Robert Dingwall cites a short story from 1957 which highlights why the development of a vaccine needs to always keep an eye on its safety, no matter what the pressures are for its immediate release.
or 30 years, social scientists have been trying to educate scientific elites in the value of taking ordinary people with them rather than dismissing skepticism about science-based actions. This work has just gone out the window, argues Robert Dingwall.
The management of the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the hollowness of that alternative in policies that have been made by people with very narrow life experiences and imposed on others with whom there is, as Disraeli once said, ‘no intercourse and no sympathy’.
Having locked ourselves into a particular way of thinking and acting in relation to COVID-19, argues Robert Dingwall, it is very difficult for this to be questioned – but it must not go unchallenged if we are to balance the moral goals of medicine with the other moral goals that make up a good society.
Of course the government should have a Plan B for a second wave. But this might also be a moment to ask where pandemic management is taking us.
The UK government has regularly been denounced by many in the public health community for its absence of strategy in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of this criticism, however, reflects a simple dislike of the strategy or of the government that has authored it. On closer inspection, the UK government does have an intellectually coherent position – just one that is different from that preferred by many public health specialists and activists, and, to some extent, the biomedical community in general.
Six months into this pandemic, we have learned that it is not going to wipe out human life on this planet. This means, argues Robert Dingwall, that it is time for a public policy reset.
In the midst of the present chaos, it is easy to forget that the world has had pandemics before and that they have come to an end. Can we learn anything from these experiences that might help us in dealing with COVID-19?
“We are, as a species, addicted to story,” says English professor Jonathan Gottschall in his book, The Storytelling Animal. “Even when the […] Tom Burns, whose combination of play — and plays – with teaching in higher education added a light, collaborative and engaging model […] The creation of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) has led to a heated debate on the balance between peer review and evaluative metrics in research assessment regimes. Luciana Balboa, Elizabeth Gadd, Eva Mendez, Janne Pölönen, Karen Stroobants, Erzsebet Toth Cithra and the CoARA Steering Board address these arguments and state CoARA’s commitment to finding ways in which peer review and bibliometrics can be used together responsibly. “We are, as a species, addicted to story,” says English professor Jonathan Gottschall in his book, The Storytelling Animal. “Even when the […] The interactional skill of large language models enables them to carry out qualitative research interviews at speed and scale. Demonstrating the ability of these new techniques in a range of qualitative enquiries, Friedrich Geiecke and Xavier Jaravel, present a new open source platform to support this new form of qualitative research. Title of course: Space/Power/Species What prompted the idea for the course? A few years ago, I came across the architect Joyce Hwang’s […]
EXPLORE
Impact
Canada’s Storytellers Challenge Seeks Compelling Narratives About Student Research
READ MORE
Tom Burns, 1959-2024: A Pioneer in Learning Development
READ MORE
Research Assessment, Scientometrics, and Qualitative v. Quantitative Measures
READ MORE
Innovation
Canada’s Storytellers Challenge Seeks Compelling Narratives About Student Research
READ MORE
Our Open-Source Tool Allows AI-Assisted Qualitative Research at Scale
READ MORE
This Anthropology Course Looks at Built Environment From Animal Perspective
READ MORE
