Johnson loves science when he can scream about Britain.As for the facts, he’s not very interested-Guardian

TWhen he was last year, there was no Covid vaccine and no imminent one. Today, about 43 million British people (80% of the UK’s adult population) are receiving doses. The trials aren’t over yet, but this is at the heart of the story when future generations announce the British pandemic. The virus caused fear and death. Science responded with vaccines and hope.

The relevant political debate continues as a bystander. The taunt may have changed Boris Johnson’s poll, but it reflects a pleasing factor in not being able to deposit in a bank. Not available in the second half of the year when voters feel sick about other things. The importance of the smooth deployment of the vaccine to the prime minister’s long-term reputation depends on whether it is a late bloomer of persistent management skills, or a coincidence followed by confusion and an excuse for the 2020 style. To do.

For now, the Prime Minister knows that science is his alibi and his salvation. He uses the claim that he followed his dictation when his mistakes were raised. At a television press conference with a medical and scientific adviser, he is unusually shy to a man who has an endless spotlight. He publicly shows his respect to experts who hesitate to pay attention to him personally.

This week, in a lab coat, the Prime Minister announced the establishment of a new science and technology strategy office. This cabinet-based organization will direct resources to promising projects that “strengthen Britain’s position as a scientific superpower.”

The government has worse ambitions. Scientists say that if sustainable new funding equates to the right to brag (Johnson rarely does), and if they escape political interference (the current administration cannot resist, and certainly at the heart of the matter. Will pay attention to).

There is a tension between Johnson’s notion of romantic science as a heroic endeavor to grow the country and the science practiced by real scientists. When he was talking about vaccines, like this week, it was shown that “the days when every family was in so much debt to British scientists could not have been in modern memory.” I will.

Debt is real and many of them work for UK institutions. However, they are not all British, and the British do not claim exclusive national recognition of the achievements made possible by international cooperation and immigration. The Oxford-based team that produced AstraZeneca’s jabs included scientists from Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, China, India, Nepal, and New Zealand. The first Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine introduced in the United Kingdom was a German-American collaboration led by two Turkish scientists.

Johnson also insisted that he “always wants to be a scientist,” but turned to the humanities at school. It’s shivering to imagine a quack that its deceptive nature may have been unleashed in the laboratory. This is the man who was fired from his first job in journalism to create a quote. His career is based on the belief that nasty facts can be avoided with cleverly crafted phrases and can be eliminated by challenging the existence of obstacles.

When faced with coronavirus news in early 2020, his first instinct was to keep the threat small. That was his preferred scenario. Then, for the sake of fairness, he did not obey Donald Trump on the path of denial of madness. Unlike many radical American conservatives, Johnson acknowledges that climate change is a reality, despite expressing doubts about it. It is not unreasonably antiscientific in the sense of religious fundamentalists and New Age mystics. He has something to do with the facts, but it’s not monogamous.

The prime minister’s beliefs are difficult to identify, as they are not the prime minister’s firm possession, but the union of ideological impulses and his direct audience prejudices. They are caused by the situation and are kept in good faith for the duration of a meaningful life. That is the essence of his commitment to science. He means business when he wears a lab coat and speaks about Britain as the global capital of quantum computing, gene editing and space research. He doesn’t like the part of science that claims that statements are proved in observable reality.

This is nothing new in politics. New ministers often promise to be guided by evidence, but their involvement diminishes when they are well-personalized and their budgets are already invested in policies that do not work. Vanity drives the machine deeper into failure. Bullying guarantees that failure is disguised as success. Ambition, fear, and ideology give the device a reason to go with an excuse.

It is the dynamics that maintain the system from the left and right. It’s especially common if you have a whimsical and charismatic leader and all your favorite advances depend on it. No one volunteers to bring an unpleasant truth to a boss who rewards a messenger with a comforting fiction.

As humans, scientists are unaffected by these weaknesses. But the scientific method basically means the obligation to look for flaws in the hypothesis. Test the prediction against the result. Failure is not humiliating when generating new information to improve an experiment.

In theory, politics can import this principle. In reality, it’s hard to imagine a minister announcing that solving a problem actually exacerbates the problem, but money isn’t wasted because it makes the new policy better. Government changes are usually needed to eradicate old mistakes so that new ones can be made.

The credible threat of election defeat can make the government more cautious, but Johnson is not yet subject to that discipline. Without it, he can live in the reality of his own story, which endures empirical rigor. Wearing a lab coat, you can imagine the alchemy of all kinds of superpowers. But it’s a costume for governments who like everything about science except the obligation to truth.

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