Dennis Prager Show - Jayanta Bhattacharya: How Science Has Been Harmed By this Epidemic
Aired: 2021-05-11
Duration: 02:17


=== Two Norms Clash (02:06) ===

[00:00:00]  What you have said should take medical authority seriously.
[00:00:03]  You said that might be a little too extreme of you.
[00:00:06]  I don't know why it is, but you were talking about two norms.
[00:00:10]  Please continue.
[00:00:12]  Sure.
[00:00:13]  So there's two norms, right?
[00:00:14]  One is scientific debate has to be open.
[00:00:17]  When there's evidence that comes out, you decide who's right, who's wrong.
[00:00:21]  It has to be absolutely open to new ideas and challenges.
[00:00:26]  There cannot be any violation of that or you're not doing science.
[00:00:30]  That's norm one.
[00:00:31]  On the other hand, there's a public health norm where there has to be some unanimity of messaging.
[00:00:37]  So when there's dissent in public health, well, I mean, that might undermine public health.
[00:00:42]  It's dangerous to undermine public health.
[00:00:43]  I mean, that's actually not an unreasonable norm, right?
[00:00:47]  If you have a whole range of opinions about public health.
[00:00:52]  What's the right thing to do?
[00:00:53]  It sort of may undermine the ability of public health people to give out good information to help guide the public who's not paying attention reasonably to the scientific literature.
[00:01:03]  The problem, I think, has been in a situation where there really was deep scientific uncertainty, we immediately jump to the public health norm of unanimity messaging.
[00:01:14]  The moral basis of that norm is that the science has been done to justify it.
[00:01:20]  But it hadn't been done to justify it.
[00:01:22]  And through the whole epidemic, we've seen this, that somehow it's dangerous to push back on public health messaging and ideas that actually don't have a solid scientific basis, where there's great deep uncertainty and huge amount of debate still left to be done.
[00:01:39]  And it's been dangerous for science and incredibly damaging for public health.
[00:01:43]  I think we need to address both.
[00:01:45]  Both science and public health have been harmed by this epidemic.
[00:01:48]  About the way that the policies move forward in the epidemic, and I hope to be able to help address that in the coming year.

=== People Who Love Science (00:26) ===

[00:01:54]  Well, you are, and I salute you.
[00:01:57]  It's an honor to speak to you.
[00:01:58]  Thank you so much.
[00:02:00]  Thank you.
[00:02:01]  Thank you, Dan.
[00:02:02]  It's really an honor to speak to you as well.
[00:02:05]  Yes.
[00:02:08]  The people who love science do not love lockdowns and masks.
[00:02:16]  That's the science.