The term "Good Justification Practice" (GJP) is a neologism that describes the scientific process of vetting the quality of a research rationale.
GJP is a scientific practice in the sense that it is practiced by scientists. Needless to say, there are many different, perhaps even equally legitimate but distinct, practices of justifying a research rationale. Therefore, there is not a single process that describes "vetting the quality of a research rationale" and uniquely counts as "good". Thus, GJP is a context-sensitive notion and what should be normatively expected form scientists when vetting the evidence of a research rationale may heavily depend on context, including the academic field of study, the topic, other disciplines involved, the maturity of a hypothesis and many other aspects. GJP is a social endevour that is practiced by scientists but, by definition, cannot be performed by a single scientist in isolation. No observation of a single scientists may ever deserve to be legitimately called "objective" and "scientific". The core constituents of "science", i.e. "falsification", "replication", "reliability", etc. can simply not be established in an epistemically sound and "scientific" way without reliance on "judgments", "observations", "data", "evidence", etc. of other scientists, where "scientist" refers to someone who uses the "scientific method" properly (not to someone who simply happen to work in academia or elsewhere with a job description that mentions "science"). Vetting the evidence of a research rationale is a social practice. As such it can be empirically studied, but also analytically scrutinized, as any social practice (cf. "Practical Turn" in the Philosophy of Science).
Here we are going to describe aparticular social practice that is part of GJP: Vetting the quality of a research rationale in drug development. The paradigmatic example for GJP in this context is the decision-making process that underlies the "clinical translation" from "exploratory" phase 1 and 2 studies to "confirmatory" phase 3 clinical trials.
As most concepts under scientific scrutinity, GJP of drug development (phase 1>>2>>3) is to complex to be studied directly and realiter. The first step of describing what GJP is and what it is not is to design a model of GJP that is a simplification but an instructive one. The second step ist to always remind oneself (and you, the reader) that it is a model that is designed to be an instructive simplification. We do not know everything about GJP, that's why it's interesting!
- Model of GJP for drug development (phase 1>>2>>3)