The philosophical relevance of experimental psychology is hard to dispute. Much more controversial is the so-called negative program’s critique of armchair philosophical methodology, in particular the reliance on ‘intuitions’ about thought experiments. This chapter responds to that critique. It argues that, since the negative program has been forced to extend the category of intuition to ordina...

We survey the evaluation methodology adopted in Information Extraction (IE), as defined in the MUC conferences and in later independent efforts applying machine learning to IE. We point out a number of problematic issues that may hamper the comparison between results obtained by different researchers. Some of them are common to other NLP tasks: e.g., the difficulty of exactly identifying the ef...

Several recent studies have underlined the lack of rigor in simulation practices that threatens the credibility of the published claims. While agreeing with some of the criticism, this article argues against some others and advocates for a different overall view. In short, existing criticism is concentrated on simulation as an independent task, and advises better reporting (repeatability), more...

Tensions exist between the disability rights movement and the work of many bioethicists. These reveal themselves in a major recent book on bioethics and genetics, From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. This book defends certain genetic policies against criticisms from disability rights advocates, in part by arguing that it is possible to accept both the genetic policies and the rights of ...

More than twenty years after its conception, 'evidence-based medicine' (EBM) continues to invoke polarised debate. There are several areas of disagreement between EBM supporters and detractors as well as unanswered questions about the role of EBM in modern healthcare. Proponents suggest that the goal of EBM is to rescue medicine from many of its major ills, including wide variations in clinical...

this evaluation was undertaken to analyse the overall merit of studies for publication in medical journals. peer review, in which peer experts evaluate the value of a manuscript submitted to a professional journal, is regarded as a crucial step in publication. it helps to ensure that published articles describe experiments that focus on important issues and that the research is well designed an...