My current research examines the emergence and distribution of epistemic harms within clinical and institutional contexts, focusing particularly on how lived experience and bodily doubt are systematically excluded. I aim to develop a philosophically rigorous taxonomy of epistemic harm that accounts for institutional vulnerabilities and asymmetrical epistemic relations, especially in biomedicine. A central component of my work is the concept of epistemic disadvantage, which captures how certain warranted reasoning norms can nonetheless produce intellectual and moral harms. This nuanced approach expands traditional notions of epistemic injustice to incorporate structurally rooted exclusions that arise from rigorous evidential reasoning.
I investigate how data practices and scientific publication cultures shape epistemic risks, survivor bias, and hermeneutical gaps in biomedical models, which often marginalize patients’ experiential knowledge. My work critically engages with emerging challenges in health-related technologies and AI-driven medical decision-making, highlighting how these innovations can unintentionally exacerbate bias and injustice in healthcare.
Further, I study the normativity of mental content and generalization through a Wittgensteinian lens, exploring how conceptual norms guide inference and judgment under uncertainty. In parallel, I analyze stereotypes and prejudice as constitutive and normative mental properties, particularly regarding their ethical and cognitive roles.
My broader research agenda contributes to the philosophy of open science, ethics of data practices, and the sociology of care. It aims to promote fairer, more inclusive epistemic environments by refining the conceptual tools needed to understand knowledge production and harm in complex social and biomedical systems.
PUBLICATIONS
Leonelli, S. Castańo, P., Alcalay, R. “Openness and Inequity in Scientific Research.” Forthcoming in Social Epistemology.
Alcalay, R., & Vandekerckhove, J. (under review). Persistent extractivism in open science research.
Alcalay, R., & Vickers, D. “A pedagogical pathway narrowing gender and race gaps in academic philosophy.” Forthcoming In K. R. Westphal & M. Addis (Eds.), Educating philosophers: A handbook of best practice. de Gruyter.
Goldstein, R. (2024). Epistemic injustice in the medical context: Introduction to special issue. Social Epistemology, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2024.2400096
Goldstein, R. (2023). Holistic similarities between Quine and Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations. https://doi.org/10.1111/phin.12405
Goldstein, R. (2022). Epistemic disadvantage. Philosophia. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-021-00465-w
Sarnecka, B. W., Silva, P. N., Vickers, D. C., Coon, J., Goldstein, R., & Rouder, J. N. (2022). Doctoral writing workshops: A pre-registered, randomized controlled trial. Innovative Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-021-09574-6
INVITED CONTRIBUTIONS
Goldstein, R. (2021). Reconceptualizing civic competence in the digital age. In N. E. Snow & M. S. Vaccarezza (Eds.), Virtues, democracy, and online media: Ethical and epistemic issues (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003083108
Goldstein, R. (2020). You are only as good as you are behind closed doors. Precollege Philosophy and Public Practice, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.5840/p42020348
BOOK REVIEWS
Goldstein, R. (2019). Patriotic Education in a Global Age by Randall Curren & Charles Dorn, in Educational Theory, vol. 69, no. 5. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12393
MAGAZINES and BLOGS
Alcalay, R. (2025, August 18). A Scaffolded Approach to Teaching with GenAI. Times Higher Education. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/scaffolded-approach-teaching-genai
Alcalay, Rena Beatrice, Sheehan, Nathanael and Rose Trappes. 2025. Concept Cartography [Software]. Relation type: “Creative Agency depends on Epistemic Creativity.” Retrieved July 17, 2025, from https://conceptcartography.github.io/conceptcartography/concepts/creative-agency/
Goldstein, R. B., & Vickers, D. (2022, December 16). “The writing workshop”: Increasing representation in philosophy. Blog of the APA. https://blog.apaonline.org/2022/12/22/the-writing-workshop-increasing-representation-in-philosophy/
Goldstein, R. (2022). “Jewish Injustice: on the role of women witnesses.” Tikkun https://www.tikkun.org/jewish-injustice/.
IN PROGRESS (Email me for drafts!)
“Content Normative Shadow”
“The Violence of Knowing”
“(Dis)Advantages of the Book of Conversation Attitude Toward Scientific Publication” with Joachim Vandekerckhove
“Probabilistic Predictions, Epistemic Harms: Rethinking Responsibility in Medical AI” with Patrick Oliver Schenk
“Two Nodes or Four: Epistemic Disadvantage in Agricultural Science” with Joyce Koranteng-Acquah
“Philosophy of Epistemic Harms” Edited Volume with Sabina Leonelli and Ian James Kidd
DISSERTATION
Title: “On (Mal) Functioning Belief Systems”
Supervisors: Professors Annalisa Coliva and Duncan Pritchard
Committee: Professor Anna Boncompagni
Summary: This dissertation explores harms that can arise from warranted thinking routines, specifically those that occur in contexts like medicine and education. I first develop the concept of epistemic disadvantage to capture contexts in which there is epistemic harm due to the asymmetrical relationship between knowers, yet that asymmetry is pertinent to the practice of knowledge. This inquiry leads to considering how beliefs systematically function in evidential reasoning practices. I argue that two prominent doxastic frameworks–a Quinian and a Wittgensteinian framework–support a version of confirmation holism, the view that justification for empirical beliefs entails appreciation of the full system of beliefs. One upshot of incorporating the epistemological systems of Quine and Wittgenstein is that these frameworks can give a convincing account for how thinking routines influence evidential reasoning. I develop such an account in the third chapter of the dissertation by employing a Wittgensteinian framework to show how a heuristic like stereotyping plays a normative role in cognitive processes. I conclude that heuristics like stereotyping are justified except in contexts where harm occurs