Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Evidence in biology and the conditions of success

  • Published:
Biology & Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

I describe two traditions of philosophical accounts of evidence: one characterizes the notion in terms of signs of success, the other characterizes the notion in terms of conditions of success. The best examples of the former rely on the probability calculus, and have the virtues of generality and theoretical simplicity. The best examples of the latter describe the features of evidence which scientists appeal to in practice, which include general features of methods, such as quality and relevance, and general features of evidence, such as patterns in data, concordance with other evidence, and believability of the evidence. Two infamous episodes from biomedical research help to illustrate these features. Philosophical characterization of these latter features—conditions of success—has the virtue of potential relevance to, and descriptive accuracy of, practices of experimental scientists.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Early contributions include Hacking (1983) and Franklin (1986), and recent discussions of experiment in biology include Bechtel and Richardson (1993), Burian (1993), Allchin (1996), Rheinberger (1997), Rasmussen (2001), Darden and Craver (2002), Griffiths (2002), Weber (2005), Elliott (2007), Waters (2007), and Weber (2012).

  2. Hereafter I drop reference to background assumptions (b) for notational simplicity.

  3. On these measures, see, for example, Fitelson (1999).

  4. This desideratum—requiring a high p(e) for credible evidence—departs from standard Bayesian thinking about evidence. In a standard Bayesian framework, a high p(e) indicates both that the evidence is credible but also that it provides little support to any particular hypothesis (this can be easily seen via Bayes’ Theorem). A low p(e) is usually thought to represent surprising evidence, from, say, a risky prediction, and a smaller p(e) is associated with a greater increase in p(H|e) than a larger p(e), by Bayes’ Theorem, and this reflects general intuition about the confirmatory power of surprising evidence. Using high p(e) to represent credible evidence sacrifices the ability to represent surprising and highly confirming evidence with p(e). A low p(e) also represents evidence generated by a high quality method (discussed in Sect. “Conditions of success: methodological features”).

  5. According to accounts of evidence associated with Williamson (2000), Neta (2008), and others, evidence is factive, and so it makes little sense to talk about the ‘veracity of evidence’, or ‘reliable evidence’. There is, on the factive account, simply evidence, the veracity of which is taken for granted. Any account of evidence must be able to accommodate the difference between (i) evidence generated by a method with systematic errors and (ii) evidence generated by a method which controls for known errors. On my account (ii) is reliable evidence and (i) is unreliable or weak evidence (but the amount of systematic error present is presumably a degree notion). On the factive account, a proposition expressing an evidential report can accommodate the difference between (i) and (ii) by including the relevant information regarding the methodological differences between (i) and (ii) in the proposition expressing the evidential report itself. Given the methodological complexity of contemporary experiments, many evidential reports in such a factive account would be complex and cumbersome. The advantage of the conditions of success account is that an evidential report can be stated rather simply while the assessment of such reports can be as complex as need be. This is, moreover, precisely how biologists report and assess evidence.

  6. If ci represents the possible confounding errors of the method used to generate e, and if we assume for simplicity that H and ci represent a total partition of the possible causes of e, then, by the principle of total probability: \( {\text{p}}\left( {\text{e}} \right) = {\text{p}}\left( {\text{H}} \right){\text{p}}\left( {{\text{e}}|{\text{H}}} \right) + {\text{p}}\left( {{\text{c}}_{ 1} } \right){\text{p}}\left( {{\text{e}}|{\text{c}}_{ 1} } \right) + {\text{p}}\left( {{\text{c}}_{ 2} } \right){\text{p}}\left( {{\text{e}}|{\text{c}}_{ 2} } \right) + \ldots {\text{p}}\left( {{\text{c}}_{\text{n}} } \right){\text{p}}\left( {{\text{e}}|{\text{c}}_{\text{n}} } \right) \). Since the quality of a method amounts to decreasing the prior probability that any of ci are true, quality directly influences p(e). The higher the quality of a method, the lower the p(e). For a valuable discussion of Bayesian approaches to evidence, see Strevens (2009).

  7. Many now argue that this is for the worse; see for example Worrall (2002) and Cartwright (2007).

  8. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for noting that transparency might trade off against properties of an experimental system (such as quality and relevance) and properties of the target system (its complexity, say).

  9. Collins famously argues that in such scenarios, assessing evidence involves an ‘experimenters regress’: good evidence is generated from properly functioning techniques, but properly functioning techniques are just those that give good evidence (1985). Even if we put aside this rarified worry, we often cannot make judgments regarding the quality or relevance of a method simply because we do not know enough about the inner workings of the method to make such judgments.

