Knowledge production in times of COVID-19 pandemic: reforming relations between science and society?

Olga I. Zvonare­va
Siber­ian State Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty
Maas­tricht Uni­ver­si­ty
Nation­al Research Tom­sk State Uni­ver­si­ty

Knowl­edge pro­duc­tion in times 
of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic: reform­ing rela­tions between sci­ence and soci­ety?

Abstract. Years pre­ced­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic were marked by decrease in trust in sci­ence and cri­sis of exper­tise. By the begin­ning of the pan­dem­ic once sol­id author­i­ty of sci­ence has erod­ed, while con­fi­dence in sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge has been replaced by diver­si­ty of con­flict­ing opin­ions and pro­lif­er­a­tion of claims to exper­tise. One rea­son for ten­sions in rela-tions between sci­ence and soci­ety is an extreme­ly resilient image of sci­en­tists as crack­ing the nature’s secrets in a remote space, iso­lat­ed from soci­ety. When in a spe­cif­ic moment pub­lic acquires a pos­si­bil­i­ty to observe actu­al sci­ence-in-the-mak­ing, pop­u­lar expec­ta­tions regard­ing how reli­able facts and trust­wor­thy experts look like, become dis­ap­point­ed. How­ev­er, with the onset of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, con­di­tions of glob­al uncer­tain­ty and neces­si­ty to nonethe­less make deci­sions with life and death impli­ca­tions pro­voked changes in knowl­edge pro­duc­tion. These changes, includ­ing unprece­dent­ed acces­si­bil­i­ty of science’s “back­stage” for obser­va­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion, can become foun­da­tion for bridg­ing epis­tem­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed com­mu­ni­ties which oth­er­wise will con­tin­ue to drift apart from each oth­er.

Key­words: pan­dem­ic, sci­ence-in-the-mak­ing, cri­sis of exper­tise, knowl­edge pro­duc­tion

DOI: 10.5840/dspl20203213

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