TY - JOUR

T1 - Second-Order Assessment of Scientific Expert Claims and Sharing Epistemic Burdens in Science Communication

AU - Barimah, George Kwasi

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s), 2022.

PY - 2024/6/1

Y1 - 2024/6/1

N2 - When laypersons are presented with scientific information which seeks to modify their way of life, they are expected to believe, suspend belief, or reject it. Second-order assessment of scientific experts helps laypersons to make an informed decision in such situations. This is an assessment of the trustworthiness of the person making the scientific claim. In this paper I challenge the optimistic view of Anderson (2011), regarding the ease with which laypersons can perform second-order assessment of experts, by pointing out some of the obstacles that may prevent laypersons from arriving at an informed decision through this means. By showing that laypersons cannot easily perform second-order assessment of experts, I make a case for sharing epistemic burdens in science communication by using Lackey's (2006) concept of dualism in the epistemology of testimony and Irzik and Kurtulmus’ (2019) work on public epistemic trust in science, as a guide. I invite experts to bear a greater share of the epistemic burden when communicating with laypersons because of their privileged epistemic condition vis-à-vis laypersons

AB - When laypersons are presented with scientific information which seeks to modify their way of life, they are expected to believe, suspend belief, or reject it. Second-order assessment of scientific experts helps laypersons to make an informed decision in such situations. This is an assessment of the trustworthiness of the person making the scientific claim. In this paper I challenge the optimistic view of Anderson (2011), regarding the ease with which laypersons can perform second-order assessment of experts, by pointing out some of the obstacles that may prevent laypersons from arriving at an informed decision through this means. By showing that laypersons cannot easily perform second-order assessment of experts, I make a case for sharing epistemic burdens in science communication by using Lackey's (2006) concept of dualism in the epistemology of testimony and Irzik and Kurtulmus’ (2019) work on public epistemic trust in science, as a guide. I invite experts to bear a greater share of the epistemic burden when communicating with laypersons because of their privileged epistemic condition vis-à-vis laypersons

KW - laypersons

KW - science communication

KW - scientific experts

KW - Second-order assessments

KW - sharing epistemic burdens

KW - trustworthiness

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85207811447&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1017/epi.2022.11

DO - 10.1017/epi.2022.11

M3 - Article

VL - 21

SP - 461

EP - 477

JO - Episteme

JF - Episteme

SN - 1742-3600

IS - 2

ER -