Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3RH, UK.
Stud Hist Philos Sci. 2021 Dec;90:1-9. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.08.006. Epub 2021 Sep 6.
Drawing on literature on values in science and a case-study of UK cancer policy, this paper argues for a novel account of the demarcation project in terms of trustworthiness. The first part of the paper addresses the relationship between science, politics and demarcation. In 2010, the UK government decided to pay more for cancer drugs than for drugs for other diseases; in 2016, this Cancer Drugs Fund was reformed so as to lower the evidential standards for approving cancer drugs, rather than paying more for them. Are these two ways of treating cancer as "special" importantly different? This paper argues that, if we the argument from inductive risk seriously, they seem equivalent. This result provides further reason to doubt the notion of demarcating science from non-science. However, the second part of the paper complicates this story, arguing that considerations of epistemic trust might give us reasons to prefer epistemic communities centred around "broadly acceptable" standards, and which are "sociologically well-ordered", regardless of inductive risk concerns. After developing these claims through the cancer case-study, the final section suggests how these concerns might motivate novel versions of the demarcation project.
本文借鉴科学价值观文献和英国癌症政策的案例研究，提出了一种新的可信赖性划界方案。本文的第一部分探讨了科学、政治和划界之间的关系。2010 年，英国政府决定为癌症药物支付更多的费用，而不是为其他疾病的药物支付更多的费用；2016 年，该癌症药物基金进行了改革，降低了批准癌症药物的证据标准，而不是为它们支付更多的费用。这两种对待癌症的“特殊”方式有重要区别吗？本文认为，如果我们认真对待归纳风险论证，它们似乎是等同的。这一结果进一步证明了划界科学与非科学的概念值得怀疑。然而，本文的第二部分使这个故事变得复杂，认为认识论信任的考虑可能使我们有理由偏爱以“广泛可接受”的标准为中心的认识论共同体，以及那些“社会学上有序”的共同体，而不考虑归纳风险的考虑。通过对癌症案例的研究，本文最后一部分提出了这些担忧如何为划界项目的新方案提供动力。
