Politics and science: a look back at the Covid-19 health crisis

They are two very dif­fer­ent worlds, but dia­logue between them is essen­tial to the vital­ity of our demo­cracy, even if it is some­times com­plex to estab­lish. This is true in the health sec­tor, and even more so dur­ing health crises such as the one we are still exper­i­en­cing with Cov­id-19. It is also true of oth­er more or less recent issues. For example, a few years ago, the author­it­ies decided wheth­er or not to pur­sue nuc­le­ar policy in France after listen­ing to a num­ber of experts. Although the experts’ views were not fully taken into account – as the final decision res­ted with the politi­cians – the sci­entif­ic expert­ise helped to cla­ri­fy the decision that was made. But, make no mis­take, this dia­logue is gov­erned by a fun­da­ment­al prin­ciple that has always been very clear: we are a demo­cracy in which is the role of elec­ted politi­cians to make the final decisions. The role of the experts is to enlight­en them, noth­ing more. 

Yes, of course. And for many reas­ons. Firstly, when it comes to sci­ence and expert­ise, sub­jects are becom­ing increas­ingly tech­nic­al, which means that politi­cians don’t neces­sar­ily have the know­ledge to fully grasp them. Secondly, the French polit­ic­al world is fairly ste­reo­typed. It’s a world in which elec­ted mem­bers of the Nation­al Assembly or the Sen­ate, for example, live side by side with sev­er­al thou­sand people work­ing in cab­in­ets or major admin­is­trat­ive depart­ments. Most of them are gradu­ates of ENA, now known as the Insti­tut nation­al du ser­vice pub­lic (INSP). This school, which is spe­cif­ic to France, trains sharp minds that are cap­able of tak­ing decisions, but does not intro­duce them to sci­entif­ic reas­on­ing. Most of them left the field of sci­ence in the second or first year of sec­ond­ary school and were sub­sequently trained in human­it­ies-ori­ented courses.

Almost all of our politi­cians have nev­er taken part in a thes­is, either in the hard sci­ences or in the human­it­ies and social sci­ences. Yet pre­par­ing and defend­ing a thes­is requires an under­stand­ing of how research works – in oth­er words an accept­ance of doubt and uncer­tainty. Our rul­ing class, to some extent, is too used to liv­ing in ignor­ance of this doubt. It is also strik­ing to note that there are almost no engin­eers left in our polit­ic­al class, which was not always the case. Today, the vast major­ity of engin­eers work in the private sec­tor, where­as in oth­er major European demo­cra­cies such as Ger­many, the UK and Spain, there is great­er diver­si­fic­a­tion of the rul­ing elite.

In the Anglo-Sax­on mod­el, there is often a chief sci­ent­ist who is respons­ible for com­mu­nic­at­ing sci­entif­ic inform­a­tion to polit­ic­al decision-makers. In France, I don’t think we’ve giv­en enough thought to this mod­el. Our cur­rent rela­tion­ship between expert­ise and polit­ic­al decisions is based on a series of good wills and estab­lished links, but it is not suf­fi­ciently struc­tured to be really effective.

It makes exchanges more com­plex for two reas­ons. Firstly, the rela­tion­ship between extern­al expert­ise and decision-makers is weakened because the lat­ter do not always have the cul­tur­al back­ground to under­stand what sci­ent­ists are shar­ing with them.What’s more, the res­ult­ing lack of under­stand­ing of the research com­munity and the rel­at­ively lim­ited interest shown in it by polit­ic­al play­ers partly explains the dif­fi­culty we have in France in mak­ing research appear as essen­tial to the nation’s vis­ion as it did 30 or 40 years ago. Today, we talk a lot about innov­a­tion, but in the end, we don’t really talk about research anymore.

There is now a grow­ing aware­ness of the import­ance of diver­si­fy­ing the train­ing and know­ledge base of those who make decisions. We have been asked to provide inform­a­tion ses­sions on pub­lic health issues and epi­dem­ic pre­pared­ness, for example. In fact, the INSP has a course on the sub­ject. Let’s be clear, the aim is not to turn decision-makers into sci­ent­ists, but to diver­si­fy their train­ing so that they have a bet­ter grasp of the major issues at stake in the world of research and its processes.

The cit­izen is an integ­ral part of the ongo­ing con­struc­tion of demo­cracy, par­tic­u­larly demo­cracy in health­care. The tri­angle they form with the expert and the politi­cian means that their interests can be bet­ter con­sidered, a num­ber of con­tra­dic­tions and dis­trusts can be cleared up, and pub­lic action can be taken in a cli­mate of great­er trust on a wide range of issues – par­tic­u­larly in times of crisis, wheth­er fin­an­cial or health-related.

