ABSTRACT
The values in science literature considers deep questions around value-laden aspects of inquiry like the following: Where and when can values of different sorts legitimately influence science? What sorts of values, and related ethical practices, best promote scientific inquiry? How do individual beliefs and biases impact science? Earlier work in this area focused mostly on how values interact with individual practice. But increasingly there has been a move toward thinking about how the impacts of values can reverberate through scientific communities and how the dynamics of social groups may lead to unexpected outcomes when values shape science. At the same time, social epistemologists and others have been using network models to think about how social network structures and group features shape knowledge generation. These models are often useful in thinking about the emergent, group-level effects of values on scientific progress. This chapter will briefly survey this network literature and connect it with the literature on values in science.
Readers may be interested in these Handbook chapters as well: Pedro Bravo, “Values and Industry-Funded Research”; Manuela Fernández Pinto and Anna Leuschner, “Epistemic Intimidation and Illegitimate Value-Influences in Science”; Maya J. Goldenberg, “Controversies in Vaccine Policy.”
