There’s no such thing as just ’following the science’ – coronavirus advice is political | Jana Bacevic | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/28/theres-no-such-thing-just-following-the-science-coronavirus-advice-poli
To begin with, there is no such thing as the “best science available”. Scientists regularly disagree about different issues, from theoretical approaches to methodologies and findings, and decisions about what kind of scientific advice is taken into account are highly political.
Politicians tend to favour the kind of science that aligns with their existing preferences. In the worst case, this can lead to cherrypicking data, pejoratively called “policy-based evidence”. But it needn’t be that extreme. For instance, studies suggesting a very high transmission rate for Covid-19 have been coming out of China since January, and Neil Ferguson, whose team was behind the study cited as precipitating Britain’s change of course in managing the pandemic, first sent his report to a Cobra meeting on 24 January. In February, studies suggesting that a substantial proportion of Covid-19 cases may be asymptomatic appeared in scientific journals. Evidence supporting general social distancing was already there. It took a political change of direction for this kind of data to be presented as “the science”.
This tells us something important about the social nature of scientific knowledge. Scientific models are estimates, not oracles. Scientists can tell politicians the conditions under which their models are likely to work, but they are not responsible for creating those conditions. Blaming epidemiologists for the consequences of the government’s Covid-19 strategy is like blaming climate scientists for not preventing the climate crisis. Scientists can provide evidence, but acting on that evidence requires political will.