 Debates about these topics persisted under the heading of “the science wars”. Within the mainstreams of both science and philosophy, however, the foregoing views have generally been rejected as implausibly radical. This did not mean that no lessons were learned about the status of social factors in science and philosophy. These debates gave important insight into the role of cultural beliefs and biases in the creation of knowledge. What we shall pursue, however, in the remainder of this entry is how social epistemology has created a new branch, or sphere, of mainstream epistemology. According to this “extension” of epistemology, social factors can and do make major contributions to traditional, truth-oriented epistemology by introducing, broadening, and refining new problems, new techniques, and new methodologies. But such factors do not undercut the very notions of truth and falsity, knowledge and error.