The Bactra Review   Error and the Growth of Experimental Knowledge
One further comment, which falls outside the ambit of methodology, though still within that of the broader philosophy of science. Mayo, a child like the rest of us of the victorious Scientific Revolution, takes it for granted that the goal of science, of natural philosophy is reliable knowledge, subject to experimental controls, about phenomena and their efficient causes. But this is very far from being the only conceivable goal of natural philosophy, and someone who pursued it with a different aim --- obtaining, e.g., knowledge of God through the allegorical interpretation of Her creations, or an inner conviction that one has grasped the ineffable yet meaningful interconnections of Nature --- would be led to a radically different kind of science, and find not merely our theories or our methods but our methodology totally beside the point. I think she's quite right about how affairs are conducted under the Revolutionary flag, but doesn't advance our understanding of how that flag first came to be flown, of how to justify the Revolution and the Open Society of Science which it creates, against the Old Regime and counter-revolutionaries, if indeed it can be justified.