Feminist philosophers of science have been prominent amongst social epistemologists who draw attention to communal aspects of knowing. As part of this work, I focus on the need to examine the relations between scientific communities and lay communities, particularly marginalized communities, for understanding the epistemic merit of scientific practices. I draw on Naomi Scheman's argument (2001) that science earns epistemic merit by rationally grounding trust across social locations. Following this view, more turns out to be relevant to epistemic assessment than simply following the standards of "normal science". On such an account, philosophers of science need to attend to the relations between scientific communities and various lay communities, especially marginalized communities, to understand how scientific practices can rationally ground trust and thus earn their status as "good ways of knowing". Trust turns out to involve a wide set of expectations on behalf of lay communities. In this paper I focus on expectations of knowledge sharing, using examples of "knowledge-sharing whistleblowers" to illustrate how failures in knowledge sharing with lay communities can erode epistemic trust in scientific communities, particularly in the case of marginalized communities.

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Feminist epistemologists have found the atomistic view of knowers provided by classical epistemology woefully inadequate. An obvious alternative for feminists is Lynn Hankinson Nelson's suggestion that it is communities that know. However, I argue that Nelson's view is problematic for feminists, and I offer instead a conception of knowers as "individuals-in-communities." This conception is preferable, given the premises and goals of feminist epistemologists, because it emphasizes the relations between knowers and their communities and the relevance of these relations for epistemic assessments. Furthermore, it provides a sense of epistemic agents as active reflective inquirers, capable of transforming and improving knowledge-seeking practices.The question of epistemic subjects, or of "who is it that knows?" is central to epistemology. Feminist epistemologists have been quick to point out that much of classical epistemology has relied on a very individualistic reading of the epistemic subject. It is not just that classical epistemology has understood epistemic agents to be individuals, but it has also interpreted these individuals in a very particular way, with content that feminist epistemologists, among others, have found to be overly abstract and atomistic. I refer to this general individualistic view of the epistemic subject as the atomistic view of knowers; it characterizes epistemic subjects as generic and selfsuffEcient individuals. It is important to recognize that despite some interpretations otherwise, it is not the case that feminists have simply found the idea of knowers as individuals to be problematic; rather, they have found the specifics of this atomistic view Hypntici vol. IY, no 3 (Summer 2004) 0 by Hedl E. GrnbbwiLk

Much of the literature concerning epistemic injustice has focused on the variety of harms done to socially marginalized persons in their capacities as potential contributors to knowledge projects. However, in order to understand the full implications of the social nature of knowing, we must confront the circulation of knowledge and the capacity of epistemic agents to take up knowledge produced by others and make use of it. I argue that members of socially marginalized lay communities can suffer epistemic trust injustices when potentially powerful forms of knowing such as scientific understandings are generated in isolation from them, and when the social conditions required for a responsibly-placed trust to be formed relative to the relevant epistemic institutions fail to transpire.

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