Design Rules: Industrial Research and Epistemic Merit

Abstract

A common complaint against the increasing privatization of research is that research that is conducted with the immediate purpose of producing applicable knowledge will not yield knowledge as valuable as that generated in more curiosity-driven, academic settings. In this paper, I make this concern precise and reconstruct the rationale behind it. Subsequently, I examine the case of industry research on the giant magnetoresistance effect in the 1990s as a characteristic example of research undertaken under considerable pressure to produce applicable results. The example permits one to arrive at a more optimistic assessment of the epistemic merits of private, application-driven research. I attempt to specify the conditions that, in this case, advanced the production of interesting and reliable knowledge. ________________ Instrumental Research and the Concerns about Epistemic DeclineWhat epistemic consequences ensue when scientific research is taken over by corporate interests? In this paper, I will examine one important recent example of such a takeover. Among other things, I will describe the role of a certain kind of local model that figures importantly in connecting research efforts with product development and whose occurrences are sometimes aptly called 'design rules'. It is often feared that these and all other results of application-driven research are inevitably pragmatic, provisional or otherwise inferior to the knowledge achieved by curiosity-driven academic science. The ambiguity of this paper's title alludes to these worries: It is reasonable to assume that in industrial research, design rules. Might the demands of successful product design even threaten to overrule the traditional epistemic values of academic science?Quite a few players in public debates about science evidently fear so, and have expressed their concern that the gradual privatization of research will eventually prove detrimental for the epistemic merits of science as a whole.

The promise and perils of industry‐funded science

“…The patent‐based business model has been particularly valuable for developing theoretical ideas into practical applications. As an example, consider the development of magnetic sensor technology (Wilholt, ). The first steps were taken by university researchers who discovered that a conducting layer sandwiched between layers of ferromagnetic films was subject to massive fluctuations of electric resistance depending on the orientation of the ferromagnetic layers.…”

“…Wilholt () finds that over the course of resolving residual uncertainties in how to generate the effect, scientists developed design rules : locally applicable and empirically derived regularities that guide optimal design. While such rules may be local, they are methodologically thorough.…”

A Tapestry of Values: Response to My Critics

“…Many philosophers have pointed out the ways in which this research can express problematic value influences, such as a focus on profit to the exclusion of concerns about distributive justice (Reiss and Kitcher 2009) or epistemic quality (Goldacre 2012;Holman and Elliott 2018). Nevertheless, privately funded science can also express beneficial values such as a concern for reproducibility (Edwards 2016) and for the translation of basic research results into phenomena that have practical utility (Carrier 2011;Wilholt 2006). Much work remains to be done to determine the conditions under which privately-funded science is most useful and to identify ways to steer this research so that it reflects beneficial values rather than problematic ones.…”

The Challenge of Practice: Einstein, Technological Development and Conceptual Innovation

“…Such relations were not provided by theory, but had to be gained experimentally. When it came to building working devices, the empirical identification of design rules, not the appeal to fundamental laws, were the order of the day [8].…”

“…Actually, worries about the detrimental impact of applied research on the methodological dignity of science have been articulated frequently. For instance, theoretical physicist John Ziman complained recently that science guided by material interests and commercial goals will lack objectivity and universality ( [9, p. 399]; see [8,Sect. 1]).…”