The voice of science in the time of covid-19

In 2009 I wrote a book, Imperfect Oracle: The epistemic and moral authority of science, in which I explored the complex relationships of science and technology with other sectors of society: the courts, religion, government, the public sphere written large.  It’s a complex subject; science is but one of many social sectors, and it often has to compete with one or more other sectors in attempting to have its voice heard.  Whether it succeeds or not depends in large measure on its authority; the capacity to have what one says be accepted. In the book, I argued that science has two forms of authority, epistemic, and moral. Epistemic refers to knowledge.  Science has unrivaled epistemic authority over vast domains of knowledge: the time that shows on your cell phone, the molecular structure of vitamin C, the origins of the El Nino effect—no one argues about that sort of thing.  On the other hand, science’s epistemic authority is not complete. For example, what it has to say regarding the efficacy of vaccination, or the age of the planet, are challenged by some. In general, though, it’s fair to say that science speaks with a great deal of authority in telling a believable story of how the world is.

On the other hand, science’s moral authority is the capacity to convince others of how the world should be.  That’s not a very useful definition, so let’s try this: Moral authority encompasses the capacity to motivate others to work toward achieving goals that will change the world in some desired way.  The Dali Lama has loads of moral authority, as do environmental heroes such as E. O. Wilson and Paul Hawken. Moral authority is earned, you can’t buy it off the shelf.  Science does not automatically have moral authority on every issue that comes to the fore—it earns it by establishing an accepted knowledge base and then speaking from that.  The two major crises facing the world today, global warming and the covid-19 viral pandemic, are proving to be tests of science’s authority, both epistemic and moral. 

The Pachamama Alliance community has been featuring a series on Resilience and Possibility in These Times. One of the first speakers in the series was Dr. Zach Bush, a multi-disciplinary medical and biological scientist, recognized widely as an educator on the microbiome as it relates to human health, soil health, food systems, and a regenerative future. Bush founded the non-profit Farmer’s Footprint to promote regenerative agriculture, an effort that has gained considerable traction.  I’ve followed Bush’s work on regenerative agriculture, and admire what he’s doing. It’s evident that he has an aggressive and somewhat confrontational approach, as evidenced by the opening paragraphs from Farmer’s Footprint:

“A century of monocrop farming and reliance on pesticides has damaged our nation’s once-fertile soils and the health of every American. The rapid increase in pesticide use over the past few decades has coincided with this explosion of chronic disease.

A profound change in the demographics of chronic disease is underway in the United States. Independent research from private laboratories and universities around the world, are implicating glyphosate – the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup.” 

Zach Bush’s stances on agricultural enterprises that arose during the Pachamama video interview reveal a strongly anti-establishment tone. I share many of his reservations regarding practices in the pharmaceutical industry and especially big ag, with its industrial methods of raising crops, including applications of pesticides and herbicides, land management practices, raising of food animals, and the impacts on water resources entailed by them. I agree with his strong emphasis on restoring soil to its natural richness using regenerative agriculture. In this endeavor he has a lot of company; regenerative agriculture is gaining adherents as never before. 

All that said, I was disappointed in his remarks during the Pachamama interview on the subject of the coronavirus pandemic. I was mystified by his seemingly offhand way of dismissing the pandemic as just one more way for nature to make natural adjustments. He refers to Covid-19 as a shift in the virus’s structure, as distinct from smaller changes, drifts, of the sort that occur in the influenza virus on a more or less continuous basis. He suggests that these shifts, being natural events, should not greatly concern us. The number of deaths from covid-19 is not all that notable, he says, as compared with deaths due to respiratory failures generally.  Covid-19 is a mere bump in the road.  If it were not for our being in a compromised condition as a result of air pollution, pre-existing conditions, and an over-reliance on pharmaceuticals, deaths from the virus would be minimal. The virus is a largely innocent bystander, a natural force for adaptation in nature.  

For some reason, in his eagerness to assure his listeners that covid-19 is not that much of a threat, Bush said in his video interview that viruses can’t replicate, seemingly to play down the dangers that covid-19 presents. This is just sophistry; of course viruses replicate, or they wouldn’t swell in numbers from a small initial infection to the point where they threaten the life of the host organism. That they replicate differently from say, bacteria, is not of significance for assessing the threats covid-19 poses. At the time of this writing, the pandemic has infected about 4 million people, and the formally recognized global death total stands near a half million. We are only just in the beginnings of the covid-19’s march across the planet. We now know that its reach extends to many organs, including the heart and blood vessels, kidneys, gut, and brain. Despite the fervid efforts of thousands of biomedical researchers, a clear picture of how this virus works is elusive. As cardiologist Harlan Krumholz of Yale University is quoted as saying in the April 24 2020 issue of Science, “Its ferocity is heartbreaking and humbling.” Bush brushes this aside in his eagerness to lay the blame for the magnitude of this pandemic on humankind’s environmental and social sins. They become the center of attention, and the deep scientific truths about the virus fade into the background.  

I’m disappointed by Zach Bush’s manner of addressing the covid-19 pandemic. He beclouds the immense tragedies it has already caused and those to come, in the service of his agenda regarding personal health and planetary wellness.  I fear that he has compromised his epistemic authority to advance other objectives. The covid-19 pandemic has opened a tempting ground for crossing that line. Every day we see examples of subverting—some would say weaponizing—the scientific and technical knowledge and skills gained from fighting the disease, using them as tools; in politics at all levels of government, in economics in the competition for the flood of government money for medical needs, economic relief and so on.  For weeks, who was at fault for a shortage of swabs, masks and ventilators, whether to test and who should administer tests, to lock down or open up, have been mainstays in the national news. In the blame games, the epistemic authority of science has been barely visible. 

I’m disappointed that this subversion of science comes from a scientist. I would have liked Zach Bush to say in his Pachamama interview that covid-19 is a viral pandemic of unparalleled nastiness--highly infectious, with a capacity to attack organs throughout the body; to kill or leave the victim permanently impaired in body or mind. It represents a threat to the continuation of world order we know it, to our national life, to the cohesion of communal life. We will make it through this pandemic only if we focus all the resources we can on responses grounded in science and implemented globally in the most freehearted way. The public needs to be reassured that the work of scientists all over the world working on one aspect or another of the large problem is on behalf of us all. That bustle of work will get messy at times. There will be many tests vying for use, more than one vaccine offered as the most effective. In the final analysis, if we come out of this with the world still intact socially and the virus kept at bay, it will be because the best science was put to work in open global cooperation, with special interests put aside. 

Moral leadership for addressing the huge challenges before the nation in getting the covid-19 pandemic under control should be coming from the Executive branch of government.  Donald Trump has failed to take on that role.  Instead, out of fear for his political future, he has lied and misdirected, decimated the ranks of many in his administration who could have provided sound guidance, muzzled the publicly visible few who might have told us anything interesting, and cast about wildly for a suitable target onto which to shift blame.  Apparently, none of that has worked well for him, so he seems to be shifting toward ridiculous rosy predictions now and then and pretending that the problem is about solved.  In the meantime, thousands of scientists and technicians around the world are working to find short-term ameliorative measures that will save lives and to develop vaccines. They’re building the epistemic grounds on which to base society’s way forward.