The weaponizing of scientific expertise to oppose regulation has been extensively studied. However, the relevant studies, belonging to the emerging discipline of agnotology, remain focused on the analysis of empirical corruption: of misinformation, doubt mongering, and other practices that cynically deploy expertise to render audiences ignorant of empirical facts. This paper explores the wrongful deployment of expertise beyond empirical corruption. To do so, I develop a broader framework of morally subversive expertise, building on recent work in political philosophy (Howard, 2016). (...) Expertise is subversive if it sets up its audience to fail morally, either intentionally or negligently. I distinguish three modes of subversive expertise: empirical subversion (the focus of agnotology), normative subversion and motivational subversion. Drawing on these distinctions, I offer a revisionary account of the Trump Administration’s regulatory science as a case study. I show that the Trump Administration’s use of expertise to dismantle climate regulation, contra the standard charge, cannot be explained using the resources of agnotology alone: the Administration produced highly reliable climate assessments, detailing the risks of climate change, candidly admitting the harms of its proposed policies, and still successfully deployed these findings to justify massive climate deregulation. The lesson of the analysis is that dismissing the expertise that underpins climate deregulation as empirically corrupt ‘anti-science’ both obscures its actual role in the politics of climate change and understates its wrongfulness: it misses the breadth of the assault on moral agency that sustains climate injustice. (shrink)

Solving the “new demarcation problem” requires a distinction between epistemically legitimate and illegitimate roles for non-epistemic values in science. This paper addresses one ‘half’ (i.e. a sub-problem) of the new demarcation problem articulated by the Gretchenfrage: What makes the role of a non-epistemic value in science epistemically illegitimate? I will argue for the Explaining Epistemic Errors (EEE) account, according to which the epistemically illegitimate role of a non-epistemic value is defined via an explanatory claim: the fact that an epistemic agent (...) is motivated by a non-epistemic value explains why the epistemic agent commits a particular epistemic error. The EEE account is inspired by Douglas’ and Steel’s “functionalist” or “epistemic constraint” accounts of epistemic illegitimacy. I will suggest that the EEE account is able to meet two challenges that these two accounts face, while preserving the key intuition underlying both accounts. If my arguments succeed, then the EEE account provides a solution to one half of the new demarcation problem (by providing a definition of what makes the role of a non-epistemic value epistemically illegitimate) and it opens up new ways for addressing the other half (i.e. characterizing an epistemically legitimate role for non-epistemic values). (shrink)

Biased research occurs frequently in the sciences. In this paper, I will focus on one particular kind of biased research: research that is subject to sponsorship bias. I will address the following epistemological question: what precisely is epistemically wrong with biased research of this kind? I will defend the evidential account of epistemic wrongness: that is, research affected by sponsorship bias is epistemically wrong if and only if the researchers in question make false claims about the evidential support of some (...) hypothesis H by data E. I will argue that the evidential account captures the epistemic wrongness of three paradigmatic types of sponsorship bias. (shrink)

Gender bias is a recalcitrant problem in academia and society. However, dissent has been created on this issue. We focus on dissenting studies by Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, arguing that they reach conclusions that are unwarranted on the basis of the available evidence and that they ignore fundamental objections to their methodological decisions. Drawing on discussions from other contexts, particularly on manufactured dissent concerning anthropogenic climate change, we conclude that dissent on gender bias substantially contributes to the (...) exacerbation of biases in society and an increasing number of attacks on researchers, making it both epistemically and socially problematic. (shrink)

The shooting bias hypothesis aims to explain the disproportionate number of minorities killed by police. We present the evidence mounting in support of the existence of shooting bias and then focus on two dissenting studies. We examine these studies in light of Biddle and Leuschner’s “inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent” and conclude that, although they meet this account only partially, the studies are in fact epistemically and socially detrimental as they contribute to racism in society and to a (...) social atmosphere that is hostile to science as scholars working on issues of racism come under attack. We emphasize this final point via recourse to Kitcher’s “Millian argument against the freedom of research.”. (shrink)

Although the discipline of vice epistemology is only a decade old, the broader project of studying epistemic vices and failings is much older. This paper argues that contemporary vice epistemologists ought to engage more closely with these earlier projects. After sketching some general arguments in section one, I then turn to deep epistemic vices: ones whose identity and intelligibility depends on some underlying conception of human nature or the nature of reality. The final section then offers a case study from (...) a vice epistemic tradition that emerged in early modern English natural philosophy. (shrink)

The shooting bias hypothesis aims to explain the disproportionate number of minorities killed by police. We present the evidence mounting in support of the existence of shooting bias and then focus on two dissenting studies. We examine these studies in light of Biddle and Leuschner’s “inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent” and conclude that, although they meet this account only partially, the studies are in fact epistemically and socially detrimental as they contribute to racism in society and to a (...) social atmosphere that is hostile to science as scholars working on issues of racism come under attack. We emphasize this final point via recourse to Kitcher’s “Millian argument against the freedom of research.”. (shrink)

In recent years, industry-funded research has come under fire because of concerns that it can be biased in favor of the funders. This article suggests that efforts by philosophers of science to analyze the concept of objectivity can provide important lessons for those seeking to evaluate and improve industry-funded research. It identifies three particularly relevant criteria for objectivity: transparency, reproducibility, and effective criticism. On closer examination, the criteria of transparency and reproducibility turn out to have significant limitations in this context, (...) but the criterion of effective criticism suggests some important strategies for improving the objectivity of industry-funded science. (shrink)

While the Value-Free Ideal of science has suffered compelling criticism, some advocates like Gregor Betz continue to argue that science policy advisors should avoid value judgments by hedging their hypotheses. This approach depends on a mistaken understanding of the relations between facts and values in regulatory science. My case study involves the morning-after pill Plan B and the “Drug Fact” that it “may” prevent implantation. I analyze the operative values, which I call zygote-centrism, responsible for this hedged drug label. Then, (...) I explain my twofold account of value-ladenness, involving the constitutive role of value judgments in science and the social function of facts as political tools. Because this drug fact is ineliminably value-laden in both senses, I conclude that hedged hypotheses are not necessarily value-free. (shrink)

While the science and values literature has seen recurrent concerns about wishful thinking, there have been few efforts to characterize this phenomenon. Based on a review of varieties of wishful thinking involved in climate skepticism, we argue that instances of wishful thinking can be fruitfully characterized in terms of the mechanisms that generate them and the problems associated with them. We highlight the array of mechanisms associated with wishful thinking, as well as the fact that it can be evaluated both (...) from epistemic and ethical perspectives. We argue that it is doubtful that a single unified definition of wishful thinking can be developed. Moreover, the concept of wishful thinking can problematically focus excessive attention on individual and epistemic problems in science, to the exclusion of social and ethical problems. (shrink)

Around 97% of climate scientists endorse anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the theory that human activities are partly responsible for recent increases in global average temperatures. Clearly, this widespread endorsement of AGW is a reason for non-experts to believe in AGW. But what is the epistemic significance of the fact that some climate scientists do not endorse AGW? This paper contrasts expert unanimity, in which virtually no expert disagrees with some theory, with expert consensus, in which some non-negligible proportion either rejects (...) or is uncertain about the theory. It is argued that, from a layperson’s point of view, an expert consensus is often stronger evidence for a theory’s truth than unanimity. Several lessons are drawn from this conclusion, e.g. concerning what laypeople should infer from expert pronouncements, how journalists should report on scientific theories, and how working scientists should communicate with the public. (shrink)