Are ‘experts’ and scientists fashionable and trusted again? The high profile role of medical experts and chief medical officers on daily TV, suggests that they are. ‘It has already forced people back to accepting that expertise matters’ is the view of Professor Tom Nichols, author of The Death of Expertise. On this reading, COVID-19 may herald a welcome reversal of the ‘post-truth’ turn and an acceptance that facts matter and expertise counts.
There are, however, many reasons not to embrace such re-assertions of expert authority uncritically. Many challenging questions about science and this crisis, and expertise more generally, will start (re-)emerging. They already are. Whilst experts may indeed have specialised insight into particular issues, they are not simply bearers of ‘truth’ or there to unveil facts which have hitherto been hidden. And when politicians say they will be ‘guided by the science’ we should be as alert to deception as when they told us ‘people have had enough of experts’.
Much depends on how the science is conducted, for whom, and the ends to which it is mobilised. In a democratic society, experts must be open to challenging questions beyond those envisaged by peer review: how do they know what they know? what knowledge and wisdom have they included and what have they omitted? what assumptions and values infuse their research? what are the social costs and benefits of their research? what conflicts of interest might exist? and so on…. If we want experts to be taken seriously and expertise to be recognised, then rather than proclaiming the need to trust scientists and have faith in the authority of experts, we should acknowledge that the rightful place of science is within, not above, society.
In an analytical piece, ‘Never Waste a Crisis’, written in mid-March, my co-author and I suggested that faith in experts will increase short-term but decrease longer-term. We didn’t elaborate at that time. Here I try to do so.
First, some preliminary observations.
A pandemic was not unexpected. Observers of global trends have long been aware of the risk of a major global pandemic, that it was a question of when not whether. Historians of infectious disease have known of the devastating impacts these have had in the past. Infectious disease specialists, virologists and epidemiologists have long flagged up the need to prepare for such an eventuality. Specialist facilities exist in many countries charged with tracking, planning for, and responding to potential outbreaks – the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the USA being only one example. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has significant responsibilities too.
Many governments and public health specialists conduct regular exercises to test their preparedness for such events. Examples include Exercise Cygnus in the UK in 2016, and a major global pandemic preparedness exercise, Event 201, held in the USA and organised by Johns Hopkins University, the Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum (WEF) in October 2019. In both these exercises it became clear that governments and health authorities were not well prepared. The Gates Foundation has many shortcomings, as does philanthro-capitalism generally, but warning of pandemic risk over many years is not one of them.
Although pandemic risk was widely known, it was low on the priority list of many political leaders and thus received little, if any, attention: although there is some evidence that the leadership of countries in East Asia and parts of Africa, with recent experience of SARS, MERS and Ebola may have been more attentive.
Global business leaders were aware of the risk but generally regarded it as low priority, perhaps not surprising given that their horizons are typically short-term and self-interested. The latest WEF-sponsored Global Risks Report, released in mid-January 2020 ahead of the annual Davos elite-fest, and with coronavirus already spreading, hardly mentions pandemics. It was not on the Report’s list of ten ‘most likely’ global risks and was rated 10th on the list in terms of impact should it occur. This expert assessment now looks ridiculous.
Whilst in a general sense a pandemic was not unexpected, it is also true that this particular pandemic, COVID-19, was not expected. There was also, perhaps, complacency that any new pandemic might be contained, like SARS and MERS had been. Some have called COVID-19 a ‘black swan’ event, an event with major effects but which comes as a surprise (and also an odd term in Australia where black swans, the birds, are not uncommon). COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus in the sense that it is new and previously unknown in humans. We are still in the early stages of understanding its progression, infectiousness and characteristics, and how to manage it absent a vaccine … although scientists and intensive care medicos on the frontline are learning fast. In this context it is important to acknowledge ignorance. There are many things about COVID-19 which experts do not know, at least not yet.
We are therefore in a paradoxical situation. Experts have warned of pandemic risk for many years and governments mainly chose to remain ignorant, or at least failed to invest in preventative strategies and public health. Now with governments struggling to catch-up and learn about pandemic management, the experts find themselves, not surprisingly, deeply ignorant of this particular virus, and rushing to catch-up.
In the next instalments I’m going to reflect on four questions in relation to COVID-19:
1. Why trust experts now?
2. Why do experts differ, and does it matter?
3. Which experts should we be relying upon in this crisis, and what facts matter?
4. What to do about obvious misinformation?
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