Mechanisms and science denialismexplaining the global lung cancer epidemic

  1. Saúl Pérez-González 1
  1. 1 Universitat de València, Spain
Revista:
Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin

ISSN: 2254-0601

Año de publicación: 2020

Título del ejemplar: The Upsurge of Irrationality: Pseudoscience, Denialism and Post-truth

Volumen: 9

Número: 13

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.5281/ZENODO.3567206 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso abierto editor

Otras publicaciones en: Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin

Resumen

La explicación es uno de los principales objetivos de la ciencia. Los científicos frecuentemente tratan de explicar fenómenos científicos. Este artículo aborda la relación entre la explicación científica y el negacionismo de la ciencia. En él, se introduce la noción de guerra de explicación. Una guerra de explicación es una situación en la cual la explicación científica estándar de un fenómeno es sistemáticamente negada por un grupo de personas. Se argumenta que la concepción mecanicista de la explicación es de ayuda para hacer frente a este tipo de negacionismo de la ciencia. Las explicaciones mecanicistas son resistentes a los argumentos habitualmente esgrimidos por los negacionistas. La relevancia de las explicaciones mecanicistas es ilustrada mediante el caso del negacionismo de las enfermedades causadas por el tabaco en la segunda mitad del siglo veinte.

€ Ver financiación

Información de financiación

I would like to thank ValoeIranrzo ianad twno anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation andnUiversities under grants FPU16/03274 andFI2017–89639–P.

