Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T23:09:15.842Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

12 - What Is the Nature of Scientific Controversies in the Biological Sciences?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2020

By
Michael R. Dietrich
Edited by
Kostas Kampourakis  and
Tobias Uller
Kostas Kampourakis
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Tobias Uller
Affiliation:
Lunds Universitet, Sweden
Get access

Summary

Biological knowledge is not created by individuals in isolation but through a process of review and response within scientific communities. Criticism then is a normal and necessary part of this process. Occasionally, however, lasting disagreements arise during this process that become scientific controversies. In modern biology, some of the most well-known controversies have been relative significance disputes, which are disagreements about the relative importance of features of a biological system. These do not admit all-or-nothing resolutions, but instead often start as strongly stated opposing positions only to find resolution in some middle ground. In this chapter, we consider different views on how biological communities both disagree and resolve those disagreements as part of the social process of knowledge production.

Type
Chapter
Information
Philosophy of Science for Biologists , pp. 235 - 254
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Beatty, J. (1987a). Natural Selection and the Null Hypothesis. In Dupré, J. (ed.), The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Beatty, J. (1987b). Weighing the Risks: Stalemate in the Classical/Balance Controversy. Journal of the History of Biology 20(3): 289–319.Google Scholar
Beatty, J. (1997). Why Do Biologists Argue like They Do? Philosophy of Science S64(4): 231–242.Google Scholar
Beauchamp, T. L. (1987). Ethical Theory and the Problem of Closure. In Engelhardt, H. T. & Caplan, A. L. (eds.), Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, pp. 27–48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Benjamin, D. J., Berger, J. O., Johannesson, M., Nosek, B. A., Wagenmakers, E. J., Berk, R., Bollen, K. A., et al. (2018). Redefine Statistical Significance. Nature Human Behaviour 2(1): 6–10.Google Scholar
Biddle, J. B. & Leuschner, A. (2015). Climate Skepticism and the Manufacture of Doubt: Can Dissent in Science Be Epistemically Detrimental? European Journal for Philosophy of Science 5(3): 261–278.Google Scholar
Collins, H. M. (1981). Son of Seven Sexes: The Social Destruction of a Physical Phenomenon Social Studies of Science 11(1): 33–62.Google Scholar
Collins, H. M. (1994). A Strong Confirmation of the Experimenters’ Regress. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 25(3): 493–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dietrich, M. R. (1994). The Origins of the Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution. Journal of the History of Biology 27: 21–59.Google Scholar
Dietrich, M. R. (2006). From Mendel to Molecules: A Brief History of Evolutionary Genetics. In Fox, C. W. & Wolf, J. B. (eds.), Evolutionary Genetics: Concepts and Case Studies, pp. 3–13. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dietrich, M. R. & Skipper, R. (2007). Manipulating Underdetermination in Scientific Controversy: The Case of the Molecular Clock. Perspectives on Science 15: 295–326.Google Scholar
Dobzhansky, T. (1955). A Review of Some Fundamental Concepts and Problems in Population Genetics. Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology 20: 1–15.Google Scholar
Douglas, H. E. (2009). Science, Policy, and the Value-Free ideal. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Elliott, K. (2017). Exploring Inductive Risk: Case Studies of Values in Science. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Engelhardt, H. T. & Caplan, A. L. (1989). Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Franklin, A. (1999). How to Avoid the Experimenters’ Regress. In Can That Be Right? Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol 199, pp. 13–38. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Godin, B. & Gingras, Y. (2002). The Experimenter’s Regress: From Skepticism to Argumentation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 33(1): 137–152.Google Scholar
Gould, S. J. & Lewontin, R. C. (1979). The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 205(1161): 581–598.Google Scholar
Graham, L. R. (2016). Lysenko's Ghost: Epigenetics and Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hubby, J. L. & Lewontin, R. C. (1966). A Molecular Approach to the Study of Genic Heterozygosity in Natural Populations. I. The Number of Alleles at Different Loci in Drosophila Pseudoobscura. Genetics 54(2): 577–594.Google Scholar
