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Jonathan Fuller

  • Assistant Professor • Director of Graduate Studies
  • Assistant Professor • Director of Graduate Studies

My main research interests lie in the philosophy of medicine. I am especially interested in: scientific inference in epidemiology and clinical research; diagnosis; clinical reasoning; evidence and evidence-based medicine; and the nature of disease, mental disorder, and death. I recently completed work on a forthcoming book titled The New Modern Medicine: Disease, Evidence, and Epidemiological Medicine, supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine. The book examines philosophical problems brought by the twentieth century integration of epidemiological research and epidemiological thinking into clinical medicine. I have also trained in medicine and in medical curriculum design and am interested in how philosophy and the sciences of reasoning can enhance medical training. Finally, I am affiliated with the Center for Bioethics & Health Law and am Director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Research Ethics Consultation Service (RECS).

Selected Courses 

  • Philosophy of Medicine (graduate)
  • Philosophy of Psychiatry (graduate)
  • Philosophy of Science (graduate)
  • History of Medicine (graduate)
  • Morality and Medicine (undergraduate)
  • Mind and Medicine (undergraduate)
  • Development of Scientific Medicine (undergraduate) 

    Education & Training

  • MD, University of Toronto, 2019
  • PhD, University of Toronto, 2016
  • Fellowship (Health Professions Education Research), University of Toronto, 2016
Representative Publications
  • Fuller, J., Chin-Yee, B., and R.E. Upshur. The argument framework: a flexible approach to evidence in healthcare. Nature Medicine 2024; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-02930-x.
  • Fuller, J. Demarcating scientific medicine. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 2024;106: 177-185.
  • Fuller, J. Epidemics from the population perspective. Philosophy of Science 2022;89: 232-251.
  • Fuller, J. Preventive and curative medical interventions. Synthese 2022;200: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03579-0.
  • Fuller, J. The myth and fallacy of simple extrapolation in medicine. Synthese 2021; 198: 2919–2939. 
  • Fuller, J. Epidemiologic evidence: use at your ‘own risk’? Philosophy of Science 2020; 87:1119–1129. 
  • Fuller, J. The confounding question of confounding causes in randomized trials. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2019; 70:901–926. 
  • Fuller, J. Meta-research evidence for evaluating therapies. Philosophy of Science 2018; 85:767-780. 
  • Fuller, J. Universal etiology, multifactorial diseases, and the constitutive model of disease classification. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 2018; 67: 8-15. 
  • Fuller, J. What are chronic diseases? Synthese 2018; 195: 3197–3220. 
  • Fuller, J. The new medical model: a renewed challenge for biomedicine. Canadian Medical Association Journal 2017; 189(17): E640-E641.  
  • Fuller, J. and L.J. Flores. The Risk GP Model: the standard model of prediction in medicine. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 2015; 54: 49-61.