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A New Role for Data in the Philosophy of Science

2015· article· en· W1515719716 on OpenAlexaff
Molly Kao

Bibliographic record

VenuePhilosophia Scientae · 2015
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicPhilosophy and History of Science
Canadian institutionsWestern University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsEntitlement (fair division)EmpiricismPhilosophy of scienceEpistemologyFoundation (evidence)Context (archaeology)Computer scienceMathematical economicsData sciencePhilosophyMathematicsPolitical scienceLaw

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

There exists a problem of the circularity in measurement: construction of theories requires reliable data, but obtaining reliable data requires reliable measurement devices whose construction requires a theory. I argue that adapting Anil Gupta's empiricist epistemology to a scientific context yields a possible solution. One can consider the role of data not as providing a foundation for a theory, but as acting functionally, licensing revisions of a previous theory. Data provide scientists with entitlement to their claims conditional on their background theory. Unconditional entitlement is obtained when different starting theories converge to the same view over the course of experimentation. I explain this idea using two examples, one in thermometry and one involving experiments on the weak neutral current.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.059
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.060
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScience and technology studies
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.992
Threshold uncertainty score0.309

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0590.060
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.002
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0030.003
Bibliometrics0.0080.007
Science and technology studies0.0080.096
Scholarly communication0.0230.071
Open science0.0050.014
Research integrity0.0100.027
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0060.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.259
GPT teacher head0.312
Teacher spread0.054 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2015
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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