Collapse, social tipping dynamics, and framing climate change.

In this article, we claim that recent developments in climate science and renewable energy should prompt a reframing of debates surrounding climate change mitigation. Taken together, we argue that these developments suggest (1) global climate collapse in this century is a non-negligible risk, (2) mitigation offers substantial benefits to current generations, and (3) mitigation by some can generate social tipping dynamics that could ultimately make renewables cheaper than fossil fuels. We explain how these claims undermine familiar framings of climate change, wherein mitigation is understood as self-sacrifice that individuals and governments must be morally persuaded or incentivized to undertake.

Evidence-based Medicine and Mechanistic Evidence: The Case of the Failed Rollout of Efavirenz in Zimbabwe.

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has long deemphasized mechanistic reasoning and pathophysiological rationale in assessing the effectiveness of interventions. The EBM+ movement has challenged this stance, arguing that evidence of mechanisms and comparative studies should both be seen as necessary and complementary. Advocates of EBM+ provide a combination of theoretical arguments and examples of mechanistic reasoning in medical research.

Pro-Diversity Beliefs and the Diverse Person's Burden.

Pro-diversity beliefs hold that greater diversity leads to better results in academia, business, politics and a variety of other contexts. This paper explores the possibility that pro-diversity beliefs can generate unfair expectations that marginalized people produce distinctive bonuses, a phenomenon we refer to as the "diverse person's burden". We suggest that a normic conception of diversity, according to which non-diversity entails social privilege, together with empirical research on psychological entitlement suggests an explanation of how the diverse person's burden can arise in many social settings.

Trade-offs and the precautionary principle: A lexicographic utility approach.

The precautionary principle is often argued to be irrational because it cannot adequately explain how resources should be distributed across multiple possible catastrophes or between catastrophic and noncatastrophic risks. We address this problem of trade-offs by extending a recently proposed formal interpretation of the precautionary principle (PP) within a lexical utility framework and using it to prove results about which distribution of resources maximizes lexical utility when several catastrophic risks exist, given different assumptions. We also explain how our lexical utility interpretation of PP can recommend balanced distributions of resources between disaster prevention and other concerns.

Can Treatment for Substance Use Disorder Prescribe the same Substance as that Used? The Case of Injectable Opioid Agonist Treatment.

This article examines injectable Opioid Agonist Treatment (iOAT), in which patients suffering from long-term, treatment refractory opioid use disorder (OUD) are prescribed injectable diacetylmorphine, the active ingredient of heroin. While iOAT is part of the continuum of care for OUD in some European countries and in some parts of Canada, it is not an available treatment in the United States. We suggest that one reason for this situation is the belief that a genuine treatment for substance use disorder cannot prescribe the same substance as that used.

Information elaboration and epistemic effects of diversity.

We suggest that philosophical accounts of epistemic effects of diversity have given insufficient attention to the relationship between demographic diversity and information elaboration (IE), the process whereby knowledge dispersed in a group is elicited and examined. We propose an analysis of IE that clarifies hypotheses proposed in the empirical literature and their relationship to philosophical accounts of diversity effects. Philosophical accounts have largely overlooked the possibility that demographic diversity may improve group performance by enhancing IE, and sometimes fail to explore the relationship between diversity and IE altogether.

Exploring Scientists' Values by Analyzing How They Frame Nature and Uncertainty.

Several scholars have proposed that values embedded in science are a central reason why more research does not necessarily resolve scientific controversies around complex environmental issues. In the Capital Regional District, British Columbia, Canada, scientists have positioned themselves for and against the construction of a wastewater treatment plant in a debate framed as purely technical. This study explores the link between the scientists' positions in the debate and the way they, in their scientific publications, portray nature and environmental risks.

If the Facts Were Not Untruths, Their Implications Were: Sponsorship Bias and Misleading Communication.

Sponsorship bias occurs when the financial interests of funders of scientific research influence claims made by scientists, especially in peer-reviewed publications. This article examines the relationship between sponsorship bias and misleading claims, understood as claims that are not necessarily false but which encourage those exposed to them to infer false conclusions. Misleading claims are relevant to how the term "bias" should be understood and thereby to evaluating a recent dispute about whether there is evidence of sponsorship bias in clinical research on statins.

