Could Covid save science and, with it, democracy? Western democracies are in trouble: the last elections in the US and the UK were won by leaders who believe their victories make them representatives of ‘The Will Of The People’ (TWOP). If you believe you are the embodiment of TWOP then anyone who is against you is a traitor – you are a populist. If scientific experts are against you, over, say, the size of the inaugural crowd or the danger of global warming, or the economic effects of Brexit, they are traitors. Pluralist democracies, in contrast, provide some space for those who don’t agree with the government: an independent judiciary, a loyal opposition’, votes in parliament, alternate chambers, and a free press. Scientific experts are another of those checks and balances; without them, governments can choose anything convenient or popular when it comes to technological decisions. There are two ways in which Covid could get us out of this but three ways in which it might make things worse: here are the possibilities:
+1) Covid could save us because it is now obvious to everyone that we need science. A low point for science was the widespread rejection of Mumps, Measles and Rubella (MMR) vaccine following Andrew Wakefield’s claim, on the basis if no evidence, that it caused autism. But Trump’s drivel in respect of Coronavirus is being rejected because people know they need scientists to develop tests, drugs (that aren’t disinfectants), and vaccines; this could lead to him losing the next election. Meantime, night after night, the British Government is broadcasting that it is ‘following the science’ instead of rejecting experts. So here too, science is on the up. The last time ‘the West’ had to rescue democracy it took 80 million lives, a lot of them young. If Covid does save us, a few hundred thousand lives (including mine), many of them old – would be a small price to pay.
-1) On the other hand, Covid could ruin the future for science because if Trump wins the next election in spite of his shameless pseudo-science it is hard to see how science as we know it will survive in the public domain because no politician will feel they need to endorse it in order to win an election.
+2) Covid could save us because we’d learn what science really is and how to defend it into the future. Scientists are their own worst enemies when it comes to justifying what they do because they set impossible targets. The great icons of science are the super-hero and the crazy genius, giving us gravitational waves, false colour pictures from The Hubble Telescope and A Brief History of Time, pulled out a magicians hat with a flourish; in some ways it’s humanity’s high point and it’s fabulous entertainment, but it doesn’t bear on policy-making and it doesn’t measure up to close examination anyway; even Einstein kept changing his mind about gravitational waves and there were at least seven failed ‘discoveries’ of gravitational waves before the 2016 triumph. The science we need isn’t a motor of capitalism either. Where are the heroes of what we do need: ‘craftwork with integrity’? This is the kind of science that underlies policy. We need weather forecasting, econometric modelling, predictive epidemiology. None of it is certain, none of it is justified by its being guaranteed to provide the right result. In terms of the certainty of its judgements, it overlaps with politics but crucially, in terms of its aspirations it has nothing in common with politics. It is driven by the search for truth not financial success or success at persuading the public to agree with a slogan. But politics needs it because the institution of science is an object lesson for democracy in how to make decisions when things are a mess. And that is by doing ones best based on what observations and instruments one has and valuing the truth more than riches or power. The UK cabinet, it seems, has found out that ‘epidemiology [is] more like economics than physics: lots of variables, lots of assumptions, and no one right answer’, but it’s still the best kind of information we can get to feed into the question of how and when to end lockdown: ‘scientists [who] are as bitchy as a bunch of lawyers’ cannot and should not make policy but they are a better starting point than celebrities or a referendum driven by misinformation. If Covid can teach us how to value a science that cannot always give the right answer, then democracy will be safer.
-2) Covid might not save us because the mantra of ‘following the science’ might wind up making science the scapegoat. The precedent is Regan and Thatcher who claimed that their policies were driven by economics when, as we now know, economists never agree. If the government can support the idea that it was the science that let us all down, drawing attention away from the fact that the consensus on the need for testing and PPE was strong at the time when the promises were being made and broken day after day, science and democracy will emerge weaker from the pandemic.
-3) Covid might not save us because it will change science into politics. That predictive epidemiology has visibly turned out to be like economics means that Dominic Cummings and his buddies seem to have a role inside science not just outside. Strangely, the merging of science and politics is just what many of my colleagues in the social studies of science want and that leads straight to the MMR revolt and the like. That would be a disaster because what we need to lead democracy and safeguard it is the institution we still have, driven by the ideal of truth – the institution whose icons turn on craftwork with integrity.
Conclusion: That’s two positives and three negatives. My view is that the crucial things is to find the justification for fallible science: the time when science could be justified by its heroic discoveries is over: Covid is telling us so. That nettle has to be grasped by scientists, politicians and the public. We want science as because it can show us how to make decisions when we ‘live in interesting times’. Those decisions are not guaranteed to be right but they are the way we want to see them made: they are better than hunches or decision based on what celebrities say on social media, or on any decision where self-interest dominates an interest in the truth of the matter. We need science as an institution more than we need it for its findings; we need it if we don’t want to have to fight for democracy all over again.