The ignorance of experts | Julian Baggini, Ellen Clarke, Ben Burgis

foreign governments and politicians get it wrong during covid in relying on quote the science to justify policy and specifically within that it's the sort of the use of Science in in politics that I think we we want to sort of lean into that Ben what are you what are you thinking um yeah I mean I think there are lots of governments that got lots of things

wrong I'm not sure that's why uh that they you know excessive um excessive Reliance on expert opinion I mean I think that you know one distinction I guess that hasn't really been made that's maybe useful to is even beyond the point about facts and values there's um you know having expertise on the facts doesn't necessarily mean that you're great at figuring out what follows for those

facts uh and you know sometimes there are issues that are simple enough that somebody you know with legitimate expertise could explain their reasoning you could say well that doesn't really make sense right you know that the you know I'll take your word your word for it on the premise right you know but that doesn't really make sense so an example from very early in the pandemic

was the point when all the public health authorities were saying you shouldn't wear masks uh that's actually going to be worse if you wear a mask that they uh that you'll mess it up you know you've you fools you can't do it right you know and uh and and you're actually more likely you know get covered and if you if you looked at the documents like

uh CDC or who on this um the stated reasons didn't really make that much sense it was like oh well you know uh people will be Reckless because they'll think they're safe it's like all right that's an argument to get seat belts you know that's uh you know so so I think there are cases like that but overall I mean I don't um I don't know

maybe like Julie to have a different perspective on this based on someone what he said earlier you know maybe Ellenwood but like I think um I think by and large you know the the things that uh governments did most seriously wrong you know I I you know I don't think can particularly be laid on the uh the doorstep of like you know paying too much attention

to epidemiologists I think often it was kind of the other way around right I mean we don't agree with that I think you know the point was that we're just following the science was a smoke screen they you know they people did that to to avoid having to justify themselves politically but they they weren't in many countries in in the US with Trump as president and

with our um uh joke of a government here I mean they just have to just they weren't actually basing their policy on on the best scientific advice I think that often they they were ignoring it so it was using it as a smoke screen effectively um also the other thing is I mean it's a good example of how people use this kind of conveniently one of

the ways in which they kind of claimed to be following the science which was most misguided was they were claiming to follow the science around behavioral psychology and Behavioral Science right so like you were saying how you know oh if people wear Master actually become riskier and and they were saying if we can't do lockdowns because there's only so long people will tolerate lockdowns if we

go too early everyone will break it et cetera Etc and that that was again it was it was very very sloppy because first of all this whole Behavioral Science field is far too young to have any sort of like strong conclusions from it you know what we know about how people behave oh yeah no one knew how people were behave in a global pandemic they just

didn't have the data right you can you can only base your conclusions on the basis of um relevant past experience and there wasn't relevant by past experience so it would always have been overconfident anyway it also turns out in the case of the UK government they invented things that weren't even part of the science so the the behavioral impact team whatever they're called um the advise

the government never came up with the phrase I think behavioral fatigue or something there's some kind of like uh fatigue phrase they used and the government is saying you know we can't um bring in these lockdowns because there's this thing called whatever it is fatigue and people will retire of it the scientists didn't even come up with that it wasn't it wasn't a scientific phrase so

there was a lot of just hiding behind the signs and claiming to be following it so I think I agree the problem was they didn't um listen enough to the science and and base their bait not follow it but base their policy sufficiently on the science rather they just used it as a way of like claiming that they they didn't have to take any political responsibility

I mean I wonder I wonder how you you what you think in that case about the fact that obviously it's a global pandemic right everybody had different responses so famously in Europe of course there was Sweden so how does how does Sweden fit into this perhaps they're like more apparently laissez-faire approach was maybe arguably the right one in that case because they went well we follow

the science there isn't much science so we what do you think well I think but I think they were following I said they thought they were following their science their Chief Scientific Advisor when justifying what's going on was was appealing to evidence for saying why this was the best policy so I mean it really just reinforces the point that in areas like this you know you

talk about data points and and how you join them in this case we had quite a lot of data points there was no obvious uncontroversial way of joining them to give us a theory of of what the best action would be in the pandemic surely in this case it a graph's never going to tell you what to do right agreement really I think it's just nonsense

audio that they were following sites I assumed it was like a legal move almost it was kind of a way of saying like oh if I screw this up blame him don't blame us like just transparently um but I mean how could it have been otherwise there's so many you know normative questions that had to go into a balance of reasons right about you know uh

how bad it is if so if some people die how bad is it if people miss out on education you know how how sort of risk-averse you know how bad is anxiety like it's a it's a balance of reasons and for my money you know they should have been much more explicit about explicit about what those uh reasons were and how they were weighing them and

