The Authority of Chemistry Beyond Evidence @ ISPC26 !

Why is evidence not the answer to why some chemical practices gain authority while others do not?

Last July 2026, I was deeply humbled to have presented my work at the 29th Annual Conference of the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry (ISPC #2026), held at University of California UCLA, Los Angeles, CA (#USA) 🇺🇸. Using philosophy of chemistry and agent-based modeling (#ABM), I explored the gap between the analytical performance of chemical methods and their uptake as institutional standards.

In my talk, “The Authority of Chemistry Beyond Evidence: An ABM of Chemical Legitimacy” I presented a computational Chemical Legitimacy ABM to examine how the authority of chemical methods emerges through the interaction of four variables: explanation, controversy, trust, and fallback. The model reveals that despite increasing amounts of evidence, an approach can struggle to attain institutional stability in conditions of disagreement and mistrust.

In other words, evidence does not necessarily translate into greater authority! A chemical approach will be effective not only because of its analysis, but also because of other factors such as trustworthiness and legitimacy.

The abstract of the presentation can be found here along with the Book of Abstracts.

I want to thank FLAD - Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento for supporting my participation through the Papers@USA Grant, and the Universidade de Évora (IHC - Grupo de História da Ciência, da Tecnologia e do Ambiente) for hosting this research. I would also like to thank the fantastic community at ISPC, in particular Eric Scerri, Guillermo Restrepo and Farzad Mahootian for their contributions to this important conversation.

jfcaetano