Philosophical Analysis of Some Cases of Disagreement

We saw in part II that different philosophical biases can motivate different and sometimes conflicting scientific practices and norms. In this final part of the book, ‘What then when experts disagree? Applying philosophy to scientific controversies’, the aim is to put the theory to work in practice and see how a philosophical analysis of controversy could be done. Most scientific controversies will involve more than one basic implicit assumption, since philosophical biases of ontological, epistemological, and ethical types are intertwined. Our main purpose here is mainly to show the principle, so we concentrate on one or two biases for each case. We provide ideas for further analysis of each case in the sample essay questions. We have chosen a selection of real-life cases of expert disagreement and philosophical biases, and each case is based on one or more published articles.