The decision to accept or reject a hypothesis involves a value judgment (at least implicitly) because scientists have to judge which of the consequences of an erroneous decision they deem more palatable: (1) some individuals die of the side effects of a drug erroneously judged to be safe; or (2) other individuals die of a condition because they did not have access to a treatment that was erroneously judged to be unsafe. Hence, ethical judgments and contextual values necessarily enter the scienti