A Flock of Dodos and the Battle Against the Zombies: Scientific Expertise and a Scientific Expert Epistemic Injustice

In this thesis, I define a unique kind of epistemic injustice that occurs due to epistemic pathologies that develop between scientific experts and non-experts. The epistemic pathologies I have in mind are pseudoscience and science denialism. I argue that these pathologies produce epistemically detrimental dissent—dissent that is counter-productive to scientific inquiry—and ‘downgrades’ the epistemic authority of scientific communities and their members. This downgrading results in epistemic harms where individual scientific experts are especially vulnerable. I sketch the ideal relationship between scientific experts and non-experts to use in my analysis of the epistemic pathologies. I explain the notion of scientific expertise by considering the kind of epistemic authority scientific experts have, where it can only come from a scientific consensus and collective knowledge produced within a particular community. This specific community—a scientific community—is diverse and has specific underlying mechanisms necessary to deliver the knowledge we hope to get from science. When scientific experts testify, they provide preemptive reasons for belief, where preemptive reasons for belief can only be provided when someone has epistemic authority. Preemptive reasons for belief are the kinds of reasons that replace our reasons, and this means that we no longer rely on our reasons for belief. From this, I show how the epistemic pathologies between scientific experts and non-experts are the result of the rejection of epistemic authority or the claim that the non-expert possesses the kind of epistemic authority that only scientific experts can have. The rejection of the epistemic authority of scientific experts ‘downgrades’ their epistemic authority, which is the key to understanding the epistemic injustice and distinct harms involved. I define the epistemic injustice as a scientific expert epistemic injustice which occurs when scientific experts are epistemically harmed due to the wrongful downgrading of their epistemic authority when they testify about matters relevant to their scientific expertise.