The most ominous and least defensible aspect of Tiberius's first years as emperor was the growth of the practice called "delation".
After discussing three case studies about objectivity in scientific practice (from economics, social science and medicine) as well as a radical alternative to the traditional conceptions of objectivity, instrumentalism, we draw some conclusions about what aspects of objectivity remain defensible and desirable in the light of the difficulties we have discussed.
A two-step methodology first estimates the number of trips evacuating the region, thereby capturing behavioral aspects in a scientifically defensible manner based on survey results, and second, assigns these trips to a regional highway network, using geographic information systems software, thereby making the methodology transferable to other locations.
Besides the close connection with empirical adequacy (see Sect. 3), Sober (1988) has shown that parsimony is only a defensible inference condition when it captures salient aspects of the phenomena being inferred about, which is in turn only evaluable if the relevant well-confirmed generalizations describing them are available.
Is every last aspect of Britain's social contract defensible?
An economic world in which environmental responsibility was rewarded, was assumed to be a routine aspect of practice that was both ethically defensible and profitable, would have a very different flavour from what we have generally seen for most of the last couple of centuries.
And there were sweet and human aspects, but also much, much bickering and legally defensible grounds for divorce or, quite possibly, a bijou gun rampage.
The general view is that no ware are defensible.
"Although many key U.S. positions were defensible, especially that certain prisoners might not qualify for P.O.W. status," Mr. Roberts concluded, "aspects of U.S. policy and procedures were very poorly presented, and in some cases did not appear well thought out".
