Justin Biddle | Georgia Institute of Technology (original) (raw)

Papers by Justin Biddle

Philosophy of Science

This paper argues that the controversy over GM crops is not best understood in terms of the suppo... more This paper argues that the controversy over GM crops is not best understood in terms of the supposed bias, dishonesty, irrationality, or ignorance on the part of proponents or critics, but rather in terms of differences in values. To do this, the paper draws upon and extends recent work of the role of values and interests in science, focusing particularly on inductive risk and epistemic risk, and it shows how the GMO debate can help to further our understanding of the various epistemic risks that are present in science and how these risks might be managed.

The current debate over genetically engineered (GE) crops is framed as an evaluation of GE crops ... more The current debate over genetically engineered (GE) crops is framed as an evaluation of GE crops as a class. This paper is an attempt to reframe the debate by focusing on the question of what responsible research and innovation (RRI) in agricultural biotechnology would look like. With regard to the ethics of agricultural technology, the most important question that we should be asking is not whether a technology is genetically engineered, but whether it is responsibly designed. I discuss a report by the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies to the European Commission in order to propose guidelines for RRI in agricultural technology, and I illustrate the possibility of RRI in agricultural biotechnology by discussing a public private partnership, the Water Efficient Maize for Africa Project. I conclude by examining the implications of this argument for debates over the ethics of agricultural technologies more generally.

At each stage of inquiry, actions, choices, and judgments carry with them a chance that they will... more At each stage of inquiry, actions, choices, and judgments carry with them a chance that they will lead to mistakes and false conclusions. One of the most vigorously discussed kinds of epistemic risk is inductive risk—that is, the risk of inferring a false positive or a false negative from statistical evidence. This chapter develops a more fine-grained typology of epistemic risks and argues that many of the epistemic risks that have been classified as inductive risks are actually better seen as examples of a more expansive category, which this paper dubs “phronetic risk.” This more fine-grained typology helps to show that values in science often operate not exclusively at the level of individual psychologies but also at the level of knowledge-generating social institutions.

Criticism plays an essential role in the growth of scientific knowledge. In some cases, however, ... more Criticism plays an essential role in the growth of scientific knowledge. In some cases, however, criticism can have detrimental effects; for example, it can be used to ‘manufacture doubt’ for the purpose of impeding public policy making on issues such as tobacco consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., Oreskes & Conway 2010). In this paper, we build on previous work by Biddle and Leuschner (2015) who argue that criticism that meets certain conditions can be epistemically detrimental. We extend and refine their account by arguing that such criticism can be epistemically corrupting—it can create social conditions that are conducive to the development of epistemic vice by agents operating within them.

Intellectual Property Rights and Global Climate Change: Toward Resolving an Apparent Dilemma, 2016

This paper addresses an apparent dilemma that must be resolved in order to respond ethically to g... more This paper addresses an apparent dilemma that must be resolved in order to respond ethically to global climate change. The dilemma can be presented as follows. Responding ethically to global climate change requires technological innovation that is accessible to everyone, including inhabitants of the least developed countries. Technological innovation, according to many, requires strong intellectual property protection, but strong intellectual property protection makes it highly unlikely that patent-protected technologies will be accessible to developing countries at affordable prices. Given this, responding ethically to global climate change is highly unlikely. I argue that this apparent dilemma – which I call " the patent dilemma in global climate change " – should be taken seriously. I discuss a number of possibilities for resolving it, and I argue that any acceptable strategy must satisfy the criteria of near-term feasibility and non-paternalism. Finally, I propose a multi-pronged, multi-tiered strategy that meets these conditions.

Recent philosophers of science have not only revived the classical argument from inductive risk b... more Recent philosophers of science have not only revived the classical argument from inductive risk but extended it. I argue that some of the purported extensions do not fit cleanly within the schema of the original argument, and I discuss the problem of overdiagnosis of disease due to expanded disease definitions in order to show that there are some risks in the research process that are important and that very clearly fall outside of the domain of inductive risk. Finally, I introduce the notion of epistemic risk in order to characterize such risks.

