©2017 Fotografico, Senato della Repubblica
These are unprecedented times for the relationship between science and society. Since the pandemic began, the world has been watching science unfold ‘live’ as it builds new pieces of knowledge. Trials, successes and failures occur under a global media coverage that has never been so extensive, capillary, and intrusive.
In Italy in particular, the pandemic has brought scientists a sudden, forced visibility, which comes with a great responsibility: scientists must now learn to navigate an unknown public space, with the appropriate language, using the scientific method as a compass. That means sticking to the available evidence, not confusing evidence and opinions, certainties and probabilities, expectations and personal interests. And last but not least, the courage to change course if the evidence demands it.
On some occasions, in recent months, these distinctions have failed, with harmful consequences for the public debate and for citizens’ perception. I am thinking, for example, of how often the public has had the impression of a ‘divided science’. When faced for the first time with a complex phenomenon such as COVID-19, it is understandable that epidemiologists, virologists, clinicians, economists or sociologists describe it in different ways. Understanding complexity and making it accessible, giving the right weight to each different expertise and having experts dialogue on the basis of evidence alone, are the greatest challenges that scientists and the media are facing now.
After a few years in close contact with Italian parliamentary politics, I realize that we are still a long way from incorporating the scientific method in the decisions that affect lives . But after a life spent within the scientific community of this country, whose achievements I have always looked up to with great admiration, I realize how much the continuous presence of that method in the political and public sphere is necessary for democracy.
At times, scientific evidence can be uncomfortable. Ignoring it to accommodate the fears and moods of citizens can produce consensus in the short term. For too many years, Italian politicians have believed that they could leave scientific evidence out of the decision-making process, or that they could cherry-pick it, leaving out the most unpopular aspects.
At the same time, a big part of the scientific community has deluded itself into thinking that its role could stop at the door of the laboratory. It has given up defending scientific evidence against those who simplify it and manipulate it, and it has given up demanding that is used in the interest of lawmakers and of public life as a whole. Individual interests and ambitions – at the level of institutes or individuals — have often led Italian scientists to not supervise the correct allocation and management of public funds for research. Or to shy away from rectifying incorrect or partial public interpretations of the available data. Science and politics, we could say, have exploited each other in mutual opportunism.
When this happens, a dangerous vacuum is created, that is easily filled by the opportunisms of those who are ready to sell alternative versions. It happened when research on the genetic improvement of crops was blocked, when research on embryonic stem cells was opposed, or when legislative openings were made to the Stamina ‘method’. It happened when political support was given to the no-vax movements, during the (failed) fight against the Xylella plant pathogen in Puglia, in the debate on organic foods.
And the same will happen for dozens of Italian researchers if, on 1 January 2021, a ban on animal testing on abused substances (including many active ingredients underlying pharmaceuticals) and xenotransplantations come into force in Italy. These bans became law in 2014, and were immediately suspended for being in contravention of the European Directive 2010/63. However, they were never cancelled, and are now close to becoming operational at the end of the year, when the last extension expires.
To reverse the course, it is necessary that the voice of universities, research institutes and hospitals, scientific societies, academies, of every young and old scholar, becomes a ‘social sentinel ‘. Italian scientists often complain that politicians do not know and do not understand the scientific method, and with some exceptions this is true. But in order to fulfil their mission, it is essential that scientists also get to know and understand the methods of politics. Learning the decision-making procedures of the institutions, following laws from draft to approval, intervening at the first hint of arbitrary decisions based on pseudoscience. Being able to do all this would allow scientists to offer lawmakers timely support so that they can correct the course.
The pandemic has forced science and politics to finally look at each other: the sooner they learn to recognize each other in their entirety, and to work together without sacrificing their differences, the sooner we will find a way out of the emergency.
