ArticleFrontiers in public health2020
The Role of Experts in the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Limits of Their Epistemic Authority in Democracy.
Article in Frontiers in public health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers.
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Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed.
- The efficacy of health experts' communication in inducing support for COVID-19 measures and effect on trustworthiness: A survey in Hong Kong.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2023Trial
- Expert opinion in decision-making: a systematic review of methods and the INTEGRITY framework for incorporating expert consultation into research.Research integrity and peer review · 2026Article
- Experts' subjective theories: how did they explain post-pandemic school violence in their public discourse through digital media?Frontiers in sociology · 2026Article
- Contesting state expertise after COVID-19.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2026Article
- The role of evidence-based medicine in the media: misinformation and the COVID-19 lesson.European respiratory review : an official journal of the European Respiratory Society · 2025Article
- 'Follow the science': Popular trust in scientific experts during the coronavirus pandemic.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2025Article
- 'We tried our best... it wasn't great': a qualitative study of clinician experiences on child psychiatry wards at the height of COVID-19.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- RT-qPCR Testing and Performance Metrics in the COVID-19 Era.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Visible scientists in digital communication environments: An analysis of their role performance as public experts on Twitter/X during the Covid-19 pandemic.Public understanding of science (Bristol, England) · 2024Article
- Online rumors during the COVID-19 pandemic: co-evolution of themes and emotions.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Adaptive metrics for an evolving pandemic: A dynamic approach to area-level COVID-19 risk designations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Predictive factors of hesitancy to vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 virus in young adults in Spain: Results from the PSY-COVID study.Vaccine: X · 2023Article
- Adaptive metrics for an evolving pandemic A dynamic approach to area-level COVID-19 risk designations.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2023Article
- Malleable Morality: Re-Shaping Moral Judgments in Health Policymaking.The Journal of law, medicine & ethics : a journal of the American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics · 2023Article
- The role of science in a crisis: Talks by political leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic.PloS one · 2023Article
- Wicked problems in a post-truth political economy: a dilemma for knowledge translation.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2023Article
- Article
- To vaccinate or to isolate? Establishing which intervention leads to measurable mortality reduction during the COVID-19 Delta wave in Poland.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Article
- Pseudoscience and fraudulent products for COVID-19 management.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2022Review
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2 authors.
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Abstract
In the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, medical experts (virologists, epidemiologists, public health scholars, and statisticians alike) have become instrumental in suggesting policies to counteract the spread of coronavirus. Given the dangerousness and the extent of the contagion, almost no one has questioned the suggestions that these experts have advised policymakers to implement. Quite often the latter explicitly sought experts' advice and justified unpopular measures (e.g., restricting people's freedom of movement) by referring to the epistemic authority attributed to experts. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the basis of this epistemic authority and the reasons why in this case it has not been challenged, contrary to the widespread tendency to devalue expertise that has been observed in recent years. In addition, in relation to the fact that experts' recommendations are generally technical and supposedly neutral, we note that in the COVID-19 crisis different experts have suggested different public health policies. We consider the British case of herd immunity and the US case of the exclusion of disabled people from medical care. These decisions have strong axiological implications and affect people profoundly in very sensitive domains. Another goal is, therefore, to argue that in such cases experts should justify their recommendations-which effectively become obligations-by the canons of public reason within the political process because when values are involved it is no longer just a matter of finding the "best technical solution," but also of making discretionary choices that affect citizens and that cannot be imposed solely on the basis of epistemic authority.
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