Two Senses of Experimental Robustness: Result Robustness and Procedure Robustness
BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, cilt.73, sa.1, ss.279-298, 2022 (SCI-Expanded, AHCI, SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 73 Sayı: 1
- Basım Tarihi: 2022
- Doi Numarası: 10.1093/bjps/axy031
- Dergi Adı: BRITISH JOURNAL FOR THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, Academic Search Premier, IBZ Online, Periodicals Index Online, Agricultural & Environmental Science Database, Humanities Abstracts, Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, MLA - Modern Language Association Database, Philosopher's Index, zbMATH
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.279-298
- Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
- Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
In the philosophical literature concerning scientific experimentation, the notion of robustness has been solely discussed in relation to experimental results. In this article, I propose a novel sense of experimental robustness that applies to experimental procedures. I call the foregoing sense of robustness 'procedure robustness' (PR) and characterize it as the capacity of an experimental procedure to maintain its intended function invariant during the experimental process despite possible variations in its inputs. I argue that PR is a precondition for what I call 'result robustness' (RR), which refers to the traditional sense of experimental robustness, namely, the existence of convergent experimental results obtained through different and independent means of detection. Furthermore, I argue, PR and RR constitute useful experimental strategies in the context of high-energy physics experiments, but these strategies are not without limitations.