Many scientific studies cannot be replicated. Therefore, their conclusions may be incorrect. This replication crisis is increasingly being recognised in the scientific community. For instance, the European Economic Association has hosted a whole session on the phenomenon. Irreproducible studies may escape the academic circles, find space in the public or industry, and influence opinion.
I use the replication crisis to illustrate some of the major shortcomings of scientific research. Research work informs practitioners. However, the shortcomings are mostly not made transparent to the practitioner. Consequently, the user of this information is unable to gauge its uncertainty, where uncertainty is defined as the average distance from the truth the choice one makes is. At the same time, there is an implicit acceptance that an expert’s or scientist’s statement is ultimate. But there are limits when it is applied to influence human behavior in communities.
This is important because it is autonomous human beings I’m referring to, who often have an idea of the matter at hand, and are opinionated. That is, they can formulate the problem, consider the risks and constraints given their options, and decide. Therefore, individuals should be trusted a lot more.
I’m aware that there is a trade-off between the value the individual puts to the well-being of those around them, and theirs alone. At this point the political or scientific elites or so-called experts come in. But their role is simple. They should offer transparent advice, distill myths, and sit back. In a few cases, there might be a need to take extra actions, but those should be simplified.
Our experts have offered guidance how the Covid-19 pandemic should be fought. It has emerged that we should self-isolate and governments need to impose lock-downs. However – I calculate as a resident of Germany – a typical person in Germany has around 30 square meters of properly-equipped living space, has a well-paying job, is insured against a job loss in a country with nearly positive budget surplus and an extra-ordinary state capacity, and whose household has an average of two members. This is all on the back of proven science and technology. How would you take Germany’s ‘free-style’ kind of lock-downs and apply it to South Africa or Kenya or Italy? And how would you conclude it worked well or otherwise?
Our search for a unified model for how society ought to work has led us to live in waves of ideologies, the present one being elitism. Our oversight has produced simplistic static models while society is truly dynamic. By its nature, any framework for people incentivizes a different kind of behavior breeding a different challenge, both of which are likely to be missed by the elite.
Communities are resilient because, across history, this would not be the first time our existence is threatened. Past experience in small communities as passed on through generations, especially where there is no documented scientific blueprint, can be relied upon. Unfortunately, then, different communities would go about it differently.
To a large degree, measures to fight Covid-19 as taken by the West borrow from their experiences with previous epidemics such as the the plague and the Spanish flu. Africa has had its own epidemics. So, it has amassed knowledge how to be resilient, which should also be weighed by those entrusted with guiding from above.
The last point I want to make is that there is a problem with the elites: Health experts ignore economists and economists ignore epidemiologists, and so on. The fact is that one body of knowledge cannot claim ownership of a challenge as complex as Covid-19.
Further reading:
This goes both ways kaka. Nobody can say anything for sure related to the vaccine, nor can anybody say anything about alternative “cures” or “preventives” for sure. Perhaps we are experiencing an unprecented change in the scientific method, a change I would call scientific entrepreneurism, ie the venture of capable folks in trying to end covid19 once and for all. We are all blind, so far.