Index of Evidence

23/11/2021

We have published a brief article on the thinking and methods that underpin the Index of Evidence. It argues that the current crises of evidence and knowledge in which we find ourselves demand new speculative methodologies.

Read the latest article version by Gill Partington, Laura Salisbury, Steve Hinchliffe, Mike Michael, Lara Choksey, at Wellcome Open Research.

24/06/2021

The Index of Evidence project is launching a short online seminar series: Following the Evidence.

Invited speakers will be discussing the kinds of interactions we have with evidence in contexts of health and beyond: waiting, narrating and - maybe increasingly - doubting.

The series kicks off on Friday 2nd July at 2pm with 'Indexing Evidence'. Dennis Duncan, author of 'Index, A History of the' (Penguin, 2021) will be in conversation with New York based artist Alejandro Cesarco to discuss one of the most familiar conventions of printed evidence: How has it been used, abused and subverted?

Register for the first event here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/indexing-evidence-tickets-160846138129

Details and registration for the whole series are on our website:
https://www.indexofevidence.org/events

24/02/2021

Today's offering from the Index of Evidence features the philosopher of biology, John Dupre, writing about SARS-CoV-2, evolution, and consilience.

91 View fullsize The middle of a viral pandemic is one time when evolutionary theory seems unusually salient. Mostly we think of evolution as happening over unimaginable stretches of deep time, but not so for viruses. The reason that new flu vaccines are offered to the vulnerable every year is that....

18/02/2021

At the moment, we're hearing a lot about scepticism, especially in relation to the pandemic. The term has come to be associated with views that pull against the consensus of scientific opinion. Here, Caitjan Gainty describes how the term has a longer and more complex history. She suggests that we need scepticism in relation to evidence in order to have a 'healthy' relationship with knowledge.

382  View fullsize A few years ago, the editor of The Skeptic (“pursuing truth through reason & evidence since 1987”) served notice to those who considered the English spelling of scepticism to be chiefly a geographical affair. As she explained in The Guardian, A generic ‘sceptic...

05/02/2021

Today's offering from the Index of Evidence falls into a sub-category that is developing around 'seeing is believing'. Christina Faraday, who lectures on art history at Cambridge University and is a BBC New Generation Thinker, writes here about seeing, believing, and how knowledge becomes vivid. https://www.indexofevidence.org/seeing-is-believing

05/02/2021

Today we had a fantastic workshop for early career researchers about the Index of Evidence. Such a lot of interesting areas of study in the virtual room: from ancient medical accounts of the menopause, through chronic fatigue syndrome and noise pollution, to the groups who are pro or anti 5G. We got some great offers for contributions to the Index so hope to have some new bits of writing to share with you soon.

01/02/2021

A while ago now, I was talking to someone who worked for the WHO about vaccine hesitancy. He said that the WHO's policy had always been not to get involved in the specifics of most of these concerns about vaccination. Their worry was that a public conversation risked amplifying misinformation. Instead, the policy was to keep on presenting the data. If they did that, the safety of efficacy of vaccination would be self evident, they believed. By the time he was talking to me, it was clear to the WHO that this policy wasn't working. For something to be taken as self evident there needs to be a considerable level of trust - a trust that could no longer be relied upon.

Here, historian of vaccination, Gareth Millward, puts forward an argument for a more nuanced conversation about vaccination. Writing before the emergence of vaccines for COVID-19, Gareth argues for the value of viewing evidence 'in the round' in order to weigh up risk and increase trust.

90 View fullsize Vaccines can kill. No medical intervention is ever completely devoid of risk. If you selectively comb through the archive, there is plenty of historical evidence of death. In 1928, twelve children died after being given Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), the anti-tuberculosis vac...

31/01/2021

INDEX OF EVIDENCE: Workshop for Early Career and Postdoctoral Researchers

The current pandemic has demonstrated that erosion of trust in expertise and medical authority is a serious challenge for public health. Most fundamentally, it has highlighted just how complex and contested the idea of evidence has become. But how might those working, researching and operating in health contexts respond? How can evidence be reimagined? What are the methods, practices and networks through which it can be mobilised? The Index of Evidence, based in the University of Exeter’s Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, is a project that takes an innovative approach to these questions. Using speculative, creative-critical methods, it is an attempt to map the changing meanings of evidence in the post-truth era.

Indexofevidence.org puts the conventional, alphabetical book index to imaginative use as the starting point for a co-authored, dispersed and evolving online text. Through short-form articles, it accumulates diverse voices, disciplines and perspectives. While a definitive account of our current upheavals can’t yet be written, this project is instead an unfolding experiment in collective thinking, a speculative index to a work that doesn’t yet exist, and an open-access publication platform.

This workshop invites Early Career and postdoctoral researchers, as well as PhD candidates in the medical humanities to find out more about the index and its aims, to help shape its direction, and to contribute short pieces for publication.

We’ll discuss how the Index works and how it might be developed, but also how its methodology might be generative or helpful for you. We’re interested to know, for instance, how problems of evidence present themselves in the context of your own research. What are the cultural and disciplinary environments in which evidence is particularly fraught? Tell us what new entries should be added to the index, why they are important, or why they need alternative analysis. We’ll also be thinking about how the format of the index might allow linked ‘clusters’ of articles that overlap or even argue with one another.

Join us 2-4 on 5th February for an informal Zoom session: a hands-on workshop in which we’ll discuss, intervene in and navigate the index, and work towards short-form writing for publication. Email [email protected] to register.

31/01/2021

A research project bridging the creative and the critical. An experiment in collective thinking. An index to a non-existent book.

As social media and populisms continue to undermine trust in top-down expertise, it’s clear that facts are coming under increasing pressure. But how are the effects of this being felt in health contexts? What is happening to the idea of ‘evidence’? In what terms is it now asserted and contested? What forms does it take, how does it gain or lose authority, and how can we continue to use and mobilise it in relation to health matters?

The Index of Evidence approaches these twenty-first century questions by repurposing a distinctly old-fashioned print device. It puts the alphabetical index to creative use as the starting point for a co-authored, open-ended and evolving text. While a definitive account of our current upheavals can’t yet be written, this index is instead a work in progress. It traces the shifting dynamics of evidence, mapping the connections between an emergent network of new concepts, terminologies and new ways of thinking.

https://www.indexofevidence.org/the-index