One problem is the people telling us to just “follow the science” rarely seem to understand the interaction between things science can and has resolved and the unknowns and trade-offs that cannot be resolved by appeals to “The Science.” They’re often using science as a talisman.https://twitter.com/jflier/status/1345417443909500931 …
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Agree with this. I think a better way to think of it is “Start with the science.”
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Replying to @chrislhayes @benyt
The problem is it's both true and not, but in a very complicated way. We need to be evidence and scientific-theory driven. Of course. Many important questions for which both are incomplete. Some of those—even with clarity—involve inevitable trade-offs that need political choices.
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"Listen to scientists". Doesn't work that well either, because give me a question and I'll find you a scientist with the right credential who disagrees with most. Often they are cranks who should have retired long time ago. Sometimes they have a point. How to tell them apart?
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As a talisman though, it isn't just ineffective, it's counterproductive. How is an ordinary person supposed to navigate this? That's why CDC, WHO etc have to be stellar; we need the synthesizing authorities who can navigate the thicket on our behalf & fight for earning out trust.
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I think it’s more a point for policy makers. It’s the main issue in climate. There’s no escaping politics and contrasting values and visions of the good, but you can’t get *anywhere* unless you start with some basic agreements on consensus scientific knowledge.
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As a scholar I agree w/you about the limits of scientific knowledge & problems of "follow the science" as talisman, but 'embrace the complexity & contingency' is a very hard thing to message, or sell; agreement on basic consensus science is a vital foundation for any next steps.
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I don't think we should just tell everyone to embrace complexity. I agree. I want the synthesizing authorities to work in a stellar fashion, in a way that responds to the current information environment. Nothing else can really scale.
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That makes good sense to me. It does ask a lot of the synthesizing authorities, WHO, CDC, etc. And, as we've seen, given hyper-partisanship, mono channel media, & the role of bellicose nationalism, some well-placed high-level doubt, once seeded, is awfully hard to beat back...
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Synthesis of emerging, incomplete information with an eye towards decision-making is a crucial and greatly under-appreciated skill. Deep domain expertise can even work against it. The best of WHO and CDC excel at just that, and that is—should be—their main and very important job.
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