How Government Leaders Violated Their Epistemic Duties During the SARS-CoV-2 Crisis

Winsberg, Eric; Brennan, Jason; Surprenant, Chris W.

doi:10.1353/ken.2020.0013

Cited by 36 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…One might agree that the general type of situation characterised by (a)–(c) could happen and yet disagree that the events of mid-March are a genuine instance of it. Critics of the Ferguson et al model have argued that, due to the tentative nature of its modelling assumptions, it did not generate a normatively adequate justification for its recommendation (Northcott, 2021 ; Winsberg et al, 2020 ; but see also the response from van Basshuysen and White, 2021 ). Importantly, though, we should avoid overstating the significance to the case of this one model.…”

Section: Types Of Advice: Reflections and A Proposalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science and policy in extremis: the UK’s initial response to COVID-19

Birch

2021

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Drawing on the SAGE minutes and other documents, I consider the wider lessons for norms of scientific advising that can be learned from the UK’s initial response to coronavirus in the period January–March 2020, when an initial strategy that planned to avoid total suppression of transmission was abruptly replaced by an aggressive suppression strategy. I introduce a distinction between “normatively light advice”, in which no specific policy option is recommended, and “normatively heavy advice” that does make an explicit recommendation. I argue that, although scientific advisers should avoid normatively heavy advice in normal times in order to facilitate democratic accountability, this norm can be permissibly overridden in situations of grave emergency. SAGE’s major mistake in early 2020 was not that of endorsing a particular strategy, nor that of being insufficiently precautionary, but that of relying too heavily on a specific set of “reasonable worst-case” planning assumptions. I formulate some proposals that assign a more circumscribed role to “worst-case” thinking in emergency planning. In an epilogue, I consider what the implications of my proposals would have been for the UK’s response to the “second wave” of late 2020.

show abstract

Section: Types Of Advice: Reflections and A Proposalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Science and policy in extremis: the UK’s initial response to COVID-19

Birch

2021

Euro Jnl Phil Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Scientific modelling is a value-laden process: the decisions involved can seldom be made using ‘scientific’ criteria alone, but rather draw on our social and ethical values. This has been shown in health economics ( Harvard et al, 2020 ), climate science ( Winsberg, 2012 , 2018 ), and COVID-19 modelling, where critiques of COVID-19 models reflect differences in values around how health policy decisions should be informed ( Reddy, 2020 ; Winsberg et al, 2020 ). Here, we draw on philosophical literature to analyze a COVID-19 vaccination model ( Adibi et al, 2021 ), presenting a case study of social and ethical value judgments in health-oriented modelling.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Value judgments in a COVID-19 vaccination model: A case study in the need for public involvement in health-oriented modelling

Harvard

Winsberg

Symons

et al. 2021

Social Science & Medicine

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scientific modelling is a value-laden process: the decisions involved can seldom be made using ‘scientific’ criteria alone, but rather draw on social and ethical values. In this paper, we draw on a body of philosophical literature to analyze a COVID-19 vaccination model, presenting a case study of social and ethical value judgments in health-oriented modelling. This case study urges us to make value judgments in health-oriented models explicit and interpretable by non-experts and to invite public involvement in making them.

show abstract

“…Philosophers are increasingly scrutinising epidemiological models that have been used to forecast the trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic (Horner and Symons 2020;Nguyen and Frigg 2021;Winsberg, Brennan, and Surprenant 2020;Schroeder 2021; van Basshuysen and White 2021). The success of these models is often evaluated in terms of their predictive accuracy (Friedman et al 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three Ways in Which Pandemic Models May Perform a Pandemic

Basshuysen

White

Khosrowi

et al. 2021

EJPE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Models not only represent but may also influence their targets in important ways. While models’ abilities to influence outcomes has been studied in the context of economic models, often under the label ‘performativity’, we argue that this phenomenon also pertains to epidemiological models, such as those used for forecasting the trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic. After identifying three ways in which a model by the Covid-19 Response Team at Imperial College London (Ferguson et al. 2020) may have influenced scientific advice, policy, and individual responses, we consider the implications of epidemiological models’ performative capacities. We argue, first, that performativity may impair models’ ability to successfully predict the course of an epidemic; but second, that it may provide an additional sense in which these models can be successful, namely by changing the course of an epidemic.

show abstract

How Government Leaders Violated Their Epistemic Duties During the SARS-CoV-2 Crisis

Cited by 36 publications

References 0 publications

Science and policy in extremis: the UK’s initial response to COVID-19

Science and policy in extremis: the UK’s initial response to COVID-19

Value judgments in a COVID-19 vaccination model: A case study in the need for public involvement in health-oriented modelling

Three Ways in Which Pandemic Models May Perform a Pandemic

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About