European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 2015

The aim of this paper is to address the neglected but important problem of differentiating betwee... more The aim of this paper is to address the neglected but important problem of differentiating between epistemically beneficial and epistemically detrimental dissent. By "dissent," we refer to the act of objecting to a particular conclusion, especially one that is widely held. While dissent in science can clearly be beneficial, there might be some instances of dissent that not only fail to contribute to scientific progress, but actually impede it. Potential examples of this include the tobacco industry's funding of studies that questioned the link between smoking and lung cancer, and the attempt by the petroleum industry and other groups to cast doubt upon the conclusion that human consumption of fossil fuels contributes to global climate change. The problem of distinguishing between good and bad dissent is important because of the growing tendency of some stakeholders to attempt to delay political action by 'manufacturing doubt' (Oreskes & Conway 2010). Our discussion in this paper focuses on climate science. This field, in our view, is rife with instances of bad dissent. On the basis of our discussion of climate science, we articulate a set of sufficient conditions for epistemically problematic dissent in general, which we call “the inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent.”

This paper examines one important aspect of the current organization of scientific and technologi... more This paper examines one important aspect of the current organization of scientific and technological research – namely, the system of patenting and licensing and its role in structuring the production and dissemination of knowledge. The primary justification of patenting in science and technology is consequentialist in nature. On this account, patenting incentivizes research and thereby promotes the development of scientific and technological knowledge, which in turn facilitates social progress. Some have disputed this argument, on the grounds that patenting actually inhibits the development of knowledge. In this paper, I make a stronger argument; in some areas of research in the US – in particular, research on GM seeds – patents and patent licenses can be, and are in fact being, used to prohibit some research. I discuss three potential solutions to this problem: voluntary agreements, eliminating patents, and a research exemption. I argue against eliminating patents, and I show that while voluntary agreements and a research exemption could be helpful, they do not sufficiently address the problems of access that are discussed here. More extensive changes in the organization of research are necessary. In addition to developing an argument about patenting and licensing, this paper illustrates a promising approach to social epistemology.

There are serious problems with the way in which pharmaceutical research is currently practiced, ... more There are serious problems with the way in which pharmaceutical research is currently practiced, many of which can be traced to the influence of commercial interests on research. One of the most significant is inadequate dissent, or organized skepticism. In order to ameliorate this problem, I develop a proposal that I call the “Adversarial Proceedings for the Evaluation of Pharmaceuticals,” to be instituted within a regulatory agency such as the Food and Drug Administration for the evaluation of controversial new drugs and controversial drugs already in the market. This proposal is an organizational one based upon the “science court” proposal by Arthur Kantrowitz in the 1960s and 1970s. The primary benefit of this system is its ability to institutionalize dissent, thereby ensuring that one set of interests does not dominate all others.

This paper examines the state of the field of “science and values” – particularly regarding the i... more This paper examines the state of the field of “science and values” – particularly regarding the implications of the thesis of transient underdetermination for the ideal of value-free science, or what I call the “ideal of epistemic purity.” I do this by discussing some of the main arguments in the literature, both for and against the ideal. I examine a preliminary argument from transient underdetermination against the ideal of epistemic purity, and I discuss two different formulations of an objection to this argument – an objection that requires the strict separation of the epistemic from the practical. A secondary aim of the paper is to suggest some future directions for the field, one of which is to replace the vocabulary of values that is often employed in the literature with a more precise one.

Many philosophers of science have argued that the growing emphasis upon commercializing the resul... more Many philosophers of science have argued that the growing emphasis upon commercializing the results of scientific research – and in particular, upon patenting the results of research – is both epistemically and socially detrimental, in part because it inhibits the free flow of scientific information. One of the most important of these criticisms is the “tragedy of the anticommons” thesis. Some have attempted to test this thesis empirically, and many have argued that these empirical tests effectively falsify the thesis. I argue that they neither falsify nor disconfirm the thesis, because they do not actually test it. Additionally, I argue that there is evidence from other studies that supports the conclusion that we are witnessing anticommons problems, at least in some areas of research, such as DNA diagnostics. I conclude by addressing the question of whether it is justifiable to patent the results of basic research, and I argue that how one answers this question depends in part upon the solution to an important yet neglected philosophical problem, one that concerns the social order of science and its relation to the law.

