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The article informs about the call for papers for a special issue on Culturally Responsive Qualitative Health Research, aiming to address important contemporary issues in qualitative health research. Topics include the aim and purpose of the special edition, the methodology of culturally responsive qualitative research, and the significance of disrupting harmful research practices in health-related disciplines.

The motto of the conspiracist, "Do your own research," may seem ludicrous to scientists. Indeed, it is often dismissed as a mere rhetorical device that conspiracists use to give themselves the semblance of science. In this perspective paper, we explore the information-seeking activities ("research") that conspiracists do engage in. Drawing on the experimental psychology of aha experiences, we explain how these activities, as well as the epistemic experiences that precede (curiosity) or follow (insight or "aha" experiences) them, may play a crucial role in the appeal and development of conspiracy beliefs. Aha moments have properties that can be exploited by conspiracy theories, such as the potential for false but seemingly grounded conclusions. Finally, we hypothesize that the need for autonomous epistemic agency and discovery is universal but increases as people experience more uncertainty and/or feel epistemically excluded in society, hence linking it to existing literature on explaining conspiracy theories. Recent events have made it painfully clear that conspiracy beliefs can tear deep rifts in society and that we still have not found an adequate, de-escalating response to this. To understand the appeal of conspiracy theories and find new, humanizing ways to talk about them, we propose in this perspective paper to start from the universal human need to autonomously make discoveries through personal knowledge-generating actions. Indeed, psychological research shows that the aha experiences that accompany subjective discoveries create confidence in and perceived ownership of ideas that may be exploited by conspiracy theories. We hypothesize that people experiencing more uncertainty and/or epistemic exclusion in society will especially feel the need to re-establish autonomous epistemic agency and discovery. While this explanation starts from shared human experiences and practices, it also illustrates the potential of those processes to lead to a narrowed world and ossified cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews an embodied or experientialist view of conceptual understanding. It focuses on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's theory of embodied cognition and its framing of human conceptualization and reasoning in terms of embodied imagination. These ideas are summarized as ten basic claims: (a) objectivist assumptions are problematic; (b) many human categories have non-classical structure; (c) conceptual systems consist of cognitive models; (d) thinking utilizes frames, metonymies, and prototypes; (e) metaphor is prevalent and primarily conceptual; (f) image schemas structure our experiences; (g) the mind is embodied; (h) abstract thought is largely metaphorical; (i) truth is relative to embodied understanding; and (j) philosophy should be empirically responsible. Lakoff and Johnson's theory of embodied cognition offers a view of conceptual understanding that is cognitively realistic (or empirically responsible), biologically plausible, and self-critical, while providing adequate theories of meaning and truth grounded in embodied experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]