Moti Mizrahi (Florida Institute of Technology)
In this paper, I argue that Philosophy of Science faces a methodological problem: philosophers of science frequently appeal to anecdotal evidence, but anecdotal evidence is not good evidence. To show that, I present the results of a systematic survey of the PhilSci-Archive, which suggest that a sizeable proportion of papers in Philosophy of Science contain appeals to anecdotal evidence, as indicated by the occurrence of the indicator words "case study." These results are confirmed by data mined from JSTOR on research articles published in three leading journals in the field: Philosophy of Science, the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (BJPS), and the Journal for General Philosophy of Science (JGPS). The data also show upward trends in appeals to anecdotal evidence in articles published in these journals. I then propose a way to do Philosophy of Science that does not involve appealing to anecdotal evidence, which is exemplified by the research done for this paper.
