Previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 15 May 2020.
It’s no surprise that people, generally, don’t like uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a level of uncertainty for everyone, beyond what most people ever experience. Research into personality suggests that some people cope with uncertainty better than others. Nonetheless, generally, humans do what they can to reduce uncertainty, including creating “stories” and social structures to make the uncertain seem more certain.
Our fascination with trying to predict the future is a good example. Whether it be astrology, fortune tellers, prophesy, whatever kind of oracle into the future you choose, it all stems from the same thing, an attempt to cope with uncertainty. Another “story” to cope with uncertainty is a conspiracy theory, with a common feature that the conspiracy is attempting to further some kind of future that “good” people don’t want. Epidemiological modeling is a very modern attempt to cope with the uncertainty of a new and deadly virus.
Unlike many people who don’t read the comments on news stories, social media posts, and other public postings, I do. People’s reactions are more interesting, to me, than the original posts. What I see a lot of though is a significant misunderstanding of what science is and how science progresses. Add in the almost (and understandable) desperate search for something “certain” in the face of extraordinary uncertainty and I see a turning away from science, even when misunderstood.
Take our basic “popular” score card for the COVID-19 pandemic. We have those tested, positive cases, and deaths. By now, I think most folks know that not everyone is being tested although in some states (and countries) who is being tested varies. That variation in who gets tested makes comparisons between states and countries really meaningless (thus uncertain). Counting deaths, however, is comparable, although some states, like Florida, apparently don’t’ want to count tourists or part-time residents in their count.
Deaths, however, are fairly reliable, but there is still some noise in who gets counted as a COVID-19 death and who does not. And we see a lot made of this, that on the one hand, there is an undercount of true COVID-19 deaths or on the other an overcount of COVID-19 deaths. This “scorecard” seemed appropriate and helpful at the beginning. It’s seeming less and less “certain” as we move forward.
As we learn more about the disease, not just how it kills and what raises the risk for dying, we are beginning to learn that it affects other internal organs of those who survive. What is state-of-the-art knowledge today is not state-of-the-art knowledge tomorrow. That inherent uncertainty right there is hard for many people to cope with. As the knowledge base expands, as it should with more data and analysis, many view this as wrong, as evidence that the “scientists” don’t know what they are doing, as in “make up your mind!” So, some begin to reject “science” in order to reduce their uncertainty.
Scientific knowledge is always changing. It doesn’t help that scientists are vulnerable to all the human foibles like the rest of us. The rush to be “first” or to “solve the riddle” is present and often can and does distort things. Releasing results prior to peer review, as we are seeing a lot of right now, and the press liking the horserace analogy plus the drama of someone being “wrong” only fuels the uncertainty. Then, many, who do not know or understand the scientific process are quick to vilify the scientists (sometimes adding it to a conspiracy theory) thus contributing to an overall anti-science and anti-expert discourse.
Perhaps the most profound display of misunderstanding science are commenters that pick out words that convey uncertainty such as “may,” “likely,” and “probable,” as a means to discredit the results. So, the measured, careful, language of science now appears to be not what we think science is (or want it to be) and people move to discredit it.
Scientists are in the business of producing new knowledge and they are doing it at remarkable speed, even if many in the public and our leaders don’t understand. No doubt, our leaders, too, are unsettled by the ominous uncertainty of COVID-19. Nevertheless, it is their job to lead us through this and while the governors appear, generally, to be doing a good job based on polls, the federal response has probably done more to create uncertainty than to settle it.
Thomas L. Steiger is a professor of sociology and director of the Center for Student Research and Creativity at Indiana State University. Email: thomas.steiger@indstate.edu.
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