Contexto

"The most succinct criticism of postmodernist philosophy as applied to science that I have heard is this – that proponents confuse the context of discovery with the context of later justification. It occurred to me that the same is true of the role of both anecdotes and anomalies in science. Often when I criticize reliance on anecdotes or so-called anomaly hunting, I get feedback that makes the exact same confusion of context.

The context of discovery refers to how new ideas are generated in science. Playing off of Thomas Kuhn’s work on paradigms (and without getting into a side discussion of Kuhn’s own position), some post-modernists argued that science is a humanist-type of endeavor because scientists come up with their ideas in quirky and culturally contingent ways, rather than rigorous or methodical ways. However, what makes science methodologically rigorous is not how new ideas are generated (the context of discovery) but how they are tested (the context of later justification)." Steve Novella, citado do post The Context of Anecdotes and Anomalies