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DISCUSSION
SCIENCE AND DECISION MAKING*
C. WEST CHURCHMAN
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248 C. WEST CHURCHMAN
that won't meet the test of agreement. And if one goes even further, and wants
to "assign probabilities" to hypotheses, I'm sure that he will have to evaluate
the relative worth of (1) more observations, (2) greater scope of his conceptual
model, (3) simplicity, (4) precision of language, (5) accuracy of the probability
assignment. Such a scientist, whether or not he thinks of himself as "accepting"
hypotheses, is a decision maker with multiple aims, and the criteria of optimal
decision making depend on the values of these aims.
I gather that Jeffrey wants to go no further than this-because this much is
already terribly difficult to work out. I would certainly agree with him that few
if any scientists "simply" accept hypotheses-for acceptance of hypotheses is
an activity rarely to be undertaken with a complete freedom from risk. Much
of the issue that Jeffrey raises depends on what one thinks "acceptance" means,
and here I cannot necessarily speak for the other authors he cites. It does seem
to me that hypotheses are signs of intended behavior-so that "X accepts hy-
pothesis H" means "X intends to adopt action A." (In this respect, I find the
quote of De Finetti, p. 243, very confusing.)
In this sense of "acceptance," scientists do accept hypotheses. For example,
a scientist woniderswhether to repeat an experiment he did yesterday, or to try
a new experiment today which is based on yesterday's findings. This situation
can be given the form of "hypothesis testing," and it is sensible to say that if
the scientist intends to repeat the experiment, he "rejects" the hypothesis that
yesterday's results have a certain degree of accuracy, and if he intends to run a
new experiment, he accepts the hypothesis.
But Jeffrey seems to feel that the situation gets out of hand if the scientific
information is "open ended" so that no one knows what aims it will serve. There
is no denying that this is a critical question-and not an abstract one either.
Our national Census Bureau-which does not enjoy the luxury of gathering any
information that its chiefs feel curious to collect-must make decisions about
the quality, type and amount of information, without in many instances knowing
how the information is to be used.
Here the situation is quite similar to that which occurs in production and
distribution. Of course, we don't have a recognized "philosophy of production"
in the same sense in which we have a "philosophy of science"-possibly because
the material expression of ideas is somehow less worthy of contemplation than
the intellectual. But production and distribution have had to face the problem
of the "open ended product." There is no such thing as a "good" rope: the best
rope for anchoring a boat may be very poor rope indeed for hanging clothes-or
men. The only answer seems to be (1) a "market" survey of the demand for
products, (2) specification of product lines in terms of the most important of
these demands, and (3) consumer education. None of these "answers" is by
any means simple to give, although there is considerable research activity going
on with respect to each one of them. I can't help feeling that the analogy holds:
the only adequate answer for the problem of open ended information seems to
be (1) a "market" survey of the demands for information, (2) specification of
hypotheses in terms of these demands, and (3) consumer education. In this
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DISCUSSION SCIENCE AND DECISION MAKING 249
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