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SUMMARY:Against presence empiricism - Sabina Leonelli (University of Exete
 r)
DTSTART:20230119T153000Z
DTEND:20230119T170000Z
UID:TALK195292@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jacob Stegenga
DESCRIPTION:The datafication of society is said to be revolutionizing how 
 researchers investigate the world\, resulting in improved scientific commu
 nications\, faster data integration and analysis\, and more reliable outpu
 ts. Big and Open Data exemplify the newest frontier of empirical research\
 , and scientific success in extracting knowledge from such objects is ofte
 n hailed as demonstrating the power of (increasingly automated) inductive 
 reasoning: science as the collection and interpretation of facts about the
  world. In this lecture\, I critique this view of scientific inquiry\, whi
 ch is predicated on the existence and availability of documents of the wor
 ld from which insights can be distilled. Building on in-depth\, long-term 
 studies of data practices in the biological and biomedical practices\, I r
 eview the multiple failures of this form of empiricism\, drawing attention
  especially to the intersection of moral and epistemic problems that this 
 approach to research fails to address or even to recognize as significant\
 , with severe implications for the reliability and the robustness of the k
 nowledge thereby generated. The study of research practices calls for an a
 lternative framing of empirical inquiry focused on the limitations of data
  as research components and the value judgements involved in using data as
  scientific evidence. Throughout my discussion\, I pay homage to the semin
 al role played by members of the Cambridge HPS Department – and particul
 arly Simon Schaffer\, Peter Lipton and Hasok Chang – in shaping our fiel
 d's approach to research practices\, including my own ideas on the epistem
 ic role of data\, experiments and inference.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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