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Accepted manuscript

Minority Reports: Registering Dissent in Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2023

Haixin Dang*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska Omaha, United States
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Abstract

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Consensus reporting is valuable for presenting unified scientific evidence to the public. When a consensus does not exist, I argue that scientists ought not to default to majority reporting in its place. Majority reporting has several epistemic drawbacks because it can obscure underlying justifications and lines of evidence, which may be in conflict or contested. I argue that minority reporting, in conjunction with majority reporting, is an epistemically superior mechanism for scientists to report on the full range of reasons and evidence available within a group. This paper addresses several objections, including worries over group cohesion, fringe reporting, and elite capture.

Type
Symposia Paper
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Philosophy of Science Association