Inferring the unconfirmed

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Thus Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes describe a crucial part of his method of solving detective cases. Sherlock Holmes often takes pride in adhering to principles of scientific reasoning. Whether or not this particular element of his analysis can be called scientific is not straightforward to decide, however. Do scientists use ‘no alternatives arguments’ of the kind described above? Is it justified to infer a theory’s truth from the observation that no other acceptable theory is known? Can this be done even when empirical confirmation of the theory in question is sketchy or entirely absent?

Read more about “the no alternatives argument” by Richard Dawid, Stephan Hartmann, and Jan Sprenger online in the OUP blog here:
http://blog.oup.com/2014/04/inferring-the-unconfirmed-the-no-alternatives-argument/