Evaluating the quality of medical evidence in real-world contexts.

How should the quality of medical evidence be evaluated? Proponents of evidence-based medicine advocate the use evidence hierarchies to rank the quality of evidence on the basis that certain methods produce more reliable evidence. Some criticisms of this approach focus on whether certain methods deserve their place in the hierarchy, while others claim that evidence hierarchies should be abandoned in favour of other evidence assessment techniques. We claim that this debate pays insufficient attention to the real-world contexts in which medical decisions are made.

Multiple diversity concepts and their ethical-epistemic implications.

A concept of diversity is an understanding of what makes a group diverse that may be applicable in a variety of contexts. We distinguish three diversity concepts, show that each can be found in discussions of diversity in science, and explain how they tend to be associated with distinct epistemic and ethical rationales. Yet philosophical literature on diversity among scientists has given little attention to distinct concepts of diversity.

Our Life Depends on This Drug: Competence, Inequity, and Voluntary Consent in Clinical Trials on Supervised Injectable Opioid Assisted Treatment.

Supervised injectable opioid assisted treament (siOAT) prescribes injectable opioids to individuals for whom other forms of addiction treatment have been ineffective. In this article, we examine arguments that opioid-dependent people should be assumed incompetent to voluntarily consent to clinical research on siOAT unless proven otherwise. We agree that concerns about competence and voluntary consent deserve careful attention in this context.

Scientists' attitudes on science and values: Case studies and survey methods in philosophy of science.

This article examines the relevance of survey data of scientists' attitudes about science and values to case studies in philosophy of science. We describe two methodological challenges confronting such case studies: 1) small samples, and 2) potential for bias in selection, emphasis, and interpretation. Examples are given to illustrate that these challenges can arise for case studies in the science and values literature.

AIC and the challenge of complexity: A case study from ecology.

Philosophers and scientists alike have suggested Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC), and other similar model selection methods, show predictive accuracy justifies a preference for simplicity in model selection. This epistemic justification of simplicity is limited by an assumption of AIC which requires that the same probability distribution must generate the data used to fit the model and the data about which predictions are made. This limitation has been previously noted but appears to often go unnoticed by philosophers and scientists and has not been analyzed in relation to complexity.

Acceptance, values, and probability.

This essay makes a case for regarding personal probabilities used in Bayesian analyses of confirmation as objects of acceptance and rejection. That in turn entails that personal probabilities are subject to the argument from inductive risk, which aims to show non-epistemic values can legitimately influence scientific decisions about which hypotheses to accept. In a Bayesian context, the argument from inductive risk suggests that value judgments can influence decisions about which probability models to accept for likelihoods and priors.

Environmental justice, values, and scientific expertise.

This essay compares two philosophical proposals concerning the relation between values and science, both of which reject the value-free ideal but nevertheless place restrictions on how values and science should interact. The first of these proposals relies on a distinction between the direct and indirect roles of values, while the second emphasizes instead a distinction between epistemic and nonepistemic values. We consider these two proposals in connection with a case study of disputed research on the topic of environmental justice and argue that the second proposal has several advantages over the first.

Extrapolation, uncertainty factors, and the precautionary principle.

This essay examines the relationship between the precautionary principle and uncertainty factors used by toxicologists to estimate acceptable exposure levels for toxic chemicals from animal experiments. It shows that the adoption of uncertainty factors in the United States in the 1950s can be understood by reference to the precautionary principle, but not by cost-benefit analysis because of a lack of relevant quantitative data at that time. In addition, it argues that uncertainty factors continue to be relevant to efforts to implement the precautionary principle and that the precautionary principle should not be restricted to cases involving unquantifiable hazards.

Whole lot of parts: stress in extreme environments.

Stress has been a central interest for researchers of human behavior in extreme and unusual environments and also for those who are responsible for planning and carrying out expeditions involving such environments. This paper compares the actuarial and case study methods for predicting reactions to stress. Actuarial studies are useful, but do not tap enough variables to allow us to predict how a specific individual will cope with the rigors of an individual mission.