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From the article:
Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support or counter a scientific theorem or hypothesis.
Shouldn't "theorem" be replaced with "theory"? -- Wonderstruck 14:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I say yes - a "theorem" is for mathematics. I'll boldly make the correction. :-) gnomelock 23:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
This starts out saying:-
That is a logical fallacy. That means any evidence of any kind is scientific if it either supports or counters a scientific theory or hypothesis. So if I say, I believe every action has an equal and opposite reaction except under water, the evidence of my belief is scientific evidence.
[Well, actually such a statement would in fact be evidence; but, there's a REALLY fundamental flaw here: there is NO SUCH THING AS "SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE." You have the scientific method, period. Anything, typically "observations," may be considered as evidence, provided such is analyzed scientifically. The word scientific applies to the process, not the evidence.] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.99.66.65 ( talk) 03:55, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Well done Wikipedia for getting it wrong again and in the first sentence too - probably not the first time. 86.11.86.4 07:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
The explanation seems unnecessary.
This is rubbish, I find no evidence that anyone, besides the editor who wrote this, defines evidence in this way. Also, it's obliquely contradicted by the circumstantial evidence article, which —of course— lacks citations. I hope no one misses it. :S (This [1] is the closest thing to verification I could find.)
This is just terrible. Rewording it to:
I think this is clearer. I hope it still means the same thing. PatheticCopyEditor ( talk) 21:46, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
As a matter of fact, I think it was clearer the first time. Unless someone can relate this in plain English with appropriate citations, I suggest that this paragraph be deleted.
-- Coconutporkpie ( talk) 05:19, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
(Under "Principles of inference"): Unless someone can rewrite this paragraph in plain English, I suggest that it be deleted entirely.
-- Coconutporkpie ( talk) 05:25, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
Can anyone explain why this article should not be merged into the article Empirical evidence? That article defines its subject as "a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation or experimentation". Presumably that could be used to "either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis". Is there something that makes certain evidence so acquired especially "scientific" and different enough to merit its own page? It seems to me that this article merely cobbles together various elements (inference, the scientific method, statistical analysis) with no logical cohesion, and that those subjects are adequately treated elsewhere with regard to the scientific disciplines.
-- Coconutporkpie ( talk) 05:54, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
This article is about the concept of scientific evidence in pure science.
This statement implies that scientific evidence is relevant in pure science, but not in applied research, which is incorrect.
For that reason, I changed it to:
This article is about knowledge derived from the scientific method. For the legal term, see Scientific evidence (law).
@ Sunray, Coconutporkpie, Speednat, Gregbard, Trabucogold, Sunrise, K, LlywelynII, Gehrlich, IntoThinAir, Abb3w, and Diannaa: As pointed out in the section Merge this article, Scientific evidence should not be merged into Empirical evidence, but a merge in the opposite direction makes sense because the sourced content in the article Empirical evidence is not sufficiently elaborated to justify a second article. In fact, the argument supports a merging, because separating two views on a same subject that are related by a discussion in the literature is against WP:CFORK. The non sourced content in the article Empirical evidence would not be merged unless sources are provided. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 15:38, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
There was a consensus to remove the tags that proposed a merge, because a deeper issue must be addressed first: can we really distinguish between scientific evidence vs empirical evidence using a reference at the scientific method. I argued above that we cannot. To continue the argument here I decided to search on Google with the query '"empirical evidence" "scientific evidence"'. Here are the first articles that I found and seemed relevant:
I will add other articles to the list. Some articles might not be from academic sources, but they are still useful to get the common view, though I agree that the view of philosophers of science is more important. A key point is that I do not cherry pick. I include every article that seems relevant. I am not finished creating that list. I will continue later, because I have other responsibilities to address now in my life. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 14:00, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
Clarification added. This section mainly concerns important issues created by recent edits made on Empirical evidence in the hope that the merge will become unnecessary. Phlsph7 argued that the thread was pointless, because it does not concern this article. I felt Phlsph7 had a valid point, because the issues more directly concern Empirical evidence. So, I moved the thread in talk:Empirical evidence. However, Phlsph7 reverted this move, because his criticisms were now out of context. Fine, we keep the thread here, but then it is important that we all understand that many issues here are about Empirical evidence and yet indirectly related to this article, because of the possible merge that these may imply. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 15:05, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
I accepted to remove the tags to merge Empirical evidence in this article, because I felt we should discuss locally the new situation obtained after recent edits on Empirical evidence. A local discussion before a RfC is a policy in Wikipedia and a merge request is like a special RfC. In particular, we absolutely needed to do our homework and search the sources, if any, that justify Empirical evidence as a separate article. We found nothing. @ Biogeographist and Phlsph7: If there is any further discussion that may happen here before I put the tags back, please let us do that. This is the optimal approach for those who will come to help in the discussion. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 18:29, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Scientific evidence is closely related to empirical evidence. But there is a sense in which not all empirical evidence constitutes scientific evidence. The reason for this is that the scientific standards for evidence are high and therefore exclude certain evidence that is legitimate in other contexts.I think this article, Scientific evidence, which is currently underdeveloped, should be mainly about those "high standards" for scientific evidence. I'm sure there are differing views about those standards, just as there are differing views on the demarcation problem in general. Deborah Mayo, for example, would say that scientific evidence is evidence that has survived "severe testing". She has a chapter on this, among chapters by other philosophers, in: Achinstein, Peter, ed. (2005). Scientific evidence: philosophical theories and applications. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801881188. OCLC 56617162. One of William Bechtel's standards mentioned in this article also strikes me as an important differentiator of scientific evidence from other empirical evidence: strong coherence with well corroborated mechanisms (i.e. "how it works"). Scientific evidence (according to some standards like the one from Bechtel that I mentioned) strongly coheres with a mechanismic understanding of why the evidence answers a particular question. This is especially important for facts that are not observable. The article Empirical evidence is more general than this. Biogeographist ( talk) 18:57, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
is currently underdeveloped. I was suggesting some ways that this article could develop; that's why my suggestions don't match what is currently in the article.
