Evidence and the Assessment of Causal Relations in the Health Sciences

Campaner, Raffaella; Galavotti, María Carla

doi:10.1080/02698595.2012.653113

Cited by 22 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…This provides grounds to revise current advice provided by hierarchies of evidence, which regard mechanistic evidence as inferior to-even trumped by-evidence of correlation. While we think that there is overwhelming support for RWT, it must be noted that RWT goes against some recent trends in both the philosophy of causality and in the methodology of medicine and it is controversial (see, e.g., Weber, 2009;Broadbent, 2011;Campaner, 2011;Dragulinescu, 2011;Howick, 2011;Campaner and Galavotti, 2012;Claveau, 2012). Hence it is only one of the grounds we cite for taking evidence of mechanisms more seriously.…”

Section: The Epistemology Of Causalitymentioning

confidence: 87%

Mechanisms and the Evidence Hierarchy

Clarke

Gillies

Illari

et al. 2013

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174

169

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Section: The Epistemology Of Causalitymentioning

confidence: 87%

Mechanisms and the Evidence Hierarchy

Clarke

Gillies

Illari

et al. 2013

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174

169

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“…If one wants to look at the case from the perspective of mechanistic explanations, I would rather say that the molecular data used in EXPOsOMICS plays the role of a heuristic for finding mechanisms, as no mechanism seems to be discovered directly, or that is part of how-possibly mechanistic explanations (Forber 2010;Reydon 2012). Moreover, mechanisms can often be discovered on the basis of types of evidence such as difference-making evidence and manipulative evidence, rather than mechanistic evidence (Campaner and Galavotti 2012).…”

Section: Mechanistic Evidence In Exposome Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is partly a consequence of the rise of the methodological approach known as evidence-based medicine, which has brought about new ways of assessing the quality of evidence and provoked many critical reflections in the literature (Worrall 2002;Clarke et al 2013;Stegenga 2014). As a result of this debate, a number of authors started to discuss how to classify evidence produced in medical research, connecting the issue to more general issues in philosophy of science, such as causality and causal inference (Campaner and Galavotti 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating evidential pluralism in epidemiology: mechanistic evidence in exposome research

Canali

2019

HPLS

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In current philosophical discussions on evidence in the medical sciences, epidemiology has been used to exemplify a specific version of evidential pluralism. According to this view, known as the Russo-Williamson Thesis, evidence of both difference-making and mechanisms is produced to make causal claims in the health sciences. In this paper, I present an analysis of data and evidence in epidemiological practice, with a special focus on research on the exposome, and I cast doubt on the extent to which evidential pluralism holds in this case. I start by focusing on the claim that molecular data allows for the production of mechanistic evidence. On the basis of a close look at the ways in which molecular data is used in exposome research, I caution against interpretations in terms of mechanistic evidence. Secondly, I expand my critical remarks on the thesis by addressing the conditions under which data is categorised as evidence in exposome research. I argue that these show that the classification of a dataset as a type of evidence is dependent on the ways in which the data is used. This is in contrast with the approach of evidential pluralism, where evidence is classified in different types on the basis of its intrinsic properties. Finally, I come back to what I consider the core of the thesis and suggest that the epidemiological research analysed in the paper indicates different interpretations of evidential pluralism and its applicability in the health sciences.

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“…These include the life sciences, particularly biology (Wimsatt 1972;Weber 2005;Bechtel 2006;Darden 2006;Bechtel 2007;Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005), 1 evolutionary biology (Ylikovski 1995;Elgin and Sober 2002;Craver 2013), the neurosciences (Craver 2005(Craver , 2007, as well as medicine (Russo and Williamson 2007;Nervi 2010;Campaner and Galavotti 2012). In cellular biology, for example, a large number of mechanisms have been proposed in order to explain phenomena like fermentation, protein synthesis and secretion.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Mechanistic Information as Evidence in Decision-Oriented Science

2015

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Mechanistic information is used in the field of risk assessment in order to clarify two controversial methodological issues, the selection of inference guides and the definition of standards of evidence. In this paper we present an analysis of the concept of mechanistic information in risk assessment by recurring to previous philosophical analyses of mechanistic explanation. Our conclusion is that the conceptual analysis of mechanistic explanation facilitates a better characterization of the concept of mechanistic information. However, it also shows that the use of this kind of information in risk assessment is heavily influenced by pragmatic factors, which have not been sufficiently taken into account in philosophical analysis. Mechanistic models are like hypothesis that have to be validated empirically. Due to their dependence on the standards of evidence, they are subject to the same pragmatic factors. Therefore, recurring to mechanistic information does not lead to closure of the methodological controversies in risk assessment.

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Evidence and the Assessment of Causal Relations in the Health Sciences

Cited by 22 publications

References 35 publications

Mechanisms and the Evidence Hierarchy

Mechanisms and the Evidence Hierarchy

Evaluating evidential pluralism in epidemiology: mechanistic evidence in exposome research

Mechanistic Information as Evidence in Decision-Oriented Science

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