The texts suggested in the article are: Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything ; Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species ; Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ; Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat ; Primo Levi, The Periodic Table ; Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
While I would rather indicate some good divlugation of Epistemology (or "Philosophy of Science", formula preferred West of the Atlantic, where 'epistemology' is more commonly used to indicate what elsewhere is called 'gnoseology'), and the list from The Economist has something of the pick from the half-interested onlooker, even those texts will probably do more good than harm.
The author, Thomas Milovac, discusses in the article the following three points: that «Science [does not] "tell[] you what to do"», that «[The practice in] Science is [not] value-free», that «[The construction of] Science is [not] unbiased».
Occasional context aside, pretty basic notions, that some paternalistic panic blown in the past years has seen obscured.
«When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout»
~~ Walt Disney (through Donald Duck)
Well, covid demonstrated that bad things can appear, that rapid human response can have an effect and that medical and pharma technology is able to respond quickly to a crisis. Having the works massively review existing alternatives for a new situation, communicating at lightening speed was something that could not have occurred 20+ years ago. Having the ability to rapidly create multiple vaccine alternatives and a few direct treatment attempts in a year or so was totally unexpected. Hell, the virus was sequenced in days or a few weeks. That aspect of the system worked better than expected, fortunately.
Politicians, social media, business, however, totally failed. Hoarding supplies, denying results, ignoring the severity of the crisis, distributing bogus information…. Also something that wasn’t possible 20 years ago. Politicizing a crisis and allowing people to die was inhuman but commonplace. “Science” was ok. Society failed. And failed in such as way that the next crisis will be worse.
> Politicians, social media, business, however, totally failed
Hear, hear.
> “Science” was ok
Yes and no.
"Science" was """politicized""", possibly in the sense the poster used above. That would not be "Science" anymore. What happened is, ignorance was allowed to taint and prevail. Of course, while all around there was havoc, researchers honestly researched.
On the other hand, «“Science” was» not «ok», since there where we needed a concerted effort to clarify a situation, for the purpose of sound decision making in a structured framework, i.e. a model in which "We have a ranked and structured list of important questions; these are the tentative provisional answers" - this leadership related goal failed. Far from having obtained dashboards of information in form of rough functions of risks, improved through time, depending on, say, "room cubature" and "surface of openings" and "time of permanence" and "protections used" etc., the leading relevant bodies of leading relevant countries probably still present in their websites "Wash your hands" (for real - this is not an hyperbole, I have seen it).
Some evidence of disconnected efforts appeared, together with a chasm in divulgation, between research and public - especially in the said basic need of a "structured presentation of progressive tentative knowledge so far". It is a failure in "journalism", because we need to access digested information, not "the journals".
The Economist reads, Science - What to read to understand how science works
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2022/08/17/wha...
The texts suggested in the article are: Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything ; Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species ; Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks ; Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat ; Primo Levi, The Periodic Table ; Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.
While I would rather indicate some good divlugation of Epistemology (or "Philosophy of Science", formula preferred West of the Atlantic, where 'epistemology' is more commonly used to indicate what elsewhere is called 'gnoseology'), and the list from The Economist has something of the pick from the half-interested onlooker, even those texts will probably do more good than harm.