Wikipedia saying in wiki's voice in an article that some standards are better than othersis a good idea. That needs to be fixed, as anywhere else in the encyclopedia; for example, I agree with you that what this article says about RCTs in the lead needs to be referenced and qualified.
It's totally against NPOV to create an article that is supposed to be about a description of these high standards.No, if we report all that we can find about what experts say in reliable published sources and report it as their views, that is actually the definition of NPOV.
the current article says basically nothing about these high standards.Again, as I said, this article is currently underdeveloped. And "standards" isn't the only relevant word: definitions, criteria, and factors are appropriate synonyms, and there are probably others.
no sources at all make a distinction between empirical evidence and scientific evidence.That's not true; relevant sources have been presented.
it's not at all the way "empirical evidence" is used in the literature.This is the only claim in your comment above that strikes me as relevant, but as I see it, the way "empirical evidence" is used in the literature would support merging Scientific evidence into Empirical evidence, and not the other direction, as you proposed.
This traditional doctrine about the nature of empirical evidence, as I have so far described it, can be summed up in two propositions: (1) Sense experiences are evidence for perceptual judgments, and (2) Sense experiences are evidentially ultimate.Biogeographist ( talk) 21:00, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Bogen, J., 2016, "Empiricism and After," in P. Humphreys (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 779–795.The introduction to that chapter summarizes Bogen's view of the difference between the traditional empiricist conception of empirical evidence as perceptual evidence and Bogen's alternative account of scientific evidence. "Familiar versions of empiricism overemphasize and misconstrue the importance of perceptual experience as a source of scientific knowledge", according to Bogen. It's a good exposition of some reasons why the traditional empiricist conception of empirical evidence is insufficient for science. This is also addressed to some degree in the SEP article. Biogeographist ( talk) 02:52, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
The purpose of the second article, which was to separate strong scientific evidence from anecdotal empirical observations, but this is not exactly correct, in my view. Anecdotal evidence is already an article. I see that Phlsph7 mentioned anecdotal evidence, but that's not the main issue. To simplify, I see it like a Venn diagram: scientific evidence is one circle, empirical evidence is another circle, anecdotal evidence is another circle. There is some overlap between them, but the overlap does not necessarily indicate that we should merge them all into one article. Biogeographist ( talk) 14:48, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
I think the Venn diagram is a good visualization of the main point. The point is not to have one article for scientific evidence and one for non-scientific anecdotal evidence, as Dominic Mayers suggested. That would eradicate the overlap that is there. I see three arguments against the merge, each one would be sufficient by itself if successful.
The first two arguments are extensional, the third one is intensional. So even if there was a full overlap concerning the cases, there would still be a different sense in which we refer to them. Phlsph7 ( talk) 15:07, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
So far, one argument has been presented for the merge: in the scientific literature, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. This argument by itself carries some weight but is not sufficient to justify a merge. Phlsph7 ( talk) 15:19, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
Scientific evidence can be defined as what provides support for scientific theories.Or as what refutes scientific theories. I would guess that Dominic, being very interested in critical rationalism, would not want you to omit the refutation part. And he would be right.
in the scientific literature, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.It could be said that the two terms are very often used interchangeably, but that's still doesn't outweigh the reasons against the merge. Biogeographist ( talk) 15:32, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
If one reads the context, I obviously used "anecdotal evidence" to refer to what is unfortunately called "empirical evidence" in the discussion here, because I refused to use "empirical evidence" in a way that is never to my knowledge used in the literature. Maybe it's because I have not yet read the new sources proposed, but in what I have seen it's not that the two terms are often used interchangeably. They are always used interchangeably. If we start to adopt a local jargon, then the discussion will not work. If you want to oppose what I am saying here, you have to refer to sources and give some excerpts to show some uses of empirical evidence that cannot be replaced by scientific evidence. The only cases that are borderline are when we have "shaky empirical evidence" or other qualified uses, but even then we could say "shaky scientific evidence" and it would work.
