Bayesians and error statisticians have relied heavily upon examples from physics in developing their accounts of scientific inference. The present essay demonstrates it is possible to analyze H.B.D. Kettlewell's classic study of natural selection from Deborah Mayo's error statistical point of view (Mayo 1996). A comparison with a previous analysis of this episode from a Bayesian perspective (Rudge 1998) reveals that the error statistical account makes better sense of investigations such as Kettlewell's because it clarifies how core elements in the design of experiments are used to minimize erroneous inferences rather than dwelling on whether the strategies used are reasonable.

Most work done in philosophy of experiment has focused on experiments taken from the domain of physics. The present essay tests whether Allan Franklin’s (1984, 1986, 1989, 1990) philosophy of experiment developed in the context of high energy physics can be extended to include examples from evolutionary biology, such as H. B. D. Kettlewell’s (1935, 1956, 1958) famous studies of industrial melanism in the peppered moth, Biston betularia. The analysis demonstrates that many of the techniques used by evolutionary biologists exemplify the strategies Franklin lists, and identifies an additional strategy that can likewise be justified by appeal to Bayes’s Theorem.