Overview

Selectivity and Discord addresses the fundamental question of whether there are grounds for belief in experimental results. Specifically, Allan Franklin is concerned with two problems in the use of experimental results in science: selectivity of data or analysis procedures and the resolution of discordant results. By means of detailed case studies of episodes from the history of modern physics, Franklin shows how these problems can be - and are - solved in the normal practice of science and, therefore, that experimental results may be legitimately used as a basis for scientific knowledge.

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9780822941910

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Reviews

That experimentalists select only their 'good data' and eventually accept only one of several discordant experimental results have been central to the claim that physics and other sciences are socially constructed. In this impressive book, Allan Franklin tackles these two problems head on, demonstrating persuasively that physics is at root a rationally constructed science. - Roger H. Stuewer, University of Minnesota No one has done more than Allan Franklin to show how the intricacies of experimental reasoning in physics provide safeguards against being misled by individual experimental results. - George E. Smith, Tufts University and the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology Franklin is one of a very small number of people who have both the knowledge needed to understand complicated experiments in physics and the skill needed to explain to a nonprofessional audience how the experiments work.... A welcome counterweight to postmodernist interpretations of science. - John Earman, University of Pittsburgh

Author Information

Allan Franklin, professor of physics at the University of Colorado, is the author of numerous books, including Can That Be Right? Essays on Experiment, Evidence, and Science and Are There Really Neutrinos? An Evidential History.

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