I agree that the above is only about terminology, but it is an important part of the issue. But, I go further than that. It's not just terminology. It is also that the three arguments presented by Phlsph7 do not work. They are very good points, but not to justify a second article. About the first argument, first we have to consider what it really says, so that we are not caught in a particular formulation. It only says that some observations or data are not obtained through a "good" scientific method. Not only this is relative to what we mean by a "good" scientific method, but more importantly why exactly this means that we must have a second article? I don't see it at all. On the contrary, it's a fundamental issue in the topic of empirical/scientific evidence and it fits in the article on this topic. A similar counter argument hold for the second argument. The third argument is said to be intentional. I suspect that there is a reference to the distinction between extensional definition vs intensional definition. Well, this is seriously problematic, because then we refer more formally to definitions of the two expressions and I cannot even find sources that do not use these expressions interchangeably and this means in particular that I have not seen these definitions or anything that can play the same role as these definitions. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 17:47, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
Empirical evidence means evidence constituted by or accessible to sensory experience.The one-sentence definition of empirical evidence from Roderick Firth that I gave above is standard empiricist doctrine, from early modern epistemology through some of the logical empiricists. For example, search for "empirical evidence" + "sense experience" OR "sense experiences" (though other terms could work as well) and you will find plenty of other examples of this usage of "empirical evidence". It is standard in that literature. Biogeographist ( talk) 18:10, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
Please don't readd the tags, there was consensus to remove them just 2 days ago and not much has changed since then. You started a thread that was mainly of personal interest to you and you even acknowledged that it was pointless. Sources have been presented both that some empirical evidence is not scientific and that some scientific evidence is not empirical. You decided to dismiss these sources and took the unwillingness of other editors to spend their time on a pointless thread as a sign that despite everyone doing their homework, nothing was found. This is just a severe misrepresentation. Phlsph7 ( talk) 19:15, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
We are getting loss into details if we reduce the question of whether a second article is needed to the question of whether we can define scientific evidence differently than empirical evidence. I will argue that we have not really succeeded to define them differently, but even if we did, it would not be enough to justify a second article, because it will still remain that we have a single topic which makes use of these two definitions. Biogeographist pointed to a definition of "empirical evidence". I haven't looked at the reference that he provided, but what he wrote reminded me that, obviously, philosophers have tried to define the concept of empirical basis in different manners. They did not all use the expression "empirical evidence", but making a big deal about this would be an example of getting loss into details of terminology and definition. So, I assume that we all agree that there are different views out there on this basic concept that depend on the point of view adopted. For example, it has not always been accepted that observation is theory-laden. Moreover, philosophers, including Popper in the 1930, insisted that observation cannot be used as evidence (they perhaps used a different terminology) if it cannot be repeated. They also knew that there were errors in these repetitions and that statistic would have to be involved, though many, including Popper, did not go much into the details of statistics, RCT, etc. In her 2018 book, Mayo mentions that she communicated with Popper about that and he replied to her "I regret not studying statistics" and that her thought was then "not as much as I do". So, the notion of "empirical evidence" used by many philosophers is not fundamentally different than what we want to call "scientific evidence" here. Yes, sure some might have proposed a more permissible definition, but that just mean that there are indeed many definitions possible depending on what we want to emphasize. Therefore, it is not fair to say that we have different definitions for empirical evidence and scientific evidence. In that sense, I don't see that you have really refuted my claim that the two expressions can be used interchangeably, but by insisting on this I am myself guilty of putting too much importance on terminology and definition. I mean that, even if we accepted that there exists two different definitions, it will not change the fact that it is nevertheless a single topic with many possible views on what is evidence in science. It's not because we defined scientific evidence differently than empirical evidence that a second article for a supposedly new topic must be created. In the same line of thought, let's consider Phlsph7's second argument that scientific evidence is not always empirical evidence. BTW, this essentially contradicts the second sentence in the lead : "Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and interpretable in accordance with scientific methods." Nevertheless, this is certainly a possible definition of scientific evidence, which would distinguish it clearly from empirical evidence. But, I don't see that just because we adopt this definition that a second article is justified. This is what I mean at the start of the paragraph by we are getting lost in details if we reduce our question to a superficial question of terminology and definition. But, there is indeed an important concept, irrespective of any definition, in the fact that we often support theories by other things than empirical evidence. This could indeed be a topic in itself, but I don't agree that we should have a separate article on scientific evidence in addition to empirical evidence only to support this sub-topic. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 22:06, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't see that you have really refuted my claim that the two expressions can be used interchangeably. I agree this has not been refuted, but I think we're all subjectively giving different weight to this in our balance of considerations. I vacillate about how important it is.
I mean that, even if we accepted that there exists two different definitions, it will not change the fact that it is nevertheless a single topic with many possible views on what is evidence in science.I would delete "in science" from the end of this, because Empirical evidence is also about empirical evidence in philosophy and perhaps also in everyday life. Leaving that aside, the rest of this statement is an argument for the merger that Phlsph7 failed to mention in their summary above. I would call it the "anti–content forking" argument and I would state it differently: "We don't want separate articles because our treatment of these perspectives will be stronger if we approach them as if they were a single topic in a single article." I have some sympathy for that argument, especially because I think that the traditional empiricist definition of empirical evidence is obviously outdated.
