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Robust and Discordant Evidence: Methodological Lessons from Clinical Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Spencer Phillips Hey
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Abstract

The concordance of results that are “robust” across multiple scientific modalities is widely considered to play a critical role in the epistemology of science. But what should we make of those cases where such multimodal evidence is discordant? Jacob Stegenga has recently argued that robustness is “worse than useless” in these cases, suggesting that “different kinds of evidence cannot be combined in a coherent way.” In this article I respond to this critique and illustrate the critical methodological role that robustness plays as an aim of scientific inquiry.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 55 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I would like to thank Charles Weijer, Robert Batterman, Charles Heilig, William Wimsatt, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their insightful feedback on this manuscript.

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