O'Malley et al. (2009) and Haufe (2013) suggest that the philosophical idea of science as hypothesis testing generates a pernicious bias towards hypothesis-driven research and against exploratory research in the review process of research proposals and the allocation of resources. This paper addresses a conceptual objection to the argument by O'Malley et al.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFData production in experimental sciences depends on localised experimental systems, but the epistemic properties of data transcend the contingencies of the processes that produce them. Philosophers often believe that experimental systems instantiate but do not produce the epistemic properties of data. In this paper, we argue that experimental systems' local functioning entails intrinsic capacities to produce the epistemic properties of data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTheory-free characterizations of experimental systems miss normative and conceptual components that sometimes are crucial to understanding their historical development. In the following paper, we show that these components may be part of the intrinsic capacities of experimental systems themselves. We study a case of non-exploratory and theory-oriented research in experimental neuroscience that concerns the construction of free-viewing as an experimental system to test one particular pre-existing hypothesis, the Temporal Correlation Hypothesis (TCH), at a laboratory in Santiago de Chile, during 2002-2008.
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