BTW, this essentially contradicts the second sentence in the lead. I noticed this and have been thinking about how to fix it. One way is to add a qualifier like "Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence, which can include both sensory evidence and other sources" or something like that. In his "Empiricism and After" chapter, Bogen says: "I'll call the view that knowledge about the world can be acquired from instrumental as well as sensory evidence liberal empiricism, and I'll use the term empirical evidence for evidence from both sources." Biogeographist ( talk) 23:31, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
One approach is to decide that the scope is essentially Empirical evidence in science with perhaps a small section on the related subject of empirical evidence outside science.This sounds more like a move than a merger; are you essentially proposing moving this page to Empirical evidence in science, with a redirect from Scientific evidence? If so, I don't think we would need a small section on the related subject of empirical evidence outside science; that is covered in Empirical evidence. But I can imagine Phlsph7's objection that the article would omit scientific evidence that is not empirical. To address that objection would you be willing to allow that there could be a small section on scientific evidence that is not empirical? I imagine it would mostly be brief pointers to other articles.
they are essentially the same subject, despite the argument that they have different scopes, because the large overlap is the most fundamental part.Yes, I completely agree that Empirical evidence in science and Scientific evidence are essentially the same subject, except for the much smaller subject of scientific evidence that is not empirical, which could be covered in a small section. Biogeographist ( talk) 02:51, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
It seems no direct argument against argument1 has been presented since my last post. I'll respond to the indirect ones.
Dominic Mayers: "Therefore, it is not fair to say that we have different definitions for empirical evidence and scientific evidence."
Dominic Mayers: "I mean that, even if we accepted that there exists two different definitions, it will not change the fact that it is nevertheless a single topic with many possible views on what is evidence in science.".
Dominic Mayers: "In the same line of thought, let's consider Phlsph7's second argument that scientific evidence is not always empirical evidence. BTW, this essentially contradicts the second sentence in the lead : "Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and interpretable in accordance with scientific methods."".
Dominic Mayers: "In fact, one of my main point is that Phlsph7's arguments are too much based on definitions and terminology.".
Dominic Mayers: "The separation between scientific evidence and empirical evidence is artificial.".
Dominic Mayers: "I can see that Phlsph7 seems not able to get my point".
Dominic Mayers: "the point is that they are essentially the same subject, despite the argument that they have different scopes, because the large overlap is the most fundamental part.".
Dominic Mayers: "Not so many people worry about empirical evidence outside science".
The original argument against the merge was something along the line that Scientific evidence is more about the rigorous scientific method whereas Empirical evidence is about empirical evidence in general. In other words, it was the same topic, but approached with two different focuses. This argument was refuted as being some form of content forking: the high standard methods in one article and the other methods in another article. The counter argument was also made that this global distinction between Scientific evidence and Empirical evidence does not exist in the literature. The idea of this counter argument is that even if we are sympathetic to the idea of a focus on "rigorous", "modern" scientific evidence, versus a more general focus on empirical evidence, we meet the issue that there is no source that discuss that distinction. Even if there was a few sources that discuss it, it would still be a view point and not sufficient to organize the topic accordingly. To base the organization of the topic on this view, it would have to be a well established non controversial view. It does not seem possible to make this distinction in an encyclopaedic manner. As a result, the discussion shifted on whether Scientific evidence and Empirical evidence have different scopes, but this is actually a different issue.
In this other approach against the merge, it was argued that they have different scopes as illustrated in the diagram. In this perspective, the issue is how to cover the common notion of scientific empirical evidence. In the current organization of the topic, this natural subtopic must be split into two articles Empirical evidence and Scientific evidence. It's impossible without duplicating this subtopic in both articles, because an article named Empirical evidence restricted to Empirical evidence outside science makes no sense and, similarly, an article named Scientific evidence restricted to scientific evidence that is not empirical also makes no sense. Large duplication is some times necessary when the two articles offer two different focuses on a same topic. An example is Crusades with a focus on the military history versus Crusading movement with a focus on the ideology and institutions. In our case, I see the two different scopes as illustrated in the diagram, but I don't see two different focuses at all.
A more efficient and natural organization is to have one main article that covers the common notion with sections for the non shared subtopics, which can be small and expanded as needed in their own main article.
Dominic Mayers ( talk) 15:12, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
I wouldn't oppose merging Scientific evidence into Empirical evidence, but I would still oppose merging in the other direction. Dominic's original proposal was to merge in the other direction. "Empirical evidence" is mentioned in more sources (e.g. in Google, Google Scholar, JSTOR, and WorldCat) and is more consulted on Wikipedia: pageviews for "empirical evidence" are much higher (279,702 in the past 6 months, versus 21,097 for "scientific evidence"), but the pageviews may be so much higher in part because it is the target of so many redirects, namely:
Two terms redirect to Scientific evidence:
Biogeographist ( talk) 17:18, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
It seems to me that we have discussed this topic at length but have made very little progress towards a consensus. I don't have the impression that there will be significant change if we continue the discussion. We have 1 editor (Dominic Mayers) in favor of merging "empirical evidence" into "scientific evidence" and 3 editors (10stone5, Biogeographist & Phlsph7) against it. That makes a strong point against it. Phlsph7 ( talk) 18:22, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
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From the article:
Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support or counter a scientific theorem or hypothesis.
