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Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? The interweaving of values and science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Helena Likwornik
Helena Likwornik*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
*
*Email: helena.likwornik@utoronto.ca
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Abstract

The role of values in the scientific process is widely debated. But evidence and values cannot be neatly separated. Instead, values infuse the entire scientific process, starting with the choice of research questions. Research avenues are selected based on prior beliefs about the workings of the world. In fact, informally assigned prior probabilities and normalizing constants play an essential role in distinguishing causes from correlations and ignoring irrelevant associations that would otherwise be suggested by raw data. But since these initial probabilities often have a heterogeneous pedigree – often not all that went into their formation is known or knowable – it becomes difficult to cleanly separate evidence from values. At the same time, this reality does not undermine science's unique status in generating knowledge. This is because it is not the evidence per se generated by science, but rather the method by which science generates it, that justifies science's privileged role.

Keywords

valuessciencescientific processevidenceprior beliefsscientific methodprior beliefsnormalizing constantscauses and correlations
Type
Symposium
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , June 2015 , pp. 382 - 403
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2015

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