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Meta-Research Evidence for Evaluating Therapies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jonathan Fuller
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Abstract

The new field of meta-research investigates industry bias, publication bias, contradictions between studies, and other trends in medical research. I argue that its findings should be used as meta-evidence for evaluating therapies. ‘Meta-evidence’ is evidence about the support that direct ‘first-order evidence’ provides the hypothesis. I consider three objections to my proposal: the irrelevance objection, the screening-off objection, and the underdetermination objection. I argue that meta-research evidence works by rationally revising our confidence in first-order evidence and, consequently, in the hypothesis—typically, downward.

Type
Evidence
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 85 , Issue 5 , December 2018 , pp. 767 - 780
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Thanks to Mathew Mercuri, Nicolas Wuethrich, and audiences at the Philosophy of Science Association biennial meeting in Atlanta and the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology in Toronto for productive feedback and discussion. I am grateful for funding support from the McLaughlin Centre.

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