Epistemic Lensing: How Collective Judgment Standards Deflect Scientific Anomalies Before Paradigm Shifts
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper introduces epistemic lensing: the measurable deflection of scientific anomalies by a community's shared judgment standards before a paradigm shift occurs. Against passive models of filtering or suppression, the paper argues that evidentiary preferences, refusal thresholds, and methodological norms actively bend anomalous findings toward paradigm-compatible interpretations. The paper formalises this using patchwise epistemic geometry and a collective epistemic tensor proxy, and proposes a five-step empirical method combining SPECTER document embeddings, SciBERT citation-context NLP, and factor-analytic extraction of judgment-standard axes. Pilot case: Helicobacter pylori / peptic ulcer aetiology 1982–1995.
Author: Cassie, Ben
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7161724541
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