  10. See also Woodward (1989): “The problem of detecting a phenomenon is the problem of […] identifying a relatively stable and invariant pattern of some simplicity and generality with recurrent features – a pattern which is not just an artefact of the particular detection techniques we employ or the local environment in which we operate.”

  11. For discussion of such algorithms, see Sober (2007).

  12. See also Weber (2005), who calls such appeals to concordant evidence ‘arguments from independent determinations’.

  13. Such mechanisms include, but are not limited to, mechanisms of the method (since mechanisms of the method could be assessed under the rubric of quality). On the role of mechanisms in discovery, see Darden and Craver (2002), Bechtel (2006), and Tabery (2009).

  14. The criterion of believability is similar to Quine’s (1951) claim that one can be justified in rejecting a certain observation if that observation strongly conflicts with one’s background theories, while in the absence of such theories the same observation might be more plausible.

  15. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this point.

  16. See also Franklin (1986), Franklin (2002), and Mayo (1996) for discussions of these strategies and others employed by scientists to minimize the risk of bias or error.

  17. I describe this case in more detail in Stegenga (2011).

  18. See e.g. MacLeod and Avery, 22 October 1940. “Laboratory Notes”; MacLeod and Avery, 28 January 1941. “Laboratory Notes”.

  19. From McCarty et al. (1946). See also McCarty and Avery (1946a), McCarty and Avery (1946b).

  20. However, the primary methodological criticism that was directed at AMM1944 could have been directed at HC1952: the potential for protein contamination in the portion of the virus that entered the cell in Hershey and Chase’s experiments was as great as the potential for protein contamination in Avery’s TS. Such criticisms against HC1952 were not as pronounced as they were against AMM1944—the evidence in HC1952 was rapidly accepted, and Hershey went on to win a Nobel Prize. At least one way to understand this is that given AMM1944, scientists could then assess HC1952 favorably by (C). And conversely, once the evidence in HC1952 was available, the evidence in AMM1944 could also be reconsidered on the grounds of (C).

  21. Fraud would be an extreme type of criticism based on (Q). The Nature team was less than subtle in such a suggestion: “we were dismayed to learn that the salaries of two of Dr Benveniste’s coauthors of the published article are paid for under a contract between INSERM 200 and the French company Boiron et Cie., a supplier of pharmaceuticals and homeopathic medicines, as were our hotel bills.” Industry funding of scientific research is, of course, ubiquitous, as Maddox must have been aware.

  22. A retrospective comment by one of Benveniste’s co-authors on the original paper, Francis Beauvais, lends some support to this methodological concern. He claimed that unblinded experiments usually showed a positive effect, but “the results of blinded samples were almost always at random and did not fit the expected results: some ‘controls’ were active and some ‘active’ samples were without effect on the biological system” (Beauvais 2008).

  23. The contrast between the two traditions of accounts of evidence that I have called signs of success tradition and the conditions of success is similar to Musgrave’s contrast between what he calls logical accounts of confirmation and historical accounts of confirmation (1974), and is also similar to Mayo’s contrast between what she calls evidential-relationship accounts of inference and testing accounts of inference (1996). See also Love (forthcoming) for a discussion of formal versus material theories of scientific inference.

  24. For an account of the assessment of evidence in molecular biology which places emphasis on the role of theory and model building rather than on features of methods and of evidence, see Schindler (2008). Similarly, Weber (2002) presents an excellent discussion of a case from biochemistry in which incommensurability of theories was overcome empirically. On the other hand, the features of evidence discussed here may be more prominent in exploratory experimentation (see Elliott 2007).

References

  • Achinstein P (2001) The book of evidence. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Allchin D (1996) Cellular and theoretical chimeras: piecing together how cells process energy. Stud Hist Philos Sci 27:31–41

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alloway JL (1933) Further observations on the use of pneumococcus extracts in effecting transformation of type in vitro. J Exp Med 57:265–278

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson TF (1946) Morphological and chemical relations in viruses and bacteriophages. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 11:1–13

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Avery OT, MacLeod CM, McCarty M (1944) Studies on the chemical nature of the substance inducing transformation of pneumococcal types: induction of transformation by a desoxyribonucleic acid fraction isolated from pneumococcus type III. J Exp Med 79:137–158

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beauvais F (2008) Memory of water and blinding. Homeopathy 97(1):41–42

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bechtel W (2000) From imaging to believing: epistemic issue in generating biological data. In: Creath R, Maienschein J (eds) Epistemology and biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 138–163

    Google Scholar 

  • Bechtel W (2006) Discovering cell mechanisms. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Bechtel W, Richardson RC (1993) Discovering complexity: decomposition and localization as strategies in scientific research. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Benveniste J (1988) Dr Jacques Benveniste replies. Nature 334:291

