Follow the Science: Science, Uncertainty and Values in the Pandemic

This essay is a companion to Is Macroeconomics a Science? which examines the epistemological status of macroeconomics as a social science – its reliance on provisional models, its forecasting limitations, its embedding of value judgements within technical frameworks, and the tension between orthodoxy and productive dissent. The pandemic exposed remarkably similar dynamics in public health: provisional models communicated as certainty, values disguised as science, dissent suppressed rather than engaged, and institutional authority overextended beyond what the evidence could support. The parallels are not coincidental. They reflect a structural problem in the relationship between expertise and democratic governance that applies wherever technical knowledge is used to justify political choices.