Trust the science.
Since the very beginning of the pandemic, that’s been billed as the way through it all, a reassuring mantra reminding us we’re in safe hands.
And by and large, Australians, law-abiding as we are, have found that easy to do.
We’ve listened to the experts, stayed home, mostly masked up when required. The Q-pilled conspiracy theorists are a minority, and the dorky libertarian let it rip crowd mostly remain a marginal presence in News Corp’s funny pages.
Get Crikey FREE to your inbox every weekday morning with the Crikey Worm.
But, suddenly, that way-too-simple bit of advice suddenly seems a whole lot more confusing.
“The science” really wasn’t clear-cut back in March, when we faced a novel, deadly virus we still knew little about.
Modelling, even good modelling, has been way off, because there just wasn’t enough data about the virus yet. And six months later, while we know a lot more, the mantra just seems to be getting harder to follow.
Science can still be messy and uncertain. Reasonable minds will disagree on the best way to manage a once-in-a-century pandemic. There’s a constant divide among experts bubbling away over whether we can, in fact eliminate the virus from Australia.
Such differences are inevitable. But politicians tend to add to the confusion and noise, and make trusting the science all the more difficult.
On Sunday, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews released Victoria’s cautious, incremental roadmap back to “normal”. Underpinning the plan was modelling which said the state would be right back in lockdown come Christmas if restrictions were eased too early.
“You can’t argue with this sort of data, you can’t argue with science,” Andrews said, very confidently.
Except many experts did, suggesting the modelling was built on outdated assumptions, and unclear parameters. At the same time, plenty of epidemiologists threw their weight behind Andrews’ plan.
We also learnt this week that some of the rules, ostensibly backed by “the science”, came from nowhere at all.
Right now, nobody will take responsibility for the nightly curfew, by far the most draconian and controversial element of Melbourne’s current plan.
On Tuesday, chief health officer Brett Sutton said the curfew wasn’t his idea.
On Thursday, Victoria Police Commissioner Shane Patton said he hadn’t asked for it either, despite Andrews saying police wanted it to make enforcing restrictions easier. Turns out the curfew was all just a bit of heavy-handed shock and awe.
But there’s also a real sense this week that a lot of the debate in Australia is divided not by science but by partisan bickering and interstate rivalry.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison immediately hit out at Andrews’ plan. So did Health Minister Greg Hunt.
And the latest source of tension is over Queensland’s decision to keep its borders shut to NSW and the ACT.
Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she was just following health advice, and accused Morrison of “bullying” when he tearfully begged her to let a Canberra woman attend her father’s funeral.
At the same time, NSW has largely kept the virus under control. There hasn’t been a new case in the ACT for 62 days. And Palaszczuk has an election to win next month. It’s easy to get cynical about it all.
The problem here isn’t really the science.
Good epidemiologists and health experts will tell you there’s always uncertainty, things we don’t know. Trying to balance stopping the virus with protecting people’s emotional wellbeing and stimulating the economy is a fiendishly difficult task.
At the same time, it’s become more obvious than ever this week that politics is getting in the way of an honest, well-thought-out appraisal of where Australia is at in the COVID-19 struggle.
Politicians aren’t scientific communicators. Morrison aside, (ironically enough, he has a Bachelor of Science in geography), nobody in federal cabinet has a science degree.
Politicians don’t tend towards an honesty that reflects the messy, inconvenient uncertainty of the pandemic, but towards spin, triumphalism, and point-scoring over their rivals.
On Monday, the Morrison government declared all Australians would get a free COVID-19 vaccine by early next year, thanks to a deal with AstraZeneca.
Then science got in the way. Clinical trials were paused because a participant got sick. All totally run-of-the-mill stuff, but not a good fit with the government’s narrative of a vaccine around the corner.
Science deals in ifs and buts. Politicians deal in absolutes. And the tense uneasy alliance between the two is a concerning preview of the battles that will dominate our post-lockdown landscape.
Leave a comment
Science doesn’t deal in ifs and buts. It deals with data and complex theories that are used to explain that data. It does this so that predictions can be made about how and why systems behave the way they do. Scientist do qualify their research and point out its limitations; that not ifs and buts that’s just being honest about what the data means and what conclusions you can draw from it.
Politicians on the other hand like to fit the data to their agendas whether it is valid to do so or not.
It did not fall within the perview of the Chief Medical Officer to decide on a curfew. His job was to advise on tactics like limiting interpersonal contact. It is then up to the police to advise the politicians whether to have a curfew or not.
If they are all denying they reccommeded the curfew then someone most likely a politician is being economical with the truth.
I suggest that Crikey being the fearless and independent media organization that it is, file an FOI request and knock on Dan the Man’s door and ask him.
Someone decided on a curfew and as the paying public we have a right to know. And we have a right to know the reasoning and logic behind the decision.
As usual they tell us what the decision is, but not who made it and what options and logic they used to come to the decisions.
