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Two Senses of Experimental Robustness: Result Robustness and Procedure Robustness

Karaca, Koray (2018) Two Senses of Experimental Robustness: Result Robustness and Procedure Robustness. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

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Abstract

In the philosophical literature concerning scientific experimentation, the notion of robustness has been solely discussed in relation to experimental results. In this paper, I propose a novel sense of experimental robustness that applies to experimental procedures. I call the foregoing sense of robustness procedure robustness (PR) and characterize it as the capacity of an experimental procedure to maintain its intended function invariant during the experimental process despite possible variations in its inputs. I argue that PR is a precondition for what I call result robustness (RR), which refers to the traditional sense of experimental robustness, namely the existence of convergent experimental results obtained through different and independent means of detection. Furthermore, I argue, PR and RR constitute useful experimental strategies in the context of high-energy physics experiments, but these strategies are not without limitations.


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Item Type: Published Article or Volume
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Karaca, Koraykaracak@gmail.com
Subjects: General Issues > Data
General Issues > Experimentation
Depositing User: Koray Karaca
Date Deposited: 19 Feb 2018 00:54
Last Modified: 19 Feb 2018 00:54
Item ID: 14395
Journal or Publication Title: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science
Subjects: General Issues > Data
General Issues > Experimentation
Date: 17 February 2018
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/14395

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