Kent Staley (Saint Louis University)
When experimental data in particle physics serve as the basis for inferences regarding phenomena, estimates of statistical and systematic uncertainty play a crucial role in determining the empirical value of those inferences. Physicists share no consensus regarding the methodology that is best employed for calculating systematic uncertainty. A proposed epistemological function of systematic uncertainty regards it as a means of managing theory-dependence of data-to-phenomenon inferences. This paper deploys this function as a constraint that rules out Bayesian methods of calculating systematic uncertainty, as well as other methods that effectively dissolve the distinction between statistical and systematic uncertainty.
