Weight of Evidence: Participatory Methods and Bayesian Updating to Contextualize Evidence Synthesis in Stakeholders’ Knowledge

Mixed methods research is well-suited to grapple with questions of what counts as valid knowledge across different contexts and perspectives. This article introduces Weight of Evidence as a transformative procedure for stakeholders to interpret, expand on and prioritize evidence from evidence syntheses, with a focus on engaging populations historically excluded from planning and decision making. This article presents the procedure’s five steps using pilot data on perinatal care of immigrant women in Canada, engaging family physicians and birth companions. Fuzzy cognitive mapping offers an accessible and systematic way to generate priors to update published literature with stakeholder priorities. Weight of Evidence is a transparent procedure to broaden what counts as expertise, contributing to a more comprehensive, context-specific, and actionable understanding.

Epistemological Understanding of Science Embedded within Shad Darsana and Buddhist Philosophy

This paper focuses on the epistemological understanding of finding the science embedded within Shad darsana and Buddhist philosophy. The primary rationale of this study is to dig out the scientific notion that consists of Shad darsana and Buddhist philosophy. Shad darsana or six systems of Hindu philosophy considered as the orthodox/astika philosophy and accept the authority of Vedas, which included Nyaya, Vaisesika, Sankey, Yoga, Poorva Mimamsa and Uttar Mimamsa. Pratyaksa/Perception, Anuman/Inference, Upamana/Comparison, Sabda (word) or testimony are considered the achieving and transforming ways of valid knowledge of Shad darsana like modern science. Astanga yoga, introduced by seer Patanjali, is regarded as a pioneer scientific practice in the modern era for the connection of mind, body and soul; and is useful to control the COVID 19 pandemic. Buddhist philosophy is considered as the heterodox/nastic or materialist philosophy; that is, it does not believe in the authenticity of Veda. It is mainly based on four universal truths and ways of elimination of sin doing practical meditation way. Madhyama Pratipada, Pratityasamutpada, Nirvana, Ksanabhangavada and Anatmavada are scientific processes of achieving knowledge in Buddhist philosophy.

Epistemological Assumption: Understanding Protein Polysaccharide Complexes in Improving Diabetes Treatment

Embracing the philosophical condition of epistemology in research has led to identifying and understanding the meaning and nature of diabetes and the use of protein-polysaccharides complexes in the treatment of diabetes. The research approach is purely qualitative; thereby, postmodern epistemological assumptions were made from the theory of knowledge on diabetes, its conditions and symptoms, effects, protein and polysaccharides characteristics. The research develops knowledge on using protein-polysaccharides obtained mainly from plant species like mushrooms and pumpkins generated from credible and valid knowledge connected from observable justification, beliefs and truths from scholarly material. In the process, knowledge has been created identifying that protein-polysaccharides complexes contain polysaccharides that have proven to possess hypoglycaemic activity that reduces hyperglycaemia leading to an increase in insulin secretion and reduction of blood glucose.

Doing Human Service Ethnography

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Human service work is performed in many places – hospitals, shelters, households – and is characterised by a complex mixture of organising principles, relations and rules. Using ethnographic methods, researchers can investigate these site-specific complexities, providing multi-dimensional and compelling analyses. Bringing together both theoretical and practical material, this book shows researchers how ethnography can be carried out within human service settings. It provides an invaluable guide on how to apply ethnographic creativeness and offers a more humanistic and context-sensitive approach in the field of health and social care to generating valid knowledge about today’s service work.

A REVIEW ON ROLE OF PRAMANAS IN AYURVEDIC RESEARCH METHODOLO-GY

Research is the process of search for unknown knowledge. Research methodology is the general approach a researcher takes during research process. Research methodology is defined as the specific techniques & procedures required to identify, select, process and analyze a research problem. Various tools and tech-niques are required for research. In Ayurveda valid knowledge is termed as Prama and the means or source to acquire knowledge are known as Pramana. These Pramanas are the evidence of the critical sci-entific approach of Ayurveda. Pramanas are the tools of Research in Ayurveda. Pramanas can be of great importance in developing Ayurvedic Research Methodology. Present paper is aimed to explore the scope & importance of Pramanas described in Ayurvedic literature in Ayurvedic Research Methodology.

