The paradox of ‘listen to the science’
President Donald Trump’s ligion, or science against the success in politicizing maskintuitions of citizens. Such juxtawearing has been destructive to positions helped create the mess human life. By enwe’re in. couraging his folOf course, no one who says lowers to ignore “listen to the scientists” — a the advice of sciphrase President-elect Biden entists, Trump has invoked often — is trying to has made the panstoke conflicts of this sort. And demic worse. None the scientists are entirely right of this means that that masks are good, large gathrepeating “Listen erings in bars are stupid, social to the science” as distancing is essential and, more a quasi-religious broadly, we simply cannot live in mantra will undo the damage ways that pretend there is little he’s done. danger out there.
It won’t work because it’s a Put differently, the choice besentiment that appeals only to tween listening to Trump and the already converted. It feeds right-wing denialist governors the war against expertise that or listening to Dr. Anthony Fauci has become a favorite propais no choice at all. The right anganda tool for the political right. swer is Fauci, and he will now be And without intending to, it rereinforced by the able coronaviinforces the deadly and false rus task force Biden announced dichotomies that Trump has this week. ginned up to avoid accountabilBut we need to understand ity. that the election we just had
The last thing we need are arpoints to a country far more diguments that pit science against vided on how to grapple with the the economy, science against depandemic than many of us would like.mocracy,scienceagainstindi
vidual rights, science against re- The Edison exit poll put an interesting question to voters about their priorities concerning the pandemic, asking which of two approaches was “more important.” The result: 52% said “containing the coronavirus now, even if it hurts the economy,” while 42% said “rebuilding the economy now, even if it hurts efforts to contain the coronavirus.”
Biden won about four-fifths of the first group; Trump won over three quarters of the second.
And if you wonder how a president whose failings are as obvious as Trump’s could add over 11 million votes to his 2016 total, consider that when voters were asked to name the issue that mattered most to them, 35% named the economy and just 17% named the pandemic. Trump got more than 80% of the economy voters, Biden more than 80% of the pandemic voters.
This suggests that despite his lethal bungling of the covid-19 crisis, Trump actually picked up support by framing the issue before the voters as an either/or showdown between subduing the virus and boosting the economy.
Many Americans seemed to respond to “listen to the scientists” by saying: “But what about my job, my house, my income?”
Biden has tried to make the case — correctly — that defeating the virus is a prerequisite of economic recovery and that falling back into the catastrophic spread we confront now can only set back the cause of job creation. But Trump’s poisonous casting of experts as indifferent to the struggles on Main Street got real traction. It’s incumbent on Biden and his team to change the terms of the discussion.
Their efforts should begin by highlighting the economy every chance they get — by fighting for economic relief now and additional help and stimulus after Biden is inaugurated; by rolling out longer-term programs to assist those whose lives have been most disrupted by the pandemic, including the young; and by proposing a GI Bill and pay-and-benefit increases for those whose work we have finally discovered is “essential.”
Ending the pandemic and reviving the economy must always be mentioned in the same breath as part of the same fight.
But we also need greater clarity about the role of scientists and other experts in a democracy. As the great liberal philosopher and intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin wrote, there are “vast regions of reality which only scientific methods, hypotheses, established truths, can reveal, account for, explain, and indeed control.” Yes, God bless the scientists.
Yet Berlin also insisted “that not everything, in practice, can be . . . grasped by the sciences . .
. . Natural science cannot answer all questions.”
To move forward, we need Berlin’s sense of balance. We should robustly defend science against attacks rooted in anti-intellectualism and political opportunism. But here’s what the wisest scientists (including Fauci) have always understood: Their work is a form of service to a public good whose definition is determined not by science but by democratic deliberation, debate and persuasion.
They know that we are more likely to listen to experts — and political leaders — who themselves know how to listen.