This paper examines James Conant’s pragmatic theory of science – a theory that has been neglected... more This paper examines James Conant’s pragmatic theory of science – a theory that has been neglected by most commentators on the history of 20th-century philosophy of science – and it argues that this theory occupied an important place in Conant’s strategic thinking about the Cold War. Conant drew upon his wartime science policy work, the history of science, and Quine’s epistemological holism to argue that there is no strict distinction between science and technology, that there is no such thing as “the scientific method,” and that theories are better interpreted as policies rather than creeds. An important consequence that he drew from these arguments is that science is both a thoroughly value-laden, and an intrinsically social, enterprise. These results led him to develop novel proposals for reorganizing scientific and technological research – proposals that he believed could help to win the Cold War. Interestingly, the Cold War had a different impact upon Conant’s thinking than it did upon many other theorists of science in postwar America. Instead of leading him to “the icy slopes of logic,” it led him to develop a socially- and politically-engaged theory that was explicitly in the service of the American Cold War effort.

Science in the Context of Application, Jan 1, 2011

The aim of this paper is to identify and evaluate the theoretical justification for the commercia... more The aim of this paper is to identify and evaluate the theoretical justification for the commercialization of science. To do this, I examine the arguments put forward by one of the most prominent early proponents of commercialization, George Keyworth II, who served as Presidential Science Advisor to Ronald Reagan and as Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 1981 to 1985. An examination of Keyworth’s arguments reveals the profound role that neoliberal political and economic thought played in his defense of the commercialization of science. Keyworth argued that Reagan’s science and technology policy would stimulate economic growth by reorganizing scientific research along neoliberal lines. More specifically, by expanding the domain of voluntary exchange in which scientists operate – i.e., by removing the government-imposed barriers between scientific research and the marketplace – this policy was supposed to facilitate the flow of information between sectors that were previously cut off from one another, thereby encouraging the sharing of expertise and the transfer of scientific research into marketable products. The end result, Keyworth claimed, would not only be high-quality science, but also improved technological development, economic growth, and ultimately, social progress. In the second part of this paper, I will argue that there are strong reasons to question this conclusion. These reasons concern the biasing effects of conflicts of interest, the inhibition of the free flow of information that results from the proliferation of patenting and licensing, and the restrictions on scientific freedom that result from greater corporate control over scientific decision making.

New Waves in Philosophy of Science, Jan 1, 2009

Philosophy of Science, Jan 1, 2009

"Helen Longino’s “contextual empiricism” is one of the most sophisticated recent attempts to defe... more "Helen Longino’s “contextual empiricism” is one of the most sophisticated recent attempts to defend a social theory of science. On this view, objectivity and epistemic acceptability require that research be produced within communities that approximate a Millian marketplace of ideas. I argue, however, that Longino’s embedding of her epistemology within the framework of Mill’s political liberalism implies a conception
of individual epistemic agents that is incompatible with her view that scientiﬁc knowledge is necessarily social, and I begin to articulate an alternative conception that is better suited to a truly social theory of science."

Social epistemology, Jan 1, 2007

Since the early 1980s, private, for-profit corporations have become increasingly involved in all ... more Since the early 1980s, private, for-profit corporations have become increasingly involved in all aspects of scientific research, especially of biomedical research. In this essay, I argue that there are dangerous epistemic consequences of this trend, which should be more thoroughly examined by social epistemologists. In support of this claim, I discuss a recent episode of pharmaceutical research involving the painkiller Vioxx. I argue that the research on Vioxx was epistemically problematic and that the primary cause of these inadequacies was faulty institutional arrangements. More specifically, the research was organized in such a way as to allow short-term commercial interests to compromise epistemic integrity. Thus, the Vioxx case study, in conjunction with numerous case studies developed elsewhere, provides strong reasons for believing that the privatization of the biomedical sciences is epistemically worrisome, and it suggests that the primary response to this situation should be a social, or organizational, one. What kind of organizational response would be most beneficial? I briefly discuss two prominent social epistemological proposals for how scientific research should be organized—namely those of Philip Kitcher and Helen Longino—and I suggest that they are incapable of dealing with the phenomenon of privatization. I then draw upon the Vioxx episode in order to outline an alternative suggestion for reorganizing certain aspects of pharmaceutical research.

In the first part of this dissertation, I argue that scientific knowledge is intrinsically social... more In the first part of this dissertation, I argue that scientific knowledge is intrinsically social; that is, the development of scientific knowledge requires communities, and the decisions that communities make regarding both the choices of problems and the epistemic evaluation of research ...

Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2014