{"id":10581,"date":"2020-04-30T09:48:25","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T14:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=10581"},"modified":"2021-06-14T07:19:45","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T12:19:45","slug":"pandemic-epistemology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/04\/30\/pandemic-epistemology\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandemic epistemology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the silver linings about the coronavirus pandemic is that it has made some people, and even institutions, more generous (at least temporarily). Among them are popular and academic journals that have removed their paywalls and offered their publications for free. (I shared one of my own articles in that category yesterday<\/a>. The irony, as my colleague, UVM dean of libraries Bryn Geffert<\/a>, points out, is that right-wing disinformation tanks that have long flooded the internet with their free “studies,” while legit academics get paywalled into marginalization by their profit-seeking publishers.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there are popular magazines that have made their coronavirus coverage freely available. The Atlantic Monthly<\/a><\/em> has had some excellent coverage, and Ed Yong’s “Why the Coronavirus is So Confusing<\/a>” is especially helpful in mapping out exactly what its title asks. The epistemological issues the pandemic has raised — about how science and medicine work, whom we should trust, what sorts of interests are at play, and why this issue is different from others — make it an important and valuable case study. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

It’s worth reading the article in the context of the many conspiracy theories that have arisen in the wake of COVID-19. For an indication of some of them, see Disinfo.eu’s tracking of the “disinfodemic<\/a>” (UNESCO’s term).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few good quotes from the Yong article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is how science actually works. It\u2019s less the parade of decisive blockbuster discoveries that the press often portrays, and more a slow, erratic stumble toward ever less uncertainty. \u201cOur understanding oscillates at first, but converges on an answer,\u201d says Natalie Dean, a statistician at the University of Florida. \u201cThat\u2019s the normal scientific process, but it looks jarring to people who aren\u2019t used to it.\u201d [. . .]<\/p>

The scientific discussion of the Santa Clara study might seem ferocious to an outsider, but it is fairly typical for academia. Yet such debates might once have played out over months. Now they are occurring over days\u2014and in full public view. Epidemiologists who are used to interacting with only their peers are racking up followers on Twitter. They have suddenly been thrust into political disputes. \u201cPeople from partisan media outlets find this stuff and use a single study as a cudgel to beat the other side,\u201d Bergstrom says. \u201cThe climate-change people are used to it, but we epidemiologists are not.\u201d<\/p>

In an earlier era, issues with the Santa Clara study would have been addressed during peer review\u2014the process in which scientific work is assessed by other researchers before being published in a journal. But like many COVID-19 studies, this one was uploaded as a preprint<\/a>\u2014a paper that hasn\u2019t yet run the peer-review gauntlet. Preprints allow scientists to share data quickly, and speed is vital in a pandemic […].<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The article makes clear that part of the problem with the pandemic is that it calls on so many types of depth<\/em> expertise, the kind that contemporary science excels at with its hyperspecialization, yet the interdisciplinary <\/em>expertise — what we might call lateral <\/em>expertise — of bringing them all together is in short supply. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“This is the epistemological crisis of the moment,” says media sociologist Zeynep T\u00fcfek\u00e7i: “There\u2019s a lot of expertise around, but fewer tools than ever to distinguish it from everything else.” The pandemic, Yong argues, “exploits our cognitive biases.” “We crave simple narratives, but the pandemic offers none.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic\u2019s length traps people in a liminal space<\/a>. To clarify their uprooted life and indefinite future, they try to gather as much information as possible\u2014and cannot stop. \u201cWe go seeking fresher and fresher information, and end up consuming unvetted misinformation that\u2019s spreading rapidly,\u201d Bergstrom says. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The article concludes with a nice summary of the “many aspects of 21st-century life that made the pandemic possible:”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

