Research
My work centers on three main themes: disagreement among scientists, publicly controversial science, and public participation in science.
Regarding disagreement among scientists, I have long been interested in relative frequency controversies as a puzzling but common mode of disagreement. More recently I have been writing about the role of evidence synthesis techniques, especially meta-analysis, in resolving scientific disagreement.
I initially started thinking about publicly controversial science in the context of climate change denial. These days I’m more interested in controversies about which conservation policies to adopt.
As for public participation in science, I am interested both in community science/community-based research, and in how we might leverage social scientific techniques to better understand public views and values, and to help science be more democratic.
Below you will find information about my publications. You can read more about my collaborative work here.
Selected Publications
Kovaka, K. “What Is Meta-Analysis Good For?” Forthcoming in Philosophical Studies. [pdf]
Abstract: There is an ongoing debate about the quality of the evidence that meta-analysis provides. But both critics and defenders of meta-analysis generally assume that the core purpose and contribution of meta-analysis is to tell us what the evidence really says about the existence and magnitude of causal relationships, to extract conclusions that agree from datasets that do not. I argue that while delivering such information about cause-and-effect relationships is the most common use of meta-analysis, this is only an application of the tool, and that its primary epistemic role of meta-analysis is something else entirely: to help us explore and understand variation among populations of studies.
Kovaka, K. “Intervention in Ecology” Forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Ecology. [pdf]
Abstract: Conservation interventions achieve their desired aims sometimes, but they also frequently deliver lackluster results. I develop one reason why: much of the evidence that ecological science produces about interventions, and an even greater proportion of the evidence that is considered high quality, is insufficient to help practitioners judge whether the interventions they are considering are likely to be effective. I advocate for a revised view of evidential quality that can help ecological science better support conservation practice.
Kovaka, K. “Measuring the Public’s Values: Are the Data Adequate for Purpose?” Forthcoming in The Routledge Handbook of Values and Science. [pdf]
Abstract: Philosophers are paying increasing attention to the role that the values of the public can and should play in science. In particular, there is debate about the extent to which democratic values should inform scientific value judgments. This debate raises the question: What are the capabilities and limits of social scientific techniques for identifying democratic values in the first place? I evaluate a variety of social scientific techniques, discuss their strengths and weaknesses with respect to the project of identifying democratic values, and argue that there is a trade-off between data that represent the public’s values and data that can meaningfully constrain scientific value judgments. This complicates the idea that appealing to democratic values can legitimize scientific conclusions, because typical conceptions of legitimacy involve both representativeness and constraint.
Kovaka, K. 2024. “Environmental Interference.” Biology and Philosophy. DOI: doi.org/10.1007/s10539-024-09955-z. [pdf]
Abstract: One of the guiding ideas in modern environmentalist thought is that we shouldn’t interfere with nature. It’s better to leave it alone. Many of the arguments offered in favor of this presumption against environmental interference are epistemic. One such argument focuses on ineffectiveness. It says that conservation interventions often do not accomplish their goals. A second argument says that well-intentioned interference in nature produces many harmful unintended consequences. I show that these arguments do not justify the presumption against environmental interference. Both arguments depend on stronger claims, such as the claim that conservation interventions do more harm than good overall. Yet, evidence-based conservation studies do not support the idea that conservation interventions generally do not work, or that they do more harm than good. These facts seriously undermine the presumption against environmental interference.
Hoffman, K.N., & Kovaka, K. 2024. “A New Heuristic for Climate Adaptation.” Philosophy of Science. DOI: 10.1017/psa.2023.163. [pdf]
Abstract: An influential heuristic for thinking about climate adaptation asserts that “natural” adaptation strategies are the best ones. This heuristic has been roundly criticized but is difficult to dislodge in the absence of an alternative. We introduce a new heuristic that assesses adaptation strategies by looking at their maturity, power, and commitment. Maturity is the extent to which we understand an adaptation strategy’s effects. Power is the size of the effect an adaptation strategy will have. Commitment is the degree to which an adaptation strategy is difficult to test or reverse.
Kovaka, K., & Novick, R. 2024. “Relative Frequency Controversies and the Growth of Biological Knowledge.” Philosophy, Theory and Practice in Biology. DOI: 10.3998/ptpbio. [pdf]
Abstract: Relative frequency controversies, so common in the biological sciences, pose something of a puzzle. Why do biologists routinely engage in disputes that (a) are rarely settled and (b) arguably wouldn’t yield interesting knowledge even if they were? Recent work suggests that relative frequency controversies can lead biologists to increase their understanding of the modal profile of the processes under dispute. Here, we consider some further consequences of this view. We contend that relative frequency controversies can generate recurrent, transient underdetermination about which causes are responsible for producing particular effects. As a result, the increases in understanding these controversies provide can come with decreases in biologists’ ability to offer warranted explanations. We argue that this fits with a toolkit view of biological theory, and suggest some implications for the scientific realism debate as it pertains to biological science.
