(1) The UMass Philosophy Department is pleased to present Miriam Solomon from Temple University who will be speaking on The Historical Epistemology of Evidence-Based Medicine Thursday, 10/6/2016 at 4:00 PM in the Integrative Learning Center S140. Please join us! All are welcome to attend.

Abstract: What evidence determines a medical consensus? What methods generate good evidence? Does it matter who conducts the experiments? How are patients impacted? Miriam Solomon explores these questions and how evidence-based medicine has superseded other accounts of objectivity in medicine resulting in responses from the areas of translational medicine, personalized medicine, and precision medicine.

(2) Prof. Solomon will be giving a colloquium talk, sponsored by the Philosophy Department, titled “Agnotology, hermeneutical injustice, and scientific pluralism: the case of Asperger Syndrome”, on Friday, Oct. 7, at 3:30 PM in Bartlett 206.

Abstract: Agnotology and hermeneutical injustice are among the most fruitful new ideas in social epistemology. When the ideas were first presented, they came with examples that have become canonical: lost knowledge of abortifacients and climate change denial (for agnotology) and postpartum depression, sexual harassment and sexual identity (for hermeneutical injustice). These examples have been useful for introducing the concepts of agnotology and hermeneutical injustice, but they oversimplify the epistemology. The purpose of this paper is to explore a case—the diagnostic category of Asperger Syndrome , embraced in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and then jettisoned in 2013—in which it is essential to acknowledge the more complex epistemic situation.