as possible. In this paper, I propose a…
One purpose -- quite a few thinkers would say the main purpose -- of seeking knowledge about the world is to enhance our ability to make good decisions. An item of knowledge that can make no conceivable difference with regard to anything we…
Much has been discussed in the philosophy of science about how we should understand the scientific enterprise. On the one hand, scientific realists believe that empirically adequate theories can be supplemented by interpretations that can…
In this essay, I argue that modern science is not the dichotomous pairing of theory and experiment that it is typically presented as, and I offer an alternative paradigm defined by its functions as a human endeavor. I also demonstrate how…
Typical arguments against scientific misconduct generally fail to support current policies on research fraud: they may not prove wrong what is usually considered research misconduct and they tend to make wrong things that are not normally…
Scientific fact-checking aims to determine the veracity of scientific claims by retrieving and analysing evidence from research literature. The problem is inherently more complex than general fact-checking since it must accommodate the…
This paper is concerned with the question of when a theory is refutable with certainty on the basis of sequence of primitive observations. Beginning with the simple definition of falsifiability as the ability to be refuted by some finite…
While the relation between visualization and scientific understanding has been a topic of long-standing discussion, recent developments in physics have pushed the boundaries of this debate to new and still unexplored realms. For it is…
Can scientific discovery be made arbitrarily easy by choosing the right representation, collecting enough data, and deploying sufficiently powerful algorithms? This paper argues that the answer is fundamentally negative. We introduce the…
The combination of evidence in Dempster-Shafer theory is compared with the combination of evidence in probabilistic logic. Sufficient conditions are stated for these two methods to agree. It is then shown that these conditions are minimal…
Some attack scientific rationality, others defend it, but both miss the point. What both parties take to be scientific rationality is actually a species of irrationality masquerading as scientific rationality. The current orthodox…