The Social Vulnerabilities of Science and the Covid-19 Pandemic Crisis

Abstract

According to the traditional image of science, if its achievements are reliable, then they will be communicated successfully and the public will trust in their applicability to solve practical problems. The new perspective on science as “socially robust knowledge” (Gibbons, 1999) is based on two other necessary conditions of knowledge production, namely, transparency and public participation. But the recent Covid-19 pandemic crisis has shown that the institutional weaknesses of the relationship between science and society generates an equally endemic mistrust. Should we go back to “heroic science” and the ‘“magic of science” to regain trust? Or the pandemic crisis just highlighted that the death of expertise (Nichols, 2017) is inevitable in the public space?