---
title: "PHI403 Lecture 01 — Metascience and Better Science"
type: source
tags: [philosophy-of-science, metascience, norms, philosophical-bias]
authors: [Anjum, Rani Lill; Rocca, Elena]
year: 2023
venue: "PHI403 Causation in Science, NMBU"
kind: handout
raw_path: "raw/Philosophy of Science/PHI302 01 Metascience and Better Science.pdf"
created: 2026-04-20
updated: 2026-04-20
key_claims:
  - Norms of science (objectivity, more-data-is-better, predictive success, explanatory power) are not themselves empirical claims and can be contested.
  - Philosophical bias is the one bias science cannot get rid of — basic implicit assumptions of an ontological, epistemological or normative nature (Andersen, Anjum, Rocca 2019, eLife).
  - Scientific methods carry implicit commitments about causation (regularity theory fits statistics, manipulability fits experiments).
  - Philosophy is the "critical friend" of science; "philosophy-free science is simply not an option".
---

# PHI403 Lecture 01 — Metascience and Better Science

Opens the PHI403 course ([[sources/2023-anjum-rocca-phi403-causation-in-science]]) by asking: what are the non-empirical elements of science? Norms such as "more data is better", "predictive success counts", "the best theory has the greater explanatory power" are themselves normative, not empirical.

The lecture introduces **[[concepts/philosophical-bias]]** (Andersen, Anjum, Rocca 2019, *eLife*): implicit assumptions of an ontological, epistemological or normative nature that skew hypotheses, designs, and interpretations. Unlike cognitive biases, these cannot be removed — only made explicit.

Scientific methods embed commitments about causation: statistical correlation → [[concepts/regularity-theory-of-causation|Hume's regularity theory]]; comparative studies → difference-making (Lewis); experiments → [[concepts/interventionist-theory-of-causation|Woodward's manipulability]]. [[concepts/evidence-hierarchy|EBM's explicit evidence hierarchy]] formalises this into a ranking.

The handout closes with the claim that philosophy is the *critical friend* of science: "philosophy-free science is simply not an option". Scientists need to know which assumptions they are buying into — this is the normative remit of the whole course.

## Connections
Back-link: [[sources/2023-anjum-rocca-phi403-causation-in-science]]. Concepts: [[concepts/philosophical-bias]] · [[concepts/evidence-hierarchy]] · [[concepts/causation]] · [[concepts/regularity-theory-of-causation]] · [[concepts/interventionist-theory-of-causation]].