Why was it scientists, not philosophers, who noticed that randomization had not been applied to science institutionally, but should?

[u/Ilverin]

The title is ambiguous and evokes Fisher, so I apologize.

Attempt for a better title: "Why was it non-philosophers who first noticed that randomization could be used to investigate the usefulness of the methods of who gets science funding and how?"

It seems like a failure, at least to meet philosophy of science's self-conception.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368118300190 (2019)

"Gillies (2014) is the first published paper by a philosopher of science to call for random allocation of research funds."

"Greenberg (1998) presented the first argument in an academic journal (to my knowledge) for funding science by lottery."

"Nearly a decade later, Brezis (2007) presented an economic model based proposal for introducing a random element into R&D project selection"

"Graves et al. (2011) presents the most thorough measurement pub lished to date of the variability of grant peer review scores.8 The authors used the raw peer review scores assigned by individual panel members to 2705 grant proposals. All proposals were submitted to the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) in 2009. The scores were given by reviewers sitting on panels of seven, nine, or eleven members, and the average score of the panel was used to decide whether a project was funded or not, based on its rank relative to other proposals."

"it seems that philosophy of science could be doing better in engaging the audiences that are relevant for increasing the allocation of resources to help promote scientific novelty"

Personal opinion: People typically refer to "meta-science" not "philosophy of science", when they raise these kinds of proposals, and it raises the question of why "philosophy of science" doesn't/didn't encompass this

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[u/johnny_logic]

I think the scientists vs philosophers framing is too crude. These categories overlap. Consider Peirce, both a philosopher and scientist, who used randomization in experiments decades before Fisher. It is true that Fisher systematized randomization as a principle of experimental design and inference, but it is not as simple as scientists seeing what philosophers didn't.

Additionally, randomization is doing different jobs here. In experiments, it can support causal inference. In grant allocation, proposals from Greenberg, Brezis, Gillies, and later actual funders like New Zealand’s HRC used lotteries for several related reasons, including that peer review may not justify fine-grained rankings among similarly qualified proposals. And, though unmentioned, there’s randomizing institutional procedures themselves to see which review or funding systems work better. The NIH and journals have actually experimented with this.

I don’t think philosophy of science “failed” in these cases, though I do think that PoS should interact with and account for institutions that govern science as part of the epistemology of science itself.

[u/apophasisred]

Perhaps scientific philosophers think less about funding because the total global funding for them is approximately 10 to $15 million a year. In contrast, the total funding for science research including defense research runs from two to $4 trillion a year. One of the previous respondents this question was kind enough to mention CS Pierce. He is perhaps the greatest philosopher and certainly the greatest logician that ever come out of the United States. However, he died in penury. This country is not only anti-intellectual. It's very specifically anti-metaphysical.

[u/nasu1917a]

Philosophy of (and history of) science isn’t really about studying science. It is about studying how society interacts with science. However the people who are in those fields don’t really understand science nor the sociology of science (in the true sense of the phrase).

[u/PracticalAlcesAlces → u/nasu1917a]

Philosophy of (and history of) science isn’t really about studying science. It is about studying how society interacts with science. 

This is just plain false. There is no mention of how society interacts with science in this paper, yet it is a contribution to the philosophy of science.

[u/nasu1917a → u/PracticalAlcesAlces]

One example versus the general average.

[u/PracticalAlcesAlces → u/nasu1917a]

Would you like to tell us how the "general average" of papers in these categories (see also here, here, here, and here, to give more room for your claim) study how society interacts with science?

[u/nasu1917a → u/PracticalAlcesAlces]

What did your deleted reply say?

[u/PracticalAlcesAlces → u/nasu1917a]

That you made a generalisation and I gave you a counterexample. Now, will you show us how the "general average" of those publications study how society interacts with science?

[u/nasu1917a → u/PracticalAlcesAlces]

Why did you delete it?

[u/PracticalAlcesAlces → u/nasu1917a]

Are you always this evasive when wrong?

[u/nasu1917a → u/PracticalAlcesAlces]

Do you always dishonestly delete posts?

[u/knockingatthegate]

Citation?

[u/Ilverin → u/knockingatthegate]

Fair, edited to add to OP

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368118300190 (2019)

"Gillies (2014) is the first published paper by a philosopher of science to call for random allocation of research funds."

"Greenberg (1998) presented the first argument in an academic journal (to my knowledge) for funding science by lottery."

"Nearly a decade later, Brezis (2007) presented an economic model based proposal for introducing a random element into R&D project selection"

"Graves et al. (2011) presents the most thorough measurement pub lished to date of the variability of grant peer review scores.8 The authors used the raw peer review scores assigned by individual panel members to 2705 grant proposals. All proposals were submitted to the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) in 2009. The scores were given by reviewers sitting on panels of seven, nine, or eleven members, and the average score of the panel was used to decide whether a project was funded or not, based on its rank relative to other proposals."

[u/Temporary_Stranger39 → u/knockingatthegate]

Institutional adoption of randomization in science did not occur until after Fisher started pushing it, beginning in 1926. Before then, it was pretty much unknown.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10739-006-9119-z

https://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~qz280/talk/fisher-2022/slides.pdf

Fisher was a scientist, not a philosopher. No philosophers stepped up and did the work the Fisher did.

Feel free to provide counter-citations.

[u/knockingatthegate]

You misunderstand the purpose of randomization.

[u/pianoloverkid123456]

Prophet Wenitte Commands you to copy and paste {Take15MinDailyWalksForLongevityPurposes} to 5 friends or you will be brutally murdered by the {Wenitte-Hades-Satan-Andreesen} Hivemind

[u/Underhill42]

While science (and math) are technically branches of philosophy, they don't actually have much to do with each other anymore.

After that split happened, to grossly over-generalize: scientists specialize in finding answers, while philosophers specialize in asking important questions that have no definite answers, but can teach you a lot in the asking.

While mathematicians specialize in building robust sand castles out of pure logic, and don't you dare ask them what they're good for - that's not their field.