We’re living in a time of high stakes and scientific risks need to be taken | Sonia Sodha

It's not enough now for science to move in a stately fashion with great caution

There's nothing like living through a global pandemic to engender a dawning realisation that real-world science is a different beast from the hypothesise, test, repeat" science we learn at school. And that just because a claim is made by an eminent scientist it is not automatically elevated to a gold standard truth.

A year ago, I would have predicted that the role of science in a global pandemic would be fairly straightforward. The scientists do the science. Then they tell the rest of us what to do, and lives get saved. I would have been shocked if someone had told me how politicised the scientific debate would become, that people claiming to be informed by science would be arguing on the basis of the same facts that we should take directly contradictory action, when the stakes couldn't be higher.