Resumos 4

 The C-word, the P-word, and realism in epidemiology 

Alex Broadbent

Abstract This paper considers an important recent (May 2018) contribution by Miguel Hernán to the ongoing debate about causal inference in epidemiology. Hernán rejects the idea that there is an in-principle epistemic distinction between the results of randomized controlled trials and observational studies: both produce associations which we may be more or less confident interpreting as causal. However, Hernán maintains that trials have a semantic advantage. Observational studies that seek to estimate causal effect risk issuing meaningless statements instead. The POA proposes a solution to this problem: improved restrictions on the meaningful use of causal language, in particular “causal effect”. This paper argues that new restrictions in fact fail their own standards of meaningfulness. The paper portrays the desire for a restrictive definition of causal language as positivistic, and argues that contemporary epidemiology should be more realistic in its approach to causation. In a realist context, restrictions on meaningfulness based on precision of definition are neither helpful nor necessary. Hernán’s favoured approach to causal language is saved from meaninglessness, along with the approaches he rejects. 

Keywords Causal inference · Causality · Causation · Philosophy of epidemiology · Potential outcomes approach (POA) · Association · Positivism · Logical positivism · Realism · Scientific realism

Commercial interests, agenda setting, and the epistemic trustworthiness of nutrition science Saana Jukola

 Abstract The trustworthiness of nutrition science has been questioned recently. According to the critics, the food industry has corrupted scientists in the feld. I argue that the worries that commercialization threatens the epistemic trustworthiness of nutrition science are indeed well-founded. However, it is problematic that the discussion has revolved around how funding can threaten the integrity of researchers and the methodological quality of the studies. By extending Wilholt’s (Br J Philos Sci 64(2):233– 253, 2013) account of epistemic trustworthiness, I argue that when assessing the epistemic trustworthiness of research that forms the basis for diferent health policy measures, it is necessary to evaluate research at the macro-level and whether agenda setting advances the goals that are assigned to the feld. The prevalence of commercial funding becomes problematic if it leads to a situation where the body of available evidence that is used for making health policy decisions does not refect the shared sense of what epistemic and non-epistemic goals of the inquiry are important.

 Keywords Nutrition research · Trustworthiness · Social epistemology · Conficts of interests · Bias

Picturing the Unusual: Uncertainty in the Historiography of Medical Photography 

Lukas Engelmann 

 Summary. The article explores and expands the historiography of medical photography. First, it revisits historical scholarship on medical photography to demonstrate the absence of a consensus as to what counts as medical photography and what does not. Secondly, the article illustrates the shortcomings of current analytical perspectives with two examples. The first picture was taken by the board of health in Honolulu in 1900 to visualise bubonic plague but resists recognition as a medical representation. The second, a 1986 picture of a person with AIDS, has been perceived as a medicalised photograph contrary to the artist’s intention. Both pictures, rather than delivering diagnostic inferences sustained notions of uncertainty and unusualness. With these examples, I outline the often overlooked significance of picturing uncertainty in the historiography of medical photography. Finally, I ask if these visualisations might be better addressed as elements of experimental systems rather than as representations of disease. 

Keywords: medical photography; AIDS; plague; experimental system

Modeling the structure of recent philosophy 

Maximilian Noichl

 Abstract This paper presents an approach of unsupervised learning of clusters from a citation database, and applies it to a large corpus of articles in philosophy to give an account of the structure of the discipline. Following a list of journals from the PhilPapersarchive, 68,152 records were downloaded from the Reuters Web of Science-Database. Their citation data was processed using dimensionality reduction and clustering. The resulting clusters were identified, and the results are graphically represented. They suggest that the division of analytic and Continental philosophy in the considered timespan is overstated; that analytical, in contrast to Continental philosophy does not form a coherent group in recent philosophy; and that metaphors about the disciplinary structure should focus on the coherence and interconnectedness of a multitude of smaller and larger subfields. 

Keywords Bibliometrics · Metaphilosophy · Analytic philosophy · Continental philosophy · UMAP · hDBSCAN

Nominalism, contingency, and natural structure 

M. Joshua Mozersky

 Abstract Ian Hacking’s wide-ranging and penetrating analysis of science contains two welldeveloped lines of thought. The frst emphasizes the contingent history of our inquiries into nature, focusing on the various ways in which our concepts and styles of reasoning evolve through time, how their current application is constrained by the conditions under which they arose, and how they might have evolved diferently. The second is the mistrust of the idea that the world contains mind-independent natural kinds, preferring nominalism to ‘inherent structurism’. These two pillars of thought seem at frst to be mutually reinforcing: the lack of natural structure can help make sense of scientifc variability and revision, while variability and revision provide reason to suspect that natural structure is little more than idealization. In what follows, I argue that these two pillars not only fail to support each other, but in fact confict. One of them must fall, and it is clear which. Keywords Realism · Nominalism · Structure · Contingency · Mind-independence · Science · Ian Hacking · Representation · Skepticism · Reality

Models and numbers: Representing the world or imposing order? 

Matthias Kaiser*, Tatjana Buklijas**, Peter Gluckman** 

Abstract We argue for a foundational epistemic claim and a hypothesis about the production and uses of mathematical epidemiological models, exploring the consequences for our political and socio-economic lives. First, in order to make the best use of scientific models, we need to understand why models are not truly representational of our world, but are already pitched towards various uses. Second, we need to understand the implicit power relations in numbers and models in public policy, and, thus, the implications for good governance if numbers and models are used as the exclusive drivers of decision making. 

Keywords: COVID-19; epidemiological models; epidemics; public policy; numbers