Workshop: Risk Assessment and Values in Science

Today's welfare society is characterized by prosperity, increased life expectancy as well as by comprehensive social and health protection. However, in terms of food quality and safety the public is increasingly scared about anxiety and false risk perception. Several factors, such as the apparently growing number of outbreaks of food- and feed borne diseases, local incidents, mass production, criminal fraud, but also changing trends in nutrition and consumer food habits, have stimulated both the public awareness and the consumers' concerns about food. Against this background as well as regional as well as global developments, food safety has become a topic of high complexity and diversity. Somehow, this observation seems to be in contrast to the explicit trend that in so-called industrialized countries consumers, on average and compared to earlier times, spend steadily decreasing proportions of their regular budget for food. So, the value of food seems to be underestimated. Due to the regulatory basis, and quite often for the sake of advertising, the consumer of today is said to be an "informed consumer". Notwithstanding, this so-called informed consumer is not necessarily an educated consumer, as he or she often lacks sound information and specific knowledge about food. Hence, food safety experts (either from food industry or from inter/national authorities) play some important role, as they not only contribute to ensure the quality and safety of food but also act in the dissemination of knowledge about food. Importantly, several internationally linked control measures as well as surveillance and alert networks have been established based on food law and official regulations and aim at protecting national markets from (potentially) contaminated, mislabelled or unhealthy food. In this context, there are several interfaces that still need to be further cross-linked and harmonized. In this presentation, the diversity of relevant criteria around food safety will be illuminated from different perspectives. Special emphasis will be placed on current trends and statistics, on case scenarios and related crucial questions, on the gaps and needs of public health systems as well as on risk assessment and communication related to food.

According to the so-called Lockean acceptance rule, it is rational to accept a hypothesis H relative to a given rational belief function P and a body of total evidence E, iff H's probability given E exceeds a contextually determined threshold α>0.5. Behind this innocent looking rule two philosophical problems are lurking: (a) the problem of determining the right threshold, and (b) the problem of closure under conjunctions.

In this talk I will assume a practical context, in which "to accept a proposition H" means that one will rely on the assumption of H in practical actions. I investigate the consequences of this assumption concerning the problem of passing statistical expert information to society in the form of action recommendations (including a discussion of the L'Aquila case).

Climate policy needs to be informed by the results of the best climate models, with respect to the issue at hand. To evaluate climate models, it is essential that the best available methods for confirmation are used. A hotly debated issue on confirmation in climate science (as well as in philosophy) is the requirement of use-novelty (i.e. that data can only confirm models if they have not already been used before, e.g. for calibrating parameters). This paper investigates the issue of use-novelty in the context of the mathematical methods provided by model selection theory. We will show that the picture model selection theory presents us with about use-novelty is more subtle and nuanced than the commonly endorsed positions by climate scientists and philosophers. More specifically, we will argue that there are two main cases in model selection theory. On the one hand, there are the methods such as cross-validation where the data are required to be use-novel. On the other hand, there are the methods such as Bayesian confirmation or the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) for which the data cannot be use-novel. Still, for some of these methods (like AIC) certain intuitions behind the use-novelty approach are preserved: there is a penalty term in the expression for the degree of confirmation by the data because the data have already been used for calibration. The common positions argued for in climate science and philosophy are either that data should always be use-novel or that the use-novelty criterion is irrelevant. According to model selection theory these positions are too simple: whether or not data should be use-novel depends on the specific method used. For certain methods data should be use-novel, but for others they cannot and thus need not be use-novel.

(DCLPS, University of Duesseldorf, Germany)

Alexander Christian studied philosophy, sociology and biology at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Duesseldorf, where he now is a research fellow at the Chair of Theoretical Philosophy and the Duesseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS). His research includes questions in the intersection between philosophy of science and ethics of science, in particular scientific misconduct and questionable research practices in medical research, the problem of demarcation and values in science.

(Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Roma, Italy)

Giovanna Cultrera is researcher at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV, Italy), Section Seismology and Tectonophysics, and she is adjunct professor at the Department of Geological Sciences, Roma Tre University of Rome.

Her research is focused on the study of ground motion variations at the earth surface through the analysis of moderate and strong earthquakes recordings. These studies are finalized to loss and damage estimations in urban areas and infrastructures, and they have been addressed within several projects and in cooperation with international research institutions. She also works in the rapid response to seismic emergency in epicentral area, to improve the monitoring and to collect data for scientific studies, and in the INGV initiatives for seismic hazard's outreach.

Since 2012, she participates in the INGV working group for the information management on the criminal trial followed the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, both at national and international level.

(DCLPS, University of Duesseldorf, Germany)

Research Fellow and DOC-scholar (Austrian Academy of Sciences) at the Duesseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS) at the University of Duesseldorf. Before coming to Duesseldorf, he was a visiting fellow at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP) and project staff at the University of Innsbruck. Christian's area of research focuses on general philosophy of science (analogical reasoning and concept formation, and the problem of induction) and social epistemology (tesimony, judgement aggregation).

(BOKU - University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria)

Wolfgang Kneifel is head of the Department of Food Science and Technology at the BOKU and Leader of the Food Safety and Quality Assurance Laboratory, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna. He is Director of the Christian Doppler Research Laboratory for Innovative Bran Biorefinery. He is an expert in food microbiology, hygiene, functional foods, product development, food quality assurance, quality management and food safety. He is President of the Austrian Association of Food and Biotechnologists, and an active member in about 15 professional societies.

His research interests are on: food safety, food hygiene, food and feed product development, optimisation and quality assurance of foods, quality management, biorefinery concepts and food side product valorisation, pro- and prebiotic research, microbiological quality factors of food and pharmaceutical products, food-GI tract interactions, validation of microbiological analytic methods, development and standardisation of improved analytical tools.

He holds several international projects and cooperations with industry. Furthermore, he is in the board of more than 7 scientific journals.

(DCLPS, University of Duesseldorf, Germany)

Gerhard Schurz is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Duesseldorf and Director of the Duesseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science. He is a member of the steering committee of the European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA) and currently leader of several DFG-funded projects on causality and induction. Before coming to Duesseldorf, he held a chair at the University of Erfurt and was visiting professor at Yale University. His areas of research include amongst others philosophy of science (general; natural science; history of science; explanation and understanding; lawlikeness; induction and abduction; theory confirmation and verisimilitude; normic laws, structural realism), and logic (logic and relevance, probability logic, nonmonotonic logic). He is member of the editorial board of several renowned philosophy journals (amongst others Episteme, Erkenntnis, GPS, Synthese), editor of about 20 collections, and author of more than 6 books (e.g. Philosophy of Science. A Unified Approach, 2013)

(University of Salzburg & London School of Economics, UK)

Charlotte Werndl holds a Chair in Logic and Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Salzburg and a Visiting Professorship at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. She is also an associate editor of the European Journal for the Philosophy of Science and an editor of the Review of Symbolic Logic.

Before coming to Salzburg, she was an Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics. Before joining LSE, she was a Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at The Queen's College, University of Oxford. Her doctoral degree is from the University of Cambridge.