It’s time to talk about my disseration. This short teaser introduces the 4-part series that explains my Master’s dissertation from the London School of Economics. The dissertation was titled, “Going for Gold: A Proposal to Raise the Evidentiary Standard of Mechanisms in Rare Disease Medicine.” The four part series will be released as detailed below:

Part 1: Introducing the Project & Offering a Brief Overview of Evidence in Medicine

Part 2: Establishing a Need for Recalibration of the Evidence Standard

Part 3: Arguing for Mechanisms Driving Epistemological Progress

Part 4: Providing the Implementation Plan & Concluding Remarks

In this episode, Mathias Risse’s 2004 claim that “unless majoritarians present a more complete defense, it is irrational to grant majority rule its default status” is evaluated. It is argues that it is rational to grant majority rule the default status that it occupies. This is defended through disarming Risse’s 4 objections (argumentative content, preference intensity, omission of relevant information, proportionate consideration), proposing new ideal desiderata of a default aggregation rule, and a statement on practicality regardless of justificatory power.

In this episode, manipulability in the conclave voting procedure is discussed. Rest in peace to Pope Francis. This podcast comes as a discussion of the aggregation method used by cardinals in electing the next pope. The sequential supermajority voting system allows for manipulability at several levels, where there are clear cases when cardinals (voters) have incentive to falsify or misrepresent their preferences. While supermajority rule can seem to numbers-wise (dictated by ‘experts’ in the faith) give a strong mandate for papal infallibility, potential for manipulability seems to contradict that consequential mandate.

In this episode, it is argued that the causal efficacy of an act is what matters to its evaluation, not its auspiciousness. Discussion of decision theories of Jeffrey and Savage are what motivates that claim. Further, an example of the Borough Market sandwich stand provides a nice illustration of act evaluation in practice.

In this episode, it is argued that no-platforming should be opposed on purely epistemic grounds because it deprives students of epistemic benefits that would have been realized had the contrarian (cancelled academic) been allowed to speak. This is motivated by raising the specific epistemic focus of higher education institutes. Also, the contrarian’s ability to push ‘apprentice’-like students to more deeply understand their axiomatic adherence in the discipline, their live intellectual agency, and paradigmatic display of epistemic humility all support the argument.

In this episode, it is argued that it is not a reasonable goal for cooperative game theory to try to find a single privileged solution concept for bargaining games. Moreover, if it is a reasonable goal of cooperative game theory to try to find a single, unequivocal solution concept for bargaining games, then there would not be persisting and jutified irreconcilable variance in opinions about tradeoffs in agreement structure. To motivate this, theoretical convergence in quantum mechanics on the Schrödinger equation is discussed, and Nash, Kalai-Smordinsky, and Utilitarian solution concepts are raised.

In this episode, mechanisms and research are discussed. The question, ‘if we have a randomized control trial (RCT), can we do without knowledge of a mechanism?’ is answered. It is held that mechanisms do make a substantive difference to the optimization of a RCT. This is defended through two cases — the failed Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Phase 3 trials in 2024 ran by Sarepta Therapeutics and Pfizer and the daptomycin 2005 trial to test its efficacy in patients Gram-positive community acquired pneumonia. Nancy Cartwright’s INUS contributors are put forth as a potential objection. However, an as-complete-as-possible concept of mechanistic understanding and reasoning is advocated for ultimately.

In this episode, philosopher Ian Peeble’s 2021 article, “To Race or Not to Race: A Normative Debate in the Philosophy of Race,” is discussed. An argument is put forth that Peeble’s argument for the morally permissible use of race in medicine is not deductively sound. This opinion is held as I believe that Peebles misses an important fourth necessary condition for the permissible use of race in medicine — the patient consent requirement.

In this episode, the resurgence of the traditional wife lifestyle on social media is examined. The recent outrage from women about this lifestyle and the receiving opposing reaction to that outrage is discussed. It is held that this reception boils down to the perception that these tradwives could be experiencing a case of adaptive preference that limits their boundless freedom (that which is the aim of a transcendent existence). Even if it might not be the case that these tradwives suffer from seeing other possibilities as “sour grapes,” the second issue of internalized toxic femininity is discussed. Generally, we should be conscious of the kind of content we choose to consume and how we shape our preferences and choose to act based on new information we learn from interactions with others. The bottom line here is that we should be aiming for a vision beyond capabilities: a world in which “throwing like a girl” is meaningless because there is no particular way girls throw.