Shouldn't "theorem" be replaced with "theory"? -- Wonderstruck 14:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I say yes - a "theorem" is for mathematics. I'll boldly make the correction. :-) gnomelock 23:35, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
This starts out saying:-
That is a logical fallacy. That means any evidence of any kind is scientific if it either supports or counters a scientific theory or hypothesis. So if I say, I believe every action has an equal and opposite reaction except under water, the evidence of my belief is scientific evidence.
[Well, actually such a statement would in fact be evidence; but, there's a REALLY fundamental flaw here: there is NO SUCH THING AS "SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE." You have the scientific method, period. Anything, typically "observations," may be considered as evidence, provided such is analyzed scientifically. The word scientific applies to the process, not the evidence.] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.99.66.65 ( talk) 03:55, 12 August 2014 (UTC)
Well done Wikipedia for getting it wrong again and in the first sentence too - probably not the first time. 86.11.86.4 07:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
The explanation seems unnecessary.
This is rubbish, I find no evidence that anyone, besides the editor who wrote this, defines evidence in this way. Also, it's obliquely contradicted by the circumstantial evidence article, which —of course— lacks citations. I hope no one misses it. :S (This [1] is the closest thing to verification I could find.)
This is just terrible. Rewording it to:
I think this is clearer. I hope it still means the same thing. PatheticCopyEditor ( talk) 21:46, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
As a matter of fact, I think it was clearer the first time. Unless someone can relate this in plain English with appropriate citations, I suggest that this paragraph be deleted.
-- Coconutporkpie ( talk) 05:19, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
(Under "Principles of inference"): Unless someone can rewrite this paragraph in plain English, I suggest that it be deleted entirely.
-- Coconutporkpie ( talk) 05:25, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
Can anyone explain why this article should not be merged into the article Empirical evidence? That article defines its subject as "a source of knowledge acquired by means of observation or experimentation". Presumably that could be used to "either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis". Is there something that makes certain evidence so acquired especially "scientific" and different enough to merit its own page? It seems to me that this article merely cobbles together various elements (inference, the scientific method, statistical analysis) with no logical cohesion, and that those subjects are adequately treated elsewhere with regard to the scientific disciplines.
-- Coconutporkpie ( talk) 05:54, 16 November 2014 (UTC)
This article is about the concept of scientific evidence in pure science.
This statement implies that scientific evidence is relevant in pure science, but not in applied research, which is incorrect.
For that reason, I changed it to:
This article is about knowledge derived from the scientific method. For the legal term, see Scientific evidence (law).
@ Sunray, Coconutporkpie, Speednat, Gregbard, Trabucogold, Sunrise, K, LlywelynII, Gehrlich, IntoThinAir, Abb3w, and Diannaa: As pointed out in the section Merge this article, Scientific evidence should not be merged into Empirical evidence, but a merge in the opposite direction makes sense because the sourced content in the article Empirical evidence is not sufficiently elaborated to justify a second article. In fact, the argument supports a merging, because separating two views on a same subject that are related by a discussion in the literature is against WP:CFORK. The non sourced content in the article Empirical evidence would not be merged unless sources are provided. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 15:38, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
There was a consensus to remove the tags that proposed a merge, because a deeper issue must be addressed first: can we really distinguish between scientific evidence vs empirical evidence using a reference at the scientific method. I argued above that we cannot. To continue the argument here I decided to search on Google with the query '"empirical evidence" "scientific evidence"'. Here are the first articles that I found and seemed relevant:
I will add other articles to the list. Some articles might not be from academic sources, but they are still useful to get the common view, though I agree that the view of philosophers of science is more important. A key point is that I do not cherry pick. I include every article that seems relevant. I am not finished creating that list. I will continue later, because I have other responsibilities to address now in my life. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 14:00, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
Clarification added. This section mainly concerns important issues created by recent edits made on Empirical evidence in the hope that the merge will become unnecessary. Phlsph7 argued that the thread was pointless, because it does not concern this article. I felt Phlsph7 had a valid point, because the issues more directly concern Empirical evidence. So, I moved the thread in talk:Empirical evidence. However, Phlsph7 reverted this move, because his criticisms were now out of context. Fine, we keep the thread here, but then it is important that we all understand that many issues here are about Empirical evidence and yet indirectly related to this article, because of the possible merge that these may imply. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 15:05, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
I accepted to remove the tags to merge Empirical evidence in this article, because I felt we should discuss locally the new situation obtained after recent edits on Empirical evidence. A local discussion before a RfC is a policy in Wikipedia and a merge request is like a special RfC. In particular, we absolutely needed to do our homework and search the sources, if any, that justify Empirical evidence as a separate article. We found nothing. @ Biogeographist and Phlsph7: If there is any further discussion that may happen here before I put the tags back, please let us do that. This is the optimal approach for those who will come to help in the discussion. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 18:29, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Scientific evidence is closely related to empirical evidence. But there is a sense in which not all empirical evidence constitutes scientific evidence. The reason for this is that the scientific standards for evidence are high and therefore exclude certain evidence that is legitimate in other contexts.I think this article, Scientific evidence, which is currently underdeveloped, should be mainly about those "high standards" for scientific evidence. I'm sure there are differing views about those standards, just as there are differing views on the demarcation problem in general. Deborah Mayo, for example, would say that scientific evidence is evidence that has survived "severe testing". She has a chapter on this, among chapters by other philosophers, in: Achinstein, Peter, ed. (2005). Scientific evidence: philosophical theories and applications. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801881188. OCLC 56617162. One of William Bechtel's standards mentioned in this article also strikes me as an important differentiator of scientific evidence from other empirical evidence: strong coherence with well corroborated mechanisms (i.e. "how it works"). Scientific evidence (according to some standards like the one from Bechtel that I mentioned) strongly coheres with a mechanismic understanding of why the evidence answers a particular question. This is especially important for facts that are not observable. The article Empirical evidence is more general than this. Biogeographist ( talk) 18:57, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
is currently underdeveloped. I was suggesting some ways that this article could develop; that's why my suggestions don't match what is currently in the article.
