Thoughts from the start of the pandemic...

The following was written in early 2020 at the start of the pandemic. I didn't get around to sharing it then so thought I would share it now.

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While I write this, the world is in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic. The figures right now sit at 31,231,209 cases with 965,063 deaths…and there is no end in sight. We are probably still many months away from a viable vaccine, at least a year or two away from widespread vaccination and many more years away from economic recovery.

The pandemic has played out against a global backdrop of distrust in expertise and democratic institutions. In Australia, where I am writing from, there are signs that this is certainly the case. In the 2019 version of the Australian Election Study, which has tracked every election?going back to the 1970s, only one in four Australian voters indicated that politicians can be trusted, and 75 per cent of voters indicated that people in government look after themselves. It also found that voter satisfaction with democracy is at its lowest point since the 1970s, with only 59 per cent of voters indicating they are satisfied with democracy, down 27 per cent since 2007.

At the same time, Australians are increasingly losing confidence in the key institutions of democracy. According to the World Values Survey just over one in five Australians has no confidence at all in the press, while 60 per cent have not very much, figures that have been relatively stable since the mid-1990s. A similar proportion (19 per cent) has no confidence at all in government. The justice system fares a little better, but still a full 40 per cent have not very much or no confidence. The most startling result is the decreasing confidence in our parliament, which has dropped from 46 per cent having quite a lot and 8 per cent a great deal of confidence in the early 1980s, to just 24 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively in the 2010-2014 period, with a full 70 per cent now having not very much or no confidence at all. And it’s a similar story for the civil service, with 54 per cent having not very much confidence or none at all. Our university sector actually fares pretty well by comparison, with 80 per cent of respondents having a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in them.

It would be na?ve to conclude by extension, though, that publicly funded researchers are an exception to the prevailing sentiment. The Australian government’s current response to what is essentially a research-funding crisis inside our universities is proof enough that there is a prevailing scepticism of the value of university-based expertise. While university research is facing a massive threat to its financial viability, the government has sat idly by. In fact, several of the reforms currently being touted – including the transparent costing agenda, oversight of university relations with foreign powers and the introduction of spending restrictions on teaching revenues – will erode the research funding model inside of universities. If the value of our university research and experts was broadly accepted, there would be no case to make for government underwriting the sector – it would be the self-evident course of action, but this isn’t the case. And the data back this up – the same World Values Survey time series shows that there is a large proportion of the population that remains sceptical of experts, with only just over half of Australians identifying that having experts make decisions is a positive thing, and 49 per cent expressing negativity towards experts.

One needs only look to a few recent examples to understand that researchers are not immune to the throes of the prevailing scepticism. Take the case for whether climate change is linked to the recent bushfires that ravaged Australia. The evidence is unequivocal – the Australian Bureau of Meteorology summarises it:

Climate change is influencing the frequency and severity of dangerous bushfire conditions in Australia and other regions of the world, including through influencing temperature, environmental moisture, weather patterns and fuel conditions. There have been significant changes observed in recent decades towards more dangerous bushfire weather conditions for various regions of Australia [...] trends towards more dangerous bushfire conditions are at least partly attributable to human-caused climate change, including through increased temperatures [...] Bushfire weather conditions in future years are projected to increase in severity for many regions of Australasia, including due to more extreme heat events, with the rate and magnitude of change increasing with greenhouse gas concentrations (and emissions).

And yet The Australian, a leading national newspaper, can run a story that concludes “there is insufficient evidence to directly link the drought to climate change. Much media ignores the history of worse conditions and fires, and the lack of long-term rainfall trends, and runs hard on climate causal links.”?This sentiment was echoed by federal MP Craig Kelly, who said “there is no link, the facts that cause the fires are the drought and the drying of the environment and on this our climate scientists down here have been very clear and they have said that there is no link between drought and climate change.” The point is that our popular media and elected officials in this case openly contest a scientific consensus.

Another example is the public’s response to COVID-19. In the early days of the pandemic in Australia we saw large numbers of the general public blatantly ignoring the advice of Australia's health experts, who had been categorical: “stay at home and only go out if it is absolutely essential [...] All Australians are required to stay home unless it is absolutely necessary to go outside. Australians are permitted to leave home for the essentials.” And yet our television screens were filled with images of large groups clearly ignoring this advice as they flocked to beaches, seaside towns and even farmers' markets. At the time, Google shared data tracking movement trends across different locations such as retail and recreation, grocery stores and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces and residential addresses. This showed that there had been far less compliance than might be expected with such a categorical public health message. For places like restaurants, cafes, shopping centres, theme parks, museums, libraries, and movie theatres, there had been only a 45 per cent drop in traffic. For places like national parks, public beaches, marinas, dog parks, plazas, and public gardens only a 35 per cent drop in traffic. And there was only a 13 per cent increase in traffic for places of residence. Clearly the experts' advice was not getting through to large portions of the population.

So, even though universities as institutions might still operate with a high degree of public confidence, the act of producing new knowledge i.e., research, is conducted in a prevailing climate of scepticism in expertise.

But why? Why, at a time when the world is facing multiple crises – a global pandemic, looming environmental disaster, unprecedented economic shock – is there increasing scepticism in the one social function – the production of knowledge – that can save us? And more importantly, what can be done to renew the social compact that allows researchers to operate?