then people might have been felt a bit more reassured so I mean obviously trust was a big part of this and there is just this General theme of like if you say oh you know the science backs this there's just this implicit trust that happens right so oh yeah so is there shouldn't that be so it was it was loaded into the question that there's been

a you know a retreat of trust and Authority um anti-vaxxers and things and I suppose let's not say I've got sympathy let's say this um I think um some people are becoming a bit more aware recently that let's say knowledge is situated right the the expertise comes from a particular position a perspective often a social position and when people don't see their own you know backgrounds

represented and the people you know doing the science and telling them what to do they're rightly suspicious of it and you know it's probably not as explicit as them thinking oh I can't see what the background assumptions are that they're using to you know come up with these policies so I can't be reassured that my values are being represented but you know that that that makes

some good sense of what's going on I and it's caused lots of communities to turn away from science you know there's a certain thread of feminist philosophy of science that just rejects it which is awful right because science has got all of the resources and all of the you know all of the money and the the big telescopes and things um so we shouldn't turn away

from it we should use it but I think it would be very helpful as far as trust and science goes if the people using the microscopes and whatnot were more diverse so that people felt like their values went into this balance of reasons I'm I have to ask in that case do you do you two think that the who is doing the Science Matters as much

if not more in that case than the person who generally is the the face of it right some policy person some legal person some somebody else is usually the person who uses the science it's not the scientists who get carted out on the whole right like yeah I mean I guess I would say that the um I mean look I'm all in favor of diversity among

people who are you know actually men in the uh you know the the microscopes uh that's a good social value and so sure yes absolutely but I I guess I I guess I have to say like at least especially going back to the context of covert you know thinking about that uh I'm actually a bit you know what do you think about the breakdown trust in

science I'm actually much more concerned about the public face people than the people behind the microscopes I I kind of think that people behind the you know mostly metaphorical might you know not always microscopes in this case like they kind of did the best they could right you know like they they actually did a reasonably good job and you know look we we got um I

I think uh had you know had figure things out I think all things considered remarkably quickly I think the things you can point to that you know that epidemiologists got wrong initially think its surfaces matter more than they did stuff like that I think that was corrected and like light speed in the great greater speed of things right you know we certainly got vaccines shockingly quickly

right you know people with the microscopes they're they're good right they're fine you know people with the people behind microphones I'm much more concerned with because I think they did a lot of things actually that were kind of own goals that unnecessarily undermined the public credibility of science so uh the mask thing that I mentioned earlier is one example I mean another um I I also

think just times when it just seemed blatantly political you know the the sort of um the use of it that it was just very obvious that people were sort of leaning on their expertise but that you know that they were that it was you could see from space that there were political considerations that were dictating and you know how they're saying all of these things I

think you know I think unnecessarily again I don't think you can really blame the people with the microscopes but I think all these things people behind microphones were doing did on did contribute heavily to undermining The credibility of you know health science at like a time you know that's kind of the worst time to do it because you know you need to convince everybody to get

vaccinated and all of that yeah I think sometimes people are a bit sort of um sloppy about thinking what exactly is it that people are not trusting I think sometimes people think oh people don't trust science they think that science is is bogus and I don't I don't think I don't have the data points for this but I I don't think that's the main issue I

think the main issue people have is what the science is being used for because if you think about it a lot of things that people are worried about assume degrees of competence that scientists do not have right these scientists cannot put these little Nanobots into your vaccines which will make you zombies following the government that is incredible trust in the power of science it's incredible distrust

in the power of authorities and the users of science right and I think a lot of it's like that I like the vaccination again why would a lot of communities worried about vaccination again they thought technically speaking the government were incredible able to do remarkable things like you know um sterilize African-American communities Etc right so huge trust in the power of science but not in the

people using it and then you ask well why did they have that you know well you know Western governments haven't experimented on um afro-americ yeah yes they have I mean there's there's past evidence of this so I think that sometimes people sort of like Get they make the wrong defense they start going about how great science is I don't recognize that what you need to do

is you need to get people's trust in how that science is being used and for what purpose is and and that's not scientific right that's that's about the politics and the ethics and who controls it who's driving the agenda and again you can make lots of reasons why people are justifiably suspicious the way pharmaceutical companies for example have driven uh research and driven the promotion of

certain drugs over others with huge detrimental effects so people are not stupid or paranoid because they are distrustful about how science is being used I think they're actually you know they may they may worry about the wrong things and the specific fix but the general concern is spot on really isn't it well okay so now that we're talking about the past I think um as we

sort of approach the last section of this debate be really interesting to talk about how we're meant to approach stuff in the future to continue watching this video click the link in the top left or in the description below or visit iai.tv for more debates and talks from the world's leading thinkers on today's biggest ideas