Wikipedia saying in wiki's voice in an article that some standards are better than othersis a good idea. That needs to be fixed, as anywhere else in the encyclopedia; for example, I agree with you that what this article says about RCTs in the lead needs to be referenced and qualified.
It's totally against NPOV to create an article that is supposed to be about a description of these high standards.No, if we report all that we can find about what experts say in reliable published sources and report it as their views, that is actually the definition of NPOV.
the current article says basically nothing about these high standards.Again, as I said, this article is currently underdeveloped. And "standards" isn't the only relevant word: definitions, criteria, and factors are appropriate synonyms, and there are probably others.
no sources at all make a distinction between empirical evidence and scientific evidence.That's not true; relevant sources have been presented.
it's not at all the way "empirical evidence" is used in the literature.This is the only claim in your comment above that strikes me as relevant, but as I see it, the way "empirical evidence" is used in the literature would support merging Scientific evidence into Empirical evidence, and not the other direction, as you proposed.
This traditional doctrine about the nature of empirical evidence, as I have so far described it, can be summed up in two propositions: (1) Sense experiences are evidence for perceptual judgments, and (2) Sense experiences are evidentially ultimate.Biogeographist ( talk) 21:00, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
Bogen, J., 2016, "Empiricism and After," in P. Humphreys (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 779–795.The introduction to that chapter summarizes Bogen's view of the difference between the traditional empiricist conception of empirical evidence as perceptual evidence and Bogen's alternative account of scientific evidence. "Familiar versions of empiricism overemphasize and misconstrue the importance of perceptual experience as a source of scientific knowledge", according to Bogen. It's a good exposition of some reasons why the traditional empiricist conception of empirical evidence is insufficient for science. This is also addressed to some degree in the SEP article. Biogeographist ( talk) 02:52, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
The purpose of the second article, which was to separate strong scientific evidence from anecdotal empirical observations, but this is not exactly correct, in my view. Anecdotal evidence is already an article. I see that Phlsph7 mentioned anecdotal evidence, but that's not the main issue. To simplify, I see it like a Venn diagram: scientific evidence is one circle, empirical evidence is another circle, anecdotal evidence is another circle. There is some overlap between them, but the overlap does not necessarily indicate that we should merge them all into one article. Biogeographist ( talk) 14:48, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
I think the Venn diagram is a good visualization of the main point. The point is not to have one article for scientific evidence and one for non-scientific anecdotal evidence, as Dominic Mayers suggested. That would eradicate the overlap that is there. I see three arguments against the merge, each one would be sufficient by itself if successful.
The first two arguments are extensional, the third one is intensional. So even if there was a full overlap concerning the cases, there would still be a different sense in which we refer to them. Phlsph7 ( talk) 15:07, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
So far, one argument has been presented for the merge: in the scientific literature, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. This argument by itself carries some weight but is not sufficient to justify a merge. Phlsph7 ( talk) 15:19, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
Scientific evidence can be defined as what provides support for scientific theories.Or as what refutes scientific theories. I would guess that Dominic, being very interested in critical rationalism, would not want you to omit the refutation part. And he would be right.
in the scientific literature, the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.It could be said that the two terms are very often used interchangeably, but that's still doesn't outweigh the reasons against the merge. Biogeographist ( talk) 15:32, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
If one reads the context, I obviously used "anecdotal evidence" to refer to what is unfortunately called "empirical evidence" in the discussion here, because I refused to use "empirical evidence" in a way that is never to my knowledge used in the literature. Maybe it's because I have not yet read the new sources proposed, but in what I have seen it's not that the two terms are often used interchangeably. They are always used interchangeably. If we start to adopt a local jargon, then the discussion will not work. If you want to oppose what I am saying here, you have to refer to sources and give some excerpts to show some uses of empirical evidence that cannot be replaced by scientific evidence. The only cases that are borderline are when we have "shaky empirical evidence" or other qualified uses, but even then we could say "shaky scientific evidence" and it would work.