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bogen J, Woodward J (1988) Saving the Phenomena. Philos Rev 97:303–352

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boivin A (1947) Directed mutation in colon bacilli, by an inducing principle of desoxyribonucleic nature: its meaning for the general biochemistry of heredity. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 12:7–17

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Burian R (1993) Unification and coherence as methodological objectives in the biological sciences. Biol Philos 8:301–318

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cartwright N (1999) The dappled world. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cartwright N (2007) Are RCTs the gold standard? Biosocieties 2:11–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chargaff E (1950) Chemical specificity of nucleic acids and mechanism of their enzymic degradation. Experientia 6:201–209

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chargaff E (1951) Structure and function of nucleic acids as cell constituents. Fed Proc 10:654–659

    Google Scholar 

  • Collins H (1985) Changing order: replication and induction in scientific practice. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowan ML, Bruner BD, Huse N, Dwyer JR, Chugh B, Nibbering ETJ, Elsaesser T, Miller RJD (2005) Ultrafast memory loss and energy redistribution in the hydrogen bond network of liquid H2O. Nature 434:199–202

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Danchin A (1988) Explanation of benveniste. Nature 334:286

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Darden L, Craver C (2002) Strategies in the interfield discovery of the mechanism of protein synthesis. Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci 33C:1–28

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davenas E, Beauvais F, Amara J, Oberbaum M, Robinzon B, Miadonna A, Tedeschi A, Pomeranz B, Fortner P, Belon P, Sainte-Laudy J, Poitevin B, Benveniste J (1988) Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE. Nature 333:816–818

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dawson MH (1928) The Interconvertibility of ‘R’ and ‘S’ Forms of Pneumococcus. J Exp Med 47(4):577–591

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dubos RJ (1956) Obituary of O. T. Avery 1877–1955. Biograph Mem Fellow R Soc 2:35–48

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Elliott K (2007) Varieties of exploratory experimentation in nanotoxicology. Hist Philos Life Sci 29:311–334

    Google Scholar 

  • Fierz W (1988) Explanation of Benveniste. Nature 334:286

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Franklin A (1986) The neglect of experiment. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Franklin A (2002) Selectivity and discord: two problems of experiment. University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Griffith F (1928) The significance of pneumococcal types. J Hyg 27(2):113–159

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Griffiths PE (2002) Molecular and developmental biology. In: Machamer PK, Silberstein M (eds) The Blackwell guide to philosophy of science. Blackwell, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Hacking I (1983) Representing and intervening. Cambridge University Press

  • Hempel C (1966) Philosophy of natural science. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs

    Google Scholar 

  • Hershey AD (1946) Spontaneous mutations in bacterial viruses. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 11:67–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hershey AD, Chase M (1952) Independent functions of viral proteins and nucleic acid in growth of bacteriophage. J Gen Physiol 36:39–56

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hotchkiss RD (1951) Transfer of penicillin resistance in pneumococci by the desoxyribonucleate fractions from resistant cultures. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 16:457–461

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hotchkiss RD (1965) Ostwald T. Avery. Genetics 51:1–10

    Google Scholar 

  • Kuhn T (1977) Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice. In The essential tension: selected studies in scientific tradition and change. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

  • Lasters I, Bardiaux M (1988) Explanation of Benveniste. Nature 334:285–286

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lederberg J (1956) Genetic transduction. Am Sci 44:264–280

    Google Scholar 

  • Lederberg J (1958) Nobel lecture. Available at www.nobel.se

  • Lederberg J (1994) The Transformation of Genetics by DNA: an anniversary celebration of avery, MacLeod and McCarty, 1944. Genetics 136:423–426

    Google Scholar 

  • Lederberg J, Tatum EL (1946) Gene recombination in Eschericia coli. Nature 58:558

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levene PA (1921) On the structure of thymus nucleic acid and on its possible bearing on the structure of plant nucleic acid. J Biol Chem 48:119–125

    Google Scholar 

  • Longino H (1994) In search of feminist epistemology. The Monist 77:472–485

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Love A (forthcoming) Material versus formal theories in philosophy of science: a methodological interpretation. In de Regt, Okasha, Hartmann (eds) Proceedings of the second European philosophy of science association meeting. Springer, Berlin

  • Lycan W (1998) Theoretical (Epistemic) virtues. In Craig E (ed) Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy vol 9. Routledge, London. pp 340–343

  • MacLeod CM, Avery OT (1940) Laboratory Notes: Exp. 1 (T[ransforming]. P[rinciple].) Effect of Fluoride on Autolysis of Pneumococcus Type III and on Preservation of the Transforming Principle”

  • MacLeod CM, Avery OT (1941) Laboratory notes: effect of ribonuclease on Deproteinized Extract 5-40

