The literature on values in science struggles with questions about how to describe and manage the role of values in scientific research. We argue that progress can be made by shifting this literature’s current emphasis. Rather than arguing about how non-epistemic values can or should figure into scientific assessment, we suggest analyzing how scientific assessment can accommodate non-epistemic values. For scientific assessment to do so, it arguably needs to incorporate goals that have been traditionally characterized as non-epistemic. Building on this insight, we show how the adequacy-for-purpose framework recently developed for assessing scientific models can provide a general framework for describing scientific assessment so that it goes beyond purely epistemic considerations. Adopting this framework has significant advantages and opens the possibility of effecting a partial rapprochement between critics and proponents of the value-free ideal.

关于科学价值的文献与如何描述和管理价值在科学研究中的作用的问题作斗争。我们认为，可以通过改变该文献当前的重点来取得进展。与其争论非认知价值如何​​或应该如何纳入科学评估，我们建议分析科学评估如何适应非认知价值。科学评估要做到这一点，可以说需要纳入传统上被认为是非认知的目标。基于这一见解，我们展示了最近开发的用于评估科学模型的充分性框架如何为描述科学评估提供一个通用框架，使其超越纯粹的认知考虑。