I agree that the above is only about terminology, but it is an important part of the issue. But, I go further than that. It's not just terminology. It is also that the three arguments presented by Phlsph7 do not work. They are very good points, but not to justify a second article. About the first argument, first we have to consider what it really says, so that we are not caught in a particular formulation. It only says that some observations or data are not obtained through a "good" scientific method. Not only this is relative to what we mean by a "good" scientific method, but more importantly why exactly this means that we must have a second article? I don't see it at all. On the contrary, it's a fundamental issue in the topic of empirical/scientific evidence and it fits in the article on this topic. A similar counter argument hold for the second argument. The third argument is said to be intentional. I suspect that there is a reference to the distinction between extensional definition vs intensional definition. Well, this is seriously problematic, because then we refer more formally to definitions of the two expressions and I cannot even find sources that do not use these expressions interchangeably and this means in particular that I have not seen these definitions or anything that can play the same role as these definitions. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 17:47, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
Empirical evidence means evidence constituted by or accessible to sensory experience.The one-sentence definition of empirical evidence from Roderick Firth that I gave above is standard empiricist doctrine, from early modern epistemology through some of the logical empiricists. For example, search for "empirical evidence" + "sense experience" OR "sense experiences" (though other terms could work as well) and you will find plenty of other examples of this usage of "empirical evidence". It is standard in that literature. Biogeographist ( talk) 18:10, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
Please don't readd the tags, there was consensus to remove them just 2 days ago and not much has changed since then. You started a thread that was mainly of personal interest to you and you even acknowledged that it was pointless. Sources have been presented both that some empirical evidence is not scientific and that some scientific evidence is not empirical. You decided to dismiss these sources and took the unwillingness of other editors to spend their time on a pointless thread as a sign that despite everyone doing their homework, nothing was found. This is just a severe misrepresentation. Phlsph7 ( talk) 19:15, 24 June 2021 (UTC)
We are getting loss into details if we reduce the question of whether a second article is needed to the question of whether we can define scientific evidence differently than empirical evidence. I will argue that we have not really succeeded to define them differently, but even if we did, it would not be enough to justify a second article, because it will still remain that we have a single topic which makes use of these two definitions. Biogeographist pointed to a definition of "empirical evidence". I haven't looked at the reference that he provided, but what he wrote reminded me that, obviously, philosophers have tried to define the concept of empirical basis in different manners. They did not all use the expression "empirical evidence", but making a big deal about this would be an example of getting loss into details of terminology and definition. So, I assume that we all agree that there are different views out there on this basic concept that depend on the point of view adopted. For example, it has not always been accepted that observation is theory-laden. Moreover, philosophers, including Popper in the 1930, insisted that observation cannot be used as evidence (they perhaps used a different terminology) if it cannot be repeated. They also knew that there were errors in these repetitions and that statistic would have to be involved, though many, including Popper, did not go much into the details of statistics, RCT, etc. In her 2018 book, Mayo mentions that she communicated with Popper about that and he replied to her "I regret not studying statistics" and that her thought was then "not as much as I do". So, the notion of "empirical evidence" used by many philosophers is not fundamentally different than what we want to call "scientific evidence" here. Yes, sure some might have proposed a more permissible definition, but that just mean that there are indeed many definitions possible depending on what we want to emphasize. Therefore, it is not fair to say that we have different definitions for empirical evidence and scientific evidence. In that sense, I don't see that you have really refuted my claim that the two expressions can be used interchangeably, but by insisting on this I am myself guilty of putting too much importance on terminology and definition. I mean that, even if we accepted that there exists two different definitions, it will not change the fact that it is nevertheless a single topic with many possible views on what is evidence in science. It's not because we defined scientific evidence differently than empirical evidence that a second article for a supposedly new topic must be created. In the same line of thought, let's consider Phlsph7's second argument that scientific evidence is not always empirical evidence. BTW, this essentially contradicts the second sentence in the lead : "Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and interpretable in accordance with scientific methods." Nevertheless, this is certainly a possible definition of scientific evidence, which would distinguish it clearly from empirical evidence. But, I don't see that just because we adopt this definition that a second article is justified. This is what I mean at the start of the paragraph by we are getting lost in details if we reduce our question to a superficial question of terminology and definition. But, there is indeed an important concept, irrespective of any definition, in the fact that we often support theories by other things than empirical evidence. This could indeed be a topic in itself, but I don't agree that we should have a separate article on scientific evidence in addition to empirical evidence only to support this sub-topic. Dominic Mayers ( talk) 22:06, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
I don't see that you have really refuted my claim that the two expressions can be used interchangeably. I agree this has not been refuted, but I think we're all subjectively giving different weight to this in our balance of considerations. I vacillate about how important it is.
I mean that, even if we accepted that there exists two different definitions, it will not change the fact that it is nevertheless a single topic with many possible views on what is evidence in science.I would delete "in science" from the end of this, because Empirical evidence is also about empirical evidence in philosophy and perhaps also in everyday life. Leaving that aside, the rest of this statement is an argument for the merger that Phlsph7 failed to mention in their summary above. I would call it the "anti–content forking" argument and I would state it differently: "We don't want separate articles because our treatment of these perspectives will be stronger if we approach them as if they were a single topic in a single article." I have some sympathy for that argument, especially because I think that the traditional empiricist definition of empirical evidence is obviously outdated.
