Leen De Vreese

The mycotoxin definition reconsidered towards fungal cyclic depsipeptides

ABSTRACT Currently, next to the major classes, cyclic depsipeptides beauvericin and enniatins are also positioned as mycotoxins. However, as there are hundreds more fungal cyclic depsipeptides already identified, should these not be considered as mycotoxins as well? The current status of the mycotoxin definition revealed a lack of consistency, leading to confusion about what compounds should be called mycotoxins. Because this is of pivotal importance in risk assessment prioritization, a clear and quantitatively expressed mycotoxin definition is proposed, based on data of widely accepted mycotoxins. Finally, this definition is applied to a set of fungal cyclic depsipeptides, revealing that some of these should indeed be considered as mycotoxins.

Evidence-based Medicine and Progress in the Medical Sciences.

The question what scientific progress means for a particular domain such as medicine seems importantly different from the question what scientific progress is in general. While the latter question received ample treatment in the philosophical literature, the former question is hardly discussed. I argue that it is nonetheless important to think about this question in view of the methodological choices we make. I raise specific questions that should be tackled regarding scientific progress in the medical sciences and demonstrate their importance by means of an analysis of what evidence-based medicine (EBM) has, and has not, to offer in terms of progress. I show how critically thinking about EBM from the point of view of progress can help us in putting EBM and its favoured methodologies in the right perspective. My conclusion will be that blindly favouring certain methods because of their immediately tangible short-term benefits implies that we parry the important question of how best to advance progress in the long run. This leads us to losing sight of our general goals in doing research in the medical sciences.

What to expect from reliability and validity claims? A pragmatic conception of psychiatric nosology

The reliability and validity of psychiatric diagnoses have always been a major concern. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) reliability field trials yielded ambiguous results, with some diagnostic categories scoring well below par. We argue that the emphasis on the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses, which has dominated psychiatric nosology and guided the endeavor of improving the DSM in its consecutive editions, is misguided and lacks in structural validity. In this article, we defend a pragmatic view on psychiatric disease as the most fruitful approach to an understanding of what the categorical distinctions in the DSM (can) represent. Disorders in the DSM are descriptions of clinical pictures and do not necessarily correspond to an identified pathological substrate. Although this is a logical result of the nature of psychiatric disease, it bears important consequences. The various DSM disease categories are not uniform but should be regarded as representing different kinds of disorders, ranging from a separation from normal behavior based on practical grounds to the discrete kind of disorders envisioned by proponents of a strong realistic view. We argue that the explication of kinds of disorders outlined in this article provides interesting perspectives on the problems of reliability and validity that the DSM faces.

How to Study Scientific Explanation

This chapter investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation discussed in Chap. 1: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: (i) construct an explication in the sense of Rudolf Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make (ii) descriptive and (iii) normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. In Sect. 2.2—which has a preliminary character—we present Carnap’s view on what the task of explication is, on the requirements it has to satisfy and on its function. In Sect. 2.3 we show that Carl Hempel develops an explication of the concept of explanation and makes descriptive and normative claims with it. We also show that he fails to provide convincing arguments for these claims. In Sects. 2.4 and 2.5 we show that Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon had a similar working-method in their philosophical analysis of scientific explanation and failed at the same stage as Hempel: the arguments for the descriptive and normative claims are missing. We think it is the responsibility of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the “pragmatic approach to scientific explanation.” We clarify what this approach consists in and defend it in Sect. 2.6.

The causes and cures of scurvy. How modern was James Lind’s methodology?

The Scottish physician James Lind is the most celebrated name in the history of research into the causes and cures of scurvy. This is due to the famous experiment he conducted in 1747 on H.M.S. Salisbury in order to compare the efficiency of six popular treatments for scurvy. This experiment is generally regarded as the first controlled trial in clinical science (see e.g. Carpenter 1986, p. 52).

Examples of Descriptions and Evaluations of Explanatory Practices

The examples we gave in Chap. 3 are brief and not always realistic. In this chapter we present elaborate and realistic examples of how the toolbox of Chap. 3 can be used for analysing explanatory practices.

Theories of Scientific Explanation

In this chapter we first summarize the ideas of Carl Hempel, the godfather of this subdomain of the philosophy of science (Sect. 1.2). Then we present the problems that other philosophers have raised in connection with Hempel’s theory of explanation (Sect. 1.3). Subsequently, we clarify how the major research traditions in the field that have emerged after Hempel, can be seen as different reactions to these problems (Sect. 1.4). Finally, we discuss two of these reactions in more detail: Philip Kitcher’s unification account in Sect. 1.5 and Wesley Salmon’s causal-mechanical account in Sect. 1.6.

A Toolbox for Describing and Evaluating Explanatory Practices

In this chapter we develop a toolbox for analysing explanatory practices. An analysis of an explanatory practice can be either a description or a description plus an evaluation (one cannot evaluate without knowing what is going on, so evaluation without description is impossible). Because explanations consist of an explanans and an explanandum, we need tools for analysing both parts. In Sect. 3.2 we introduce a set of important types of why-questions, ordered in four main categories. This section offers tools for describing the explananda that scientists are dealing with. In Sects. 3.3 till 3.6 we present possible formats for answers to explanation-seeking questions (each section is about one of the main categories distinguished in Sect. 3.2). That completes the toolbox we need for describing explanatory practices. Section 3.7 adds a normative component: tools for the evaluation of explanatory practices. These tools take the form of clusters of evaluative questions (we will present five such clusters).

AN INTERDISCIPLINARY FOCUS ON THE CONCEPT OF CAUSATION: WHAT PHILOSOPHY CAN LEARN FROM PSYCHOLOGY

In philosophy of science, it is still a mainstream practice to search for the ‘truth’ about fundamental scientific concepts in isolation, blind to knowledge achieved in other domains of science. I focus on the topic of causation. I argue that it is worthwhile for philosophy of science to leave its metaphysical tower in order to pick up knowledge from other domains where empirical research on causal reasoning is carried out, such as psychology. I will demonstrate what the psychologist Peter White’s theory, on the origin and development of causal reasoning, can impart to philosophy of causation. It concerns different but interrelated subjects with respect to the philosophy of causation: conceptual pluralism, a core causal concept of causation, the analysis of ‘what causation is’, epistemological pluralism, causation as a secondary quality and weak causal realism. The divide between metaphysical and epistemological approaches to causation — and hence between philosophy and psychology — may be much smaller than is often presupposed.

Evidence-based medicine and progress in the medical sciences: EBM and progress

The question what scientific progress means for a particular domain such as medicine seems importantly different from the question what scientific progress is in general. While the latter question received ample treatment in the philosophical literature, the former question is hardly discussed. I argue that it is nonetheless important to think about this question in view of the methodological choices we make. I raise specific questions that should be tackled regarding scientific progress in the medical sciences and demonstrate their importance by means of an analysis of what evidence-based medicine (EBM) has, and has not, to offer in terms of progress. I show how critically thinking about EBM from the point of view of progress can help us in putting EBM and its favoured methodologies in the right perspective. My conclusion will be that blindly favouring certain methods because of their immediately tangible short-term benefits implies that we parry the important question of how best to advance progress in the long run. This leads us to losing sight of our general goals in doing research in the medical sciences.