Error and Uncertainty in Scientific Practice

Marcel Boumans is Associate Professor of History and Philosophy of Economics at the University of Amsterdam and the Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research is marked by three Ms: modelling, measurement and mathematics. His main research focus is on understanding empirical research practices in economics from (combined) historical and philosophical perspectives. On these topics he has published a monograph, How Economists Model the World into Numbers (London: Routledge, 2005); edited the volume Measurement in Economics: A Handbook (New York: Elsevier, 2007); co-authored a textbook, Economic Methodology: Understanding Economics as a Science (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); and co-edited the volume Histories on Econometrics (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2011)., Giora Hon, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Haifa, Israel, published widely on the concept of error in science and philosophy. His edited book with Jutta Schickore and Friedrich Steinle, Going Amiss in Experimental Research, appeared in 2009 (Springer). For his recent work (with Bernard R. Goldstein) on modelling, see ‘Maxwell’s Contrived Analogy: An Early Version of the Methodology of Modeling’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 43 (2012), pp. 236–57., Arthur C. Petersen is Chief Scientist at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Professor of Science and Environmental Public Policy at the VU University Amsterdam, Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and University College London, and Research Affiliate at MIT. He studied physics and philosophy, obtained PhD degrees in atmospheric sciences and philosophy of science, and now also finds disciplinary homes in sociology and political science. Most of his research is about managing uncertainty.

• Introduction, Marcel Boumans, Giora Hon; Chapter 1 The Lack of a Satisfactory Conceptualization of the Notion of Error in the Historiography of Science: Two Main Approaches and Their Shortcomings, Bart Karstens; Chapter 2 Experimental Knowledge in the Face of Theoretical Error, Kent W. Staley; Chapter 3 Learning from Error: How Experiment Gets a Life (Of Its Own), Deborah G. Mayo; Chapter 4 Modelling Measurement: Error and Uncertainty, Luca Mari, Alessandro Giordani; Chapter 5 Handling Uncertainty in Environmental Models at the Science-Policy-Society Interfaces, M. Bruce Beck; Chapter 6 Variations on Reliability: Connecting Climate Predictions to Climate Policy, Leonard A. Smith, Arthur C. Petersen; Chapter 7 Order and Indeterminism: An Info-Gap Perspective, Yakov Ben-Haim; Chapter 8 Learning from Data: The Role of Error in Statistical Modelling and Inference, Aris Spanos;