Contents 4
Sufficient consensus
Epistemic injustice covers testimonial injustice, where a speaker's credibility is discounted because of who they are, and hermeneutical injustice, where a group lacks the concepts to describe its own experience. Both are well defined.
Both have direct analogues in how material is ranked.
If only the application counted, the name at the top would change nothing. It changed every row, whoever did the rating.
| Identical application, rated by science faculty | Male name | Female name |
|---|---|---|
| Competence (1 to 7), male faculty | 4.01 | 3.33 |
| Competence (1 to 7), female faculty | 4.10 | 3.32 |
| Hireability (1 to 7), male faculty | 3.74 | 2.96 |
| Hireability (1 to 7), female faculty | 3.92 | 2.84 |
| Starting salary offered, all faculty | $30,238 | $26,508 |
Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J. and Handelsman, J., Science faculty's subtle gender biases favor male students, PNAS, 2012. Randomised double-blind study with 127 biology, chemistry and physics professors.
What the result pages leave out
These belong to the subject. People ask about them. They are missing from the agreed coverage.
- Missing vocabulary produces missing queries. An experience with no established name generates no search volume and therefore no content, which keeps the name from forming.
- Credibility by format. Material that looks institutional is believed more, independently of what it says, and looking institutional costs money.
- The expertise of the affected. People with direct experience of a problem are routinely ranked below organizations that describe it from outside.
- Whose questions became the standard questions. The commonly answered questions in a field were selected by whoever had the platform to ask them.
- Correction has no path. Someone whose account is misrepresented in the results has no mechanism to correct it.
What people actually want to know
- Whose account of this is missing?
- Is there a word for what I am experiencing?
- Why does every source here describe the problem from the outside?
- Who chose the questions this field answers?
The questions a field does not answer were not chosen at random. Naming one of them is a contribution regardless of ranking.