Kovaka, K. 2022. “Meta-Analysis and Conservation Science.” Philosophy of Science. DOI: 10.1017/psa.2022.68. [pdf]
Abstract: Philosophical work on meta-analysis occurs exclusively in the context of biomedical research and revolves around a single question: Is meta-analytic evidence the best kind of evidence? I contribute to the epistemology of meta-analysis by identifying distinctive questions and puzzles that arise for meta-analysis in the context of conservation science, and I argue that philosophers should broaden their lens for studying this fascinating research method.research and revolves around a single question: Is meta-analytic evidence the best kind of evidence? I contribute to the epistemology of meta-analysis by identifying distinctive questions and puzzles that arise for meta-analysis in the context of conservation science, and I argue that philosophers should broaden their lens for studying this fascinating research method.
Kovaka, K. 2021. “Fighting About Frequency.” Synthese. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-021-03139-y. [pdf]
Abstract: Scientific disputes about how often different processes or patterns occur are relative frequency controversies. These controversies occur across the sciences. In some areas—especially biology—they are even the dominant mode of dispute. Yet they depart from the standard picture of what a scientific controversy is like. In fact, standard philosophical accounts of scientific controversies suggest that relative frequency controversies are irrational or lacking in epistemic value. This is because standard philosophical accounts of scientific controversies often assume that in order to be rational, a scientific controversy must (a) reach a resolution and (b) be about a scientifically interesting question. Relative frequency controversies rarely reach a resolution, however, and some scientists and philosophers are skeptical that these controversies center on scientifically interesting questions. In this paper, I provide a novel account of the epistemic contribution that relative frequency controversies make to science. I show that these controversies are rational in the sense of further- ing the epistemic aims of the scientific communities in which they occur. They do this despite rarely reaching a resolution, and independent of whether the controversies are about scientifically interesting questions. This means that assumptions (a) and (b) about what is required for a controversy to be rational are wrong. Controversies do not need to reach a resolution in order to be rational. And they do not need to be about anything scientifically interesting in order to make valuable epistemic contributions to science.
Kovaka, K. 2021. “Evaluating Community Science.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A. DOI: 10.1016/j.shpsa.2021.05.004. [pdf]
Abstract: Community science—scientific investigation conducted partly or entirely by non-professional scientists—has many advantages. For example, community science mobilizes large numbers of volunteers who can, at low cost, collect more data than traditional teams of professional scientists. Participation in research can also increase volunteers’ knowledge about and appreciation of science. At the same time, there are worries about the quality of data that community science projects produce. Can the work of non-professionals really deliver trustworthy results? Attempts to answer this question generally compare data collected by volunteers to data collected by professional scientists. When volunteer data is more variable or less accurate than professionally collected data, then the community science project is judged to be inferior to traditional science. I argue that this is not the right standard to use when evaluating community science, because it relies on a false assumption about the aims of science. I show that if we adopt the view that science has diverse aims which are often in tension with one another, then we cannot justify holding community science data to an expert accuracy standard. Instead, we should evaluate the quality of community science data based on its adequacy-for-purpose.
Kovaka, K. 202o. “Mate choice mechanisms and null models.” Philosophy of Science. DOI: 10.1086/710614. [pdf]
Abstract: Biologists have proposed a variety of explanations for extravagant sexual displays, and controversies over explanations define the history of sexual selection research. Recently, Richard Prum has defended Darwin’s idea that the evolution of sexual displays is driven by arbitrary and non-adaptive preferences of potential mates. Prum argues that this explanation should be the null model for sexual selection research. I show that if we adopted Prum’s proposal, the inferences we could be justified in making are more modest than he claims. I also discuss problems with estimating model parameters that at present prevent his proposal from being useful in practice.
Kovaka, K. 2019. “Climate change denial and beliefs about science.” Synthese. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-019-02210-z. [pdf]
Abstract: Social scientists have offered a number of explanations for why Americans commonly deny that human-caused climate change is real. In this paper, I argue that these explanations neglect an important group of climate change deniers: those who say they are on the side of science while also rejecting what they know most climate scientists accept. I then develop a “nature of science” hypothesis that does account for this group of deniers. According to this hypothesis, people have serious misconceptions about what scientific inquiry ought to look like. Their misconceptions interact with partisan biases to produce denial of human-caused climate change. After I develop this hypothesis, I propose ways of confirming that it is true. Then I consider its implications for efforts to combat climate change denial and for other cases of public rejection of science.
Kovaka, K. 2017. "Underdetermination and evidence in the developmental plasticity debate." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. DOI: 10.1093/bjps/axxo38 [pdf]
Abstract: I identify a controversial hypothesis in evolutionary biology called the plasticity-first hypothesis. I argue that the plasticity-first hypothesis is underdetermined and that the most popular means of studying the plasticity-first hypothesis are insufficient to confirm or disconfirm it. I offer a strategy for overcoming this problem. Researchers need to develop a richer middle range theory of plasticity-first evolution that allows them to identify distinctive empirical traces of the hypothesis. They can then use those traces to discriminate between rival explanations of evolutionary episodes. The best tools for developing such a middle range theory are experimental evolution and formal modeling.
Kovaka, K. 2015 “Biological individuality and scientific practice.” Philosophy of Science 82(5):1092- 1103. [pdf]