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Current Research

My most recent book is Making Medical Knowledge (Oxford University Press, April 2015).  Its subject matter is recent methods in medicine—consensus conferences, evidence-based medicine, translational medicine and narrative medicine—all developed within the past 35 years.  My approach is to use the tools of contemporary philosophy of science and science studies (especially historical epistemology) to understand and critique these new methods, both individually and in interactions with each other.

Together with Jeremy Simon and Harold Kincaid, I edited the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Medicine (Routledge, 2017)

Recently, I have been working on topics in philosophy of psychiatry as well as topics in philosophy of medicine more broadly. Here are some papers since 2020:

  1. “Five Conceptual Competencies in Psychiatry,” forthcoming in World Psychiatry.
  2. “On Validators for Psychiatric Categories,” Philosophy of Medicine 3:1 1-23 (December 2022).
  3. “A Pragmatic Approach to Diagnostic Categorization,” in Michael D. Lockshin et al. (eds) Diagnoses without Names: Challenges for Medical Care, Research and Policy (Springer, June 2022).
  4. Solomon, M., Foderà, V., Langkilde, A.E. et al.Recommendations for addressing the translational gap between experimental and clinical research on amyloid diseases. J Transl Med 20, 213 (May 13, 2022).
  5. Who Owns the Concept of Psychiatric Disorder?” Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 28:4 (December 2021), pp. 349-351.
  6. “On the Concept of Psychiatric Disorder: Incorporating Psychological Injury,” Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology 28:4 (December 2021), pp. 329-339.
  7. “Trust: The Need for Public Understanding of How Science Works,” Hastings Center Report: Moral and Social Challenges of Civic Learning 51:S1, S36-S39 (2021)
  8. Solomon, M. and Kendler, K. “The Problem of Aggregating Validators for Psychiatric Disorders,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease January 2021, Volume 209:1, pp. 9-12.
  9. “After Disclosure,” chapter in the volume Uncertainty in Pharmacology edited by Adam LaCaze and Barbara Osimani. Springer, 2020, pp. 439-450.
  10. “Agnotology, Hermeneutic Injustice and Scientific Pluralism: the case of Asperger Syndrome,” paper in Science and the Production of Ignorance edited by Janet Kourany and Martin Carrier. MIT Press, 2020, pp. 145-159.

The following papers are in progress:

  • “The sanctity of grief: reflections on the consensus history of grief in the DSM” supplements the two part history by Zachar et al.
  • “On Hermeneutic Injustice in Psychiatry”
  • “Towards An Ameliorative Account of “Psychiatric Disorder”” argues that an ameliorative approach is more productive than traditional conceptual and descriptive approaches at getting to the heart of what we want the concept of psychiatric disorder to do.
  • “Should we use EBM or EBM+ when evaluating evidence for the effectiveness of Covid-19 therapies?” argues for traditional EBM, rather than enhanced EBM, on the basis of the results of the past year of clinical testing.
  • “On Pluralism in Psychiatry” looks at the alternative frameworks for psychiatric classification and research since the “crisis of validity” of the DSM.
  • “The Evolution of Consensus Conferences” follows the institution of consensus conferences from the NIH to the Danish model and then to models for public participation in science.
  • “Epistemic Collusion in Stem Cell Clinics” looks at patient and physician collusion in the unproven treatments offered in stem cell clinics. Epistemic collusion is seen as a social epistemic vice.