The Politics of Learning from Rare Events

Actors engaged in learning from rare events must trade off between two different criteria for effective learning: validity—the extent to which learning can be used for understanding, prediction, and control—and reliability—the extent to which understandings of experience are public, stable, and shared. Existing models of learning from rare events have elided conflict and politics by assuming that individuals and organizations always seek new valid knowledge that then becomes public, stable, and shared across actors. Here we examine the politics of learning in a historical analysis of population-level learning by four different actors following the 1994 sinking of the ferry Estonia. We show how politics shaped the trade-off between reliability and validity and, in turn, shaped the nature of the learning. Whereas the new knowledge was sometimes both valid and reliable, the more common outcome was knowledge that was only partly valid and reliable. Rather than treat these outcomes as substandard, we show how they are important to the dynamics of learning, as different population-level actors take into account different aspects of experience. The result is a model that makes conflict and contestation—and hence politics—essential to effective learning.

Decolonizing International Relations: Confronting Erasures through Indigenous Knowledge Systems

The discipline of international relations (IR) has often been critiqued for geo-centric parochialism with scholars increasingly engaging with its colonial origins and legacies. This recent engagement underscores the necessity to unravel and disrupt the epistemic sites of hierarchized power and knowledge relations manifested through dichotomous categorizations like ‘primitive/civilized’, ‘rational-irrational’ and ‘traditional-modern’. The concerns regarding ‘epistemic imperialism’ stemming from the superiority granted to the modern science over non-Western knowledges are founded on the distinction between nature and culture that hinges upon the separation of the subject from the object. Coloniality thus reconfigures itself through the use of scientific-rational methodology and it is pertinent to reframe the colonial question beyond the questions of epistemology and ontology to unpack ‘traditional knowledges’ as a source of valid knowledge. This article offers a methodological contribution to the larger debate on ‘coloniality of power’ by critiquing the disembodied monoculture associated with modern scientific rationality. Drawing upon Boaventura De Sousa Santos’s notion of ‘ecology of knowledges’, the article focuses on the issue of ‘epistemic imperialism’ and utilizes indigenous knowledge systems as an analytical framework with emancipatory potential representing one of the possible means of decolonizing knowledge and advancing the case for epistemological plurality within the discipline of IR. The article proposes an epistemic re-centring within the IR academia by posing vexatious ethical questions hidden behind issues of epistemic inequality.

Relación teoría-práctica y actividad común como focos para resolver problemas de educación: la significación del conocimiento de la educación no ampara el modelo dual (Versión en inglés)

This work insists on the importance of the study of theory-practice relationship to obtain specialized and specific knowledge of education: pedagogical knowledge. Education is a real field that people may know in different ways, forms, and types. Several types of knowledge and rationality are useful for making knowledge of education: philosophical theories, practical theories, applied research, substantive theories have let them build it. To a higher extent, knowledge of education has already made particular and specific concepts. This study establishes differences between knowledge of education and knowledge of disciplines which are used in educative process. Besides this, it emphasizes and upholds the Educational Knowledge Growth Model. The second half of this work continues to explain the different possibilities that each current of knowledge of education has, for solving the problems which arise in the intervention, regarding to theory-practice relationship. All this has been made by focusing the discussion about the theory- practice connection in three different pedagogical currents (marginal, subaltern, and autonomous). Signification as a principle of methodology is a problem derived from how the theory-practice relationship is understood in each current of knowledge of education to justify valid knowledge. By executing the external common activity, we improve and train the internal activities-capacities: without the activity it is impossible to educate and through the activity it becomes possible for the educatee to be an actor-agent and an increasingly better author-agent of his own projects and acts. We shall see how the pedagogical function generates intervention by means of internal and external common activities. And we can conclude that common activity and theory-practice relationship are focuses to solve education problems from pedagogical intervention, which always implies knowledge and action.

How doctors on social media can provide valid health information on novel coronavirus (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED In the wake of COVID-19, the information stream has overflowed with a mixture of valid knowledge, misinformation and constantly changing guidelines. The need for help in navigating what is trustworthy health information is great and the official channels are struggling to keep up. As a consequence we created a Facebook group where volunteer doctors would answer questions from laymen about the novel coronavirus. There is not much precedence in healthcare professional driven Facebook groups and the framework was thus invented on the go. We ended up with an approach without room for debate to keep the group calm, trustworthy and safe to enter for the inquirers. Substantial moderator effort was needed to ensure high quality and consistency through collaboration between the more than hundred doctors participating. In the end we were able to provide a much needed service to more than 34.000 people in Denmark in time of crisis.

