ReviewInterface focus2021
Miasmas, mental models and preventive public health: some philosophical reflections on science in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Review in Interface focus, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- How Dutch orthopedic healthcare professionals perceive antibiotic resistance: A mixed-methods application of the mental model approach.Journal of health psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- Treating COVID-19: Targeting the Host Response, Not the Virus.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- 'Loob' and 'labas': Spatial constructions of safety and risk amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines.Health & place · 2023Article
- Public Health Management of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Australia: The Role of the Morrison Government.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Guidelines, guidelines and more guidelines for haemorrhoid treatment: A review to sort the wheat from the chaff.Colorectal disease : the official journal of the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When the history of the COVID-19 pandemic is written, it is likely to show that the mental models held by scientists sometimes facilitated their thinking, thereby leading to lives saved, and at other times constrained their thinking, thereby leading to lives lost. This paper explores some competing mental models of how infectious diseases spread and shows how these models influenced the scientific process and the kinds of facts that were generated, legitimized and used to support policy. A central theme in the paper is the relative weight given by dominant scientific voices to probabilistic arguments based on experimental measurements versus mechanistic arguments based on theory. Two examples are explored: the cholera epidemic in nineteenth century London-in which the story of John Snow and the Broad Street pump is retold-and the unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and early 2021-in which the evidence-based medicine movement and its hierarchy of evidence features prominently. In each case, it is shown that prevailing mental models-which were assumed by some to transcend theory but were actually heavily theory-laden-powerfully shaped both science and policy, with fatal consequences for some.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.