Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8039-4876
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2023
Publication Title
Philosophy of Science
Abstract
Consensus reporting is valuable for presenting unified scientific evidence to the public. When a consensus does not exist, I argue that scientists ought not to default to majority reporting in its place. Majority reporting has several epistemic drawbacks because it can obscure underlying justifications and lines of evidence, which may be in conflict or contested. I argue that minority reporting, in conjunction with majority reporting, is an epistemically superior mechanism for scientists to report on the full range of reasons and evidence available within a group. This paper addresses several objections, including worries over group cohesion, fringe reporting, and elite capture.
Recommended Citation
Dang, Haixin, "Minority Reports: Registering Dissent in Science" (2023). Philosophy Faculty Publications. 44.
https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/philfacpub/44
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Funded by the University of Nebraska at Omaha Open Access Fund
Comments
The PDF has been remediated and passed Adobe's accessibility checker on 12/11/2025.
This article was published open access under the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Cambridge University Press's publishing agreement.
Dang H. Minority Reports: Registering Dissent in Science. Philosophy of Science. Published online 2023:1-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2023.164