Search Results (50)

Medical gaslighting has emerged as a widely used term describing situations in which patients or caregivers perceive that their symptoms are minimized, dismissed, or prematurely attributed to psychological causes without adequate clinical evaluation. Although the term has gained prominence through patient narratives and public discourse, many of the underlying mechanisms correspond to well-established contributors to diagnostic error, including cognitive bias, communication failures, and diagnostic overshadowing. In pediatric care, these challenges are amplified because clinicians frequently rely upon caregiver-mediated histories while children may have a limited ability to communicate evolving symptoms. This narrative review examines medical gaslighting through the framework of diagnostic safety and explores how epistemic injustice, cognitive bias, and failures in information gathering and interpretation may contribute to delayed, missed, or incorrect diagnoses. Relevant literature was identified through a structured narrative review of publications addressing diagnostic error, cognitive bias, epistemic injustice, diagnostic safety, and pediatric communication. The literature was synthesized conceptually to develop an integrated framework linking patient experiences with established diagnostic safety models. We propose that reframing medical gaslighting as a diagnostic safety vulnerability rather than an allegation of clinician misconduct provides opportunities for measurable quality improvement through enhanced communication, structured reassessment, cognitive debiasing strategies, and integration of patient- and caregiver-reported information into diagnostic reasoning. Full article

Climate change risks deepening social inequalities and poses new challenges for social policy. Drawing on climate justice, this article examines how climate impacts and policies are experienced by people living in poverty situations and by social workers, how their knowledge by experience and professional practice circulates in local climate policy-making, and how social workers understand their role in promoting climate justice. Based on qualitative interviews with people experiencing poverty, social workers, and local policy officials in three Flemish municipalities, the study shows that vulnerable groups experience climate injustice as a combination of disadvantages, misrecognition, and limited influence over policy agendas. While experiential knowledge is widely acknowledged as valuable, it remains weakly integrated in policy processes and is often channelled indirectly or introduced only after key decisions, reflecting persistent epistemic marginalisation. These patterns can be explained by the interaction of dominant policy framings, unequal power relations, and institutional arrangements that privilege technical expertise. Together, these dynamics highlight both the strategic importance and structural constraints of social work as a mediating actor and point to the need for institutional arrangements that enable earlier, more substantive, and more direct integration of experiential or practice-based knowledge. Full article

Urban green infrastructure (GI) is widely promoted for cooling, stormwater regulation, biodiversity support, and human health benefits; however, these benefits remain unevenly distributed across communities with different socio-economic status. Machine learning (ML) is increasingly used in GI planning and design through high-resolution mapping and demand and exposure modelling, enabling planners and landscape architects to explore scenarios and assess alternative solutions based on the benefits generated. However, ML risks generating or perpetuating spatial injustice through biassed training, opaque optimisation priorities, and epistemic exclusion of Indigenous and local knowledge when models are not developed and applied transparently and collaboratively. This perspective discusses recent GI and ML trends and debates to: (i) clarify how ML can support equity-oriented GI planning; (ii) identify technical and socio-economic risks; and (iii) outline ethical and governance pathways supportive of legitimate and accountable GI planning. We argue that ML should be treated as a component of socio-technical governance rather than a neutral technical tool and therefore should be applied through collaborative design and periodic re-evaluations. Full article

This study examines the linguistic landscape of northern Lesbos at the turn of the 20th century through the lens of historical sociolinguistics. The research focuses on the scientific intersection and subsequent controversy between the native scholar Spyridon Anagnostou and the renowned German linguist Paul Kretschmer. Methodologically, the study employs archival research, biographical analysis, and a comparative study of Anagnostou’s original manuscripts held at the Research Center for Modern Greek Dialects (KENDI) against published editions. The results include the identification of 36 unpublished fairy tales and an analysis of phonetic and morphological phenomena, such as kappacism and rare feminine endings, which are largely absent from contemporary records. Comparative analysis further reveals significant “dialectal normalization” and ideological interventions in both scholars’ transcriptions. We conclude that Anagnostou’s manuscripts serve as a vital “linguistic fossil” and a proxy for unrecorded spontaneous speech, recovering diachronic depth lost to dialect leveling. Ultimately, the study highlights the importance of marginal local scholarship in reconstructing a “language history from below” and addressing epistemic injustice and the ideology of transcriptions in the history of dialectology. Full article

