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Doing Science, Writing Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jutta Schickore
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Abstract

This article identifies a fundamental distinction in scientific practice: the mismatch between what scientists do and what they state they did when they communicate their findings in their publications. The insight that such a mismatch exists is not new. It was already implied in Hans Reichenbach's distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification, and it is taken for granted across the board in philosophy of science and science studies. But while there is general agreement that the mismatch exists, the epistemological implications of that mismatch are not at all clear. Philosophers, historians, and sociologists of different stripes have expressed widely different views about how one should understand and interpret the relation between what scientists do and what they state they did. This article surveys a number of approaches to the mismatch. Based on this survey, I offer an assessment of the epistemological significance of the mismatch and identify the major meta-epistemological challenges that it poses for the analysis of scientific practice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 323 - 343
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

A version of this paper was presented in the HPS Reading Group at the Department of HPSC, IU Bloomington, in spring 2007. I thank the audience as well as Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Jordi Cat, Uljana Feest, Jan Frercks, John Johnson, and two anonymous referees for this journal for their critique and helpful suggestions. The final version of this article was produced while I was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton). Generous support from the Mellon Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.

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