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Opacity and trust in institutions

Opacity and trust in institutions

Posted on 12 June 2023 by ,

A typical lament of those, like academics, who work in large institutions is that so many of the decisions and operations of institutional life are opaque. This is often expressed […]

What’s The Social Approach to Public Trust in Science?

What’s The Social Approach to Public Trust in Science?

Posted on 30 May 2022 by

In my previous post , I have argued that, while the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into stark relief the practical importance of public trust in science, the dominant, individualistic approach […]

What’s Wrong with the Individualistic Approach to Public Trust in Science?

What’s Wrong with the Individualistic Approach to Public Trust in Science?

Posted on 16 May 2022 by

While academics and commentators have been worrying about distrust of science for some time now, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into stark relief the full scale of the problem as […]

The Potential Pitfalls of Thinking for Yourself

The Potential Pitfalls of Thinking for Yourself

Posted on 24 January 2022 by

In the previous two posts (here and here) we’ve looked at how we should think of epistemic autonomy as well as why it is valuable. In this post we’ll examine […]

The Surprise of COVID Vaccine Hesitancy Among Health Care Professionals

The Surprise of COVID Vaccine Hesitancy Among Health Care Professionals

Posted on 26 July 2021 by

The COVID vaccines were the one big hope story for the dismal year of 2020. The first shipments arrived in December to a few high-income countries and rollout started immediately […]

Our warped geometry of attention and trust: The mutually exploitative relationship between anti-vaxxers and the far right is undermining public health

Our warped geometry of attention and trust: The mutually exploitative relationship between anti-vaxxers and the far right is undermining public health

Posted on 28 June 2021 by

Over the last half decade, I’ve been monitoring the discourse on Twitter about vaccines and immunization. For a while, this was one of the few polarized debates that wasn’t politically […]

Why are we so polarized, and how can we move forward? A perspective from social epistemology.

Why are we so polarized, and how can we move forward? A perspective from social epistemology.

Posted on 7 September 2020 by

Contemporary academic philosophy has recently taken a “social turn” regarding the way it thinks about knowledge and related issues.  Put differently, philosophy has turned away from the traditional ideal of […]

Which crisis of trust?

Which crisis of trust?

Posted on 24 February 2020 by

The UK Labour Party’s leadership contest is well underway after heavy defeat in the 2019 General Election. There is nothing close to consensus within the Party about why things went […]

TRUST and Trump: investigating sincerity and accuracy in discourse

TRUST and Trump: investigating sincerity and accuracy in discourse

Posted on 9 April 2018 by

When exploring discursive untruthfulness, modern American politics is an obvious example. Donald Trump’s presidency has been continuously criticised for his use of falsity, with the aim of promoting his own […]

How Empathy Inhibits Trust

How Empathy Inhibits Trust

Posted on 6 November 2017 by

In my previous blog post, “How empathy promotes trust,” I argued that empathy can furnish an important source of trust in other people’s testimony (testifying simply being the act of […]

How Empathy Promotes Trust

How Empathy Promotes Trust

Posted on 23 October 2017 by

In the aftermath of the Dallas shootings on July 7, 2016, Hillary Clinton said: “We need to try as best we can to walk in one another’s shoes, to imagine what […]