Scientists Who Stand Up to be Counted

In the UK the pandemic is rushing towards its second anniversary, changing, but no less dangerous for the life we used to think was ‘normal’, and indeed our very lives. During this time, as a scientist I have had confidence that there are other scientists out there who are doing their best to make sense of the data and doing their utmost to pass on this knowledge to the government and the public. I don’t assume that these people are out there, peddling lies or in the pay of some mega-corporation, but others seem determined to believe such ideas. Consequently, these scientists, who are willing to speak out, have become the target of many – from the political classes to journalists and pundits, right on down to Jo(e) down the pub (almost certainly without a mask or vaccine passport in their pocket).

I am glad to see the Guardian highlighting the sorts of abuse these individuals – and many others who have been providing advice to the Government – are facing from both concerted and individual attacks (see for instance a specific example here). I have the pleasure of knowing David Spiegelhalter (not least as a Fellow of Churchill College), whom I greatly respect. He is an eminent statistician who has spent much of the pandemic trying to put facts out into the public domain. Jointly with his fellow statistician Anthony Masters, he has been writing weekly articles in the Observer about how the data can be interpreted, how it can be misinterpreted, and when it doesn’t exist in a form that is usable. This week they describe how they have been accused of ‘genocide’ and referred to as ‘Nazi collaborators’ and other similar terms of abuse.

David has always taken great pains only to deal with those facts in which he has confidence . During a Zoom talk he gave to the Churchill College Fellowship in the summer of 2020, when he was analysing the early data on deaths and highlighting the extreme dependence of these on age, he would not be drawn on other aspects of the pandemic even to that closed audience. Deaths were things he had hard data on, infections were not, nor variations by country and so on. He would not stray beyond the facts he had to hand, nor speculate about how the pandemic might unfold. David is also a very modest man, who is always willing to hold his hand up when he makes a mistake, but he also has the confidence (and platforms) to challenge those who use the data incorrectly.

Another prominent figure trying to dispense sensible advice based on the data is Devi Sridhar, Professor of global public health at the University of Edinburgh and an advisor to Nicola Sturgeon over the handling of the pandemic in Scotland. I’ve not (yet) met her, but am looking forward to hosting a public conversation with her here at Churchill College in May, in person or not only time will tell. This date will be around the time her book about the pandemic is published. Devi too has written about the attacks and lies of which she has been the target. It perhaps should come as no surprise, however dispiriting it is, to realise that as a woman of colour her expertise is regularly dismissed. That she is a professor in an ancient university seems to count for nothing when people decide to spread untruths about her scientific credibility. Jo(e) down the pub knows better than her own university about the worth of her research and can spread misinformation rapidly so that it becomes its own trope. She writes sadly about how clickbait and social media can completely drown out the facts.

Michael Gove, in his infamous remark about this country ‘having had enough of experts’, may have been referring to economists specifically but – if you’ve never met an expert in any discipline – it may be easy enough to think that everyone’s point of view is equally valid. Whereas that may be true when it comes to debating whether you prefer one Strictly contestant over another, or a particular hunk in one of the apparently endless reality TV shows, it hardly applies when dealing with the horrid reality that is a pandemic. The Prime Minister may talk cheerfully about following the science, but not all his actions align with that sensible statement. The media can, in too many instances, propagate misinformation, as Devi despairingly points out in her recent article; too many in the public may swallow it whole, without even realising that’s what they’re doing.

Another Fellow of Churchill College, Sander van der Linden, has been working hard at ways to counter misinformation. Apparently nicknamed as Cambridge’s defence against the dark arts” teacher, his own recent article in the Guardian proposes ways to handle the determined disbeliever in the vaccination programme, trying to counter the misinformation speeding around the web. While many of us may be irritated by those who believe in conspiracy theories, and understand the science well enough to have confidence, just saying ‘you’re wrong’ will not get us far in changing minds.  It is important also to remember, as John Harris has pointed out, there are many people whose lives are so disadvantaged and/or chaotic, that much of the information – positive or negative – floats around them without ever touching. They may have legitimate fears and utterly insufficient routes to access accurate information which they feel confident enough to trust.

Trust sits at the heart of so much of this debate. Who do you trust? The answer apparently is, for too many, social media not established scientists. The position is of course complicated because not all scientists say exactly the same thing. Analysing the data around mortality, as David Spiegelhalter does, is one thing. Predicting how omicron will spread as soon as it touches our shores quite another. Believing herd immunity is the solution, as those scientists who signed the Great Barrington agreement did, another thing again. How the JCVI weigh up evidence around vaccination for children, without factoring the damage (mental as well as physical) that their ill health might cause to their families and hence indirectly themselves, different again. Scientists are used to critical thinking; to weighing up the evidence and to assessing who to trust versus those actors may who have underlying motives not simply related to evidence. It is part of our daily bread and butter.  In some senses this awareness is our privilege. Not everyone is so fortunate. It is to the immense credit of those scientists who try to tackle the misinformation head on, for the good of all regardless of the hostility that is meted out to them. More power to their elbows.