Let's Not Overthink This.

[NNadir]

The Editorial in the Current Issue of Science.

Let's Not Overthink This. H. Holden Thorpe.

For some observers, the U.S. presidential election of 2020 appeared to be about science. Outgoing President Donald Trump consistently and dishonestly played down the threats from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and climate change. President-elect Joe Biden said he would listen to scientists, a position that was mocked by Trump. Some might take Biden's victory—decisive but hardly a landslide—as feeble support for science. But was science actually on the ballot? Maybe it's best not to overthink this.

Science and political communication scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the University of Pennsylvania believes that it is wrong to construe the election in such simple terms. “Science was not on the ballot,” she said in a recent conversation. When viewed in the heat of the battle, she says, the 73 million people who voted for Trump may seem to have been rejecting science, but many of them live in areas of the country that had, until recently, barely experienced the COVID-19 outbreak. Now they are getting it full blast. Others simply believed that the health of the economy should not be jeopardized by what they saw as a draconian pandemic response. As for the fight against climate change, many people feared that their livelihoods would be threatened by calls for a major move away from fossil fuels. Add to that the millions of people whose religious beliefs enjoin them from appreciating the beauty and power of the theory of evolution. There is not one great horde of Americans (many of whom happen to be Trump supporters) who are anti-science. It is a mixture of people who, for personal reasons, resist facts that challenge their thinking...

...Most people don't think about the biology of the promised coronavirus vaccine any more than they marvel at how the theory of general relativity is used by satellites to guide them as they navigate with Google Maps.

The periods of high American enthusiasm for science have all coincided with great triumphs for science such as the Moon landing or the polio vaccine. But after all this excitement, science moved off center stage, and the scientists could quietly go back to work. We're on the cusp of a similar cycle...

No comment from me other than to say that it's not just Trump-cultists who are unwilling to challenge their "thinking..." such as it is.

[Warpy]

1. Maybe next time the FUCKING MORONS won't elect one of their own to

erect all sorts of bureaucratic blockades in the path of scientists, especially the epidemiologists who should have been listened to many months ago. If they do, maybe it won't be a raging malignant narcissist with nanometer thick skin who dismantles all the infrastructure set to deal with health emergencies because his predecessor made some jokes at his expense at a dinner where everyone in attendance had jokes made at his expense.

I look at the progress in virology, molecular biology and immunology since I went to school in the late 70s and early 80s and I'm astonished, and lunkheads were in control and tightening NIH purse strings for much of that time. Science works best when it works in obscurity as long as FUCKING MORONS don't get in the way by appointing raving incompetents to micromanage everything they do and generally gum up the works.

If anything comes out of the last utterly regrettable four years, I hope it's the permanent destruction of the Republican ideal of electing businessmen to run government like a business. It isn't a business and businessmen are bad at running it and Dumdum should put the final nail in that particular campaign slogan's coffin. Maybe next we can work on "trickle down" that never trickled past the "C level" corporate executives.

I don't expect a flood of kids going into pure research after this, it means doctorates and post doc work and a vow of poverty until they hit middle age, followed with paying off their debts until they hit retirement, more commitment than most can handle. Maybe they'll be interested enough to be lab techs and nurses and pulmonary therapists and all the other people who are in such short supply right now.

Besides, have you ever tried to explain what a PCR machine does and why an assay takes so much time? Even saying "polymerase chain reaction" causes eyes to glaze over as people try to reboot before you get a chance to explain what it means. I'm not hopeful there will be a flood of people to design the next generation of equipment. I just hope there is a flood of people who know how to run it by the next time a nasty disease comes around. There will be a next time.

Also, FWIW, I thought the initial locdown was premature, that the disease would follow the pattern of other pandemics and spread slowly over the summer and that the Draconian ,measures would have to be saved for fall. Looks like I was right. Don't you just love being right.