Why it's rational to 'trust the science' but not the government
This is one of those articles that for a lot of people is going to be so obvious that it’s not worth reading, let alone saying. However, I feel it has to be said- even just as an exercise in box-checking- because I’ve never seen it covered before explicitly.
One argument that’s made about vaccines- which I agree with- is that for most of the public assessing the evidence for themselves is simply beyond them, hence they should just look to the well-qualified, largely well-meaning community that’s already done the work- medical scientists, pharmacologists, immunologists, etc.
For anyone who knows what a Bonferroni correction is, this will make the point nicely. If you don’t know what a Bonferroni correction is, well that’s not your fault, it’s not part of the basic knowledge I would expect everyone to have, but you are making my case for me.
Now there’s a school of thought that agrees with this argument, and wants to take it a bit further- a lot further! To say that we should trust governing elites and institutions. I’m hesitant to specifically name anyone, but let me, tentatively, give as an example, StefanFSchubert on Twitter who appears to believe that there is generally speaking, among intellectuals, a lack of respect for the genuine competence and expertise of elites. Especially during the Trump period, there was a big emphasis on trusting “institutions” and their supposed deep and embedded wisdom under siege by the president and his senior appointees.
Now I think there is doubtless some limited truth to this, I’m sure I have on occasion proposed policies which if I had a more thorough comprehension of government, I would realize just can’t be done for technical reasons. But in the main, I don’t think “trust the science” should transfer to “trust the government” or even “trust the public service” or “trust the institutions”. Here are the disanalogies I see:
Reasons to trust scientists but not senior public servants or politicians
Government expertise is mostly not based on the experimental method- which is a uniquely good method for creating genuine knowledge about the world.
Scientists from different countries mostly agree- much more so than politicians and bureaucrats from different countries agree.
Scientists are mostly focused on increasing our knowledge of science, government officials are generally more focused on making decisions.
I’ve met scientists. On average they’re probably slightly more moral- especially with regard to altruism- than the general population. I’ve met politicians and senior public servants, and this mostly wasn’t my impression- rather the opposite. There is also data backing this claim, scientists are just more trustworthy people than politicians and their senior functionaries.
Scientists are usually experts on very small areas (sometimes multiple small areas), whereas areas of expertise claimed and exercised by senior government employees are vast in comparison.
There’s just less content to governance. I’ve read textbooks of public policy, and I’ve read textbooks of biology, and there’s no comparison.
Government is more like a social science than a biological or physical science, and frankly, expertise in social science, while still deserving some deference, is much less deference worthy than the physical sciences.
We all encounter the problems of government much more in our everyday life than we encounter the problems of medicine, chemistry or physics, and our brains are specially designed to understand social relations, giving us some prior level of knowledge. Perhaps this is true to a degree for biology, but nowhere near as much.
While scientists disagree all the time, they are much more likely to be in agreement in areas on which they advise the public than politicians and senior bureaucrats.
And finally and most crucially: government is much more about controversial moral judgments than science- and no group has genuine and systematic expertise with respect to value judgments. While science does involve value judgments (e.g. vaccine tradeoffs) the principles there are much more widely agreed upon than the principles involved in say, trading off income between the rich and poor. People differ much more in our goals and priorities for government.
Thus: A) Government expertise is likely quite limited. and B) It’s likely not aiming for the same things you are. Don’t let ‘respect for government expertise’ hold you back from forming your own views on public policy.
I think this is tricky... to me, I think there is perhaps an overemphasis (in general) on the distinction between something we might call (1) pure neutral technical expertise and (2) the right/privilege to make difficult value judgements in potentially ethically fraught situations. I think often-times in subtle ways there are value judgements that are made even in the execution of what sounds like purely technical expertise e.g. in scientific analyses. As in, every model has assumptions, and sometimes assumptions are incorporated in subtle ways. Likewise, I feel like people who have experience in repeatedly having to navigate similar types of ethically fraught situations do develop what looks very much like "technical expertise" in having an attunement to what types of information and concerns are relevant in navigating those situations. So I think the distinction is actually much more subtle than it first appears.
Anyways, all that is to say certainly the evidence for vaccines is very good, and I say this as a person who knows exactly what a Bonferroni correction is haha.
Interesting food for thought!