Facing the Incompleteness of Epistemic Trust: Managing Dependence in Scientific Practice

Abstract

Based on an empirical study of a research team in natural science, the author argues that collaborating scientists do not trust each other completely. Due to the inherent incompleteness of trust, epistemic trust among scientists is not sufficient to manage epistemic dependency in research teams. To mitigate the limitations of epistemic trust, scientists resort to specific strategies of indirect assessment such as dialoguing practices and the probing of explanatory responsiveness. Furthermore, they rely upon impersonal trust and deploy practices of hierarchical authorship.

Keywords:

• Epistemic Trust
• Epistemic Dependence
• Scientific Practice
• Research Collaboration
• Research Groups
• Philosophy of Science in Practice

Acknowledgements

I offer my sincere gratitude to Hanne Andersen, Lisa Osbeck, Brad K. Wray, Johanna Seibt, my colleagues, among them Mads Goddiksen, Sara Green and Brian Hepburn, two anonymous referees, the editor of this journal, Jim Collier, and those scientists who introduced me to their work and took the time to share their professional experience with me. This research forms part of the project “Philosophy of Contemporary Science in Practice” which is funded by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities (FKK).

Notes

[1] In Social Epistemology, Hardwig, his numerous critics and followers have pioneered in emphasizing the scope of epistemic trust among scientists (Adler 1994; Hardwig 1985, 1991; Schmitt 1988; Webb 1993).

[2] Social science scholars have suggested to see control as an alternative to trust in organizing collaborative relationships. This has especially been popular in the 1970s and 1980s, when the phenomenon of trust in different types of societies and economies received great attention. The discourse on trust in the social sciences spans a range of fields, among them ethnomethodology (e.g. Garfinkel 1963), macro economy, and social theory (e.g. Fukuyama 1995; Gambetta 1988; Luhmann 1988).

[3] Following this definition, I regard trustworthiness as a quality which can be ascribed to human individuals exclusively, not to technology—however reliable it may be.

[4] Different forms of trust are denoted by the distinction between personal and impersonal trust which will be elaborated on in 4. For the time being, I am concerned with personal trust, i.e. trust between a trusting individual A and a trusted individual B.

[5] Testimony, i.e. the asserted knowledge of others, can be a source of knowledge if self-reliant ways of obtaining knowledge appear to be epistemically inferior. For an account of testimony see e.g. Coady (1992), Audi (2006) or Lackey (2006).

[6] This understanding of testimony has been criticized in feminist epistemology. Bergin argues that it “truncate[s] the communication activity by leaving out the activities performed by the listener/knowledge receiver and the potentially on-going nature of dialogue” (Bergin 2002, 209). In fact, my work on trust as embedded in dynamic probing processes underpins this critique.

[7] The group is situated at a Danish university. Fieldwork and interviewing took place in 2010/2011.

[8] Since long-term physical proximity is a key characteristic of the group at hand, it is worthwhile to point out that physical distance is considered a major hindrance to interpersonal trust in groups of professionals (see e.g. Jarvenpaa and Leidner 1999; Olson and Olson 2000).

[9] All names changed.

[10] The group which I have studied is both from my outside perspective and in the understanding of its group members a rather well-functioning group. Disgruntlement is rare and multi-authored papers are abundant. Therefore, my work admittedly features a bias towards successful, trust-laden collaboration and can give but little insight into the phenomenon of distrust (cf e.g. Birnholtz, Forlano, Yuan, Rizzo, Liao, Gay and Heller 2012; Govier 1992).

[11] I thank Lars-Göran Johansson and Kai Børge Hansen, Uppsala University, for pointing out the double-aspect of trust to me.

[12] This distinction is inspired by an analogy to beliefs—whether or not trust attitudes are merely analogous to beliefs or a kind of belief cannot be discussed here. For an account of belief operating with both belief-states and belief-content, see Haack 2009, 117ff.

[13] And of course it is, I need to add, situated in a particular cultural setting. The cultural allocation of trustworthiness is an issue beyond the scope of this paper, but it should be pointed out that the decision to trust may be guided firmly by culture-specific implicit social bias towards gender, nationality, scientific institution, etc. For the role of social bias in the formulation of hypotheses about scientific authority see e.g. Lee and Schunn (2011).

[14] Kitcher distinguishes between direct and indirect calibration (Kitcher 1993, 320ff). In this paper, I will not adopt this distinction, but instead talk about the trusting person’s need to monitor the quality of the trusted person’s contribution indirectly. By this formulation, I wish to underline that the trusting person is in no position to assess the epistemic quality of the contribution in question in a way that would entitle her to rely upon this contribution on the basis of her own epistemic resources without substantial personal trust to the contributing colleague. Hence, I use the attribute “indirectly” to characterize the assessment of a piece of information. I will not use it to describe the calibration of trust, or, as Kitcher does, to describe the calibration of authority.

[15] The content of all interview statements is changed where necessary to avoid identification.

[16] What I coin explanatory responsiveness is not to be confounded with Pettit’s “trust-responsiveness”, i.e. “the disposition to prove reliable under the trust of others” which he distinguishes from genuine trustworthiness (Pettit 1995, 203).

[17] Explanatory responsiveness, can be related to, but is not identical with “interactive” (Collins 2004; Collins and Evans 2002) or “interactional expertise” (Gorman 2002), i.e. the ability to mediate between the different (disciplinary) perspectives that different experts can have on one phenomenon under study. Explanatory responsiveness may include interactive expertise, but it emphasizes first and foremost genuine expert knowledge on the subject matter in question.

[18] A related argument has been made by Wilholt (2012) who shows that epistemic trust among collaborating scientists is, in optimal cases, accompanied by an accordance in values and interests concerning the possible pragmatic consequences of the piece of scientific knowledge for which the trusting scientist relies upon her colleague. But note that while Wilholt makes the point that trust profits from shared interests, my point is that the trustworthiness of a scientist profits from his knowing which interests his collaborator pursues and which informational needs he thus has.

[19] For collaborative writing and multiple authorship see e.g Birnholtz (2006), Staley (2007), Rehg and Staley (2008), and Galison (2003).

[20] Accounts of collaborative knowledge, such as e.g. Rolin (2010), Wray (2007) and Fagan (2011), focus on similar issues. Their prime interest, however, is to formulate a theoretical argument on the question to what extent epistemic collaboration results in collective knowing that is irreducible to individual knowing.

[21] From pilot interviews with members of other research groups in different fields, however, I have learnt that collaborative writing can also be organized otherwise, in a rather fluid manner, without assigning clear leadership and responsibilities for particular sections. In this mode of collaborative writing, the text is continuously circulated among co-authors and continuously re-written by them.

[22] The concept of coherence has been used widely in both philosophy of science and epistemology. There is no unanimity as to its precise definition and its epistemic virtue. For an overview see e.g. Meijs (2005) and Haack (2004).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susann Wagenknecht

Susann Wagenknecht is a PhD fellow at the Centre for Science Studies at Aarhus University, where she is a member of the group “Philosophy of Contemporary Science in Practice”. Her dissertation project deals with epistemic trust and dependence in research groups.