The Transformation of Research Findings into Scientific Knowledge

conducting detailed and 'micro'-scale studies of scientific research. This has often been accompanied by a belief that the sociology of science ought to be cast within an 'interpretive' rather than within a 'normative' paradigm.1 As a result, some sociologists have begun to inquire about the everyday practices of research scientists, and others have looked at the ways in which knowledge of research techniques and innovations are transmitted from one scientist to another.2 At the same time, there has been an increasing emphasis on the importance of considering the intellectual context of research as an integral part of the sociological study of science. At present, however, the majority of this work is concerned with what might loosely be called the 'context of discovery'3 - that is, with the social processes associated with the creation of research findings within the scientific community. Some valuable studies have resulted from the adoption of this approach, and more can be expected. This paper, however, will be concerned with a different aspect of the creation of scientific knowledge. It will explore in a preliminary way the process whereby a scientist's research findings are transformed into accredited factual knowledge.4 Thus I shall here be concerned primarily with the 'context of justification'. Although this has long been of great interest to philosophers of science, who have sought to define rational or ideal procedures to divide true knowledge from false claims, it is an issue which has been relatively infrequently