Sarah Machado-Marques

Sarah Machado-Marques is a Canadian scientonomist notable for her work on scientific error handling.

Suggested Modifications

Here are all the modifications suggested by Machado-Marques:

• Sciento-2021-0003: Accept the definition of error, stating that an epistemic agent is said to commit an error if the agent accepts a theory that should not have been accepted given that agent’s employed method. The modification was suggested to Scientonomy community by Paul Patton and Sarah Machado-Marques on 1 August 2021.1 The modification was accepted on 8 October 2021. It was agreed that the definition "succeeds in capturing the gist of the notion by explicitly stating that an error is always relative to an epistemic agent and to that agent's employed method".^{c1 c2} The importance of the concept of error for the Tree of Knowledge project was also noted. Specifically, it was argued that "we must be able to differentiate between those theories which were accepted in accordance with an agent’s employed method and those which were not" so that we can better understand the reasoning underlying individual transitions.^c3 Finally, it was suggested that a further distinction between “instances of honest error and misconduct” might be worth pursuing.^c4
• Sciento-2021-0004: Accept that the handling of scientific error, as defined by Machado-Marques and Patton, is compatible with the theory rejection theorem. The modification was suggested to Scientonomy community by Paul Patton and Sarah Machado-Marques on 1 August 2021.1 The modification was accepted on 8 October 2021. The commentators agreed that "the historical cases of scientific error identified and treated by Machado-Marques and Patton effectively demonstrate the compatibility of instances of scientific error with the theory rejection theorem".^{c1 c2 c3} It was agreed that the rejection of a theory that was accepted erroneously can be "a result of the acceptance of other theories incompatible with it - be these some first- or second-order theories".^{c4 c5 c6} One commentator expressed a common opinion when saying that "the authors are able to put to rest concerns about the handling of scientific error potentially contravening the theory rejection theorem".^c7

Theories

The following table contains all the theories formulated by Machado-Marques:

Title	Type	Formulation	Formulated In
Error (Machado-Marques-Patton-2021)	Definition	An epistemic agent is said to commit an error if the agent accepts a theory that should not have been accepted given that agent’s employed method.	2021
Error Rejection by Replacement (Machado-Marques-Patton-2021)	Descriptive	The handling of instances of scientific error is consistent with the theory rejection theorem; it involves a replacement of an erroneously accepted theory either with a first- or second-order proposition.	2021

Questions

Here are all the questions formulated by Machado-Marques:

• Disjointness of Error: What other classes is the class of error disjoint with, i.e. classes that don't share any instances with error?
• Error: What is error? How should it be defined?
• Questions and Theory Pursuit: What is the role of question acceptance in the mechanism of theory pursuit?

Publications

Here are the works of Machado-Marques included in the bibliographic records of this encyclopedia:

• Machado-Marques and Patton (2021): Machado-Marques, Sarah and Patton, Paul. (2021) Scientific Error and Error Handling. Scientonomy 4, 21-39. Retrieved from https://scientojournal.com/index.php/scientonomy/article/view/37121.

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