#auspol #covid19 It's not actually that difficult to guess the political views of nearly every pandemic…
#auspol #covid19 It's not actually that difficult to guess the political views of nearly every pandemic expert. That's not them abandoning science and facts, that's the basic reality that every fact is only true within a wider framework of assumptions and values. 1/n
This frustrates the public, because they're taught that science produces facts, so how could experts disagree? Experts themselves seem not as aware of this more nuanced view of facts, mostly because we haven't used a wide enough range of expertise in this pandemic. 2/n
Scholars from the humanities for example are much more aware of how facts are shaped by assumptions and social processes. Almost exclusively we've drawn upon medical expertise to understand this pandemic. 3/n
This medicalisation of a complex event has left us hamstrung in understanding many aspects of it. Just a couple of many examples: the Economy. Spoken of as some independent entity that needs to be protected, a major barrier to basic public health work in many countries. 4/n
Vaccine 'hesitancy' another. Biostatistics used to frame the hesitant as naive and anti-rational, absent any understanding of the enormous complexity of how individuals assess risk. And absent even basic ethical considerations around complex decisions. 5/n
A superb exception to this narrow view of the pandemic was the Go8's Road to Recovery report. Drawing upon expertise across a wide spectrum, with nuanced and sophisticated recommendations. Some of these have been adopted. 6/n
Too often though the fracturing of universities into competing, billable disciplines has been reflected in expert advice in the pandemic. Often more about positioning than problem-solving, and nearly every other area of expertise drowned out by the biddable medical sciences...7/n
...delighted to be at the centre of political power and influence. Most of the advice from that broad discipline area has been superb, but again it also conflicts (because of conflicting values and politics, usually undeclared), and isn't tempered by wider expertise. 8/end