Lysenko was a powerful Soviet pseudoscientist, whose theories cost millions of lives. He died 50 years ago, but his legacy is highly salient. Anti-science and ideology come together slowly, and UK pseudoscience has had unforeseen consequences. Pseudoscience must be challenged even when this has repercussions for those who speak up.

Many widely discussed historical and contemporary views in epistemology rely on conditions requiring that evidence be causally related to the event that is the subject of belief. Such ‘causal conditions’ have also appeared both in normative debates about when belief is rational and in metaphysical debates about the relationship between belief and credence. Drawing on this literature, our paper formulates and then carefully scrutinises a range of plausible causal conditions on rational belief. A series of counterexamples leads us to rule out, in turn, distinct attempts to formulate such a condition. We then devise a condition that withstands our test cases. Ironically, though, this condition is ill-suited to play the roles for which causal conditions on rational belief have been theorised in the first place. Our result casts doubt on whether epistemologists should devote further attention to causal conditions, whether on rational belief or on other epistemic states.

It is both unavoidable and rational to form beliefs on the basis of testimony. But whose testimony should I trust? To whom would it be rational to outsource my beliefs? In this paper, I explore the role (if any) that intellectual virtues might play in rational belief formation on the basis of testimony. I begin by considering Linda Zagzebski’s proposed intellectual virtue of being able to recognize reliable authority. I argue that this quality, which is surely an excellence, is better categorized as a skill than a virtue. Then I explore whether other intellectual virtues contribute to assessing the reliability of a testifier. I consider two options: the role of virtues in (1) directly assessing a testifier and (2) indirectly assessing a testifier. With respect to (1), I follow Neil Levy and argue that such assessment requires like expertise to the testifier as opposed to intellectual virtue. With respect to (2), I argue that intellectual virtues are helpful in performing indirect assessment and they enable us to avoid social structures that undermine our ability to perform this assessment. Given that we all must form beliefs on the basis of testimony, this role for intellectual virtues is of great importance.

This essay discusses the contours of what I call a new instrumental turn in Nigerian historical scholarship. It argues that the historical discipline in Nigeria is experiencing a new instrumental turn, which finds expression in several new features of academic history writing, teaching, and programming. Some aspects of this trend hearken back to the original instrumental history of the pioneers of Nigerian and African nationalist history; others represent something new, being responses to novel twenty-first-century anxieties and imperatives of nation-building, development, and the place of humanities knowledge in those aspirations. Unlike old conceptions of instrumentality, this new turn signals a more explicit agenda of problem-solving through historical research. It also entails a rather formulaic embrace of proposals for solutions to problems identified in or through historical research.

To what extent can intellectual humility be formalized? One natural idea links humility to open-mindedness, captured by a regularity principle: no coherent hypothesis should get probability zero. While debates over regularity often concern infinities, my objection is different. Regularity is feasible only for ideally rational, logically omniscient agents. Yet on a common view, humility involves appreciating our limitations—including our failure to be such agents. So whatever its merits for ideal cognition, regularity is a poor model for human humility. Indeed, taking it as such would itself be un-humble, by failing to appreciate our own epistemic limitations.

Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) in general, and Generative AI (GenAI) in particular, have brought about changes across the academy. In applied linguistics, a growing body of work is emerging dedicated to testing and evaluating the use of AI in a range of subfields, spanning language education, sociolinguistics, translation studies, corpus linguistics, and discourse studies, inter alia. This paper explores the impact of AI on applied linguistics, reflecting on the alignment of contemporary AI research with the epistemological, ontological, and ethical traditions of applied linguistics. Through this critical appraisal, we identify areas of misalignment regarding perspectives on knowing, being, and evaluating research practices. The question of alignment guides our discussion as we address the potential affordances of AI and GenAI for applied linguistics as well as some of the challenges that we face when employing AI and GenAI as part of applied linguistics research processes. The goal of this paper is to attempt to align perspectives in these disparate fields and forge a fruitful way ahead for further critical interrogation and integration of AI and GenAI into applied linguistics.

A paper exploring the epistemology of Edward Pusey’s work on Scripture.

Methods comprise a significant part of the knowledge engineers are taught and that they use in professional practice. However, methods have been largely neglected in discussions of the nature of engineering knowledge. In particular, methods prove to be hard to track down in the best-known and most influential typology of engineering knowledge, put forward by Walter G. Vincenti in his book What Engineers Know and How They Know It. This article discusses contemporary views of what engineering methods are and what they contain, how methods (fail to) fit into Vincenti’s analysis, and some characteristics of method knowledge. It argues that methods should be seen as a distinct type of engineering knowledge. While characterizing the knowledge that methods include can be done in different ways for different purposes, the core of method knowledge that does not fit into other categories is explicit ‘how-to’ knowledge of procedures, that draw on other types of knowledge.

This article argues that Hume’s epistemology changes in an important respect between the Treatise and the Enquiry: the degree to which these epistemologies are practical epistemologies. This article focuses on one particular aspect of this latter comparison, that is, Hume’s responses to skepticism in the Treatise and Enquiry. It argues that the Enquiry’s response to skepticism offers a practical epistemology that teaches us, in relatively concrete terms, how we can be wise. By contrast, the Treatise’s response to skepticism does not seem to share this aim, or at least realizes it to a diminished extent compared with its later counterpart.

In recent years, there have been increasing calls for the development and growth of the biosocial as a paradigm through which to tackle complex problems. The use of birth cohorts, mixed methods frameworks, and interdisciplinary work are common in biosocial research. However, these practices are also theoretically and practically complex due to epistemic, methodological, and academic challenges – particularly for early career researchers (ECRs) who face time constraints, funding limitations, and disciplinary expectations.

This paper draws on lessons from the experiences of ECRs in biosocial research by reflecting on theoretical heterogeneity, the necessity of translation and negotiation across disciplines and methodologies, and the practicalities of funding, collaboration, and dissemination. Throughout, the paper discusses strategies to overcome common challenges and provide suggestions for fellow ECRs and those interested in biosocial ECR training and development. The paper highlights the importance of strong networks with senior biosocial researchers and peers, the value of practical support, and the importance of formal and informal learning opportunities. The authors call for the enthusiasm for biosocial research to be matched with investment in the development and support for ECRs.

Which additional epistemic skills or attributes must a competent journalist possess in order to produce competent science journalism? I aim to answer this question by bringing together insights from journalism, science communication, and epistemology. In Section 2, I outline the Epistemic Challenge for Science Journalism. In Section 3, I present the dominant answer in the literature, the Knowledge-Based Solution, and argue against it. In Section 4, I propose an alternative, the Confirmation-Based Solution. In Section 5, I argue that this solution can address recent concerns regarding journalistic objectivity. Section 6 discusses my proposal in the context of epistemological debates about norms of assertion. Section 7 concludes.