Doing Science: Methods and Philosophy

The content of this dissertation spans four years of work, which was carried out in the Netherlands (Tilburg University and University of Amsterdam) and Italy (University of Turin). It is part of the ERC project “Making Scientific Inference More Objective” led by professor Jan Sprenger, for which philosophy of science and empirical research were combined. The dissertation can be summarized as a small set of modest attempts to contribute to improving scientific practice. Each of these attempts was geared towards either increasing understanding of a particular problem or making a contribution to how science can be practiced. The general focus was on philosophical nuance while remaining methodologically practicable. The five papers contained in this dissertation are both methodologically and philosophically diverse. The first three (Chapters 2 through 4) are more empirical in nature and are focused on understanding and evaluating how science is practiced: a meta-analysis of semantic intuitions research in experimental philosophy; a systematic review on essay literature on the null hypothesis significance test; and an experiment on how teams of statisticians analyze the same data. The last two (Chapters 5 and 6) are focused on the improvement of scientific practice by providing tools for the improvement of empirical research with a strong philosophical foundation: a practicable and testable definition of scientific objectivity and a Bayesian operationalization of Popper’s concept of a severe test.