Does the reasoning of a scientific article reflect the process the research was carried out? Most commonly not, many would say from empirical experience, but the issue has also been studied more formally:
Schickore, J. (2008) Doing science, writing science. Philosophy of Science 75:323-343.
This article investigates the mismatch between the actual process through which science is made and the way scientists afterwards communicate their results. Namely, publications do not reflect the processes through which results were derived, but rather take the results as a start point when formulating hypothesis to which the results then provide an answer. This comes close to the old discussion/debate on negative results. Scientists do not tend to publish those, yet those are derived through exactly similar research processes as the positive ones (i.e. asking questions, doing experiments etc). If the aim of scientific communication were to tell how scientists do science, then there should be no problem with negative results. However, the reality might be more close to this PhD comics.
3 Comments
Well. In the old times scientist used to write their papers in fashion which ‘reflected the process which results were derived’. The old German school type of descriptive papers in zoology serve as good examples of this. Typically, the end product of this ritualization was something that few of us would like to touch – not even with a stick. Personally, as long as the conclusions follow from the results and the results answer to a relevant question, I do not care about the process how the author ended up there – assuming that a good practise and laws were followed. After all, the aim is not tell how we do science, but do science. Good science.
This is rather a philosophical than practical question. If what we call ‘science’ is considered to be (positive) results only, then publications focusing on those is OK. However, one might also argue that the concept of ‘science’ encompasses the way of scientific thinking, methodology etc. In this case it of course becomes obscure that any communication about the concept only focuses on its limited sub-area.
Peter Medawar wrote a famous article titled “Is the scientific paper a fraud?” (pdf), in which he makes the same point. I think this isn’t a problem as long as we’re all aware of what a paper is and is not.
Of course, there is still a place in the literature for negative results.