In the era of big data, the Law of Large Numbers is often treated as an absolute guarantee that increasing sample size (N) leads to a more accurate representation of truth. However, this study challenges this paradigm by demonstrating that in social systems characterized by conformity pressure and systemic bias, the maximization of N paradoxically triggers a structural shift in the selection and filtration of information. Using a sociophysical framework based on statistical mechanics and opinion dynamics, we identify a critical threshold—the “Signal Cliff”—where the diversity of information plummets and minority signals are irreversibly discarded as statistical noise. By executing large-scale simulations up to $N={10}^{10}$ via macro-dynamic approximations, we observe a phase transition from a stochastic phase of informational diversity to a deterministic phase. This collapse of Shannon entropy serves as a mathematical demonstration of “Epistemic Injustice,” where the sheer scale of data acts as a mechanism for silencing minority perspectives. We propose “Informational Health Diagnostics” as a necessary framework for evaluating the integrity of decision-making processes in digital public opinion and democratic elections. This approach provides a vital benchmark for distinguishing between a healthy consensus and a distorted convergence, ensuring robust information judgment in increasingly complex data-driven environments. Full article

This document proposes integrative principles that articulate fully established and validated approaches—such as ethnobotany, One Health, circular bioeconomy, TRL, and Access and Benefit-Sharing—into an integrative model that shifts bioprospecting from a purely extractive model centered on the pharmaceutical industry to a more human-centered, circular, and biocultural paradigm. Through a historical analysis of the generations of bioprospecting (from 0.0 to 4.0), this work theorizes that technological advancement has paradoxically contributed to epistemic injustice. The proposed 5.0 framework integrates social validation tools and introduces the Epistemic Gap Score (EGS) as an exploratory heuristic tool that allows for visualizing the divergence or cohesion of bioprospecting a plant resource and the recognition of ancestral knowledge in a more humanistic manner. Through preliminary proof-of-concept, this study demonstrates the practical utility of the EGS for prioritizing plant species for bioprospecting, ensuring that the valorization of underutilized plant resources produces a tangible “epistemic return” and thereby promotes community autonomy and multisectoral benefits across the food, energy, and health systems. By focusing on zero-waste cycles and social reciprocity, Bioprospecting 5.0 reestablishes the role of plant resources as essential components of sustainable global development and ethical scientific practice. Full article

The Abortion & Religion study has collected over 200 personal narratives of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim women having abortions in the United States in the midst of an increasingly hostile and stigmatizing sociopolitical climate. Rooted in feminist theoretical claims about the epistemological value of situated knowledge, the Abortion & Religion study seeks to center the voices and experiences of people having abortions as a corrective to dominant negative attitudes about abortion in US cultural spaces. In this paper, three of the principal investigators engage in a methodological analysis of the study design using Tone Stangland Kaufman’s five categories of reflexivity to demonstrate how our epistemic insight as researchers who have also had abortions is a critical aspect of the epistemological insight that is foundational to the Abortion & Religion study. Since one of the goals of the study is to address the fictive “abortion imaginary” that shapes how people in the US think and talk about abortion, this methodological discussion of the study’s design demonstrates the epistemological value of centering the experiences of people who have had abortions as a corrective to the abstract, disembodied knowledge that shapes the epistemic injustice of the abortion imaginary. Full article

