Employed Method

What is employed method? How should it be defined?

Employed method is one of the key concepts in current scientonomy. Thus, its proper definition is of great importance.

In the scientonomic context, this term was first used by Hakob Barseghyan in 2015.

Scientonomic History

Acceptance Record

Here is the complete acceptance record of this question (it includes all the instances when the question was accepted as a legitimate topic for discussion by a community):

Community	Accepted From	Acceptance Indicators	Still Accepted	Accepted Until	Rejection Indicators
Scientonomy	1 January 2016	This is when the first scientonomic definition of the term, Employed Method (Barseghyan-2015), became accepted, which is an indication that the topic itself is legitimate.	No	1 September 2019	The usage of the term as referring to an epistemic stance was deprecated after the acceptance of the term norm employment.

All Theories

The following theories have attempted to answer this question:

Theory	Formulation	Formulated In
Employed Method (Barseghyan-2015)	A method is said to be employed at time t if, at time t, theories become accepted only when their acceptance is permitted by the method.	2015
Employed Method (Patton-Overgaard-Barseghyan-2017)	A method is said to be employed if its requirements constitute the actual expectations of the community.	2017

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Accepted Theories

The following theories have been accepted as answers to this question:

Community	Theory	Accepted From	Accepted Until
Scientonomy	Employed Method (Barseghyan-2015)	1 January 2016	28 November 2017
Scientonomy	Employed Method (Patton-Overgaard-Barseghyan-2017)	29 November 2017	1 September 2019

Suggested Modifications

Here is a list of modifications concerning this topic:

Modification	Community	Date Suggested	Summary	Verdict	Verdict Rationale	Date Assessed
Sciento-2017-0004	Scientonomy	5 February 2017	Accept the reformulation of the second law which explicitly links theory assessment outcomes with theory acceptance/unacceptance. To that end, accept three new definitions for theory assessment outcomes (satisfied, not satisfied, and inconclusive) as well as the new ontology of theory assessment outcomes, and accept the new definition of employed method.	Accepted	The new formulation of the law became accepted as a result of a communal consensus. It was noted by the commentators that the "modification provides a much improved formulation of the 2nd law".c1 It was noted that the new formulation "decouples the method from acceptance outcomes" and "is needed to avoid a contradiction for cases where assessment by the method is inconclusive, but the theory is accepted".c2 It was agreed that the new law eliminates two of the major flaws of the previous formulation. First, it clearly states the relations between different assessment outcomes and the actual theory acceptance/unacceptance. Second, it clearly forbids certain conceivable courses of events and, thus, doesn't sounds like a tautology.c3	29 November 2017

Current View

Currently, a method is said to be employed at time t if, at time t, theories become accepted only when their acceptance is permitted by the method. 1p. 54

There is currently no accepted answer to this question.

Related Topics

This question is a subquestion of Method Employment.

This topic is also related to the following topic(s):

• Mechanism of Method Employment
• Theory Acceptance
• Method