Science communication in non-ideal contexts

Zou, Binjie (2025) Science communication in non-ideal contexts. Episteme. ISSN 1742-3600

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Abstract

In daily life, most of us lack the cognitive resources to make judgements on scientific matters by ourselves. Often, we reach our judgements by relying on testimony of others. This is captured by the concept of epistemic deference: one defers one’s belief on a matter to others’ testimony. When it comes to scientific matters, most of us don’t just defer to anyone’s testimony: one first identifies trustworthy informants on the matter and defers to their testimony only. Conventional literature on this topic is dominantly concerned with highly idealised contexts and falls silent on non-ideal ones. I show this with a case study of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in China. In this paper, I make a preliminary attempt to provide alternative guidance for problematic environments with politicized scientific institutions and heavy information censorship such as China. I argue that the ‘dissent scouting’ requirement is a helpful addition in epistemically problematic environments.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2025 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) Q Science > Q Science (General)
Date Deposited:	08 Aug 2025 08:57
Last Modified:	15 Aug 2025 09:39
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/129089

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