Jablonka, E., Lamb, M. J., & Avital, E. (1998). “Lamarckian” Mechanisms in Darwinian Evolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 13(5): 206–210.Google Scholar
Kim, K.-M. (1994). Explaining Scientific Consensus: The Case of Mendelian Genetics. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (1982). Abusing Science: The Case against Creationism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kitcher, P. (2000). Patterns of Scientific Controversies. In Machamer, P. K., Pera, M., & Baltas, A. (eds.), Scientific Controversies: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives, pp. 21–39. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R. C. (1974). The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R. C. (1981). Introduction: The Scientific Work of Theodosius Dobzhansky. In Lewontin, R. C., Moore, J. A., Provine, W. B., & Wallace, B. (eds.), Dobzhansky's Genetics of Natural Populations I–XLIII, pp. 93–115. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R. C. (1991). Perspectives: 25 Years Ago in Genetics: Electrophoresis in the Development of Evolutionary Genetics: Milestone or Millstone? Genetics 128(4): 657–662.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R. C. & Hubby, J. L. (1966). Molecular Approach to the Study of Genic Heterozygosity in Natural Populations. II. Amount of Variation and Degree of Heterozygosity in Natural Populations of Drosophila Pseudoobscura. Genetics 54(2): 595–609.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R. C., Rose, S. P. R., & Kamin, L. J. (1984). Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Longino, H. E. (1990). Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Machamer, P., Pera, M., & Baltas, A. (2000). Scientific Controversies: An Introduction. In Machamer, P. K., Pera, M., & Baltas, A. (eds.), Scientific Controversies: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives, pp. 3–17. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Machamer, P. K., Pera, M., & Baltas, A. (2000). Scientific Controversies: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Macklin, R. (1987). The Forms and Norms of Closure. In Engelhardt, H. T. & Caplan, A. L. (eds.), Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, pp. 615–624. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McMullin, E. (1987). Scientific Controversy and its Termination. In Engelhardt, H. T. & Caplan, A. L. (eds.), Scientific Controversies: Case Studies in the Resolution and Closure of Disputes in Science and Technology, pp. 49–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Muller, H. J. 1950. Our Load of Mutations. The American Journal of Human Genetics 2: 111–176.Google Scholar
Numbers, R. L. (1993). The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Olby, R. (1989). The Dimensions of Scientific Controversy: The Biometric–Mendelian Debate. The British Journal for the History of Science 22(3): 299–320.Google Scholar
Orzack, S. H. & Forber, P. (2017). “Adaptationism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Zalta, Edward N. (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/adaptationism/. Accessed on July 25, 2019.Google Scholar
Panofsky, A. (2014). Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Powell, J. (1994). Molecular Techniques in Population Genetics: A Brief History. In Schierwater, B. et al. (eds.), Molecular Ecology and Evolution: Approaches and Applications. Basel: Birkhauser.Google Scholar
Provine, W. B. (1992). The R. A. Fisher–Sewall Wright Controversy. In The Founders of Evolutionary Genetics, pp. 201–229. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raynaud, D. (2017.) Scientific Controversies. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rudwick, M. J. S. (1994). The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sapp, J. (1983). The Struggle for Authority in the Field of Heredity, 1900–1932: New Perspectives on the Rise of Genetics. Journal of the History of Biology 16(3):311–342.Google Scholar
Sayre, A. (2009). Rosalind Franklin and DNA. Bridgewater, NJ: Baker & Taylor.Google Scholar
Skipper, R. A. (2002). The Persistence of the R. A. Fisher–Sewall Wright Controversy. Biology and Philosophy 17(3): 341–367.Google Scholar
Smocovitis, V. B. (1996). Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wallace, B. (1956). Studies on Irradiated Populations of Drosophila Melanogaster. Journal of Genetics 54: 280–293.Google Scholar
Wallace, B. (1958). The Average Effect of Radiation-Induced Mutations on Viability in Drosophila Melanogaster. Evolution 12(4): 535–556.Google Scholar
Wallace, B. & King, J. C. (1951). Genetic Changes in Populations under Irradiation. American Naturalist 85: 209–222.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×