Abstract

The denial of epidemiological and virological knowledge in wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is commonly seen as a serious problem for science communication, medical policy making and – more practically – the acceptance of measures meant to limit the occurrences of infections with SARS-CoV-2 among certain social peer groups. Arguably, science denialism in general and medical denialism in particular also posit a challenge for philosophy of science. Science denialism is conceptually related to the problem of demarcation, i.e. the quest for the conceptual differentiation between science and pseudoscience (Christian, 2013; Pigliucci & Boudry, 2013) in that the denial of scientific evidence and the assertion of empirically unjustified or otherwise methodologically deficient claims characterize paradigmatic examples of pseudoscience (Christian, 2020b). In my talk I presents a novel approach, tailored to evaluate highly critical claims about results from epidemiological and virological research on COVID-19 with regard to their position in a spectrum ranging from well-justified methodological criticism in specific medical studies to sweeping general denial of academic medicine.

references

Christian, A. (2013). Wissenschaft und Pseudowissenschaft: Ein Beitrag zum Demarkationspropblem. Berlin: Peter Lang.

Christian, A. (2020b). Wissenschaft und Pseudowissenschaft: Zur Aktualität des Demarkationsproblems im Kontext der Leugnung medizinischen Wissens. In M. Jungert, A. Frewer, & E. Mayr (Eds.), Wissenschaftsreflexion: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven zwischen Philosophie und Praxis (pp. 315–350). Paderborn: Mentis.

Pigliucci, M., & Boudry, M. (Eds.). (2013). Philosophy of pseudoscience: reconsidering the demarcation problem. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

about the speaker

Alexander Christian is Assistant Director of the Duesseldorf Center for Logic and Philosophy of Science (DCLPS) and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Philosophy at Heinrich Heine University. He is responsible for the project Ethics of Science for Empirical Sciences (together with Julia Mirkin) as well as the project Science Denialism and Science Communication at the HHU Citizen´s University (together with Ina Gawel). In his current research, he is concerned with the ethics of CRISPR/Cas-based human germline editing and the denial of virological and epidemiological evidence. He has published on good scientific practice in biomedical research, the suppression and denial of medical evidence, and values in science. Recent publications include:

Christian, A. (2020). Gute wissenschaftliche Praxis. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Christian, A. (2020). Wissenschaft und Pseudowissenschaft: Zur Aktualität des Demarkationsproblems im Kontext der Leugnung medizinischen Wissens. In M. Jungert, A. Frewer, & E. Mayr (Eds.), Wissenschaftsreflexion: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven zwischen Philosophie und Praxis (pp. 315–350). Paderborn: Mentis.

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