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18Nov

Popper Seminar by Karen Kovaka (University of California)

Hosted by the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Venue: LAK 2.06 Lakatos Building London, WC2A 2AE United Kingdom. Online (Via Zoom).
Tuesday 18 November 2025 2pm - 3.30pm

Title: What is meta-analysis good for?

Abstract: There is an ongoing debate about the quality of the evidence that meta-analysis provides. But both critics and defenders of meta-analysis generally assume that the core purpose and contribution of meta-analysis is to tell us what the evidence really says about the existence and magnitude of causal relationships, to extract conclusions that agree from datasets that do not. I argue that while delivering such information about cause-and-effect relationships is the most common use of meta-analysis, this is only an application of the tool, and that its primary epistemic role of meta-analysis is something else entirely: to help us explore and understand variation among populations of studies.

Karen Kovaka is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego.

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