Glass Hospitals: Transparency and Trustworthy Interpretation in Medical and Healthcare Expertise
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Academic Unit
College of Arts and Sciences
Publication Date
2025
Document Type
Article
Abstract
In their recent article in this journal, Giubilini, Gur-Arie, and Jamrozik argue that there is more to expertise than individual healthcare professionals’ knowledge of their fields. To be an expert is to be recognized as a credible authority, they explain, and being a credible authority necessitates trust. Among the core ethical principles they identify for trustworthy experts in medicine and healthcare are honesty, humility, and transparency. Here I aim to affirm these authors’ linkage of expertise and trust by decoupling both from a presumptive norm of transparency. My suggestion is not that medical or healthcare experts should lie or deceive, but that articulating their credible authority in terms of transparency mischaracterizes things. We see this in several ways: through the negative epistemic effects of a general norm of expert transparency, the importance of discretion in healthy trust relations, and the need for relationally responsive interpretation in how medical and health experts communicate with different patients and publics across social-epistemic difference.
Journal Title
Diametros: A Journal of Philosophy
Volume
22
Issue
82
ISSN
1733-5566
Beginning Page Number
53
Last Page Number
63
DOI
https://doi.org/10.33392/diam.1971.
Recommended Citation
Almassi, Ben, "Glass Hospitals: Transparency and Trustworthy Interpretation in Medical and Healthcare Expertise" (2025). Faculty Authors and Creators Reception. 151.
https://opus.govst.edu/fac/151