Katherine Dormandy
University of Innsbruck
There is a surge of belief in conspiracy theories and other anti-expert accounts of events. A growing academic literature seeks to explain this in psychological terms, for example as driven by groupthink, anxiety, or a desire for certainty. What contributors to this literature tend to ignore, however, is that belief in expert accounts, often considered “mainstream,” can be similarly epistemically suspect. This talk explores a form of epistemically problematic belief in expert accounts that can arise among scientists themselves (including philosophers), which I call science fundamentalism. Science fundamentalism, it turns out, strongly resembles belief in anti-expert accounts such as conspiracy theories. One take-home message is that, if we are not careful, the science-friendly among us may focus so much on criticizing those who believe anti-expert accounts that we fail to notice these problematic tendencies among believers of expert accounts. If science is really to be an epistemic gold standard, we must take its emphasis on self-criticism very seriously indeed.
Time: September 7th, 14:00 – 15:30
Location: E.002
SOPhiA 2026 