Metaphilosophy is often understood as an inquiry into the nature, goals, and methods of philosophy and is sometimes construed as an epistemology of philosophy. Moral questions concerning philosophical practice, however, are no less important and constitute a distinctive field that may be called ‘moral philosophy of philosophy’ or ‘moral metaphilosophy’. This article maps the field by identifying, addressing, and classifying various forms of moral transgressions in, against, and through philosophy. Hermeneutical rational injustices include the devaluation, discrediting, misrepresentation, and non-objective critique within philosophical discourse. Violations within academic philosophical practice encompass such phenomena as intellectual theft; gatekeeping; academic cliques; scholarly neglect; discrimination and favoritism; prestige bias, excellence bias, and other forms of bias oriented toward perceived institutional, professional, evaluative, or symbolic “topness”; unfair peer review; problematic evaluation criteria and rankings; abuses of power; unjust distributions of resources; and the inversion of virtues into vices. External injustices and transgressions concern the public discrediting of philosophy, violence against philosophers, the problematic relation between philosophy and politics, and the impact of extra-academic vices on philosophy. Bringing these issues to light, thereby underscoring the importance of moral metaphilosophy, can help protect philosophers from various forms of harm inflicted by themselves, colleagues, institutions, and other actors across academic and non-academic contexts, thereby rendering philosophical practice fairer and more worthwhile. Full article

This article examines how mental health discourse functions as a credibility technology in Portuguese news reporting on sexual violence between 2014 and 2023. Using Critical Thematic Analysis and grounded in feminist media studies and critical mental health scholarship, the article analyses a qualitative corpus of reporting-oriented news items published in Público and Observador. The dataset consists of systematically selected articles in which mental health discourse functions as a substantive explanatory frame for sexual violence. Psychiatric, psychological, therapeutic, and metaphorical registers grant, withhold, or condition believability, allocating responsibility and organising care through norms of stability, risk, and expert verification. The analysis identified eight recurring discursive clusters through which mental health language stabilises truth claims: it can legitimise institutional authority, regulate survivors’ credibility, and explain perpetration through pathologising tropes, while often displacing structural accounts of gendered violence and reproducing ableist stigma. By specifying the credibility work performed by mental health discourse, the article contributes to debates on trauma-informed, survivor-centred, and anti-ableist reporting and proposes a transferable framework for analysing the sexual violence–mental health nexus in journalism. Full article

This critical review interrogates how contemporary diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) reforms in STEM education engage the deeper project of epistemic decolonisation. Framed by critical race theory, feminist science studies, and decolonial scholarship, it asks whether inclusion agendas move beyond representational expansion to disrupt Eurocentric hierarchies of legitimacy; which pedagogical and curricular innovations enact pluriversal STEM; and what institutional conditions constrain transformation. A multi-stage search of Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC, Google Scholar, and grey literature (2010–2025) yielded 152 records; PRISMA-informed screening produced 80 sources for interpretive thematic synthesis. Findings show that DEI initiatives have increased access and participation, yet typically preserve assumptions of scientific neutrality and universalism, leaving epistemic injustice largely intact. In contrast, decolonial innovations, such as two-eyed seeing, culturally sustaining and place-based pedagogies, history, philosophy, and sociology of science integration, and project-based learning grounded in indigenous knowledge systems, reposition learners and communities as co-producers of knowledge and reframe science as situated and relational. However, these practices remain peripheral due to assessment regimes, accreditation pressures, funding and tenure incentives, disciplinary gatekeeping, and limited educator preparation. The review argues that meaningful reform requires structural reconfiguration of curricula, evaluation, and institutional reward systems to recognise multiple epistemologies, cultivate ethical relationality, and enable sustained community partnership. Full article

This qualitative research examines the systemic dynamics of the abuse of consecrated women in the Loyola Community, analyzing the allegations against the influential sacral artist and theologian Marko Ivan Rupnik within broader scholarly debates on abuse in Catholic ecclesial contexts. Drawing on survivor testimonies, the study explores how clericalism and forms of spiritual authority were instrumentalized within this specific community to produce a sequential chain of harm encompassing sexual, psychological, and spiritual violence against consecrated women. The analysis demonstrates how vulnerance—the systemic capacity to produce harm—is engineered through institutional configurations and theological distortions. This condition normalizes exploitation and silences survivors over extended periods. Moving beyond individual pathology, the study critically examines systemic power asymmetries, hermeneutical injustice, and forms of institutional betrayal that emerge when the protection of religious reputation takes precedence over accountability and human dignity. Finally, the article highlights the significance of public testimony and digital movements such as #NunsToo in disrupting cultures of silence and contributing to the restoration of epistemic justice for survivors. Full article

