Faculty of Health and Welfare, Østfold University College, Halden, Norway.
NMBU Centre for Applied Philosophy of Science, School of Economics and Business, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Aas, Norway.
Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2020 Dec;84:101335. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2020.101335. Epub 2020 Aug 6.
Safety assessment of technologies and interventions is often underdetermined by evidence. For example, scientists have collected evidence concerning genetically modified plants for decades. This evidence was used to ground opposing safety protocols for "stacked genetically modified" plants, in which two or more genetically modified plants are combined. Evidence based policy would thus be rendered more effective by an approach that accounts for underdetermination. Douglas (2012) proposes an explanatory approach, based on the criteria of transparency, empirical competence, internal consistency of explanations, and predictive potency. However, sometimes multiple explanations can satisfy these criteria. We propose an additional criterion based on converse abduction, where explanations are selected on the basis of ontological background assumptions as well as by evidence. We then apply our proposed scheme to the case of the regulation of stacked genetically modified plants. We discuss the implications and suggest follow-up work concerning the generalizability of the approach.
技术和干预措施的安全性评估往往由证据决定。例如，科学家们已经收集了关于转基因植物的证据长达几十年。这些证据被用来为“叠加的转基因”植物制定相反的安全协议，在这种植物中，两种或更多种转基因植物被组合在一起。基于证据的政策因此会通过一种考虑到不充分性的方法变得更加有效。道格拉斯（Douglas）（2012 年）提出了一种解释方法，该方法基于透明度、经验能力、解释的内部一致性和预测效力的标准。然而，有时多个解释可以满足这些标准。我们基于逆推断提出了一个额外的标准，其中解释是根据本体论背景假设以及证据来选择的。然后，我们将我们提出的方案应用于叠加的转基因植物的监管案例。我们讨论了这种方法的普遍性的影响和建议。
