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Paper short abstract:

Why has credibility not appeared as an important question concerning science? In other words, why credibility questions are easier to answer concerning scientific investigation than inin the case of criminal or judicial investigation?

Paper long abstract:

In his 2004 book, Schum considers that, relative to a given hypothesis, evidence has three features (or, in his terminology, "credentials"): credibility, relevance and probative force. Analyses of relevance and probative force can be found in philosophy of science, since they are (more or less) the objects of theories of confirmation, qualitative and quantitative respectively. But it seems that philosophers of science have not been much interested in credibility. Assuming that this is not due to mere negligence, the question arises why credibility has not appeared as an important question concerning science or, in other words, why credibility questions are easier to answer concerning scientific investigation than in general case or, more specifically, than in the case of criminal or judicial investigation. This question is mainly an empirical one: what are the features of the institutional or social organization of science that make credibility a non-issue or an easy question? It should be interesting to envisage the question dynamically: are recent changes in the organisation or social features of science such that credibility issues are becoming more of an issue? is it the case that controversies recently arouse that show that credibility tends to become an issue about science (both in science and in society)? Of course, all this does not deal with forensic science per se, but rather about what looking at criminal investigation and work dealing with it may tell us about science.