Using science, making policy: what should we worry about?

Montuschi, Eleonora

doi:10.1007/s13194-016-0143-3

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…One also needs to look for the lack of evidence to enable decision-making (cf. Montuschi, 2017). After all, science does not provide advice to policy-makers only on the basis of corroborating evidence, but also on the basis of lack of evidence.…”

Section: Arguments From Ignorance In Policy-making: a Forced Marriagementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, scientific insights, including those revealing 'no-evidence' are used to help policy-makers decide what to do in situations of risk and uncertainty. Such insights are considered in areas of practical concern (Montuschi, 2017) resulting ultimately in political decisions. Although those decisions are inherently based on values and preferences, since politics is guided by such characteristics, they cannot be avoided in pressing circumstances.…”

Section: Arguments From Ignorance In Policy-making: a Forced Marriagementioning

confidence: 99%

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On Arguments from Ignorance in Policy-Making

Andone

Hernández

2022

The Pandemic of Argumentation

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Abstract“Schools should remain open during the COVID-19 pandemic, because there is no evidence indicating that children can get the virus.” Many European policy-makers have employed such arguments from ignorance to argue for a course of action in a situation in which science lacked vital information. What is particularly challenging about such arguments is that, despite the ignorance involved, they are used to justify policies meant to deal with practical problems. Limited information (‘there is no evidence indicating that children can get the virus’) is used as a basis for decision-making that might have significant consequences for the population (‘schools should remain open’). This chapter explains the intricate but unavoidable relationship between arguments from ignorance and policy-making. Moreover, evaluation criteria are developed to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable arguments from ignorance in policy-making by taking into consideration the structure of these argument types and their contexts of application. Finally, the chapter assesses two real-life instances of arguments from ignorance employed by the European Commission and the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such an assessment sets important steps in understanding how arguments from ignorance can facilitate or reduce acceptance of the measures proposed by policy-makers.

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Section: Arguments From Ignorance In Policy-making: a Forced Marriagementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Arguments From Ignorance In Policy-making: a Forced Marriagementioning

confidence: 99%

On Arguments from Ignorance in Policy-Making

Andone

Hernández

2022

The Pandemic of Argumentation

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“…Also see Daston and Galison (2007), Fine (1998), Kincaid et al (2007), Kuhn (1977), Montuschi (2004Montuschi ( , 2014Montuschi ( , 2017, and Padovani et al (2015), for a series of discussions on objectivity and value-freedom that foreshadow the contextualised accounts of objectivity we refer to here. of hand: drawing attention to the perspectival considerations informing GGGI and framing them as biasing the index, and presenting their supposed mitigation of these same considerations in BIGI as a consequent achievement of a greater degree of objectivity-all whilst ignoring the different perspectives informing their construction of BIGI.…”

Section: Calculation Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

My objectivity is better than yours: contextualising debates about gender inequality

Worsdale

Wright

2020

Synthese

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Absract In this paper, we contribute to a growing literature in the philosophy of social science cautioning social scientists against context-independent claims to objectivity, by analyzing the recent proposal of a new Basic Index of Gender Inequality (BIGI) by Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary. Despite the many internal problems with BIGI, Stoet and Geary have had some success in positioning the index as an important corrective to the way in which gender inequality is measured in mainstream metrics like the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI). We argue that this success is facilitated at least in part by the failure of GGGI’s proponents to adequately justify the methodological choices underpinning the index in relation to the context in which the index’s findings are intended to be used. In so doing, the authors of GGGI oversell the objectivity of the metric’s assessment of the state of global gender inequality—and it is this overselling that allows Stoet and Geary to present BIGI as a metric that corrects what they claim are systematic biases within GGGI. The case of BIGI and GGGI, we argue, suggests that the kind of epistemic modesty exhibited by recent operational approaches to objectivity is particularly important for social research on highly politically contested topics.

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“…It might make sense, in some circumstances, to 'spit on the match first for good luck' to light it, and yet this activity might not achieve the aim. 6 For a detailed description and analysis of the case seeMontuschi (2017).7 This consists of a phenomenon of increased migration of badgers, including infected ones, from cull areas, bringing the disease to farms with no incidences of infected cattle. Badgers live in socially tight networks.…”

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confidence: 99%

Finding a context for objectivity

Montuschi

2020

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Several and repeated attempts have been made to say what objectivity consists of and why it should be pursued in research. In the first part of this paper two main strategies are singled out, sharing the assumption that there is a way (or different ways) objectivity can be thought of in the abstract (which does not mean without content), and that it can be instantiated in context—and in enough contexts to justify the abstract case. But not only is this assumption open to the objection that objectivity so conceived does not admit of one clear definition (even a disjunctive one) that is appropriate in many or most contexts where we intend the term to do its work. It also does not seem to pay specific attention to what actually constitutes a context of practice, when we think of objectivity in some relation to such context. The aim of this paper is to question how context works both as a mechanism of meaning formation for the concept of objectivity, and as a practical framework for pursuing research objectively. To articulate a suitable notion of context some insight from recent literature in the philosophy of science is first introduced and then adapted to show how research practices successfully achieve objectivity as one of their aims. It will be argued that an idea of context that includes activities which (in a way to be qualified) are relevant and reliable towards a settled aim is the model of practice that makes objectivity a pursuable task in research. This contextual picture of objectivity, it will be suggested, might better serve the purpose of scientific research (including social research) than either of the two descriptive strategies outlined at the beginning of this paper can do.

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Using science, making policy: what should we worry about?

Cited by 13 publications

References 7 publications

On Arguments from Ignorance in Policy-Making

On Arguments from Ignorance in Policy-Making

My objectivity is better than yours: contextualising debates about gender inequality

Finding a context for objectivity

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