UNIVERSIDADE E JUVENTUDE NA AMÉRICA LATINA: Horizontes e desafios para uma afirmação das Epistemologias do Sul - diálogos com Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Considerando a vasta contribuição de Boaventura de Sousa Santos ao debate motivador dessa entrevista, nosso diálogo buscará, no contexto da sua obra, abordar os desafios e estratégias das Epistemologias do Sul frente a tempos de retrocesso da democracia e avanço de forças conservadoras em escala global. No contexto da política do conhecimento, as Epistemologias do Sul aportam conhecimentos válidos criados e recriados diuturnamente nas práticas comunitárias e nas lutas sociais. Sua intervenção epistemológica se torna tão mais eficaz, quanto mais alargado o diálogo intercultural, que Boaventura compreende na medida de uma Ecologia de Saberes. Ao longo da entrevista, buscaremos discutir em que medida a luta social assume o papel de força motriz das Epistemologias do Sul, e os desafios de uma ciência que pretenda promover sua emergência. A referência a uma ciência das emergências, busca ampliar os horizontes da Sociologia das Emergências, apontada sucessivamente na obra de Boaventura de Sousa Santos, de modo a reconhecer os deslocamentos críticos que se desdobram também nos campos das Antropologia das Emergências, Ecologia das Emergências, Pedagogia das Emergências, Arte das Emergências, entre outros nos quais a política do conhecimento válido é cotidianamente reconfigurada. Que lutas necessitam ser travadas para que o ingresso de estudantes indígenas e afrodescendentes nas universidades possa efetivamente contribuir para que as Epistemologias do Sul operem politicamente como dispositivos de reversão ou bifurcação nas dinâmicas de produção do conhecimento e na transformação da realidade? Nesse sentido, a conversa buscará compreender os desdobramentos das lutas sociais no plano institucional das universidades, especialmente frente à implementação e consolidação de políticas públicas de corte étnico-racial e de gênero, e o impacto das ações afirmativas nas identidades sociais. Em seu recente livro, “O Fim do Império Cognitivo – a afirmação das Epistemologias do Sul” (2019), Boaventura confere um tratamento especial à categoria de luta, e nossa conversa visa a também criar uma oportunidade de aproximar os leitores e leitoras dos aportes dessa obra, no auge de sua atualidade no Brasil e na América Latina. ABSTRACTConsidering the vast contribution of Boaventura de Sousa Santos to the motivating debate of this interview, our dialogue will seek, in the context of his work, to address the challenges and strategies of epistemologies of the South in the face of times of democracy setback and advancement of conservative forces on a global scale. In the context of knowledge policy, epistemologies of the South provide valid knowledge created and recreated daily in community practices and social struggles. His epistemological intervention becomes more effective, the wider the intercultural dialogue, which Bonaventure comprises as far as an Ecology of Knowledge. Throughout the interview, we will discuss the extent to which social struggle assumes the role of driving force of Southern Epistemologies,and the challenges of a science that intends to promote its emergence. The reference to a science of emergencies seekstobroaden the horizons of the Sociology of Emergencies,pointed out successively in the work of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, in order to recognize the critical displacements that also unfold in the fields of Anthropology of Emergencies, Ecology of Emergencies, Pedagogy of Emergencies, Art of Emergencies, among others in which the policy of valid knowledge is daily reconfigured. What struggles need to be fought so that the entry of indigenous and Afrodescendant students into universities can effectively contribute to the Epistemologies of the South operating politically as devices of reversal or fork in the dynamics of knowledge production and in the transformation of reality? In this sense, the conversation will seek to understand the consequences of social struggles at the institutional level of universities, especially in view of the implementation and consolidation of public policies of ethnic-racial and gender-cutting, and the impact of affirmative actions on social identities. In his recent book, "The End of the Cognitive Empire – the affirmation of the Epistemologies of the South" (2019), Boaventura gives a special treatment to the category of struggle,and our conversation aims to also create an opportunity to bring readers and readers closer to the contributions of this work, at the peak of its present date in Brazil and Latin America.