How to trust a scientist

Abstract

Epistemic trust among scientists is inevitable. There are two questions about this: (1) What is the content of this trust, what do scientists trust each other for? (2) Is such trust epistemically justified? I argue that if we assume a traditional answer to (1), namely that scientists trust each other to be reliable informants, then the answer to question (2) is negative, certainly for the biomedical and social sciences. This motivates a different construal of trust among scientists and therefore a different answer to (1): scientists trust each other to only testify to claims that are backed by evidence gathered in accordance with prevailing methodological standards. On this answer, trust among scientists is epistemically justified.

Keywords: Meta-Research; Reliability; Reproducibility crisis; Scientific misconduct; Testimony; Trust.