Grading Evidence of Mechanisms, 4.-5. September, University of Kent

Call for abstracts – extended deadline 14th July:

Science is largely involved with discovering mechanisms. While protocols have been developed for grading evidence of statistical dependencies as a means to establish causal claims in medicine and public health, not as much has been said about how to grade evidence of mechanisms on the path to mechanism discovery – this task is typically left to the intuition of individual researchers. Also, while the role of mechanistic research strategies has been widely studied regarding molecular life sciences, and to some extent social sciences and psychology, not as much has been said about the role of mechanisms in the physical sciences. This conference will explore issues related to the role of mechanisms, and the quality of evidence of mechanisms in the sciences. Submissions are especially welcomed for presentations considering and comparing the role of mechanisms in physics and biology, but also more widely touching questions (but not limited to) such as:

*   What are the various kinds of evidence of mechanisms in the sciences ?

*   What similarities and differences are there in mechanistic explanations and their evidence-conditions across the sciences?

*   How can case studies of mechanism discovery be used to shed light on the way in which different kinds of evidence of mechanisms should be graded?
*   How can philosophical work on evidence shed light on how scientific evidence of mechanisms should be graded?
*   Can one develop simple protocols for grading evidence of mechanisms, analogous to the GRADE system of evidence-based medicine?
*   Is there more to grading scientific evidence of mechanisms than can be gleaned from philosophical theories of evidence?
*   Which philosophical theories of evidence best fit the use of mechanistic evidence in science?
Keynote speakers:

Emma Tobin (UCL)

Erik Weber (Ghent University)

Meinard Kuhlmann (University of Mainz)

Tudor Baetu (University of Bristol)
Please submit an abstract of max 500 words by the 14th of July to Veli-Pekka Parkkinen v.k.parkkinen@kent.ac.uk. Decisions on submissions will be made mid-July.

The project is organized by the Centre for Reasoning and the project Grading Evidence of Mechanisms in Physics and Biology at the University of Kent.