Analysis of the content of medical journals enables us to frame the shifting scientific, material, ethical, and epistemic underpinnings of medicine over time, including today. Leveraging a dataset comprised of nearly half-a-million articles published in the () and the () over the past 200 years, we (a) highlight the evolution of medical language, and its manifestations in shifts of usage and meaning, (b) examine traces of the medical profession's changing self-identity over time, reflected in its shifting ethical and epistemic underpinnings, (c) analyze medicine's material underpinnings and how we describe where medicine is practiced, (d) demonstrate how the occurrence of specific disease terms within the journals reflects the changing burden of disease itself over time and the interests and perspectives of authors and editors, and (e) showcase how this dataset can allow us to explore the evolution of modern medical ideas and further our understanding of how modern disease concepts came to be, and of the retained legacies of prior embedded values.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.72602 | DOI Listing |
Glob Health Res Policy
January 2025
California State University, Long Beach, USA.
There has been a rising call to decolonize global health so that it more fully includes the concerns, knowledge, and research from people all over the world. This endeavor can only succeed, we argue, if we also recognize that much of established global health doctrine is rooted in Euro-American beliefs, values, and practice rather than being culturally neutral. This paper examines the cultural biases of child feeding recommendations as a case in point.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Eng Ethics
January 2025
Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
While there are many public concerns about the impact of AI on truth and knowledge, especially when it comes to the widespread use of LLMs, there is not much systematic philosophical analysis of these problems and their political implications. This paper aims to assist this effort by providing an overview of some truth-related risks in which LLMs may play a role, including risks concerning hallucination and misinformation, epistemic agency and epistemic bubbles, bullshit and relativism, and epistemic anachronism and epistemic incest, and by offering arguments for why these problems are not only epistemic issues but also raise problems for democracy since they undermine its epistemic basis- especially if we assume democracy theories that go beyond minimalist views. I end with a short reflection on what can be done about these political-epistemic risks, pointing to education as one of the sites for change.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Qual Stud Health Well-being
December 2025
General Practice Research Unit, Department of Public Health and Nursing, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway.
Purpose: There is solid evidence of the impact of life experiences on health. Yet, knowledge of how general practitioners (GPs) relate to patients' stories of such experiences is sparse. This study explored GPs' reflections and experiences concerning managing potentially impactful patient stories.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhilos Stud
February 2024
Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands.
It is well-established that algorithms can be instruments of injustice. It is less frequently discussed, however, how current modes of AI deployment often make the very discovery of injustice difficult, if not impossible. In this article, we focus on the effects of algorithmic profiling on epistemic agency.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Hum Behav
January 2025
Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Science is crucial for evidence-based decision-making. Public trust in scientists can help decision makers act on the basis of the best available evidence, especially during crises. However, in recent years the epistemic authority of science has been challenged, causing concerns about low public trust in scientists.
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