Healthy Scepticism (360G-Wellcome-219040_Z_19_Z)

Healthy Scepticism aims to examine and find sense in the cloud of doubt, suspicion, cynicism, and distrust that has surrounded medical practice from the mid-20th century to the present. Rather than dismiss sceptics of medicine as outliers of our cultures of expertise, the project will engage them in search of critical insight into medicine’s political, social and epistemological status past and present.Thinking through the species of medical scepticism will form the basis for a taxonomy of how and why medical scepticism functions, ranging as it does in use from the medical laboratory as a guarantor of scientific validity, the clinic as a correction for an over-reliance on judgment and instinct, and the public, where its roles run the gambit from structural to personal critique and everything in between. Investigating scepticism about health is an intentional exercise, in getting to know medicine better, getting to know what our expectations for medicine are, and how, when, where, and why they have or have not been met. But Healthy Scepticism is at the same time intended to offer critical perspective on the position – the health - of scepticism itself, as a form of critical engagement in and for our uniquely sceptical age.