Rolfes, J. D. (2026) When Evidence Cannot Be Heard: Epistemic Injustice and the Institutional Failure of Evidence Uptake. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Miranda Fricker's account of epistemic injustice identifies two distinct wrongs done to knowers: testimonial injustice, in which a speaker receives less credibility than their evidence warrants, and hermeneutical injustice, in which a gap in collective interpretive resources disadvantages those whose experience falls outside the available conceptual vocabulary. Both forms of injustice have received extensive philosophical treatment at the level of individual interpersonal exchange. This paper argues that testimonial and hermeneutical injustice acquire a distinctive institutional form when they operate through the authority structures of scientific and classificatory practice. Two cases anchor the analysis. The first is the institutional reception of Ignaz Semmelweis's evidence that physician hand hygiene reduces childbed fever mortality: a case in which the uptake of strong evidence was shaped by professional hierarchy, theoretical conservatism, and institutional authority. The second is the politics of disease classification in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), in which classification systems help determine which forms of suffering become institutionally legible, clinically actionable, and researchable. Together, the cases demonstrate that epistemic injustice in science is not primarily a matter of individual prejudice but of institutional authority structures that produce and reproduce credibility deficits and hermeneutical gaps at scale. The present work is the second in a compendium of three independent publications; it develops the concept of structural epistemic injustice as a specification of Fricker's framework at the level of institutional authority, building on the structural framework established in the companion paper (Rolfes, 2026).

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Rolfes, J. D. jd.rolfes@a-h.institute 0009-0002-6874-3997
Keywords:	epistemic injustice; testimonial injustice; hermeneutical injustice; Semmelweis; ICD; disease classification; structural injustice; science and power
Subjects:	General Issues > Evidence General Issues > Social Epistemology of Science General Issues > Values In Science
Depositing User:	Dr. J. D. Rolfes
Date Deposited:	11 Jun 2026 12:32
Last Modified:	11 Jun 2026 12:32
Item ID:	30050
Subjects:	General Issues > Evidence General Issues > Social Epistemology of Science General Issues > Values In Science
Date:	10 June 2026
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/30050

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