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Modelling Scientific Un/Certainty. Why Argumentation Strategies Trump Linguistic Markers Use

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Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology

Part of the book series: Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics ((SAPERE,volume 27))

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in investigating science communication. Some studies that address this issue attempt to develop a model to determine the level of confidence that an author or a scientific community has at a given time towards a theory or a group of theories. A well-established approach suggests that, in order to determine the level of certainty authors have with regard to the statements they make, one can identify specific lexical and morphosyntactical markers which indicate their epistemic attitudes. This method is considered particularly appealing because it permits the development of an algorithmic model based on the quantitative analysis of the occurrence of these markers to assess (almost) automatically and objectively the opinion of an author or the predominant opinion of a scientific community on a topic at a given time. In this contribution we show that this line of research presents many kinds of problems especially when it is applied to research articles (rather than to popular science texts and basic research reports). To this aim, we propose two main lines of reasoning. The first one relies generally on the argumentative structure of scientific articles and shows that certainty/uncertainty markers are used differently in different argument forms and that therefore their number/frequency of use does not offer reliable indications for determining whether the topic at issue is considered by the authors to be more or less factual/speculative. The second one is based on the analysis of a sample of psychiatric research articles on homosexuality written over a long time span and taken from The British Journal of Psychiatry. Since the psychiatric perspective on homosexuality changed radically during the decades in which these articles were published, they offer an inventory of various kinds of argumentative strategies directed both at defending and confuting dominant as well as marginal positions. We focus especially on uncertainty markers and show that frequently the positions stated using expressions indicating uncertainty are actually not considered as conjectural or speculative by their authors, but that the use of uncertainty markers is motivated by a number of different and often incongruent rhetorical strategies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For an overview on epistemicity and for a discussion of its affinity to evidentiality see e.g. Chafe and Nichols 1986, Bednarek 2006, Cornillie 2009. Even though most authors agree that these two notions are positively related to each other (that they overlap, or that epistemicity is included in/derived from evidentiality), the debate is not unanimous on this aspect: for a brief overview of the different ways in which the relationships between these two notions have been interpreted see e.g. Dendale and Tasmowski (2001).

  2. 2.

    Actually Hyland (1996b) calls this verb class ‘deductive’, but we prefer not to use this term since we consider it to be incorrect for the kind of verbs that he has in mind. In fact, he specifies that the verbs included in this class are related to inferential reasoning, while in another article he admits that science is mainly inductive: “In fact, my data indicates that few knowledge claims are presented in unmitigated form: induction and inference rather than deduction and causality characterize most arguments in scientific discourse” (Hyland 1996a: 435).

  3. 3.

    As examples of possible false results obtained identifying uncertain statements merely on the basis of uncertainty markers Agarwal and Yu (2010: 954) cite sentences like: “We can now study regulatory regions and functional domains of the protein in the context of a true erythroid environment, experiments that have not been possible heretofore.” In addition, they point out that—in the case of complex sentences in which only one part/aspect is qualified as uncertain through the association with a marker like “Right middle and (probable right lower) lobe pneumonia”—we need to be able to distinguish between the certain and the uncertain information (indicated in the example using the square brackets).

  4. 4.

    Even though reasons and causes are clearly not one and the same thing, from the point of view of the logical structure of the argument we can consider them as equal (see Sinott-Armstrong and Fogelin 2009: 3–16).

  5. 5.

    According to the Deductive Nomologic Model developed by Carl Gustav Hempel and Paul Hoppenheim this is the only appropriate way to develop scientific explanations. See Hempel and Hoppenheim 1948, Hempel 1965, Ladyman 2002.

  6. 6.

    See Harman 1965, Boyd 1991, Psillos 1999, Ladyman 2002.

  7. 7.

    From 1855 till 1858 the periodical was known as Asylum Journal and from 1858 to 1863 it took the name of Journal of Mental Science.

  8. 8.

    DSM-I was published in 1952; DSM-II appeared in 1968, but it underwent some important changes in the seventh printing of 1974; DSM-III was published in 1980 but in 1987 a revisited version (DSM-III-R) came out; DSM-IV appeared in 1994; a revisited version was then published in 2000. The fifth and last version of DSM was published in 2013.

  9. 9.