Background/Objectives: Autism research has often interpreted autistic sociality through neurotypical norms, limiting ecological accounts of autistic meaning-making and context-sensitive support needs. Social virtual environments (SVEs), such as VRChat, allow modulation of sensory exposure, social distance, and participation pace, potentially enabling autistic-led interaction with greater autonomy and predictability. This study examined how autistic young adults co-construct meanings around social interaction, identity, and self-regulation in peer-led discussions within an SVE; identified context-sensitive processes relevant to well-being; and evaluated the feasibility and acceptability of SVEs as a participatory research setting. Methods: Sixteen autistic young adults (18–38 years; DSM-5-TR, Level 1) participated in nine remote sessions conducted in VRChat, coordinated via a co-designed Discord server. The peer-led discussions were audio-video recorded, transcribed, and anonymized. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, combining inductive session-level coding, cross-session thematic clustering, and participatory refinement with community partners. Results: Autistic experience was framed as a context-dependent negotiation of interpretive risk, interactional workload, masking-related energy costs, and epistemic injustice, alongside future-oriented accounts emphasizing access, dignity, and systemic redesign. Observational memos documented multimodal participation, distributed peer facilitation, and accessibility-relevant sensitivities to environmental stability. Community partners reported positive experiences and supported the acceptability of private-world VRChat sessions. Conclusions: Peer-led discussions in an SVE can support ecologically grounded, participant-centered qualitative research, offering methodological opportunities to study autistic meaning-making under conditions that reduce demands and risks. Full article

In a context marked by polarization and diminished trust in nonviolent solutions, this article examines whether Christian political discernment can offer a viable response to the apparent inevitability of war. In light of Pope Francis’s critique of the applicability of just war reasoning amid today’s global arm’s race and advanced technology, this study investigates how Ignacio Ellacuría confronted the question of violence in El Salvador and reflects on its transnational relevance for Christian ethics in the face of contemporary conflicts. Through a close reading of Ellacuría’s philosophical and theological writings, informed by Xavier Zubiri’s philosophy, this article reconstructs the ambiguities and multiple meanings of violence that arise in situations of structural injustice and limit situations. Ellacuría’s commitment to the historical reality reveals his critique of the deficiencies of abstract or universal theories, including the appeal to legitimate defense, in favor of a praxis of discernment grounded in the lived experience of the poor. This study finds that Ellacuría locates the epistemic center of political judgment in the suffering of victims. This article concludes that Ellacuría’s provides an important contribution for renewing Christian political ethics in the 21st century by prioritizing the voices of those who suffer as the fundamental criterion for responding ethically to democratic crises and structural oppression. Full article

This study aims to understand how religious affective content in the digital realm influences epistemic authority, social imaginaries, and religious beliefs among young adults (individuals between 18 and 35) with a university education and who identify as Christian, Hindu, or Muslim in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Data indicate the growing role of digital platforms as epistemic sources for religious maintenance, while families, private sacred-text teachings, religious leaders, and the community continue to serve as primary sources. Cultural capital, such as higher education and social skills, does not necessarily make respondents psychologically or emotionally resilient to be able and effectively deal with moral distrust and hate speech on social media. In daily life individuals feel cross-pressured between their religious attitudes, and secular educational institutions and government agencies who promote liberal values while perceiving religion as a threat, despite not consistently adhering to those liberal values themselves. Hence, this experienced injustice in the city, enhanced by the negative framing of religion in digital media, may influence the social judgement of individuals and the processes of alienation, polarization and radicalization. Full article

This perspective paper examines the multifaceted cultural ecosystem services (CESs) provided by wild bees with particular attention to the spiritual, medicinal, and traditional knowledge-based dimensions associated with Afrotropical stingless bees. We integrate these insights within a biocultural framework, highlighting their relational values and arguing that the systematic omission of these cultural roles in pollinator research, policy and conservation constitutes a form of epistemic injustice. We also argue that the systematic recognition and documentation of these cultural roles are critical to advancing more inclusive and effective conservation frameworks. Based on a synthesis of field observations, photo-documentation, and literature review, we propose future research and policy directions aimed at embedding these cultural values more comprehensively within biocultural conservation strategies. Full article