Citation
Brown, Rachael L. (2017) Not statistically significant, but still scientific. Animal Sentience 16(14)
Commentary Type
Invited Commentary
Thread
Jonathan Birch, Animal sentience and the precautionary principle
Abstract
Birch’s formulation is persuasive but not nuanced enough to capture at least one situation where it is reasonable to invoke the precautionary principle (PP): when we have multiple, weak, but convergent, lines of evidence that a species is sentient, but no statistically significant evidence of a single credible indicator of sentience within the order as required by BAR. I respond to the worry that if we include such cases in our framework for applying the PP, we open ourselves to the charge of being “unscientific.”
DOI
10.51291/2377-7478.1247
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