In other words as usual we are being treated with their usual contempt for us.
Matthew Haysom from Essendon explained it quite well in the Letters to today’s Age: the curfew is to reduce the police workload since Melbournians keep doing the wrong thing. Get over it, and all the rest of the nitpicking.
Dan the Man as you call him has clearly indicated that the decision was as part of a group discussion and he took responsibility for it. It is also totally irrelevant who of the various parties involved made the decision or suggested it, curfews are a good idea.
Kishor wrote: The problem here isn’t really the science.
Indeed, it’s not, Kishor.
Science progresses by detecting and eliminating error which it seeks to do as rigorously and independently as possible.
The process of detecting error is conflict-ridden, but the conflicts usually resolve quickly in comparison to doctrinal and ideological conflicts which can last for generations and more. Moreover, when error is detected we are not worse off in our decisions, and when it is eliminated we are better off.
I’d argue that people don’t really need certainty; they just need sufficient confidence to act intelligently. For two generations at least few would bet the house that they’ll have the same job in a year, yet we still go to work. We can live with some covid-uncertainty too as long as we understand what the uncertainty is and what we’ll do about it.
However, the influence-peddling of politics claims certainty it never actually possesses. I’m not clear that it has to do this, but am clear that the pretense of certainty and the manufacture of doubt are often rewarded with more influence.
I believe the answer isn’t less science in political debate, but more. We are better off with rigorous fact-checking than without. In a pandemic, we get better public discourse and compliance from covid-literate citizens than covid-illiterates.
It certainly would not hurt to have science knowledge well-represented in the federal and national cabinets.
Or — as I argue repeatedly — among the journalists leading political analysis on topics where science matters, since they’re the first line of defense against political deceit.
Science deals with the great uncertainties at the margins of knowledge. However, politicians have ridiculously over decades increasingly convinced individuals that they can expect certainty, particularly the fictitious certainty they sell. Why do politicians sell certainty? Because Capitalism demands certainty particularly where it does not exist. That is one of the blatant contradictions of Capitalism: on one hand, the only rational explanation for profit is that the profit-taker accepts risk and uncertainty and manages it to produce profit. Yet Capitalism demands certainty from government to make profit risk-free. It is this illogicality that causes cultural capitalism to attack and denigrate science: how can science be trusted when it admits great uncertainty?
> Science deals in ifs and buts.
Oh really? Just what was the motivation for that display of ignorance (or perhaps stupidity)?
The only issue with Newtonian physics, until about a century ago, was the orbit of Mercury. For a while it was unclear if the aberrations were attributable to measurement. However, the General Theory resolved the aberrations. There are any number of equivalent examples from Chemistry and Biology. That statement, quoted, is utterly irresponsible and betrays a very great igornance.
As an aside and an exercise, have a crack at listing the science writers for Australia but, for your own sake, ingore anyone from Crikey.
In a sentence, mate, sciences deals with MEASUREMENT and measurement is NOT associated with ‘ifs an buts’. Do make a effort to
commit at least that statement to your general knowledge.
> Politicians deal in absolutes.
Do they? That is news! The entire economic mess arising from the virus can be attributed to political interference.
It would be interesting to ascertain if DFAT has been consulted on the deteriorating relations with the PRC. Just identify ONE ‘absolute’
in politics; I would be rather interested.
Just what ‘absolutes’ are each of the Premiers currently “dealing in” mate?
> nobody in federal cabinet has a science degree
The only useful statement in your article and which confirms a long held suspicion. A BSc Geog. depending upon other subjects
studied, doesn’t quite equate the the ‘hard’ sciences.
I thought that Greg Hunt has a science degree, as his PhD was supposed to have been extolling the virtues of a carbon price I think.
That was an honours thesis for his degree from Melbourne Law School.
“Modelling, even good modelling, has been way off, because there just wasn’t enough data about the virus yet. And six months later, while we know a lot more, the mantra just seems to be getting harder to follow.”
Once again, an opinionator with insufficient technical understanding. This comment is equivalent to the endless trope about the Bureau of Meteorology always getting the weather forecasts wrong. Strangely, despite this, people all over the world make correct decisions on the outcome of the weather worth thousands of millions of dollars every day. And Dwight Eisenhower made the right decision about D Day.
I do a lot of modelling and I have looked at the modelling for the pandemic and I haven’t seen evidence of it being “way off”. Projections are projections based on assumptions and usually a range of assumptions with sensitivities. All of this needs to be looked at. Not just one or two cute charts. Pretty much everything that has transpired has fallen within the projections with some fuzziness at the fringes.
Modelling like this operates within a control cycle where actual experience is compared to expected outcomes on a regular basis with the outputs of that analysis refining the model, and therefore the projections. The modelling will and should change at least every couple of days.
Also bear in mind that for pandemics, projections are prepared as inputs to decisions about actions specifically designed to ensure that the projections don’t eventuate. The projections have actually done their job if the outcomes are “way off” the initial projections.
Well said.