Financiadores

Referencias bibliográficas

  • Bechtel, William, and Adele Abrahamsen. 2005. “Explanation: a mechanist alternative.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36: 421-441. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2005.03.010
  • Denissenko, Mikhail F., Annie Pao, Moon-shong Tang, and Gerd P. Pfeifer. 1996. “Preferential Formation of Benzo[a]pyrene Adducts at Lung Cancer Mutational Hotspots in P53?” Science 274: 430-432. doi: 10.1126/science.274.5286.430
  • Diethelm, Pascal, and Martin Mckee. 2009. “Denialism: What is it and how should scientists respond?” European Journal of Public Health 19: 2-4. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckn139
  • Fisher, Ronald A. 1957. “Dangers of Cigarette-smoking.” British Medical Journal 2: 297-298. doi: 10.1136/bmj.2.5039.297-b
  • Fisher, Ronald A. 1958. “CIGARETTES, CANCER, AND STATISTICS.” The Centennial Review of Arts & Science 2: 151-166.
  • Glennan, Stuart. 2005. “Modeling mechanisms.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 36: 443-464. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2005.03.011
  • Glennan, Stuart. 2017. The New Mechanical Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oso/9780198779711.001.0001
  • Hansson, Sven Ove. 2017. “Science denial as a form of pseudoscience.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 63: 39-47. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2017.05.002
  • Hansson, Sven Ove. 2018a. “Dealing with climate science denialism: experiences from confrontations with other forms of pseudoscience.” Climate Policy 18: 1094-1102. doi: 10.1080/14693062.2017.1415197
  • Hansson, Sven Ove. 2018b. “How connected are the major forms of irrationality? An analysis of pseudoscience, science denial, fact resistance and alternative facts.” Mètode Science Studies Journal 8: 125-131. doi: 10.7203/metode.8.10005
  • Harré, Rom. 1972. The Philosophies of Science: An Introductory Survey. London: Oxford University Press.
  • Hedström, Peter. 2005. Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology. New York: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511488801
  • Hedström, Peter, and Petri Ylikoski. 2010. “Causal Mechanisms in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 36: 49-67. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102632
  • Hedström, Peter, and Richard Swedberg. 1998. “Social mechanisms: An introductory essay.” In Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory, edited by Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg, 1-31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511663901
  • Hempel, Carl Gustav. 1965. Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: The Free press.
  • Hickey, Richard J., David E. Boyce, Evelyn B. Harner, and Richard C. Clelland. 1970. “Ecological Statistical Studies Concerning Environmental Pollution and Chronic Disease.” IEEE Transactions on Geoscience Electronics 8: 186-202. doi: 10.1109/TGE.1970.271390
  • Holman, Bennett. 2017. “Philosophers on drugs.” Synthese. doi: 10.1007/s11229-017-1642-2
  • Hopkins, Emily J., Deena Skolnick Weisberg, and Jordan C.V. Taylor. 2016. “The seductive allure is a reductive allure: People prefer scientific explanations that contain logically irrelevant reductive information.” Cognition 155: 67-76. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.06.011
  • Lewandowsky, Stephan, Michael E. Mann, Nicholas J. L. Brown, and Harris Friedman. 2016. “Science and the Public: Debate, Denial, and Skepticism.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology 4: 537-533. doi: 10.5964/jspp.v4i2.604
  • Lewandowsky, Stephan, and Klaus Oberauer. 2016. “Motivated Rejection of Science.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 25: 217-222. doi: 10.1177/0963721416654436
  • Liu, Dennis W. C. 2012. “Science denial and the science classroom.” CBE-Life Sciences Education 11: 129-134. doi: 10.1187/cbe.12-03-0029
  • Machamer, Peter, Lindley Darden, and Carl F. Craver. 2000. “Thinking about Mechanisms.” Philosophy of Science 67: 1-25. doi: 10.1086/392759
  • Pearl, Judea, and Dana Mackenzie. 2018. The book of why: the new science of cause and effect. New York: Basic Books.
  • Proctor, Robert N. 2001. “Tobacco and the global lung cancer epidemic.” Nature Reviews Cancer 1: 82-86. doi: 10.1038/35094091
  • Proctor, Robert N. 2004. “The Global Smoking Epidemic: A History and Status Report.” Clinical Lung Cancer 5: 371-376. doi: 10.3816/CLC.2004.n.016
  • Proctor, Robert N. 2006. “‘Everyone knew but no one had proof”: tobacco industry use of medical history expertise in US courts, 1990-2002.” Tobacco Control 15: iv117-iv125. doi: 10.1136/tc.2004.009928
  • Proctor, Robert N. 2011. Golden holocaust: origins of the cigarette catastrophe and the case for abolition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Proctor, Robert N. 2012. “The history of the discovery of the cigarette—lung cancer link: evidential traditions, corporate denial, global toll.” Tobacco Control 21: 87-91. doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2011-050338
  • Prothero, Donald. 2013. “The Holocaust Denier’s Playbook and the Tobacco Smokescreen. Common Threads in the Thinking and Tactics of Denialists and Pseudoscientists.” In The Philosophy of Pseudoscience, edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry, 341-358. Chicago: Chicago University Press. doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226051826.003.0019
  • Ranney Michael Andrew, and Dav Clark. 2016. “Climate Change Conceptual Change: Scientific Information Can Transform Attitudes.” Topics in Cognitive Science 8: 49-75. doi: 10.1111/tops.12187
  • Rosenau, Joshua. 2012. “Science denial: a guide for scientists.” Trends in Microbiology 20: 567-569. doi: 10.1016/j.tim.2012.10.002
  • Russo Federica, and Jon Williamson. 2007. “Interpreting Causality in the Health Sciences.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 21: 157-170. doi: 10.1080/02698590701498084
  • Salmon, Wesley C. 1984. Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  • Schnitzer, Stefan A. 2005. “A Mechanistic Explanation for Global Patterns of Liana Abundance and Distribution.” The American Naturalist 166: 262-276. doi: 10.1086/431250
  • Scriven, Michael. 1959. “Explanation and Prediction in Evolutionary Theory.” Science 130: 477-482. doi: 10.1126/science.130.3374.477
  • Steel, Daniel. 2004. “Social Mechanisms and Causal Inference.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34: 55-78. doi: 10.1177/0048393103260775
  • Steel, Daniel. 2008. Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331448.001.0001
  • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2010. How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease: The Biology and Behavioral Basis for Smoking-Attributable Disease: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health.
  • Wynder Ernest L., and E. Cuyler Hammond. 1962. “A study of air pollution carcinogenesis. I. Analysis of epidemiological evidence.” Cancer 15: 79-92. doi: 10.1002/1097-0142(196201/02)15:1<79::AID-CNCR2820150112>3.0.CO;2-3
  • YLIKOSKI, Petri. 2013. “Causal and Constitutive Explanation Compared.” Erkenntnis 78: 277-297. doi: 10.1007/s10670-013-9513-9
Fuente de los datos: Dialnet