    Here we report the complete list of the titles and authors making up the sample. 1921 (Homosexuality, by C.S. Read); 1957 (Psychometric Aspects of Homosexuality, by T.G. Grygier); 1962 (Homosexuality and Genetic Sex by M. Pritchard); 1964 (Homosexuality in Twins: A Report on Three Discordant Pairs by N. Parker); 1965 (2 articles of the same author, On the Genesis of Female Homosexuality and On the Genesis of Male Homosexuality: An Attempt at Clarifying the Role of the Parents by E. Bene); 1968 (Studies in Female Homosexuality IV. Social and Psychiatric Aspects by F.E. Kenyon); 1969 (Parental Age of Homosexuals by K. Abe and P.A.P. Moran); 1969 (Aversion Therapy of Homosexuality. A pilot study of 10 cases by J. Bancroft); 1969 (Homosexuality, Exhibitionism and Fetishism-Transvestism. Some Experiences in the Use of Aversion Therapy in Male by B.H. Fookes); 1970 (Subjective and Penile Plethysmograph Responses to Aversion Therapy for Homosexuality: A Follow-up Study by N. McConaghy); 1971 (A Male Monozygotic Twinship Discordant for Homosexuality. A Repertory Grid Study by K. Davidson, H. Brierley and C. Smith); 1972 (Parent-Child Relationships and Homosexuality by G. Robertson); 1973 (Heterosexual Aversion in Homosexual Males) by K. Freund, R. Langevin, S. Cibiri and Y. Zajac; 1973 (Classical, Avoidance and Backward Conditioning Treatments of Homosexuality by N. McConaghy and R.F. Barr); 1973 (Doctors’ Attitudes to Homosexuality by P.A. Morris); 1974 (Sex Chromosome Abnormalities, Homosexuality and Psychological Treatment by A. Orwin, S.R.N. James and R.K. Turner); 1974 (Parental Background of Homosexual and Heterosexual Women by M. Siegelman); 1974 (Personality Characteristics of Male Homosexuals Referred for Aversion Therapy: A Comparative Study by R.K. Turner, H. Pielmaier, S. James and A. Orwin; 1980 (Social and Psychological Functioning of the Ageing Male Homosexual by K.C. Bennett and N.L. Thompson); 1980 (Homosexuality and Parental Guilt by B. Zuger); 1981 (Neuroendocrine Mechanisms and the Aetiology of Male and Female Homosexuality by M.J. MacCulloch and J.L. Waddington; 1983 (Homosexuality and Lesbianism by D.J.West); 1986 (Homosexuality in Monozygotic Twins Reared Apart by E.D. Eckert, T.J. Bouchard, J. Bohlen and L. Heston); 1999 (British psychiatry and homosexuality by M. King and A. Bartlett); 2001 (Straight talking: an investigation of the attitudes and practice of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists in relation to gays and lesbians by A. Bartlett, M. King and P. Phillips).

  10. 10.

    The square brackets do not indicate omitted text, we left out only supporting literature; bold indicates the hedges.

  11. 11.

    In the original article the author uses Arabic numerals (1)–(4) instead of Roman ones (i)–(iv). We changed this in order to distinguish more clearly between the points made by the authors and the numbers used to diagram the argument.

  12. 12.

    By “nuclear sex” the author means the sex as determined by using the presence or absence of sex chromatin in somatic cells. Its presence usually indicates the female genotype XX; while its absence indicates the male genotype XY.

  13. 13.

    While this was considered a pathology, a wide variety of techniques had been used in the treatment of homosexuality. Among them there were several types of “aversion therapies” which made use of various kinds of aversive stimuli to change the preference of so-called inverts towards heterosexuality. In this paper, the authors used an ‘anticipatory avoidance therapy’ analogous to that described by MacCulloch and Feldman (1967: 594). Basically, this is a technique similar to classical conditioning: the patient receives an electric shock when he is watching at pictures of attractive males.

  14. 14.

    In the text we left out the authors merely present further literature which confirms the point.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. This research was supported by the ORBA10H82A grant to LP and by the 40201691 grant to SD.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Luigi Pastore

  2. Università degli Studi di Trento, Trento, Italy

    Sara Dellantonio

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities, Philosophy Section, and Computational Philosophy Laboratory, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Lorenzo Magnani

  2. Department of Philosophy, Education and Economical-Quantitative Sciences, University of Chieti and Pescara, Chieti, Italy

    Claudia Casadio

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Pastore, L., Dellantonio, S. (2016). Modelling Scientific Un/Certainty. Why Argumentation Strategies Trump Linguistic Markers Use. In: Magnani, L., Casadio, C. (eds) Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38983-7_8

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