Previous philosophical discussions of values in science have mainly been devoted to showing that non-epistemic values can have a legitimate influence on the evidential requirements for accepting a scientific claim. There is a lack of credible explanations of how the influence of such values can be – and usually is – adequately restricted so that science still provides us with sufficiently reliable information. The importance of this problem has increased due to the current onslaught of science denial. We show how it can be solved with decision-theoretical tools, the most important of which is the distinction between lowering and raising evidential requirements. Lowering the evidential requirements for treating a claim as scientifically established is usually inadvisable since it increases the risk of adopting badly supported – and therefore often incorrect – full beliefs. In such cases, a distinction should instead be drawn between the criteria for accepting a claim and those for acting as if it is true. In contrast, value-based raising of the evidential requirements for accepting a claim does not involve any risk of making the set of factual full beliefs less reliable. This type of value influence seems to have a considerable role in areas of science that have extensive practical applications. The influence of values in science may therefore be larger than what has often been assumed.

The profits collected by owners of companies are commonly taken to be a just and rightful compensation for the economic risks that they take. However, in the last two-and-a-half centuries, the risk-taking that follows with ownership has been drastically reduced as a consequence of legal and organizational changes, including incorporation, limited liability, and diversified investment. Investing money in companies is no longer per se a particularly risky activity. Therefore, the argument that profits are justified as a rightful reward for the investor’s risk-taking has lost its bite and should be laid to rest. Furthermore, limited liability should be reconsidered and possibly reformed since it encourages socially irresponsible risk-taking.

A gate is an object used to limit and control passage. Previous uses of the term “gate-keeping” as a metaphor align closely with the concrete functioning of a gate. The metaphor refers either to the exclusion of persons from something desirable or to limitations in the flow of information. These connotations make the gate-keeping metaphor unsuitable for strivings to improve the relation between science and the surrounding society. The term “fence-breaking” is much better suited to this purpose. It is strongly connected with a long tradition of popular defence of common lands. Like the common lands, science should be freely available to all. In particular, the fences around corporate science that prevent access to important information about public health, safety and the environment should be torn down.

Music was important in John Stuart Mill's life. He was an accomplished pianist and a talented improviser. His works include treatments of various philosophical aspects of music, including its metaphysics, its epistemology, the sources and nature of its value, and its aesthetics. Some of his ideas on musical aesthetics are still of interest. This applies to his distinction between those reactions to music that are based on associations with non-musical experiences and those that are based on properties of the music itself. It also applies to his concepts of poetic and oratorical modes of musical expression. In addition to his other achievements, he should be recognized as a philosopher of music.

Although John Stuart Mill provided no systematic account of equality, there is extensive textual evidence in his writings of an overarching egalitarian standpoint, which he applied consistently in a wide variety of contexts. Mill had a strong belief in the equal inborn capacities of all human beings. He was convinced that a more equal society could and should be realised, but it required a general moral improvement that would be a slow and gradual process. The major limitation on short-term egalitarian reforms was, in modern terminology, that they should not disrupt the incentives needed to keep the economy going.

A purely logical proof is offered of a statement that may be surprising to readers of this article in Think, namely the statement that this article has not been published in Think.