Coates, Matthew (2024) Does it Harm Science to Suppress Dissenting Evidence? [Preprint]

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Abstract

There has been increased attention on how scientific communities should respond to spurious dissent. One proposed method is to hide such dissent by preventing its publication. To investigate this, I computationally model the epistemic effects of hiding dissenting evidence on scientific communities. I find that it is typically epistemically harmful to hide dissent, even when there exists an agent purposefully producing biased dissent. However, hiding dissent also allows for quicker correct epistemic consensus among scientists. Quicker consensus may be important when policy decisions must be made quickly, such as during a pandemic, suggesting times when hiding dissent may be useful.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Coates, Matthew mncoates@uci.edu
Keywords:	networks, social networks, social epistemology, epistemology of science, scientific communities, group learning, consensus, dissent
Subjects:	General Issues > Computer Simulation General Issues > Models and Idealization General Issues > Science and Society General Issues > Social Epistemology of Science
Depositing User:	Matthew Coates
Date Deposited:	23 May 2024 11:35
Last Modified:	23 May 2024 11:35
Item ID:	23472
Subjects:	General Issues > Computer Simulation General Issues > Models and Idealization General Issues > Science and Society General Issues > Social Epistemology of Science
Date:	2024
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/23472

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