Tainted How Philosophy of Science Can Expose Bad Science

by Shrader-Frechette, Kristin

• ISBN13: 9780199396412
• ISBN10: 0199396418
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-10-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Author Biography

Kristin Shrader-Frechette is O'Neill Professor at University of Notre Dame, where she teaches biological sciences, environmental sciences, and philosophy of science. With degrees in mathematics and in philosophy of science, she has done three post-docs -- in biology, economics, and hydrogeology -- and served on many boards/committees of the US National Academy of Sciences and international scientific or environmental groups. The first female president of 3 professional scientific associations, she has had her scientific research (on quantitative risk assessment in radiobiology, biostatistics, and energy modeling) funded for 27 years by the US National Science Foundation. Author of more than 400 articles and 16 books, including Taking Action, Saving Lives (2007, Oxford University), she writes for both scientific and medical journals, such as Science, BioScience, Health Physics, Conservation Biology, Quarterly Review of Biology, American Journal of Public Health, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and philosophy journals such as Ethics, Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, and Synthese. Her books and articles have been translated into 13 languages and also appear in popular newspapers and magazines. In 2004 Shrader-Frechette became only the third American to win the World Technology Award in Ethics. In 2007, she was named one of 12 "Heroes for the US and the World" because of her pro-bono environmental-justice (EJ) work with minority and poor communities. In 2011, Tufts University gave her the Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award for her pro-bono public-health and EJ Work.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Speaking Truth to Power: Uncovering Flawed Methods, Protecting Lives and Welfare


Section 1: Conceptual and Logical Analysis

Chapter 2: Discovering Dump Dangers: Unearthing Hazards in Hydrogeology

Chapter 3: Hormesis Harms: The Emperor Has No Biochemistry Clothes

Chapter 4: Trading Lives for Money: Compensating Wage Differentials in Economics


Section 2: Heuristic Analysis and Developing Hypotheses

Chapter 5: Learning from Analogy: Extrapolating from Animal Data in Toxicology

Chapter 6: Conjectures and Conflict: A Thought Experiment in Physics

Chapter 7: Being a Disease Detective: Discovering Causes in Epidemiology

Chapter 8: Why Statistics Is Slippery: Easy Algorithms Fail in Biology


Section 3: Methodological Analysis and Justifying Hypotheses

Chapter 9: Releasing Radioactivity: Hypothesis-Prediction in Hydrogeology

Chapter 10: Protecting Florida Panthers: Historical-Comparativist Methods in Zoology

Chapter 11: Cracking Case Studies: Why They Work in Sciences Such As Ecology

Chapter 12: Uncovering Cover-up: Inference to the Best Explanation in Medicine


Section 4: Values Analysis and Scientific Uncertainty

Chapter 13: Value Judgments Can Kill: Expected-Utility Rules in Decision Theory

Chapter 14: Understanding Uncertainty: False Negatives in Quantitative Risk Analysis

Chapter 15: Where We Go from Here: Making Philosophy of Science Practical