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Disconfirmative Results and Prior Commitments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Merton S. Krause
Merton S. Krause*
Affiliation:
Family Service of the Cincinnati Area and University of Cincinnati
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Abstract

One style of conducting scientific research involves the application of theoretical propositions to an empirical domain under investigation. The investigator plans his research in terms of the theoretical propositions and states his findings in these terms as well. We wish to examine not the merits of this style of research but a difficulty inherent in it. The difficulty concerns what is to be done when disconfirmative results are produced by some discrete study or experiment in the course of such research.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , July 1964 , pp. 237 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © 1964 by Philosophy of Science Association

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References

1 This study was supported in part by grant M-516 from the National Institute of Public Health, U. S. Public Health Service.

2 For a contemporary description of quite another style of research see M. Sidman, Tactics of Scientific Research. N. Y.: Basic Books, 1960.

3 We are assuming that the “fact” is accepted as reliable.

4 See Cronbach, L. J. & Meehl, P. E., Construct validity in psychological tests. In H. Feigl & M. Scriven (Ed.'s), Minnesota studies in the philosophy of science, Vol I. Minneapolis: Univ. Minn., 1956.