Funny how "don't believe, always question everything" have transformed back into "believe in science".

Believing in science is a very old thing, Maya have believed in their eclipse prediction science so much that were even making human sacrifice to save the sun from being eaten.

We should teach the public not to "believe in science", but the main skill of any scientist: to try to find errors in the theory you think is right with more ardour than in the theory you think is wrong.

I think we got there by mixing up science and policy. In an emergency (like a pandemic) you can’t have an atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty in decision making - someone have to make the tough calls and stand by them. Unfortunately we don’t have clear delineation between “science” (what and how we know, and how certain we are) and “policy” (what should we do based on this information) in the public discourse - the same talking heads are often representing both. Then we naturally end up at a place where we have to either “believe in science” or cast doubt on policy decisions, which seems suboptimal.

Why can’t you have an atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty in decision making? Doubt is always better than false certainty. Public figures lying during pandemic have only prompted more people to be distrustful of science and the official policy decisions.

Because then nothing would ever get done. We would debate endlessly whether declaring the war on Germany was a good idea, or whether going to the Moon is a stupid goal, etc. etc. There’s certainly no shortage of arguments against any decision. Once the decision is made, continuing to doubt it is often not helpful.

I actually think this was one failure in our response to the pandemic. Take N95 masks or testing or what have you. There’s been so much back and forth on how well things work and changes of messaging - often driven by real studies, thus reflecting the uncertainty we’re talking about! - and I think that’s the cause of some distrust you’re talking about. In an alternate reality CDC would came out on day one to say “N95s are obviously good, and so are widely available rapid tests so let’s make a ton of them” and stay on this message. It’s the uncertainty and doubt that creates distrust, not the other way around.

But people were debating about all these things, war on Germany was not declared for a very long time, war in Vietnam was abandoned not sure if consider that good or bad.

The initial stance on masks was to lie that they are useless so that people don't buy masks that were needed for doctors, so if CDC was to stay on message it would stay on that message not the one that masks are good.

Your proposed approach of a few people making decisions and the rest not even being allowed to debate, can not create trust, it can only create USSR or North Korea.

I’m not sure how the discussion got to this place. Please allow me a reset. My point is only that ideally people in charge of policy should be upfront that they’re making decisions based on imperfect information, and it should not require people “believing in science”. This would have the effect leaving the science, with all its messiness, to scientists, and will be better for everyone involved.

A sidenote on CDC, the null hypothesis is institutional inertia: there were no mask mandates during many recent pandemics so CDC was simply following the long standing policy. This doesn’t require lying: if you believe that a policy is useless and will actively harm supply of masks it makes sense to come out strongly against it. I’m open to evidence to the contrary though.

Not sure what you are saying, but I do believe that we scientist need an extra big dose of humility and we need to learn how to better accept when we are wrong.