Jacob Stegenga (University Lecturer in philosophy of science, Cambridge Univ. & Bordeaux IDEX Visiting Scholar), Medical Nihilism

Jacob Stegenga will be an IDEX Visiting Scholar in Thomas Pradeu’s group at ImmunoConcept from October 2018 to March 2019. More information here.

Jacob is a University Lecturer in philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge (Department of History and Philosophy of Science). His research focuses on methodological problems of medical research, conceptual questions in evolutionary biology, and fundamental topics in reasoning and rationality. Stegenga’s present work is culminating in a book titled Medical Nihilism (Oxford University Press, 2018), in which he argues that if we attend to the extent of bias in medical research, the thin theoretical basis of many interventions, the malleability of empirical methods in medicine, and if we employ our best inductive framework, then our confidence in medical interventions ought to be low. His research employs empirical findings, analysis, and formal methods to establish normative conclusions about science.

Before going to Cambridge, Stegenga taught at University of Utah and University of Victoria, and was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto. He received his PhD from the University of California San Diego.

Abstract

A presentation of the main epistemological argument in Medical Nihilism.