Page 4 - Luce 2020

P oint of View

Science and Public Policy in a time of COVID

Our College it’. It is a very difficult thing for us to But the primary issue where we failed,
Visitor understand, that for many people the in the Victorian quarantine for instance,
Prof Peter story is more important. is in communication. The reason that
Doherty How then do you think we can improve NSW did a lot better with this earlier on
is that they divided their public health
has been public engagement with research? units into a number of smaller units tied
described as into local community. Here in Victoria
the ‘bomb- Well, it’s not just the public engagement we didn’t. With all the progressive cuts
throwing with research that we’re worried to the public service, which I think have
been a total disaster for this country
about. It’s the whole issue of public
Nobelman’ engagement with curated or evidence- and for many others, we’ve centralised
for his based knowledge. everything under one major unit. So
candour and they didn’t communicate effectively
strength of I worked for the British government as with the diverse communities among the
security guards in their own languages
a neuropathologist of sheep in the late
conviction. 1960s, and there were two of us sharing and cultural contexts. You need not only
an office. We got along perfectly well, people who understand the languages,
In December 2020, our Resident but my colleague was on the political but people who understand the cultures.
Tutor in Biomedicine Natalia right and I was more on the political We learnt that in the AIDS pandemic a
left. I bought The Guardian every day
Evertsz spoke with the Nobel and brought it into work and he bought long time ago. In Africa, the countries
Prize-winning immunologist. London’s Daily Telegraph every day that did really well with AIDS were
and brought it into work. I would read countries where (I’m thinking particularly
This year has involved some pretty The Guardian and then we would swap of Senegal) they worked through people
tumultuous ups and downs for most of papers and I’d look at The Telegraph of influence. They worked through the
us. How was it for scientists? and read the same story – and the two traditional medical practitioners, we call
stories would be completely different! them Witch Doctors, right? But to them,
I don’t think being locked down has One would be written from the liberal in Africa, they’re very influential. They
been all that onerous in some senses. left perspective, the other from the convinced those people what needed to
Because of our training and because of conservative right perspective. But you be done, sent very practical messages
what we do, we scientists have the inner knew what you were dealing with, about condoms and sexual practices and
reserves to handle something like this. because you knew the politics of the so forth. They also spoke to the Imams
Part of the lesson has been in seeing two papers. The knowledge was well- and convinced them what needed to
how devastating lockdown has been for edited, so it was likely to be factual. be done, so the Imams preached that to
a number of people; to have to indulge People cared about fact and were trying their congregations. That’s how you have
in introspection and to live from their to get the story right – it was just written to work. Communication is enormously
own intellectual reserves because they’re from a different angle. important. I think every doctor knows
either not equipped for it by nature or this; every doctor who sees patients
they’re not trained for it. And of course, But now we no longer have that. knows this. But scientists don’t. Partly
it’s always difficult to sort those two out. Online, you don’t necessarily know because of what they do and partly
Human beings are very varied. Friedrich where people are coming from. It’s this because of who many of them are.
von Hayek, that economist loved by non-curated knowledge that everyone’s
extreme right wingers (whom I dislike), accessing, and the internet is then the I always make a big point in talking
made one point that’s correct. He says perfect forum for people with way-out- with undergraduates and post-docs
that the Left tend to overestimate the there ideas to find each other. So, we’re about science communication, partly
intelligence of the average punter, and dealing with a different universe of because people like me tend to get very
basically the Right doesn’t. And that’s information. It’s a thing that many, many involved in it. I’ve written six books.
why the Right is so successful at running people, especially in science, simply But books are read by at most 20% of
a populist agenda, because they simply don’t get. the population, I think. And the sort of
tell the story that people want to hear. books I write are probably read by 10%,
If you really wanted to communicate who probably don’t need to read them
That’s the other thing I’ve learnt, that I positive information to people, about anyway. And when they do read them,
kind of knew but didn’t know fully: in vaccines for example, you’d do a they agree with them, so they’re the last
the minds of a substantial proportion of Cambridge Analytica thing. You’d people who should read them. You want
the population, a story – a good story analyse their preferences, where they people who disagree to read them and
that agrees with the way they see the shop, what they do, and you’d then send say: ‘Oh, that changes my mind’. And of
world – will always trump anything them very specifically targeted emails course, in science and in medicine we’re
based in evidence. That is a very difficult trying to speak in the language that they absolutely accustomed to changing our
issue for scientists like us because we can relate to. The science itself is robust minds. You know, if a better treatment
are trying to explain things to people and fantastic – we’ve never had anything comes along or better evidence comes
in terms of ‘this is what we know, this like this.
is where we think we should go with continued on page 6

4 LUCE Number 19 2020