Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
I argue that collaborators do not need to reach broad agreement over the justification of a consensus claim. This is because maintaining a diversity of justifiers within a scientific collaboration has important epistemic value. I develop a view of collective justification that depends on the diversity of epistemic perspectives present in a group. I argue that a group can be collectively justified in asserting that P as long as the disagreement among collaborators over the reasons for P is itself justified. In conclusion, I make a case for multimethod collaborative research and work through an example in the social sciences.
Thanks to James Woodward, Sandra Mitchell, Kevin Zollman, and Liam Kofi Bright for valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this article.