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What the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about science, policy and society
The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2021 required politicians to work alongside and depend on scientists more closely than any other event in recent times. It also saw science unfold in real time under intense public scrutiny. As a result, it highlighted as never before the ways in which science in...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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The Royal Society
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8504882/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34956594 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2021.0022 |
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author | Ball, Philip |
author_facet | Ball, Philip |
author_sort | Ball, Philip |
collection | PubMed |
description | The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2021 required politicians to work alongside and depend on scientists more closely than any other event in recent times. It also saw science unfold in real time under intense public scrutiny. As a result, it highlighted as never before the ways in which science interacts with policy-making and with society, showing with sometimes painful clarity that science does not operate in a social or political vacuum. With the advent of vaccines against the coronavirus that has caused the pandemic, science has come to be seen as something of a saviour. But at other times and in other contexts it has also been cast as a villain and an inconvenience, and has run into stark conflict with political leadership. In this article, I consider these issues with particular reference to the situation in the UK—which, as with any nation, illustrated some considerations of more general applicability but also had aspects unique to this country. I argue that there are many lessons to be learnt, and that, as this is surely not the last infectious-disease crisis of such magnitude that the world will face, we must hope they will be heeded. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8504882 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85048822021-12-23 What the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about science, policy and society Ball, Philip Interface Focus Articles The global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020–2021 required politicians to work alongside and depend on scientists more closely than any other event in recent times. It also saw science unfold in real time under intense public scrutiny. As a result, it highlighted as never before the ways in which science interacts with policy-making and with society, showing with sometimes painful clarity that science does not operate in a social or political vacuum. With the advent of vaccines against the coronavirus that has caused the pandemic, science has come to be seen as something of a saviour. But at other times and in other contexts it has also been cast as a villain and an inconvenience, and has run into stark conflict with political leadership. In this article, I consider these issues with particular reference to the situation in the UK—which, as with any nation, illustrated some considerations of more general applicability but also had aspects unique to this country. I argue that there are many lessons to be learnt, and that, as this is surely not the last infectious-disease crisis of such magnitude that the world will face, we must hope they will be heeded. The Royal Society 2021-10-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8504882/ /pubmed/34956594 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2021.0022 Text en © 2021 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Articles Ball, Philip What the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about science, policy and society |
title | What the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about science, policy and society |
title_full | What the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about science, policy and society |
title_fullStr | What the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about science, policy and society |
title_full_unstemmed | What the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about science, policy and society |
title_short | What the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about science, policy and society |
title_sort | what the covid-19 pandemic reveals about science, policy and society |
topic | Articles |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8504882/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34956594 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2021.0022 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT ballphilip whatthecovid19pandemicrevealsaboutsciencepolicyandsociety |