Weighing the Evidence

摘要

A better understanding of evidence will always be important in science. At my university, for example, the Center for Informal Learning and Schools (1) brings together students and post-docs from the natural and social sciences. Topics they continually discuss include what constitutes data, what is evidence, and how is evidence used to draw conclusions. The goal of The Nature of Scientific Evidence is to help answer those questions. To do so, Mark Taper (an ecologist at Montana State University) and Subhash Lele (a statistician at the University of Alberta) have drawn authors from the fields of ecology, statistics, and philosophy. The choice of ecology as the illustrative science is a good one, because ecology has strong traditions in both the discovery of new knowledge and the application of that knowledge to important problems of society. The chapters are grouped in five sections: "Scientific Process"; "Logics of Evidence"; "Realities of Nature"; "Science, Opinion, and Evidence"; and "Models, Realities, and Evidence." Each chapter is followed by commentary, typically from two individuals, and a rejoinder by the author. The volume is aimed toward students as well as established scientists, statisticians, and philosophers. It reaches its target: there is something in it for everyone.