What’s import­ant in crisis man­age­ment is to pre­serve the bond of trust between cit­izens, politi­cians, and experts. This is the most dif­fi­cult thing to achieve because trust is nev­er taken for gran­ted: it must be built, it must be worked on. With the Sci­entif­ic Advis­ory Board, we have tried to do our best to enlight­en our fel­low cit­izens and politi­cians to main­tain this trust, by provid­ing the right inform­a­tion in an emer­gency situ­ation, which requires com­plex reflex­ive work.

The response of European demo­cra­cies to the health crisis was the most effect­ive of all.

As with the “health pass”, the trans­la­tion of the experts’ word into polit­ic­al action has raised the hackles of a num­ber of cit­izens. I approach this situ­ation with a cer­tain degree of humil­ity. First of all, it’s not easy to make polit­ic­al decisions. We always tend to accuse politi­cians of vari­ous and sun­dry ills, but in France we are lucky enough to still have a real demo­crat­ic vis­ion, which is not the case in all coun­tries. Our gov­ern­ments have ensured that their decisions are informed by the word of experts, whose sole role is to advise. In my opin­ion, the dis­tinc­tion between the respons­ib­il­it­ies of each party was very clear. 

What’s more, all the data provided by the vari­ous inter­na­tion­al teams work­ing on the con­sequences of this pan­dem­ic, using the loss of life expect­ancy of a nation as a mark­er, and com­par­ing mor­tal­ity linked to Cov­id and mor­tal­ity unre­lated to the crisis, poin­ted in the same dir­ec­tion. Con­trary to what was said at the start of the crisis, the response of demo­cra­cies, and in par­tic­u­lar European demo­cra­cies, was ulti­mately the most effect­ive of all.

The loss of life expect­ancy dur­ing the first two years of the Cov­id-19 crisis in Europe var­ies between ‑3 months in France, com­pared with ‑6 months in Ger­many and ‑9 months in Spain and the UK, and even ‑1.2 and ‑1.5 years of loss of life expect­ancy for East­ern European coun­tries, which are among those that vac­cin­ated the least in Europe. In the United States, a demo­crat­ic and highly innov­at­ive nation, if only in the field of vac­cines, the loss of lifespan was ‑2.6 years. Why such a huge dif­fer­ence? How can we explain it? By the dif­fi­culty of access to health­care for the most vul­ner­able and poorest pop­u­la­tions, in par­tic­u­lar Afric­an-Amer­ic­ans and His­pan­ics. This issue of access to care, and there­fore of cov­er­ing the costs for the most vul­ner­able, is an essen­tial factor to con­sider. This shows that we can­not pit research and innov­a­tion against pub­lic health meas­ures, or indi­vidu­al freedoms against col­lect­ive freedoms.

I’m not a spe­cial­ist in the his­tory of sci­ence, but I think this mis­trust has always exis­ted. Sci­ence and sci­entif­ic research have always pro­gressed with dif­fi­culty. Doubts, wheth­er they eman­ate from indi­vidu­als or insti­tu­tions – includ­ing the Cath­ol­ic Church, which has refuted sev­er­al major dis­cov­er­ies through­out its his­tory – have always been part of this com­plex rela­tion­ship between politi­cians, sci­ent­ists and cit­izens. Above all, soci­ety’s com­mu­nic­a­tion tools have changed con­sid­er­ably: social net­works have giv­en a new dimen­sion to opin­ion and giv­en it much great­er weight than before.

Social media have largely interfered in the rela­tion­ships between sci­ent­ists, politi­cians, and the gen­er­al pub­lic. This demo­crat­ic tri­angle is per­haps becom­ing a square in which the new part­ner is the social net­works. This leads me to make two observations.

In my opin­ion, social media have largely interfered in the rela­tion­ship between sci­ent­ists, politi­cians, and citizens.

First of all, and I think this may not have been made suf­fi­ciently clear dur­ing this crisis, we need to make every­one under­stand what research uncer­tainty is. Research is built by ask­ing ques­tions and try­ing to find answers. Social net­works have not con­trib­uted, to say the least, to this recog­ni­tion of uncer­tainty in science.

The second point is that sci­ence does have a cer­tain num­ber of cer­tain­ties. I don’t mind people say­ing whatever they want on social media, but the earth is round. If you put your hand in a pan of boil­ing water, you can say whatever you like on Twit­ter, but you’ll get burnt. Today there are sev­er­al sol­id sci­entif­ic found­a­tions that abso­lutely must be pro­tec­ted from the ‘con­spir­acy’ of social net­works and the dis­in­form­a­tion to which they contribute. 

They are trained to do sci­ence and pub­lish their work, not neces­sar­ily to com­mu­nic­ate their expert­ise. This is where we need to improve com­mu­nic­a­tion and train­ing with­in these dif­fer­ent spheres to move towards great­er mutu­al understanding.

Interview by Jean Zeid