This paper assesses the epistemic challenges of giving nutrition advice to elite athletes in light of recent philosophical discussion concerning evidence-based practice. Our trust in experts largely depends on the assumption that their advice is based on reliable evidence. In many fields, the evaluation of the reliability of evidence is made on the basis of standards that originate from evidence-based medicine. I show that at the Olympic or professional level, implementing nutritional plans in real-world competitions requires contextualization of knowledge in (...) a way that contravenes the tenets of evidence-based thinking. Nutrition experts need to be able to combine and apply evidence from multiple sources, including the previous successes and failures of particular athletes. I argue that in this sense, the practice of elite sport nutrition embodies casuistic reasoning. (shrink)

“Excited Delirium Syndrome” (ExDS) is a controversial diagnosis. The supposed syndrome is sometimes considered to be a potential cause of death. However, it has been argued that its sole purpose is to cover up excessive police violence because it is mainly used to explain deaths of individuals in custody. In this paper, we examine the epistemic conditions giving rise to the controversial diagnosis by discussing the relation between causal hypotheses, evidence, and data in forensic medicine. We argue that the practitioners’ (...) social context affects causal inquiry through background assumptions that enter inquiry at multiple stages. This analysis serves to better understand the wide usage of the controversial diagnosis of ExDS. (shrink)

Calls for evidence-based approaches to COVID-19 have sparked up discussions on the use of evidence for policy. In this note, we expand these discussions: while the debate has mostly focused on the types of evidence to be used for policy, we argue that the assessment of judgments involved in data practices and evidence production should play a central role in evaluating policy.

The trustworthiness of nutrition science has been questioned recently. According to the critics, the food industry has corrupted scientists in the field. I argue that the worries that commercialization threatens the epistemic trustworthiness of nutrition science are indeed well-founded. However, it is problematic that the discussion has revolved around how funding can threaten the integrity of researchers and the methodological quality of the studies. By extending Wilholt’s :233–253, 2013) account of epistemic trustworthiness, I argue that when assessing the epistemic trustworthiness (...) of research that forms the basis for different health policy measures, it is necessary to evaluate research at the macro-level and whether agenda setting advances the goals that are assigned to the field. The prevalence of commercial funding becomes problematic if it leads to a situation where the body of available evidence that is used for making health policy decisions does not reflect the shared sense of what epistemic and non-epistemic goals of the inquiry are important. (shrink)

Journal peer review is an essential part of academic practices.1 But how well does it serve its purpose and which factors have an influence on how close it comes to achieving its aims? Peer review has been widely discussed in empirical literature: it has been studied both qualitatively and quantitatively (e.g., by Cole, who in his 1992 book uses data on how grant applications submitted to National Science Foundation were...

This article is an introduction to the special issue on philosophy of medicine. Philosophy of medicine is a field that has flourished in the last couple of decades and has become increasingly institutionalized. The introduction begins with a brief overview of some of the most central recent developments in the field. It then describes the six articles that comprise this issue.

Volume 33, Issue 3, April 2020, Page 474-477.

Hospital acquired infections (HAIs) are a major threat to patient safety. This paper addresses the following question: given what is known about the causes of and possible interventions on HAIs, to whom or what should the moral responsibility for preventing these infections be attributed? First, we show how generating robust evidence on the effectiveness of preventive hygiene measures is a complex endeavour and review the existing evidence on the causes of HAIs. Second, we demonstrate that the existing literature on the (...) ethical aspects of infection control has focused on responsibility at the individual-level. Thirdly, we argue that these accounts do not accommodate systemic factors relevant for HAI prevention. We show that the notion of collective responsibility is useful for making understandable how systemic factors, such as employment conditions in hospitals, are both causally and ethically relevant in infection control. (shrink)

The purpose of this chapter is to describe what we see as several important new directions for philosophy of medicine. This recent work (i) takes existing discussions in important and promising new directions, (ii) identifies areas that have not received sufficient and deserved attention to date, and/or (iii) brings together philosophy of medicine with other areas of philosophy (including bioethics, philosophy of psychiatry, and social epistemology). To this end, the next part focuses on what we call the “epistemological turn” in (...) recent work in the philosophy of medicine; the third part addresses new developments in medical research that raise interesting questions for philosophy of medicine; the fourth part is a discussion of philosophical issues within the practice of diagnosis; the fifth part focuses on the recent developments in psychiatric classification and scientific and ethical issues therein, and the final part focuses on the objectivity of medical research. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the objectivity of science in the context of commercialized research. Objectivity has traditionally been associated with the behavior of individual scientists and their willingness and ability to base their reasoning on data and logic. By introducing some examples of problematic practices in current research, I show that this view is insufficient. A view that I call the Social View on objectivity succeeds better in accommodating the way in which commercialization affects research.

The conference “The Special Role of Science in Liberal Democracy” was held November 21–22 2013 at the University of Copenhagen. The conference was organized by Julie Zahle and Klemens Kappel as part of a research project on this topic, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.There were six plenary speakers: James Bohman, Heather Douglas, Harold Kincaid, Martin Kusch, Eleonora Montuschi and Erik Weber. The other speakers at the conference were: Manuela Fernandez-Pinto, Anton Froeyman, Heidi Grasswick, Rico Hauswald, Oier Imaz, Kristen Intemann, (...) class='Hi'>Saana Jukola, Klemens Kappel, Arnon Keren, Loren King (Wilfrid Laurier Un.. (shrink)