  • Maddox J, Randi J, Stewart WW (1988) ‘High-dilution’ experiments a delusion. Nature 334:287–290

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mayo Deborah (1996) Error and the growth of experimental knowledge. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Mayo D, Spanos A (2006) Severe testing as a basic concept in a Neyman-pearson philosophy of induction. Brit J Philos Sci 57:323–357

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McAllister J (1997) Phenomena and patterns in data sets. Erkenntnis 47:217–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCarty M (1945) Reversible inactivation of the substance inducing transformation of pneumococcal types. J Exp Med 81:501–514

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCarty M (1986) The transforming principle: discovering that genes are made of DNA. Norton & Company

  • McCarty M, Avery OT (1946a) Studies on the chemical nature of the substance inducing transformation of pneumococcal types. II. Effect of desoxyribonuclease on the biological activity of the transforming substance. J Exp Med 83:89–96

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCarty M, Avery OT (1946b) Studies on the chemical nature of the substance inducing transformation of pneumococcal types. III. An improved method for the isolation of the transforming substance and its application to pneumococcus types II, III, and VI. J Exp Med 83:97–104

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McCarty M, Taylor HE, Avery OT (1946) Biochemical studies of environmental factors essential in transformation of pneumococcal types. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 11:177–183

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mirsky AE (1968) The discovery of DNA. Sci Am 218:78–88

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mirsky AE, Pollister WW (1946) Chromosin, a desoxyribose nucleoprotein complex of the cell nucleus. J Gen Physiol 30:117–148

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mirsky A, Osawa S, Allfrey V (1956) The nucleus as a site of biochemical activity. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 21:49–74

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morange M (1998) A history of molecular biology. Harvard University Press

  • Musgrave A (1974) Logical versus historical theories of confirmation. Brit J Philos Sci 25:1–23

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neta R (2008) What evidence do you have? Brit J Philos Sci 59:89–119

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nisonoff A (1988) Explanation of Benveniste. Nature 334:286

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quine WVO (1951) Two Dogmas of empiricism. Philos Rev 60:20–43

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rasmussen N (2001) Evolving scientific epistemologies and the artifacts of empirical philosophy of science: a reply concerning mesosomes. Biol Philos 16:629–654

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rheinberger H-J (1997) Experimental complexity in biology: some epistemological and historical remarks. Philos Sci 64:245–254

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Roush S (2005) Tracking truth. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schindler S (2008) Model, theory, and evidence in the discovery of the DNA structure. Brit J Philos Sci 59:619–658

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spiegelman S (1946) Nuclear and cytoplasmic factors controlling enzymatic constitution. Cold Spring Harb Symp Quant Biol 11:256–277

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stanley WM (1970) The ‘Undiscovered’ discovery. Arch Environ Health 2:256–262

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stegenga J (2009) Robustness, discordance, and relevance. Philos Sci 76:650–661

    Google Scholar 

  • Stegenga J (2011) The chemical characterization of the gene: vicissitudes of evidential assessment. Hist Philos Life Sci 33:105–127

    Google Scholar 

  • Strevens M (2009) Objective evidence and absence: comment on sober. Philos Stud 143:91–100

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tabery J (2009) Difference mechanisms: explaining variation with mechanisms. Biol Philos 24(5):645–664

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • van Fraassen B (1980) The scientific image. Clarendon Press, Oxford

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Waters CK (2007) The nature and context of exploratory experimentation: an introduction to three case studies of exploratory research. Hist Philos Life Sci 29:275–284

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber M (2002) Incommensurability and theory comparison in experimental biology. Biol Philos 17(2):155–169

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weber M (2005) Philosophy of experimental biology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Weber M (2012) Experiment in biology. In Zalta EN (ed) The stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/biology-experiment

  • Williamson T (2000) Knowledge and its limits. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Woodward J (1989) Data and phenomena. Synthese 79:393–472

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wylie A (1995) Doing philosophy as a feminist: longino on the search for a feminist epistemology. Philos Topics 23:345–358

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Financial support was provided by the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships Program administered by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am grateful for commentary from Nancy Cartwright, Eran Tal, Boaz Miller, Deborah Mayo, and two anonymous reviewers, and for discussion with audiences at the Canadian Society for the History and Philosophy of Science, the University of California San Diego, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Victoria College, University of Toronto, Room 316, 91 Charles Street West, Toronto, ON, M5S 1K7, Canada

    Jacob Stegenga

Authors
  1. Jacob Stegenga
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jacob Stegenga.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Stegenga, J. Evidence in biology and the conditions of success. Biol Philos 28, 981–1004 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9373-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9373-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation