Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:13:12.504Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Scientific Papers Have Various Structures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Valerie Gray Hardcastle
Valerie Gray Hardcastle*
Affiliation:
Departments of Philosophy, University of Cincinnati and Virginia Tech
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Fred Suppe claims that the refereed journal article is an appropriate unit of scientific debate for philosophical analysis. He also claims that when we regiment scientific papers correctly, we can see that the hypothetico-deductive method, Baysian induction, and inference to the best explanation fail to capture the structure of scientific articles adequately. In what follows I demonstrate that the coding scheme Suppe used for uncovering the structure of a scientific paper is not appropriate under all circumstances, illustrate alternative structures found in various scientific articles, and show that the hypothetico-deductive method can accommodate the alternative structures I find. My conclusions are that the article that Suppe analyzed is not paradigmatic of published scientific articles, that different papers have different structures, that the structure depends upon the rhetorical goals of the article, and that, because of the different structures and different goals, no one philosophical account of testing is going to suffice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue 3 , September 1999 , pp. 415 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061–0126.

‡

An early version of this paper was presented to the Philosophy Department at the University of Cincinnati. I give my thanks to the audience there, especially Ted Morris, for helpful comments and discussion. My thanks go also to Owen Flanagan for suggesting several stylistic corrections. Finally, two anonymous referees made several detailed and useful suggestions for improvement. This paper was completed while I was a Taft Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cincinnati; I thank them for their generous support.

References

Chinnaiyan, A. R., O'Rourke, K., Lane, B. D., and Dixit, V. M. (1997), “Interaction of CED-4 with CED-3 and CED-9: A Molecular Framework for Cell Death”, Science 275: 1122–1126.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldstein, P. (1998), “Cell Death in Us and Others”, Science 281: 1283.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golstein, P. (1997), “Controlling Cell Death”, Science 275: 1081–1082.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hempel, C. (1966), Philosophy of Natural Science. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Hengartner, M. (1998), “Death by Crowd Control”, Science 281: 1298–1299.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kluck, R. M., Bossy-Wetxel, W., Green, D. R., and Newmeyer, D. D. (1997), “The Release of Cytochrome c from Mitochondria: A Primary Site for Bcl-2 Regulation of Apoptosis”, Science 275: 1132–1136.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miller, L. J., and Marx, J. (1998), “Apoptosis”, Science 281: 1301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, J. W. (1968), “Rises, Trenches, Great Faults, and Crustal Blocks”, Journal of Geophysical Research 73: 1959–1982.10.1029/JB073i006p01959CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Random Notes (1998), Science 279: 1639.Google Scholar
Suppe, F. (1998a), “The Structure of a Scientific Paper”, Philosophy of Science 65: 381–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suppe, F. (1998b), “Reply to Commentators”, Philosophy of Science 65: 417–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Susin, S. A. (1996), Journal of Experimental Medicine 184: 1331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, E. (1998), “Overview on Apoptosis”, Unpublished ms.Google Scholar