BTW, this essentially contradicts the second sentence in the lead. I noticed this and have been thinking about how to fix it. One way is to add a qualifier like "Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence, which can include both sensory evidence and other sources" or something like that. In his "Empiricism and After" chapter, Bogen says: "I'll call the view that knowledge about the world can be acquired from instrumental as well as sensory evidence liberal empiricism, and I'll use the term empirical evidence for evidence from both sources." Biogeographist ( talk) 23:31, 25 June 2021 (UTC)
One approach is to decide that the scope is essentially Empirical evidence in science with perhaps a small section on the related subject of empirical evidence outside science.This sounds more like a move than a merger; are you essentially proposing moving this page to Empirical evidence in science, with a redirect from Scientific evidence? If so, I don't think we would need a small section on the related subject of empirical evidence outside science; that is covered in Empirical evidence. But I can imagine Phlsph7's objection that the article would omit scientific evidence that is not empirical. To address that objection would you be willing to allow that there could be a small section on scientific evidence that is not empirical? I imagine it would mostly be brief pointers to other articles.
they are essentially the same subject, despite the argument that they have different scopes, because the large overlap is the most fundamental part.Yes, I completely agree that Empirical evidence in science and Scientific evidence are essentially the same subject, except for the much smaller subject of scientific evidence that is not empirical, which could be covered in a small section. Biogeographist ( talk) 02:51, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
It seems no direct argument against argument1 has been presented since my last post. I'll respond to the indirect ones.
Dominic Mayers: "Therefore, it is not fair to say that we have different definitions for empirical evidence and scientific evidence."
Dominic Mayers: "I mean that, even if we accepted that there exists two different definitions, it will not change the fact that it is nevertheless a single topic with many possible views on what is evidence in science.".
Dominic Mayers: "In the same line of thought, let's consider Phlsph7's second argument that scientific evidence is not always empirical evidence. BTW, this essentially contradicts the second sentence in the lead : "Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and interpretable in accordance with scientific methods."".
Dominic Mayers: "In fact, one of my main point is that Phlsph7's arguments are too much based on definitions and terminology.".
Dominic Mayers: "The separation between scientific evidence and empirical evidence is artificial.".
Dominic Mayers: "I can see that Phlsph7 seems not able to get my point".
Dominic Mayers: "the point is that they are essentially the same subject, despite the argument that they have different scopes, because the large overlap is the most fundamental part.".
Dominic Mayers: "Not so many people worry about empirical evidence outside science".
The original argument against the merge was something along the line that Scientific evidence is more about the rigorous scientific method whereas Empirical evidence is about empirical evidence in general. In other words, it was the same topic, but approached with two different focuses. This argument was refuted as being some form of content forking: the high standard methods in one article and the other methods in another article. The counter argument was also made that this global distinction between Scientific evidence and Empirical evidence does not exist in the literature. The idea of this counter argument is that even if we are sympathetic to the idea of a focus on "rigorous", "modern" scientific evidence, versus a more general focus on empirical evidence, we meet the issue that there is no source that discuss that distinction. Even if there was a few sources that discuss it, it would still be a view point and not sufficient to organize the topic accordingly. To base the organization of the topic on this view, it would have to be a well established non controversial view. It does not seem possible to make this distinction in an encyclopaedic manner. As a result, the discussion shifted on whether Scientific evidence and Empirical evidence have different scopes, but this is actually a different issue.
In this other approach against the merge, it was argued that they have different scopes as illustrated in the diagram. In this perspective, the issue is how to cover the common notion of scientific empirical evidence. In the current organization of the topic, this natural subtopic must be split into two articles Empirical evidence and Scientific evidence. It's impossible without duplicating this subtopic in both articles, because an article named Empirical evidence restricted to Empirical evidence outside science makes no sense and, similarly, an article named Scientific evidence restricted to scientific evidence that is not empirical also makes no sense. Large duplication is some times necessary when the two articles offer two different focuses on a same topic. An example is Crusades with a focus on the military history versus Crusading movement with a focus on the ideology and institutions. In our case, I see the two different scopes as illustrated in the diagram, but I don't see two different focuses at all.
A more efficient and natural organization is to have one main article that covers the common notion with sections for the non shared subtopics, which can be small and expanded as needed in their own main article.
Dominic Mayers ( talk) 15:12, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
I wouldn't oppose merging Scientific evidence into Empirical evidence, but I would still oppose merging in the other direction. Dominic's original proposal was to merge in the other direction. "Empirical evidence" is mentioned in more sources (e.g. in Google, Google Scholar, JSTOR, and WorldCat) and is more consulted on Wikipedia: pageviews for "empirical evidence" are much higher (279,702 in the past 6 months, versus 21,097 for "scientific evidence"), but the pageviews may be so much higher in part because it is the target of so many redirects, namely:
Two terms redirect to Scientific evidence:
Biogeographist ( talk) 17:18, 26 June 2021 (UTC)
It seems to me that we have discussed this topic at length but have made very little progress towards a consensus. I don't have the impression that there will be significant change if we continue the discussion. We have 1 editor (Dominic Mayers) in favor of merging "empirical evidence" into "scientific evidence" and 3 editors (10stone5, Biogeographist & Phlsph7) against it. That makes a strong point against it. Phlsph7 ( talk) 18:22, 26 June 2021 (UTC)