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Abstract Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This article reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subjugated forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of science and outline a constructive alternative of transdisciplinary philosophy of science. While a focus on demarcation obscures the complex relations between epistemic communities, transdisciplinary philosophy of science provides resources for meeting epistemic and political challenges of collaborative knowledge production.
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This content will become publicly available on July 1, 2026
History of Risk Assessments of the Organophosphate Pesticide Chlorpyrifos at the US Environmental Protection Agency, 1980‒2024
This article examines the history of risk assessments of the organophosphate pesticide chlorpyrifos at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), especially after a ban on household uses in 2000. Federal funding enabled more noncorporate and place-based scientific investigations of this pesticide’s harms, including child-cohort epidemiology of populations impacted through environmental injustices. This article argues, first, that their findings challenged the thin knowledge base, mostly from corporate-sponsored toxicology, that originally justified chlorpyrifos’s continued use. Second, for decades, outside a court-induced interval in 2015–2016, EPA’s risk assessments favored “de-placed” toxicological modes and standards of knowledge—forged in the controlled environment of experimental laboratories—while marginalizing science gathered from the actual places and people EPA is supposed to protect. Third, agency officials stuck with a quantifiable, laboratory- and modeling-centered calculus for assessing health risks in part because a united front of corporate and corporate-consultant scientists harped on the uncertainties of newer findings. The article concludes that the agency needs to rethink its risk assessment practices and dependence, as well as more effectively account for financial conflicts of interest in evaluations of policy-relevant science. ( Am J Public Health. 2025;115(7):1074–1084. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2025.308073 )
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- Award ID(s):
- 2218566
- PAR ID:
- 10625838
- Publisher / Repository:
- APHA Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Journal of Public Health
- Volume:
- 115
- Issue:
- 7
- ISSN:
- 0090-0036
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1074 to 1084
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- chlorpyrifos children's environmental health risk assessment EPA
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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