“An important contribution to the ongoing debate on the status of scientific knowledge, and both those who agree and those who disagree with [Franklin’s] conclusions with benefit from reading it.”
--Philosophy in Review
“A valuable addition to the literature on scientific experiments and their role in justifying theoretical hypotheses. I recommend it.”
—ISIS
“All of the cases Franklin considers are presented with a wealth of clear, relevant, and interesting experimental detail.”
—American Journal of Physics
“Accessible to anyone with a college-level education in physics, this lucid and persuasive book collects Franklin’s previously published investigations on the epistemology of experiment and is a ‘must read’ for either students or professionals with an interest in the history and philosophy of science.”
—Reviews of Philosophy
"That experimentalists select only their ‘good data’ and eventually accept only one of several discordant experimental results have been central to the claim that physics and other sciences are socially constructed. In this impressive book, Allan Franklin tackles these two problems head on, demonstrating persuasively that physics is at root a rationally constructed science."
—Roger H. Stuewer, University of Minnesota
"No one has done more than Allan Franklin to show how the intricacies of experimental reasoning in physics provide safeguards against being misled by individual experimental results."
—George E. Smith, Tufts University and the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology
"Franklin is one of a very small number of people who have both the knowledge needed to understand complicated experiments in physics and the skill needed to explain to a nonprofessional audience how the experiments work. . . . A welcome counterweight to postmodernist interpretations of science."
—John Earman, University of Pittsburgh
Can the results of experiments in science be trusted? Recent studies have asked just this question, placing under attack the validity and legitimacy of one of the fundamental sources for scientific knowledge.
Selectivity and Discord addresses these concerns by examining two problems in the use of experimental evidence in science: selectivity, or bias in the production of data or in analysis, and the resolution of discordant results. Allan Franklin, physicist and philosopher of science, offers solutions toward resolving these problems and presents detailed case studies from the history of modern physics to further illustrate how such disagreements can be settled.
When producing results, the choice of how data is measured or studied comes under scrutiny and, in many instances, dispute. Franklin addresses several examples, including R. A. Millikan's findings in the measurement of e (the charge on the electron), which were initially disputed and then proven correct. He explains how, despite Millikan's use of selectivity in both data and analysis procedures, numerous and independent measurements verified the validity of e. Though bias occurred, the results were shown to be accurate.
Franklin analyzes other case studies-the early search for gravity waves, the claimed existence of a heavy, 17-keV neutrino, and the assertion of low-mass electron-positron states-in which the questioning of evidence was well founded. Each of these examples involved not only accusations of selectivity, but also discordant findings. Franklin explains the ways in which the nature of these results were revealed and discusses how-through the course of scientific practice-the conflicts were eventually decided.
Some instances of contradictory results, however, are not so easily defined. Franklin examines the case of William Wilson and the absorption of Beta rays. In the early twentieth century, there was a widely held belief that electrons were absorbed exponentially. Wilson argued against this view, and after a lengthy investigation, the physics community accepted his view. The earlier measurements were not incorrect, the scientists had misinterpreted the data. In the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) experiment, different analyses of the same data resulted in conflicting conclusions-both of which were published in adjoining papers by different members of the same experimental group. Franklin demonstrates how even these puzzling situations were worked through during the process of further scientific investigation.
While addressing the recent questions on the validity of experimentation, Franklin concedes that discrepancies are unavoidable. However, he determines that the problems of selectivity and discord can be-and are-solved over the course of time in the normal practice of science. A lengthy and complex string of methodological and epistemological checks and balances are used to scrutinize the experimentation process. Independent sources are routinely and stringently drawn upon to examine the work of fellow scientists. More often than not, the results are proven correct, and when instances of bias do arise, resolution occurs in an objective and legitimate manner.
