The Renegade Subjectivist: José Bernardo’s Reference Bayesianism

Abstract

This article motivates and discusses José Bernardo's attempt to reconcile the subjective Bayesian framework with a need for objective scientific inference, leading to a special kind of objective Bayesianism, namely reference Bayesianism. We elucidate principal ideas and foundational implications of Bernardo's approach, with particular attention to the classical problem of testing a precise null hypothesis against an unspecified alternative.