humanity\u2019s relentless expansion into wild spaces; soaring levels of air travel; chronic underfunding of public health; a just-in-time economy that runs on fragile supply chains<\/a>; health-care systems that yoke medical care to employment; social networks that rapidly spread misinformation; the devaluation of expertise; the marginalization of the elderly; and centuries of structural racism that impoverished the health of minorities<\/a> and indigenous groups<\/a>. It may be easier to believe that the coronavirus was deliberately unleashed than to accept the harsher truth that we built a world that was prone to it, but not ready for it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the silver linings about the coronavirus pandemic is that it has made some people, and even institutions, more generous (at least temporarily). Among them are popular and academic journals that have removed their paywalls and offered their publications for free. (I shared one of my own articles in that category yesterday. The irony, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4437],"tags":[660441,123513,628353,103256,520731,628305,628354,391,8,454985,520761,520733,628351,628352,628350],"class_list":["post-10581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-anomalies","tag-anomalistics","tag-atlantic-monthly","tag-conspiracies","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-ed-yong","tag-epistemology","tag-media","tag-mediasphere","tag-pandemic-politics","tag-pandemics","tag-public-communication-of-science","tag-public-trust","tag-science-communication"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2KF","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10614,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/05\/04\/pandemic-epistemology-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":10581,"position":0},"title":"Pandemic epistemology 2","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 4, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been haunted by Ed Yong's description of science from the Atlantic article \"Why Coronavirus is So Confusing,\" which I shared a few days ago: \"This is how science actually works. It\u2019s less the parade of decisive blockbuster discoveries that the press often portrays, and more a slow, erratic stumble\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science & society"","block_context":{"text":"Science & society","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/science\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/05\/amy_site_1_1588171117.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/05\/amy_site_1_1588171117.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/05\/amy_site_1_1588171117.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/05\/amy_site_1_1588171117.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/05\/amy_site_1_1588171117.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10352,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/03\/21\/process-relational-readings\/","url_meta":{"origin":10581,"position":1},"title":"Process-relational readings","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"A very helpful analytical review of the \"relational paradigm in sustainability research, practice, and education\" has just been published online by Ambio. While it's limited to a certain selection of key publications, the article, by European sustainabililty researchers Zack Walsh, Jessica Bohme, and Christine Wamsler, covers the terrain of \"relational\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-21-at-10.32.57-AM.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-21-at-10.32.57-AM.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-21-at-10.32.57-AM.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2020\/03\/Screen-Shot-2020-03-21-at-10.32.57-AM.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10989,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/08\/20\/hydroxychloroquine-and-other-things-an-sts-perspective\/","url_meta":{"origin":10581,"position":2},"title":"Hydroxychloroquine, and other things (an STS perspective)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"August 20, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The Covid-19 pandemic has offered all kinds of interesting case studies for those who study controversies in science, technology, and medicine. Hydroxychloroquine is one of them. It's a bit unusual in that it highlights how the left-liberal mediasphere has sometimes followed similar trajectories as more commonly found on the (Trumpist)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science & society"","block_context":{"text":"Science & society","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/science\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Kurt Hoffman","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tablet-mag-images.b-cdn.net\/production\/78845ee9d1ef8c1741566d92e45f64f45b7e5401-1500x1479.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10652,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2020\/05\/17\/covid-19-conspiracies-and-the-media-or-toward-an-epidemiology-of-media-trust\/","url_meta":{"origin":10581,"position":3},"title":"Covid-19 conspiracies and the media: or, Toward an epidemiology of media trust","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 17, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The global pandemic of Covid-19 has been accompanied by a proliferation of competing narratives of what the crisis is and means, and how it should be addressed. The UN and the World Health Organization have called this an \u201cinfodemic,\u201d that is, an epidemic (or pandemic) of information that, in its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Media ecology"","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/rUDP6e5N9gw\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8017,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/02\/08\/ontology-across-the-disciplines-reading-group\/","url_meta":{"origin":10581,"position":4},"title":"“Ontology Across the Disciplines” reading group","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 8, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm participating in a reading group here at the University of Vermont entitled \"Ontology Across the Disciplines.\" (More than just participating... I've been gently arm-twisted by the organizers, anthropologists Parker Van Valkenberg and Ben Eastman, into chairing the discussions. Thanks, guys ;-) ) Since I know there are folks out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7082,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2013\/12\/01\/thinking-forests-animals\/","url_meta":{"origin":10581,"position":5},"title":"Thinking forests & animals","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"December 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's one of the participants at the AAA's ontology panel, McGill anthropologist Eduardo Kohn, applying ontological speculation -- including Peirce and biosemiotics -- to animals and forests: http:\/\/youtu.be\/mSdrdY6vmDo And here's a \"keynote conversation\" among Kohn, Donna Haraway, and Colin Dayan from the same meeting, the UC Berkeley's Funny Kinds of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/mSdrdY6vmDo\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10581"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10585,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581\/revisions\/10585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}